

Ask HN: Building an app to make real-world conversations searchable. Want it? - willwhitney

We’re working on Retrospect (http://goretro.co), an app that sits in the background and intelligently records location and audio from your day-to-day interaction with the world. It lets you access your real-world conversations just like you might search your email. Look for things like “conversations with Sarah at Starbucks” or “Baseball games I’ve gone to with my Dad”, then play back the recorded moment.<p>We’re launching sign-ups for our free beta starting today if you’d like to try it out.<p>What do you think? Would you use something like this?
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kyllo
It sounds like you are using speech-to-text and NLP algorithms to make audio
recordings keyword searchable.

Frankly, the consumer use cases for this are creepy. If this were a thing, and
my friend or family member were recording all our conversations, I would ask
them to turn it off or leave.

But I think you should market this to law enforcement, law firms, and possibly
business executives. It would be very useful in these spaces to have
searchable audio transcripts of court hearings, testimonies, depositions,
interrogations, confessions, as well as board meetings, keynote presentations,
etc. Maybe also useful for journalists and academic researchers who do a lot
of recorded interviews.

If your speech-to-text performance is really good, it could also replace
stenography in closed-captioning. (Yeah that's still how closed captioning
works for live TV--someone listens and pecks away at a stenotype.)

Basically, sell it any place where a stenographer is currently employed, or
where people currently use audio recorders. Don't try to get people to record
audio of their entire lives for sentimental value, though, that isn't a
realistic use case. Most people's lives are mundane and we know it. We don't
need a searchable, chronological index of every time we curse or fart.

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kintamanimatt
Want it? With extreme emphasis: _oh hell no!_

I'm so annoyed by this project. Imagine the kind of chilling effect this would
have on daily interactions if you knew everything you said was being recorded.
It has a chilling effect even if it's _you_ that's recording your own
interactions! If I found out someone was surreptitiously recording my casual
conversations I'd just never talk to them again, except to chew them out for
doing such a shitty thing. Also, if someone asked me whether it's ok to hit
record in a social setting, I'd look at them sideways and not only decline,
but would instantly stop trusting them and cut them out of my life as a
consequence.

I rarely want people to fail, but I really, really want this privacy-busting,
surveillance project to fail miserably. We're surveilled enough as it is
without intelligent people contributing to these garbage projects.

Ted, Will, and George: work on something that benefits humanity rather than
chills the frankness of interpersonal interactions. The potential consequences
of this project are awful.

~~~
stfu
This summarizes the whole argument quite well. Apparently kintamanimatt and I
share the same level of disgust for people who try to create privacy-invading
technologies.

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EFruit
I'd use it. If it weren't hosted. And if it was Open Source. Otherwise, I just
can't bring myself to trust it.

The concept is a goldmine. You need to convince potential users of its
security an privacy protection, should there be any. If there isn't any, your
product is a ticking time bomb.

~~~
gtank
We’re designing this thing so that even we can never access your recordings.
Building it with actual security in mind poses some UX challenges (don’t lose
all your credentials at the same time!) but we’d rather have that problem than
any amount of privacy risk.

~~~
anonymoushn
Does this mean that I can store the only copies of the recordings on my
machines, or that they are on your machines and there is some step you cannot
perform that is required to read them?

~~~
gtank
They're on our machines, but under keys that we don't have. We're also
considering a federated model that would give users control over their
storage.

~~~
mserdarsanli
So, the conversations are on server but the required indexes for searching are
on client? Seems a little weird to me.

~~~
gcb0
i think he meant keys in the cryptography sense, not database search indexes.

~~~
mserdarsanli
No I got that, but somehow the audio must be processed, right? And it has to
be done on client or there is no point for encryption. Also, assuming the
search indexes are sent to the server, how would the server access them if
they are encrypted?

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Idioteque
Amazing idea, now imagine this with Google Glass. It would be just like in the
third episode of Black Mirror.

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3chelon
I was thinking about this a few years back, when I was working on firmware for
pre-smart-phones. Probably something to do with getting old and forgetful :)

The trouble with audio - as everyone has pointed out - is the privacy and
storage issues. What I would be interested in is some way of producing a
condensed "markup" of your day, easily searchable using a voice assistant. It
would record the basic facts but not the verbatim conversations.

When I first thought of this in any depth it was still unfeasible, but now I
think much of it is already there. Still, a big project. Maybe smaller, niche
versions for particular tasks would have to come first?

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kohanz
Very interesting idea!

However, while you do address the privacy of the user themselves, what about
the privacy of the other unwitting participants who are having their
conversations being recorded and stored without their consent?

~~~
willwhitney
This is definitely a tricky question, but in the end it comes down to the
actions our users take, just like if they were using a tape recorder or Google
Glass-like-device.

We'll make sure to notify our users of the relevant privacy laws in their
current area, and we'll always encourage people to tell those around them when
they have Retrospect turned on.

~~~
swohns
I like the idea, but there absolutely has to be some sort of indicator that
you're interested in recording this convo (and the less invasive the better).
How about linking it to calendar events, and/or locations? Facial rec could be
an indicator for recording when you hit Glass integration.

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scrapcode
How do you expect to tackle the amount of battery power this puppy will drain?

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seanccox
Sounds compelling, though in Turkey (where I live) recording someone without
their consent is a criminal offense. To legally use the app, I would need to
open every conversation with a request for their consent to be recorded, and
even then I could be prosecuted if the material was made available to a third
party without the person's permission. Journalists here run into this problem
all the time, so I don't think this is a very good market for trying this.

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bosie
Would love the idea/app/service but I am not sure what exactly your app does.
Would it be able to extract enough information from hundreds of business
meetings to actually pinpoint not just meetings but also just segments of
meetings? => I don't wanna listen to a 60 minute meeting but really only
listen to 2 minutes where we discussed feature XYZ

~~~
willwhitney
Eventually that's the idea, yeah. We're going to be trying out some topic
detection algorithms on the recordings so that we can let you search for
specific things that you talked about and jump to them in the recording.

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keiferski
Cool. Keep in mind that it's illegal to record people without their permission
in many states. (Pennsylvania, for example.)

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alexvr
I actually think it would be cool, at first, but I would be painfully quiet if
I knew everyone used it. It's the kind of thing that would be neat to try for
just a day. Once lots of people use it, there would be a nice little market
for Retrospect-jamming hardware.

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jblok
Interesting idea, but it requires quite a major lifestyle change for the user.
It is the type of service that takes time for people to adjust to. I wouldn't
be surprised if it took you (or a competitor) a couple of years to get a
decent amount of regular users.

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ereckers
I'm not sure I'd get a lot of utility out of 10,000 hours of "butt calls".
Maybe if there was some memory that I was looking to rekindle by listening to
it, but I'm not sure if the actual audio would ever beat my "memory" of it.

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mtndes
It is not legal or ethical, I think. No one should have my conversation in
their phone or something, even though s/he is my closest friend or my parent.
So, I think I wouldn't use it, but not sure about others.

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nickfromseattle
How have you solved the technical challenges associated with background noise
found in real world conversations and recording a high enough signal:noise
ratio to index the audio and make it searchable?

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davidkatz
Recording people without their knowledge is unethical, and letting people know
they're being recorded all the time is also not feasible, so, I wouldn't use
this. Good luck.

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larry7
Might be a good one, say you are on vacation, and would like to be able to
relive the experience at a later point.

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willwhitney
Clickable link: <http://goretro.co/>

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roma1n
Sorts of reminds me of the Livescribe pen (see their 'pencast' tools).

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tempi35
Sounds interesting (pun intended..)

~~~
willwhitney
+1 for awful pun

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Mz
Most conversations are far worse than any written communication about umming
and repeating things, etc. To me, this sounds like just so much baggage,
assuming that every conversation is significant. I am also reminded of some
quotes or lines about words getting in the way of communication. I think that
problem is bad enough in the world without BigBrothering our lives.

Having said that, I do think there are some potential niche uses for this. In
addition to law enforcement and court, it makes me think of the South American
tribe that used video recordings of meetings with whites to hold them to their
word. They did not read and write English but they found a means to avoid the
fate of so many indigent peoples who have been lied to, taken advantage of,
and screwed over by people from more "advanced" cultures.

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duiker101
sounds quite invasive...

