[HN Gopher] Show HN: Posterity Automations - Get things done fro...
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Show HN: Posterity Automations - Get things done from the afterlife
Hey there HN - I'm Mohamed, CEO here at Posterity. I've seen a lot
of threads lately discussing how stuff can be transferred safely to
significant others and spouses. A key aspect of that transfer is
often timing, and the ability to only disclose information if and
when necessary. This is basically what Automations are about; web-
hooks triggered in the event something happens, and which can serve
as a reliable signal because we verify every death manually.
Today, it's available via IFTTT (https://ifttt.com/posterity), and
we'll be launching standard HTTP web-hooks very soon as a follow
up. Hope you find this useful.
Author : mohamedattahri
Score : 85 points
Date : 2022-11-18 15:07 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (posterity.life)
(TXT) w3m dump (posterity.life)
| dxuh wrote:
| Excuse the harsh question, but how many people using this have
| actually died yet? As far as we know, you could just collect
| money and never trigger anything. It's also very hard to collect
| reviews for this service. I love the idea and I would like to
| have it, but I find it a hard sell to actually rely on it.
| mohamedattahri wrote:
| Very legitimate on the contrary. Luckily enough, none.
|
| You can see how incentivized we are to really go above and
| beyond if something happens to one of our users; the loved ones
| we help are our best advocates.
| omoikane wrote:
| "Never trigger anything" is actually not the worst outcome,
| compared to prematurely releasing your secrets, accidentally or
| intentionally.
| crtasm wrote:
| Manual action needed to begin the process
|
| > We rely on a user's circle of trusted contacts to let us know
| if something happened to them. It can be anyone they invited or
| nominated for a role on their account.
| mohamedattahri wrote:
| Absolutely, and by design. The only automated trigger we're
| seriously considering is the social security master death
| records; if your SSN is there, means you passed away.
| discretion22 wrote:
| Are you really sure about that?
|
| https://faq.ssa.gov/en-US/Topic/article/KA-02917
| mohamedattahri wrote:
| SSN theft is a real thing, but as far as automation goes,
| it's probably the safest in our opinion, and we'll
| obviously keep it optional.
|
| We think the most reliable way is your loved ones signaling
| it, so they can access your plan and all the stuff you
| wanted them to know.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Love the idea ( played with similar concept, but could not push
| it past the design stage ) and the approach ( manual verification
| as opposed to say.. automatic email check ). I think you did the
| right way. Good luck!
| mohamedattahri wrote:
| Thanks!
| Edd314159 wrote:
| I'm fascinated by the pricing implication here. The older you
| are, and the more imminent your need for it, the cheaper it is!
| mohamedattahri wrote:
| Not really; it would be the same as saying that leasing a car
| is cheaper if nearer to death than not.
|
| We're not a life insurance that you have to contribute to in
| exchange for a payout. We're a service that watches over you
| for one year to make sure your plan is revealed and shared with
| your loved ones.
| hirundo wrote:
| I would like to pass along my master password and safe
| combination, but those would allow an attacker to help themselves
| to most of my estate. Is there a way to do that with your service
| that you feel includes sufficient security?
| mohamedattahri wrote:
| Check out https://posterity.life/planning/crypto-vault/
|
| It's E2E encrypted, and can only be opened by whoever you made
| a recovery key for after your death.
| jeffbarr wrote:
| Talk about testing in production. You have to die first to see if
| this triggers, and if not -- your automation becomes the ultimate
| in legacy code.
|
| Seriously, this is a very interesting idea. However, after losing
| both of my parents in the last 4 years, there's a sad but
| legitimate intermediate state between alive & well, and deceased.
| People lose their ability to function and make decisions on their
| own, might not be able to renew your service.
| mohamedattahri wrote:
| I'm sorry for your loss.
|
| Your raise a very good point. Two things.
|
| (1) Incapacitation is something on our radar, and we really
| care about getting it right;
|
| (2) We put a lot of effort into making sharing and keeping
| people up to date as simple as possible, so they can reach out
| to us if there's a problem.
| [deleted]
| taubek wrote:
| This is for USA only?
| mohamedattahri wrote:
| For the time being yes. It's the only place where we know how
| to reliably verify someone's death.
|
| What other country are you interested in?
| nivenkos wrote:
| The UK has a public register so should be easy if you want to
| expand.
|
| Sweden too IIRC - and there the population register is public
| too so you can even confirm with the identity number.
| soco wrote:
| In Germany the registrar of the birth place (or last address
| if born outside Germany) will be notified in case of death
| and can be asked. Your client would register his address,
| birth date and birth place with you anyway.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| >It's the only place where we know how to reliably verify
| someone's death.
|
| No need to verify. You can modify the software to trigger if
| it doesn't receive periodic signals from someone.
| DJBunnies wrote:
| That is quite the opposite of verification/its intent.
| mohamedattahri wrote:
| Yeah, dead-man switches are risky when there's a lot at
| stake and you forget your password.
|
| An alternative we're considering is the death files
| published by the SSA if you provide us with your SSN.
| reddevil7 wrote:
| Much needed service! Keep us posted please!
| replwoacause wrote:
| The "bring your own code" part is interesting, but what happens
| if there is a mistake in my code that causes one or more of my
| automations to fail to run? How do you ensure that user created
| code is in a functional state so that the purpose of the service
| is fully executed? If my code breaks and I'm dead, then some
| potentially very important (to me) stuff doesn't happen?
| mohamedattahri wrote:
| It's not different from a smart contract. Testing, low is the
| only remedy, and that can be simplified with a great toolkit,
| which we'll be offering.
| RomanPushkin wrote:
| I'd pay for the service that would post to my
| Facebook/Vkontakte/Telegram accounts afterlife.
|
| IFTTT is not very reliable IMO, since you can't control the tech
| once you dead. But if you have a script that human needs to
| follow whatever what, then it can convince me.
|
| Moreover, if the service periodically reminds me to write
| something to be posted later, it would probably work very well.
|
| In other words, my digital life is not around IFTTT, until IFTTT
| can guarantee on their side that everything is going to work as
| expected
| mohamedattahri wrote:
| We started with IFTTT to tap into their ecosystem, but webhooks
| with your own code is probably what you're looking for.
| visviva wrote:
| This is probably a product of my current mindset, but I find the
| tagline "Get things done from the afterlife" hilariously grim -
| not only should I be obsessed with "getting things done" while
| I'm alive, but now I need to be productive after I die!
|
| edit: I should add that I actually like this idea, and I'll check
| it out further.
| mohamedattahri wrote:
| Hilarious and grim are two words I never imagined side by side,
| so just for this, I think it was worth it :)
|
| Jokes aside, it speaks to the need that many of our users have
| with regards to having agency in case of death, as opposed to
| productivity.
|
| Glad it caught your interest. Hope you give it a try.
| rundmc wrote:
| Mohammed,
|
| Connect with me on LinkedIN.
|
| We could be interested to include a posterity subscription
| for clients when we launch the US version of
| https://tontine.com in the coming months.
|
| Cheers
|
| Dean
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| WesleyJohnson wrote:
| I worked with an Estate Attorney on a similar product that was
| geared towards shutting down other online services. We started
| down the path of trying to figure out which services would let
| loved ones assume ownership vs which would only let you
| deactivate the account and there were a lot of headaches along
| the way.
|
| The service eventually launched, but it never got much
| transaction. I believe the Attorney tried to get investors at one
| point to fund marketing and advertising and everyone felt like it
| was a good idea, but was worried about adoption. The funding
| never came and the service was shuttered.
|
| I still think it's a good idea if executed properly. Will have to
| give this a look.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| My mom was a hippie, and she always promised me that after she
| died she'd figure out a way to tell me what it's like. I was in
| prison when she passed. Leading up to that first holidays after
| she passed sucked. Thanksgiving, horrible. Four months after her
| death, and approaching Xmas, I get a package at mail call. WTF?
| All of my family/friends had fallen off, so by that point it was
| only my mom who had still sent me letters. I open it, and it was
| a book on 'what the afterlife might look like'. She had figured
| out how to keep her word, and let me know what it was like after
| her passing. I don't know how it got shipped it came as an Amazon
| gift but with no identifying info. Her last 6 months she wasn't
| in a state to arrange anything, so she would have had to plan
| this like 10 months earlier. But having this gift, that was also
| an inside running kind of joke between us, oh man, that was so
| friggen awesome.
|
| I'm not doing great myself, and my boy just won't take it serious
| so we can communicate stuff so this will be super helpful. I have
| probably thousands of dollars just in re-sellable music software
| licenses that I need a way to communicate to him, and I can't
| even get him to bookmark a shared Google doc (funny how
| relationships go when you completely and utterly fail people and
| betray them by going to prison).
| doctorhandshake wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this.
| calicocoa wrote:
| This is really interesting. The site is very beautiful! I'm
| curious: let's say I'm 30 years old. How can I be sure that
| 'posterity.life' will be around if I live a full and long life. A
| _lot_ can change in fifty years.
|
| This seems like an obvious concern and I don't see it covered in
| your FAQ. This is not hypothetical. There are many similar (not
| identical) services that are no more. See SafeBeyond for one such
| example.
|
| What do you say to folks who wonder about whether their lives
| will be longer than that of this site?
| ankaAr wrote:
| They can ghost you
| soco wrote:
| I see a market opening: a service to track and manage the
| afterlife of afterlife services.
| donclark wrote:
| Seeing this makes me also think... why not offer a service
| that will lock down all finance, identity and other related
| services upon the event of a perceived attack? Sure, it would
| be worthless if it was too sensitive. I key feature would be
| that it could be unlocked in 5mins or less by an account
| holder.
| yborg wrote:
| This. Unless you are a mayfly, you are highly likely to
| outlive any new business. Simpler approach is to have an
| executor have a way to access a password manager to be able
| to identify and close out online services.
| mohamedattahri wrote:
| This is a good question.
|
| The way to think about us is more like a home insurance. When
| you purchase a policy, your home is covered if something
| happens to it for one year. When it expires, you can renew it
| again. If the insurance goes out of business, you can choose
| another carrier or find another alternative.
|
| It's not so different with us. You purchase a subscription, and
| it covers you for one year if you pass away during that time,
| and you can renew it afterwards.
|
| The services we offer never extend more than 6 months after
| one's passing, so you don't have to really be worried about us
| being in business for more than 18 months after you become a
| user, which is really not excessive and in the ballpark of most
| other services you use.
|
| Edit -- Typo.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| I've been thinking about this topic after I got married, and
| realized that I wanted to back up my wedding photos for 100+
| years so my great-great-grandkids have the originals.
|
| I wonder if this is a good use of blockchain technology. The
| company sets things up in such a way where there are
| resources and mechanisms to keep things running after the
| company collapses. Theoretically, as long as the s3 bills are
| paid, things keep running - the money pool pays for that,
| getting annual refreshes from data owners. Then money also
| exists for maintenance - s3 will shut down some day, but with
| money in escrow, developers can create proposals for
| maintenance that the token owners vote on.
|
| Just a lot of hand waving away problems on my part, but I
| think it's an interesting question: how do people store data
| for 100+ years?
| imhoguy wrote:
| > how do people store data for 100+ years?
|
| Print it.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| On acid-free paper.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| I disagree - digital is the only route. Printouts will
| get lost, bent, fires, floods, and lost.
|
| The broader idea that I find interesting however is how
| to preserve digital content for > 100 years. It's okay if
| other people don't care about that - I do, and I think
| it's an interesting set of problem constraints, and was
| just wondering if anyone else has thought about it.
|
| It's difficult to suggest an actual use case for
| blockchain, and I am far from an expert, but I think this
| could be an interesting innovative options for actually
| using distributed databases to control assets and make
| collective decisions in a decentralized fashion.
| courgette wrote:
| In a decent box.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| With archival quality pigment inks
|
| https://keithdotson.com/blogs/news/how-long-will-your-
| photog...
| vermilingua wrote:
| Do you have any insight on whether NeverTear would be
| good media for long-term archival? Waterproof and damage
| resistant is a big plus, but I wonder if they come at the
| cost of pigmant durability.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Don't do this. I somehow ended up with all the pictures
| of family going back to the 1800s. I have 5 suitcases
| full that I now have to scan.
|
| Find the best representative photos, and upload them to
| Geni.com, Ancestry.com, MyHerritage.com, 23andme, etc.
| They are bound to survive from one of those sources.
| vasco wrote:
| Why don't you just pass on 6 suitcases instead of adding
| the risk of losing digital media. The current process has
| worked for your family for 200 years.
| NateEag wrote:
| That's why you pick the best five from each year and
| print them in a small acid-free paper book.
|
| You keep the gigantic digital repository as long as
| feasible (I burn to M-Discs), but for accessibility and
| long-term, pick your favorites in a way we have good
| reason to think can last for hundreds of years.
| soperj wrote:
| > print them in a small acid-free paper book
|
| any good recommendations for printers?
| NateEag wrote:
| Shutterfly's interface is (was? been a while) kind of
| painful, but we've gotten good results from them.
|
| Chatbooks makes it fairly brainlessly easy to produce
| books regularly (and had a hilarious ad a few years back
| focusing on the ease of use compared to other options:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF2eKaOc3wo).
|
| I can't swear to the longevity of the books - I never dug
| into the details of how they're printed, because I'm not
| especially concerned about making sure they last a
| hundred years.
|
| It's the right strategy in principle, though, if that is
| your goal.
| sebhook wrote:
| I wonder if the whole site could be put in a trust with legal
| stipulations to maintain hosting funds. The trustees would be
| the management teams, then potentially a corporate trustee who
| could keep the lights on in the event of a permanent code
| freeze.
|
| I think partnering with a forward thinking legal firm that
| specializes in estate planning would be a cool avenue to
| explore that further.
| ghufran_syed wrote:
| or maybe structure the organization as two parts, an
| independent trust that acts as a custodian with set aside
| assets to cover the running costs over the expected lifetime
| of the covered population , and a technology company that
| builds markets and operates the service on behalf of the
| trust (or trusts)?
|
| kind of like how a regulated brokerage, pension fund or
| insurance company operates. The difficult part is credibly
| ensuring that the companies will follow the rules when there
| is no legal big stick hanging over them. Maybe you could have
| the company buy and issue performance bonds to the policy
| holders , so if the company disappears, the policy holder or
| their family gets a lump sum? And have the (independent)
| company issuing the bonds have the contractual right to
| display the current pricing of the performance bonds, so if
| the bond company starts to suspects mismanagement, the price
| goes up, and that has an immediate effect on the company's
| standing (and is therefore likely to deter bad behavior)
| irq-1 wrote:
| The oldest organizations are churches and universities.
| Seems like they should be involved managing something like
| this.
| rundmc wrote:
| You are using a dead mans switch or another method to confirm
| death?
| joshperrin wrote:
| Death is manually verified, you can read about the process
| here:
|
| https://posterity.life/how/death-verification/
| ibdf wrote:
| Is this a one time trigger, or can you, for instance,
| periodically continue to annoy some folks by sending them a
| message or a photo? If, periodically, how does billing work then?
| mohamedattahri wrote:
| The trigger is a one-time event, and you can use it to start
| some other process than does things periodically.
|
| Billing stops if you pass away.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| > Free 15-day trial, then $29.99/year
|
| Time to start taking those big risks I always wanted to take.
| There are some real savings here if I manage to die in the next
| two weeks, plus I can still keep getting things done!
|
| Will I need to keep paying to keep getting things done after I
| die? Can posterity automate that too? How can I cancel my service
| after death if it fails to deliver, or say, I, as a ghost become
| dissatisfied with it?
| agilob wrote:
| >How can I cancel my service after death if it fails to
| deliver, or say, I, as a ghost become dissatisfied with it?
|
| I guess it should cancel subscription after a successful
| trigger? A self-killing business?
| mohamedattahri wrote:
| You don't have to worry about that, we're we'll positioned to
| know if that happens, and the account is automatically
| memorialized with read only access to those you shared things
| with.
| pmarreck wrote:
| I couldn't help dark-laughing at "if dead, then that"
| neilv wrote:
| An answer I didn't see in the FAQ: why should someone rely on a
| tech startup to exist and function correctly after their death,
| for something important, usually decades later?
| mohamedattahri wrote:
| I tried to answer a similar question above.
|
| Death may happen at anytime, and we provide coverage one year
| at a time. If we go out of business before, you have the time
| to make other arrangements.
|
| PS: Will definitely add to the FAQ.
| omoikane wrote:
| Some services already have similar features that triggers on
| inactivity or death:
|
| https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3036546?hl=en
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212360
|
| https://www.facebook.com/help/103897939701143
| [deleted]
| idlewords wrote:
| This kind of product/service is launched every few years, but
| unless users hurry they find they typically outlive them. It
| would be very interesting to see a post-mortem of the various
| "schedule stuff to happen after you die" projects, at least one
| of which I believe was YC funded.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| most of those I've seen have been shut down your other services
| after you die, which is really a subset of schedule things
| after you die.
| idlewords wrote:
| The ones I'm thinking of were variations on "send these
| emails after my death is somehow confirmed"
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