Thanks Borski for sharing the link for the Home Loss File System - Digital Resource that my family has been working on.
Were continuing to work to get the word out about this and the physical file boxes were creating for folks who are not tech savvy (homelossfilesystem.com).
We've disseminated 2700 of the physical file boxes to fire survivors over the last 15 years and excited about what the digital resource can become.
We welcome contributors/volunteers/suggestions/feedback - feel free to add them here or email us homelossfilesystem@gmail.com
Yes, first take a detailed slow panned video of each room, wall by wall, ceiling and carpets. Basement and all tools (open all and spread). Every appliance and fixtures get the medicine cabinet and under all sinks. Same with garage and all in there, same with shed and all vehicles/tools/bikes etc.
You can then slowly advance the video, list the books etc, all the kitchen cabinet/freezer/clothes/bedding/frozen foods as well as dry foods etc and amass a fully exhaustive home inventory. An amazing amount of stuff = $$ builds up over the years and few people have such a detailed loss record. You can do the video in 15 minutes and as long as you save in the cloud - in a few places even - you can tabulate that aspect of your loss in detail later - even after the fact if well saved.
Great advice, especially in the second tab (how to deal with insurers).
I've always considered insurance false-economy and avoided it wherever possible, especially for events with losses <$20k. This is because the value of the three time-costs of insurance (time to find, time to monitor, and time to claim) generally exceed the expected value the claim.
For example, if my flight were cancelled, I might lose $1000. But all the hassle signing up for, monitoring (to ensure conditions don't change significantly in the insurer's favour; often conveyed by an email to a spam folder), and going through a stereotypically labyrinthine claims process is significantly worse than being out of pocket $1000. Or another way to put it, I'd pay $1000 just to avoid having to do all that. Or a third way to put it, if someone offered me $1000 to find them a suitable insurance policy, monitor it to make sure the company didn't spontaneously alter it, and make a claim on their behalf, I wouldn't do it, it's just not worth it.
I get why insurers are like this. If they can sneak you a letter/email(/fax) and on in a foot note on page 43 'notify' you of a reduction in your coverage (for unchanged premiums), they make money. And if they make lodging a claim as onerous as possible, some % of claimants will abandon the claim, making them even more money. So insurance companies are just doing what they're legally allowed to do to make as much money as possible.
Where possible (e.g. for events without enormous payouts [obviously not so helpful in the case of LA fires]) it can be better to DIY insurance, i.e. put a little savings aside for those events (just as one may pay insurance premiums), that way, you actually have it when you need it, unlike insurance payouts from insurers who generally try to make it as difficult as possible to obtain.
> I've always considered insurance false-economy and avoided it wherever possible, especially for events with losses <$20k.
Everything is relative, right? Self insurance is fine if you can afford it. Most people can't wear a $20k hit without potentially ending up homeless or in significant financial distress.
Insurance can actually be a win-win if you keep your money sitting anywhere else other than a literal piggy bank.
Basically, it takes just as much time for your investments to go from 10,000 USD to 50,000 USD as it does for 50,000 USD to go to 250,000 USD. So a setback of 5,000 USD has a disproportionate impact on your future financials the less money you start off with.
In other words, if your total wealth is low enough, the premiums can set you back much less than the expected loss from the insured event, and at the same time make insurance companies a profit.
In general it's worth it if a) you can't afford to replace the item in question (and the Kelly criterion gives you a precise definition of 'afford' if you really want to model it out), or b) you think the risk of losing the item is higher than the insurance company does (which is rare outside of cases of outright fraud, but might happen)
Another advantage of insurance is that if your insurer is responsible for the rectification then you benefit from collective bargaining at a time when you may be unable to do so yourself.
For example, if my car breaks down in the middle of nowhere at 3am, I expect I'll end up paying far more for recovery were I self-insured than a breakdown insurer will.
I think the article you linked is flawed because it presents a mathematical solution without taking this into account.
Yeah, I no longer bother with insurance but that which is legally mandated. I honestly wish I didn’t have to insure my vehicles either, as the policies are just hopeless.
For instance, our home flooded to the roofline and our car was washed away to god knows where five years back. Home insurance covers floods - but not floods caused by rivers. Car insurance covers floods - but only if parked on public land, and again excludes rivers.
Two years ago we had a wildfire. Luckily, the houses did not burn, but all of our infrastructure - tanks, solar panels, electrical wiring, etc. - and our truck, did.
Again, our home insurer informed us that they could only provide coverage in the event of total loss. Damage or partial loss, not our problem. The truck insurer informed us that the policy only covers fires which originate within the vehicle.
It’s a grift. Every probable event is excluded in one way or another, and only highly unlikely sets of circumstances remain, like your vehicle spontaneously combusting on a rainy day, or your stone home burning down to the foundations.
There has been a flurry of services in the EU that handle these things for you, if you are impacted. It's usually as simple as 1 form + a pic of a boarding pass, wait ~3 months and get ~70% of the money into your account. Exactly as low effort as needed to make it both useful and (one would hope) incentivise the airlines to sort it out in a better way for the client (i.e. rebooking, vouchers, etc).
There is no "File" menu in the current link because it's been shared in HTML view mode. To make a local copy, use this link to open it in edit mode instead (only the last path of the URL should be different): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TPeJzW5pa-BiJZjuEa1y...
As an article posted on HN, I expected this to be about how to cope with losing a self-hosted Linux filesystem. As a resource to deal with "home loss", this is excellent.
Also, I'd like to take a moment to appreciate how close this comes to implementing most of a website within a google spreadsheet. I know that much of this is intended to be duplicated and filled out, but the first few tabs would be right at home as HTML somewhere. You can't beat the hosting cost of doing it this way, and now I wonder how many folks are abusing Google Docs like that.
> This tool was created by former California wildfire survivors committed to supporting you through the challenging process of disaster recovery. We hope to provide essential resources, checklists, and organizational tools to help you manage insurance claims, document losses, and track expenses efficiently. By staying organized, you hope you can regain a sense of control during this difficult time. We are truly sorry for your loss and hope this tool offers clarity, support, and empowerment as you move forward on your path to recovery.
This is perhaps only a problem with the niche HN user base, but “Filing System” would be more accurate. Thought this had to do with damaged hard disk recovery or redundant file systems or something technical like that.
In version two, instead of storing a 1 as a destroyed house, we’ll destroy them to varying degrees and then read that single house as multiple bits. Like TLC SSDs
Thanks for the link. I learned that CA bans insurers from deducting the value of land when purchasing a new home instead of rebuilding.
Land Value Deduction – In the event of a total loss to your property, the amount owed to you by the insurer is the cost to rebuild your home at its original location, including building code upgrade coverage and extended replacement cost coverage. Your insurer is not allowed to take a deduction for the value of land under the replacement home you purchase. [Cal Ins. Code 2051.5 (c)(2)]
This is great, I can just fill it out, and save a copy somewhere in google drive.
Also I'd keep a printed hard copy of it and then save it in (fireproof) safe or a bug-out bag for escaping from disaster.
We just had our Home Loss File System volunteer meeting. We are now exploring the idea of building this as an app. If you are interested in contributing to this, please reach out to me here or via email: homelossfilesystem@gmail.com
Please take into account that this list is not final and may vary : some people may need to enter additional info. With a spreadsheet, this remains easy to do (you are in full control of the document and can add sheets, columns, rows as you wish), but with a webapp, it's possible only if the webapp has the feature to allow adding custom info.
Then, also essential (if not already there) , is adding or mentioning a way to retrieve /store /note down all credentials for websites, bank apps, ID card, ID/auth/esign apps... For example encouraging the use of a Keepass file, even if new, just to note down all remembered credentials.
I'm on the other side of the planet so it's not my place to comment on the content of any of this. It seems to look like a good resource clearly made with the best of intentions.
I understand the people/person behind this wants to quickly and easily impart information, so the best format for the job is whichever one they can distribute info in as quickly as possible -- but I also see this as a sort of indictment of the World Wide Web as we know it.
This should be a website. This should be at the top of search results. This should be viewable on mobile devices and desktops. And yet, it's being shared through a proprietary office suite service in the form of a spreadsheet that can't be quickly referenced or copied without loading an entire webapp.
If you're one of the many people who wonder why Google stopped being useful, if you're one of the many people who think it's getting harder to find stuff online, here's your answer as to why. All the good, salient, pertinent, well-formed information that you want to find, is being shared like this.
This is what's easiest for people, and that's at odds with how we find content these days. This comment came out kind of half-baked, but I think it's interesting to think about, and it's not a viewpoint I see here often.
The same thing happened with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In Berlin, the entire effort to support refugees was coordinated on WhatsApp and Telegram, backed by Google Docs. It still did a marvelous job until the authorities could catch up and prepare resources. Even then the unofficial resources were far better.
I run an information website for a living. There is nothing I could have done that would have beat the speed and flexibility of that response. My own response was just to give those resources more visibility.
My takeaway was somewhat opposite to yours: it's marvelous that we can do so much, so fast, for free, with minimal computer skills. We should aim to make the independent web this easy.
Spreadsheet software and in this case specifically google docs are great tools for getting something off the ground fast; often it's good enough that no replacement needs to be written. I'm reminded of a contract some of my colleagues had at some point where a company's core business was all in a shared excel sheet, their job was to replace it with a proper application; iirc it took like 2-3 years to get it finished, at significant cost / investment. Of course, the excel sheet was no longer fit for purpose and not a good long term strategy to have.
These ad-hoc efforts are wonderful and extremely effective and are the utopia we all strive for.
Ultimately, I think, the distinction between "products" and ad-hoc effort is that one is tolerant of abuse and bad actors (the "enterprise" or bureaucratic system) and the other simply isn't.
I think I read it somewhere here, that any large project eventually turns into a moderation system.
I'm not sure what actions to take as a result of this observation... except perhaps to be a little bit sad.
A potential problem with a website in a wartime scenario is that once you publicize it, it has a huge target painted on its RJ45 (or SFP) ports. Google Docs and whatsapp are huge and resilient.
> It's marvelous that we can do so much, so fast, for free, with minimal computer skills. We should aim to make the independent web this easy.
Actually, I'd argue that our takeaway is the same. That's exactly the wider point I'm making, I'm just using this emergency as a synecdoche for it. This is good, the independent web would be better. Why is the barrier for entry to the 'normal' web so high that these people didn't consider it?
Lots of information that should be hosted by local, independent groups is being hosted in these closed un-indexable platforms. It does the creator a disservice and the end-user a disservice.
Had this disaster happened 10-15 years ago, I wager that this information would (I think) likely be displayed and posted here as a website (or at least turned into one).
And zooming out, how much good info is tied up in Google Docs alone? Indulge me.
- Here's TaranVH's (The editor from Linus Tech Tips, and a very technically skilled, impressive person) guide to colour grading.[This one hurts particularly because it's such a good document and desperately wants to be anything but a Google Doc.](https://shorturl.at/InI89)
- Here's a great resource for buying products for [Curly Hair.](https://shorturl.at/ZbNF9) This should be a blog.
- How many times have you seen YT drama or open letters be Google Docs? (https://shorturl.at/fJapj) If they were here, it'd be <motherfuckingwebsite.com>
Whatever your opinion on whether or not these should or should not be documents vs. webpages, can we at least agree that they have information that people would be interested in? This stuff makes up the internet, this is where all the cool shit is. 10-15 years ago, these would be in search results. They're not anymore. It's all here, in undiscoverable Google Docs, unsearchable Discord servers, slow meandering Reddit threads, locked-down Facebook Groups and anti-discoverable TikTok feeds.
I keep hearing too much about good content leaving us (AI Slop in search), and not nearly enough about where it's going. If you find out where the good, creative stuff is going, you'll get your good, creative internet back.
*: I've said 'should' a lot, when what I mean is 'it would have been one when I was a kid'.
strange comment - this should be a website that would presumably be hosting, where exactly?
the average person would not be able to make something even close to this sheet. where are they going to host it? do they have a domain? certs? do they even know how to write html? css? during a spiky event such as a wildfire, will their website even stay up?
>Wouldn't this be a near perfect use-case for AI generated websites?
A non-tech user prompting ChatGPT to write out HTML+CSS+Javascript still doesn't cover the other logistical challenges of hosting it on a server somewhere. E.g. Buy a domain? Then buy web hosting package? Or use Netlify? Amazon S3?
Maybe someday OpenAI will have AI agents with authority to pay with customers' credit-cards and opens Cloudflare or DigitalOcean accounts on the users' behalf. That's a long time into the future where such a workflow would be trusted by non-technical end users. And then you still have the irony of using another proprietary entity of AI to empower users to put up web pages.
Whether the internet was 1990s Geocities or something like Github Pages today, a user sharing content on a personal webpage is not a trivial task. So non-techies compensate with commercial services such as MySpace pages, Twitter tweets, Facebook pages, or examples like this thread's Google Docs spreadsheet. A common theme of all those commercial services is: they handled the complexities of web hosting.
EDIT reply: >I feel like this response contains within it a great deal of contempt for average people
No, you misinterpreted. I was trying to get techies to empathize with typical end users and understand the reasons why they don't host their own web pages. If that empathy was fully internalized, we'd already predict that a ChatGPT-CoPilot assisted HTML tool isn't the only issue. The gp you replied to highlighted that in his first paragraph.
I have true admiration and not contempt for the end users at this charity using Google Spreadsheets to empower themselves to share a doc without waiting for a "real programmer or webmaster" to do it for them.
>Could you not just ask an LLM how one could host this website for free somewhere,
What's the current best answer for "website for free somewhere" that doesn't have the same criticism of being a proprietary entity that this subthread's gp was lamenting?
I feel like this response contains within it a great deal of contempt for average people and their problem solving ability.
Could you not just ask an LLM how one could host this website for free somewhere, and do the same for any logistical challenges that arise beyond that?
People could do that. Or they can click "new doc" in Docs, start typing, then copy the URL and send it to a friend. Look at that, they published a page, no problem solving necessary. Thus people, no matter their ability, will probably default to that approach.
I don't think it's a value judgement to say one thing is easier than another and hence people will. Choose the easier thing.
If we want more folks to use and build websites, it needs to be Google-Docs level easy, otherwise people will use Google Docs.
Exactly this. I do find it kinda funny that Google Docs/Word and their ilk have HTML export options. Kind of a weird funny/sad anachronism. As if there was some hope that people would use Google Docs to make their own contributions to the independent web.
I think that the biggest advantage of the spreadsheet is that it can be modified easily, even democratically and also on the go. No website offers that kind of ease of use for _adding_ information
Learning is the last thing they want to do in a situation like “I want to update a document about losing homes”, and among the end of the to do list in general. One can argue as much as they want how it’s people’s fault, but the next catastrophe will create more google sheets and whatsapp groups and zero wikis and forum threads.
I believe that developers could bridge this gap easily, if they weren’t in the denial about their own UI/UX issues themselves.
I'm speaking more broadly, not this specific instance.
In either case, justifying unwillingness to learn is a race to the bottom. I don't want every app to be made targeted at the lowest common denominator -- nor do I think it is healthy for society -- in terms of digital literacy. That's a race to the bottom to every app being like Tiktok.
Remember, that Gen Z doesn't understand what a directory or a file is because they grew up on spoon-feeding mobile apps, and this is causing problems for them when they enter the workplace.
This type of thought process of making everything as streamlined as possible is why that happens.
This is a slippery slope style argument with immediate overstretching into tiktok.
There’s a difference between learning google sheets and learning markdown.
And you are misinterpreting the desire to not deal with irrelevant complexity as some race to the bottom, as if it wasn’t constrained by the task itself.
The task of both wiki and google suite (in this case) is to create web documents with formatting and links. We clearly see what wins when there’s no additional constraints that wikipedia as a project imposes. Tiktok is completely incomparable to these and is not the “minimum state” of the same task.
This type of thought process of making everything as streamlined as possible is why that happens.
This is just an incomplete thought. Multiple factors at play here and only one of these is a type of thought process. This is as unreasonable as saying “attention to details is bad cause it’s a type of thought process that allows burglars to enter homes”.
Yes, let me just go pop my personal contents and insurance details on wikipedia as myself and my family track, update and modify the structure of the page.
Not sure why you feel justified in this level of snarkiness, given that i responded to a very specific claim:
>No website offers that kind of ease of use for _adding_ information
Obviously Wikipedia isn't great to upload your social security number to, but it does allow democratic adding of information which I cited it as an example of.
Please read the HN guidelines. You seem to require a refresher:
Perhaps it was a little snarky - it was intended with good humour to point out how drastically far away the suggestion was.
Wikipedia is nothing like what this is for adding information in the way the comment says. Particularly because one of the very key points about this sheet is that you can copy it and add information. It's explicitly for that and Wikipedia absolutely does not offer the ease of use of filling in forms and adding your information on the go.
Most wikis are not very user friendly (UI, not about the rules and moderation), most people have used Word / Google Docs before so it's much more natural.
It should be theoretically possible for Google to display a public Google doc as a search result. Google doesn't show good search results because they do not want to at this point.
At the time of writing this, the linked-to Google Sheet redirects to an html-only view with this message: "Some tools might be unavailable due to heavy traffic in this file." In this html-only view, while the user can still see the entire list of sheets at the top, in-document links to other sheets do not work, and some text overflows its cell and is not visible.
Most important information appears to be visible still, but those who wish to add to or edit the document seem to be out of luck.
What went wrong? Perhaps each Google Sheet has access throttling, not ideal for users of high-traffic docs like this, especially if the users have critical information to share.
And yet, what other tool should they have used?
We need collaborative, easily-shareable, WYSIWYG document editors for situations just like this, except of course, their access should not be throttled, and their content should be discoverable by search engines.
Do we need a new web? A web whose content is able to be directly manipulated? A web that is collaborative by default?
Perhaps some sort of Fediverse Google Docs/Sheets equivalent? Where each user can host their own copy (if they want) and the pub/sub algorithm ensures that it's all eventually consistent, if higher latency than something inherently centralized like Google?
I guess author does not have much resources. It is probably single person, with no government backing. There is not even spanish translation!
In 2015 refugee crisis, website had much better organization. It had nice graphic and translation to 5 languages. It had upto date information about police locations, border weaknesses, and how to use free trains (avoid ticket checks). Volunteers were even giving away free phones with SIM data plans, bolt cutters, single use tents...
This should be a lot of things, but this is a spreadsheet that was done probably by an end users, and thus is a superior solution to all the potential options that were not done.
There are a lot of sheets on this worksheet that are intended to be edited. Sometimes we forget that spreadsheets are popular because they are useful for the people who use them. They have an incredibly low barrier of adoption, are intuitive and pratical for editing, and frankly, for the average users, they do tables far better than HTML.
Why the fucking web has to be the measure of all things and everything needs to be hypertext? Why the web has to be everything and absorb all other applications?
There must be a reason why Visical was the killer app that really popularized the home computer for non-nerds, followed by 1-2-3 and why almost 40 years laters excel is still one of the most used tools.
Yeah, not everybody in the world is a developer, not everybody has to think like us, and frankly, sometimes we are pretty limited in our way of thinking, and way less creative than our users.
> And yet, it's being shared through a proprietary office suite service in the form of a spreadsheet that can't be quickly referenced or copied without loading an entire webapp.
I wish this was made obvious to users, but FYI: you can change /edit to /preview at the end of the URL to get something more like a webpage.
Altadena being relatively high in scientists, there was an amateur forecasting group that predicted the fire and sent early warnings out based on how they modeled the Santa Ana winds and such.
I'm sorry but the amount of houses nearby that need to be on fire before I'm just getting the fuck out is less than any amount that people might reasonably consider a wildfire, my house is not worth risking my life. Even if I do manage to stop it from burning down without getting killed the damage to my health from smoke inhalation is not worth it.
I would also be extremely skeptical of any claims of mismanagement re: the Californian government you read online - it's being used as a political football and very little of what I've seen has any basis in reality.
Kindly: If you don't have anything to contribute to helping the folks actually affected, maybe don't pick a thread for tools for affected folk to start political grandstanding.
For my friends who have lost their homes, this is extremely useful.
Thanks Borski for sharing the link for the Home Loss File System - Digital Resource that my family has been working on.
Were continuing to work to get the word out about this and the physical file boxes were creating for folks who are not tech savvy (homelossfilesystem.com).
We've disseminated 2700 of the physical file boxes to fire survivors over the last 15 years and excited about what the digital resource can become.
We welcome contributors/volunteers/suggestions/feedback - feel free to add them here or email us homelossfilesystem@gmail.com
The GoFundMe is 65% the way to its goal. If you wish you contribute you can here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-deliver-mor-1500-home-los...
Thanks again all! Please continue to share with any fire survivors!
Also here is the link again for the Digital Resource:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TPeJzW5pa-BiJZjuEa1y...
What an awesome awesome way to make light of what you’ve gone through. This is gonna help so many people in LA!
(Also hi from just a little bit up the 15 if you’re still in scripps ranch :))
We are no longer in Scripps Ranch - my parents sold their land and moved to Solana Beach. :D I'm up in the SF Bay Area myself.
Solana Beach isn't too bad either :)
Thank you! Is it OK for me to share this beyond HN? I don't want you to get slashdotted.
100%
Yes, first take a detailed slow panned video of each room, wall by wall, ceiling and carpets. Basement and all tools (open all and spread). Every appliance and fixtures get the medicine cabinet and under all sinks. Same with garage and all in there, same with shed and all vehicles/tools/bikes etc. You can then slowly advance the video, list the books etc, all the kitchen cabinet/freezer/clothes/bedding/frozen foods as well as dry foods etc and amass a fully exhaustive home inventory. An amazing amount of stuff = $$ builds up over the years and few people have such a detailed loss record. You can do the video in 15 minutes and as long as you save in the cloud - in a few places even - you can tabulate that aspect of your loss in detail later - even after the fact if well saved.
A spreadsheet tool with guidance on what to do before and after the catastrophic loss of your house, and what information to collect.
You have to remove "/htmlview" from the URL, otherwise the "File > Make a copy" interface is not available
Thank you, I was wondering about this. For anyone else that's curious, the original URL looked like
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TPeJzW5pa-BiJZjuEa1y...
I didn't know /htmlview was a feature of Google Sheets. neat
Fixed now... I think. If not please let us know!
Still opened in HTML view for me
Does anyone know what the URL should be to get the right effect?
The current URL works for me.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TPeJzW5pa-BiJZjuEa1y...
Current URL is that plus ?usp=sharing. Not sure whether it's better to cut that query string or keep it.
Great advice, especially in the second tab (how to deal with insurers).
I've always considered insurance false-economy and avoided it wherever possible, especially for events with losses <$20k. This is because the value of the three time-costs of insurance (time to find, time to monitor, and time to claim) generally exceed the expected value the claim.
For example, if my flight were cancelled, I might lose $1000. But all the hassle signing up for, monitoring (to ensure conditions don't change significantly in the insurer's favour; often conveyed by an email to a spam folder), and going through a stereotypically labyrinthine claims process is significantly worse than being out of pocket $1000. Or another way to put it, I'd pay $1000 just to avoid having to do all that. Or a third way to put it, if someone offered me $1000 to find them a suitable insurance policy, monitor it to make sure the company didn't spontaneously alter it, and make a claim on their behalf, I wouldn't do it, it's just not worth it.
I get why insurers are like this. If they can sneak you a letter/email(/fax) and on in a foot note on page 43 'notify' you of a reduction in your coverage (for unchanged premiums), they make money. And if they make lodging a claim as onerous as possible, some % of claimants will abandon the claim, making them even more money. So insurance companies are just doing what they're legally allowed to do to make as much money as possible.
Where possible (e.g. for events without enormous payouts [obviously not so helpful in the case of LA fires]) it can be better to DIY insurance, i.e. put a little savings aside for those events (just as one may pay insurance premiums), that way, you actually have it when you need it, unlike insurance payouts from insurers who generally try to make it as difficult as possible to obtain.
> I've always considered insurance false-economy and avoided it wherever possible, especially for events with losses <$20k.
Everything is relative, right? Self insurance is fine if you can afford it. Most people can't wear a $20k hit without potentially ending up homeless or in significant financial distress.
Insurance can actually be a win-win if you keep your money sitting anywhere else other than a literal piggy bank.
Basically, it takes just as much time for your investments to go from 10,000 USD to 50,000 USD as it does for 50,000 USD to go to 250,000 USD. So a setback of 5,000 USD has a disproportionate impact on your future financials the less money you start off with.
In other words, if your total wealth is low enough, the premiums can set you back much less than the expected loss from the insured event, and at the same time make insurance companies a profit.
I'm still learning about this stuff, but here's an article that breaks it down in more detail and more clearly than I have: https://entropicthoughts.com/when-is-insurance-worth-it
Said article has apparently popped up on HN a few times: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26834333
In general it's worth it if a) you can't afford to replace the item in question (and the Kelly criterion gives you a precise definition of 'afford' if you really want to model it out), or b) you think the risk of losing the item is higher than the insurance company does (which is rare outside of cases of outright fraud, but might happen)
Another advantage of insurance is that if your insurer is responsible for the rectification then you benefit from collective bargaining at a time when you may be unable to do so yourself.
For example, if my car breaks down in the middle of nowhere at 3am, I expect I'll end up paying far more for recovery were I self-insured than a breakdown insurer will.
I think the article you linked is flawed because it presents a mathematical solution without taking this into account.
Yeah, I no longer bother with insurance but that which is legally mandated. I honestly wish I didn’t have to insure my vehicles either, as the policies are just hopeless.
For instance, our home flooded to the roofline and our car was washed away to god knows where five years back. Home insurance covers floods - but not floods caused by rivers. Car insurance covers floods - but only if parked on public land, and again excludes rivers.
Two years ago we had a wildfire. Luckily, the houses did not burn, but all of our infrastructure - tanks, solar panels, electrical wiring, etc. - and our truck, did.
Again, our home insurer informed us that they could only provide coverage in the event of total loss. Damage or partial loss, not our problem. The truck insurer informed us that the policy only covers fires which originate within the vehicle.
It’s a grift. Every probable event is excluded in one way or another, and only highly unlikely sets of circumstances remain, like your vehicle spontaneously combusting on a rainy day, or your stone home burning down to the foundations.
> For example, if my flight were cancelled
There has been a flurry of services in the EU that handle these things for you, if you are impacted. It's usually as simple as 1 form + a pic of a boarding pass, wait ~3 months and get ~70% of the money into your account. Exactly as low effort as needed to make it both useful and (one would hope) incentivise the airlines to sort it out in a better way for the client (i.e. rebooking, vouchers, etc).
There is no "File" menu in the current link because it's been shared in HTML view mode. To make a local copy, use this link to open it in edit mode instead (only the last path of the URL should be different): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TPeJzW5pa-BiJZjuEa1y...
(This has now been fixed, FYI)
As an article posted on HN, I expected this to be about how to cope with losing a self-hosted Linux filesystem. As a resource to deal with "home loss", this is excellent.
Also, I'd like to take a moment to appreciate how close this comes to implementing most of a website within a google spreadsheet. I know that much of this is intended to be duplicated and filled out, but the first few tabs would be right at home as HTML somewhere. You can't beat the hosting cost of doing it this way, and now I wonder how many folks are abusing Google Docs like that.
> Also, I'd like to take a moment to appreciate how close this comes to implementing most of a website within a google spreadsheet
It looks horrible from any usability and GUI perspective.
> This tool was created by former California wildfire survivors committed to supporting you through the challenging process of disaster recovery. We hope to provide essential resources, checklists, and organizational tools to help you manage insurance claims, document losses, and track expenses efficiently. By staying organized, you hope you can regain a sense of control during this difficult time. We are truly sorry for your loss and hope this tool offers clarity, support, and empowerment as you move forward on your path to recovery.
This is perhaps only a problem with the niche HN user base, but “Filing System” would be more accurate. Thought this had to do with damaged hard disk recovery or redundant file systems or something technical like that.
It really sounded to me like some grim project where you store your data by destroying houses!
In version two, instead of storing a 1 as a destroyed house, we’ll destroy them to varying degrees and then read that single house as multiple bits. Like TLC SSDs
What if we just destroy it enough so that nobody would want to live there, but there may or may not be a homeless person living there now?
Now we have quantum storage.
Relatively quick to write but expensive to reset the blocks.
Version 2 works around that limitation using the divorce and re-marry technique.
It requires super sensitive sensors through. The prior rev could be read from orbit. (/s)
Thanks for the link. I learned that CA bans insurers from deducting the value of land when purchasing a new home instead of rebuilding.
Land Value Deduction – In the event of a total loss to your property, the amount owed to you by the insurer is the cost to rebuild your home at its original location, including building code upgrade coverage and extended replacement cost coverage. Your insurer is not allowed to take a deduction for the value of land under the replacement home you purchase. [Cal Ins. Code 2051.5 (c)(2)]
This is great, I can just fill it out, and save a copy somewhere in google drive. Also I'd keep a printed hard copy of it and then save it in (fireproof) safe or a bug-out bag for escaping from disaster.
This is a useful tool for any homeowner, not just those threatened by wildfire. Good luck and godspeed to those currently in harm's way in California.
Is there a resource for what to do before an event like this?
This is nice!
One thing I was reading about was some folks cautioning about the scams and underhanded behavior that spring up around unfortunate events.
A tab/page dedicated documenting things to watch out for would be helpful.
Some items like what is described here: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/how-do-i-avoid-scam...
Thank you! I've added this to our "Additional Resources" Tab for now, but could see it getting its own tab down the road. Much appreciated!
We just had our Home Loss File System volunteer meeting. We are now exploring the idea of building this as an app. If you are interested in contributing to this, please reach out to me here or via email: homelossfilesystem@gmail.com
Please take into account that this list is not final and may vary : some people may need to enter additional info. With a spreadsheet, this remains easy to do (you are in full control of the document and can add sheets, columns, rows as you wish), but with a webapp, it's possible only if the webapp has the feature to allow adding custom info.
Then, also essential (if not already there) , is adding or mentioning a way to retrieve /store /note down all credentials for websites, bank apps, ID card, ID/auth/esign apps... For example encouraging the use of a Keepass file, even if new, just to note down all remembered credentials.
Emailed.
If we click that link, who besides Google can instantly identify us?
I know someone who lost their home in the Palisades fires. This is what he said about this spreadsheet:
"I’ve already started spreading the word about the spreadsheet, it’s a great resource."
awesome to hear!
This is a very clever idea. Cudos.
I'm not 100% a fan of the google doc format, but whatever.
I welcome your suggestions and volunteer efforts if want to help us make it better!
It is obviously well intentioned and well timed.
Nit-picking it now wouldn't add any value.
Is there a format you'd like to see this in. Keep in mind the original link in this thread was not formatted properly. Ensure you use this:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TPeJzW5pa-BiJZjuEa1y...
I don't think you want to start a format discussion on Hacker News. Seriously.
Technically, you started it.
I mentioned it, true. I declined to participate.
Shall we have a meta discussion?
Go for it. I'd be interested to read along your meta discussion, but I would not want to participate in one. :]
that's not how this works :-|
Agreed, it doesn't work.
Would love to see an Australian equivalent of this.
I'm on the other side of the planet so it's not my place to comment on the content of any of this. It seems to look like a good resource clearly made with the best of intentions.
I understand the people/person behind this wants to quickly and easily impart information, so the best format for the job is whichever one they can distribute info in as quickly as possible -- but I also see this as a sort of indictment of the World Wide Web as we know it.
This should be a website. This should be at the top of search results. This should be viewable on mobile devices and desktops. And yet, it's being shared through a proprietary office suite service in the form of a spreadsheet that can't be quickly referenced or copied without loading an entire webapp.
If you're one of the many people who wonder why Google stopped being useful, if you're one of the many people who think it's getting harder to find stuff online, here's your answer as to why. All the good, salient, pertinent, well-formed information that you want to find, is being shared like this.
This is what's easiest for people, and that's at odds with how we find content these days. This comment came out kind of half-baked, but I think it's interesting to think about, and it's not a viewpoint I see here often.
The same thing happened with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In Berlin, the entire effort to support refugees was coordinated on WhatsApp and Telegram, backed by Google Docs. It still did a marvelous job until the authorities could catch up and prepare resources. Even then the unofficial resources were far better.
I run an information website for a living. There is nothing I could have done that would have beat the speed and flexibility of that response. My own response was just to give those resources more visibility.
My takeaway was somewhat opposite to yours: it's marvelous that we can do so much, so fast, for free, with minimal computer skills. We should aim to make the independent web this easy.
Spreadsheet software and in this case specifically google docs are great tools for getting something off the ground fast; often it's good enough that no replacement needs to be written. I'm reminded of a contract some of my colleagues had at some point where a company's core business was all in a shared excel sheet, their job was to replace it with a proper application; iirc it took like 2-3 years to get it finished, at significant cost / investment. Of course, the excel sheet was no longer fit for purpose and not a good long term strategy to have.
These ad-hoc efforts are wonderful and extremely effective and are the utopia we all strive for.
Ultimately, I think, the distinction between "products" and ad-hoc effort is that one is tolerant of abuse and bad actors (the "enterprise" or bureaucratic system) and the other simply isn't.
I think I read it somewhere here, that any large project eventually turns into a moderation system.
I'm not sure what actions to take as a result of this observation... except perhaps to be a little bit sad.
A potential problem with a website in a wartime scenario is that once you publicize it, it has a huge target painted on its RJ45 (or SFP) ports. Google Docs and whatsapp are huge and resilient.
> It's marvelous that we can do so much, so fast, for free, with minimal computer skills. We should aim to make the independent web this easy.
Actually, I'd argue that our takeaway is the same. That's exactly the wider point I'm making, I'm just using this emergency as a synecdoche for it. This is good, the independent web would be better. Why is the barrier for entry to the 'normal' web so high that these people didn't consider it?
Lots of information that should be hosted by local, independent groups is being hosted in these closed un-indexable platforms. It does the creator a disservice and the end-user a disservice.
Had this disaster happened 10-15 years ago, I wager that this information would (I think) likely be displayed and posted here as a website (or at least turned into one).
And zooming out, how much good info is tied up in Google Docs alone? Indulge me.
- Here's TaranVH's (The editor from Linus Tech Tips, and a very technically skilled, impressive person) guide to colour grading.[This one hurts particularly because it's such a good document and desperately wants to be anything but a Google Doc.](https://shorturl.at/InI89)
- Here's a great resource for buying products for [Curly Hair.](https://shorturl.at/ZbNF9) This should be a blog.
- How many times have you seen YT drama or open letters be Google Docs? (https://shorturl.at/fJapj) If they were here, it'd be <motherfuckingwebsite.com>
- Here's a guide to video game stats. This should be on a Wiki. (https://shorturl.at/db49s)
- Here's a worldbuilding calculator. This should be a tool website.* (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AML0mIQcWDrrEHj-InXo...)
Whatever your opinion on whether or not these should or should not be documents vs. webpages, can we at least agree that they have information that people would be interested in? This stuff makes up the internet, this is where all the cool shit is. 10-15 years ago, these would be in search results. They're not anymore. It's all here, in undiscoverable Google Docs, unsearchable Discord servers, slow meandering Reddit threads, locked-down Facebook Groups and anti-discoverable TikTok feeds.
I keep hearing too much about good content leaving us (AI Slop in search), and not nearly enough about where it's going. If you find out where the good, creative stuff is going, you'll get your good, creative internet back.
*: I've said 'should' a lot, when what I mean is 'it would have been one when I was a kid'.
strange comment - this should be a website that would presumably be hosting, where exactly?
the average person would not be able to make something even close to this sheet. where are they going to host it? do they have a domain? certs? do they even know how to write html? css? during a spiky event such as a wildfire, will their website even stay up?
In addition this includes tracking your own info in it. So now we're going to need auth and a backend to store the data on top of that.
I don't think it's strange at all.
Wouldn't this be a near perfect use-case for AI generated websites?
>Wouldn't this be a near perfect use-case for AI generated websites?
A non-tech user prompting ChatGPT to write out HTML+CSS+Javascript still doesn't cover the other logistical challenges of hosting it on a server somewhere. E.g. Buy a domain? Then buy web hosting package? Or use Netlify? Amazon S3?
Maybe someday OpenAI will have AI agents with authority to pay with customers' credit-cards and opens Cloudflare or DigitalOcean accounts on the users' behalf. That's a long time into the future where such a workflow would be trusted by non-technical end users. And then you still have the irony of using another proprietary entity of AI to empower users to put up web pages.
Whether the internet was 1990s Geocities or something like Github Pages today, a user sharing content on a personal webpage is not a trivial task. So non-techies compensate with commercial services such as MySpace pages, Twitter tweets, Facebook pages, or examples like this thread's Google Docs spreadsheet. A common theme of all those commercial services is: they handled the complexities of web hosting.
EDIT reply: >I feel like this response contains within it a great deal of contempt for average people
No, you misinterpreted. I was trying to get techies to empathize with typical end users and understand the reasons why they don't host their own web pages. If that empathy was fully internalized, we'd already predict that a ChatGPT-CoPilot assisted HTML tool isn't the only issue. The gp you replied to highlighted that in his first paragraph.
I have true admiration and not contempt for the end users at this charity using Google Spreadsheets to empower themselves to share a doc without waiting for a "real programmer or webmaster" to do it for them.
>Could you not just ask an LLM how one could host this website for free somewhere,
What's the current best answer for "website for free somewhere" that doesn't have the same criticism of being a proprietary entity that this subthread's gp was lamenting?
I feel like this response contains within it a great deal of contempt for average people and their problem solving ability.
Could you not just ask an LLM how one could host this website for free somewhere, and do the same for any logistical challenges that arise beyond that?
People could do that. Or they can click "new doc" in Docs, start typing, then copy the URL and send it to a friend. Look at that, they published a page, no problem solving necessary. Thus people, no matter their ability, will probably default to that approach.
I don't think it's a value judgement to say one thing is easier than another and hence people will. Choose the easier thing.
If we want more folks to use and build websites, it needs to be Google-Docs level easy, otherwise people will use Google Docs.
Exactly this. I do find it kinda funny that Google Docs/Word and their ilk have HTML export options. Kind of a weird funny/sad anachronism. As if there was some hope that people would use Google Docs to make their own contributions to the independent web.
I think you're the only one who understands what I was trying to say here, which means I didn't say it nearly clear enough. But thanks.
I think that the biggest advantage of the spreadsheet is that it can be modified easily, even democratically and also on the go. No website offers that kind of ease of use for _adding_ information
You may be right, but it's still an indictment of the web. After all, the first browser was an HTML editor as well as viewer.
Wikipedia is literally a website that does this and has existed for >2 decades at this point.
### Regular _users_ cannot edit [Wikipedia](<url>)
Refusal to learn != can't
Learning is the last thing they want to do in a situation like “I want to update a document about losing homes”, and among the end of the to do list in general. One can argue as much as they want how it’s people’s fault, but the next catastrophe will create more google sheets and whatsapp groups and zero wikis and forum threads.
I believe that developers could bridge this gap easily, if they weren’t in the denial about their own UI/UX issues themselves.
I'm speaking more broadly, not this specific instance.
In either case, justifying unwillingness to learn is a race to the bottom. I don't want every app to be made targeted at the lowest common denominator -- nor do I think it is healthy for society -- in terms of digital literacy. That's a race to the bottom to every app being like Tiktok.
Remember, that Gen Z doesn't understand what a directory or a file is because they grew up on spoon-feeding mobile apps, and this is causing problems for them when they enter the workplace.
This type of thought process of making everything as streamlined as possible is why that happens.
This is a slippery slope style argument with immediate overstretching into tiktok.
There’s a difference between learning google sheets and learning markdown.
And you are misinterpreting the desire to not deal with irrelevant complexity as some race to the bottom, as if it wasn’t constrained by the task itself.
The task of both wiki and google suite (in this case) is to create web documents with formatting and links. We clearly see what wins when there’s no additional constraints that wikipedia as a project imposes. Tiktok is completely incomparable to these and is not the “minimum state” of the same task.
This type of thought process of making everything as streamlined as possible is why that happens.
This is just an incomplete thought. Multiple factors at play here and only one of these is a type of thought process. This is as unreasonable as saying “attention to details is bad cause it’s a type of thought process that allows burglars to enter homes”.
Yes, let me just go pop my personal contents and insurance details on wikipedia as myself and my family track, update and modify the structure of the page.
Not sure why you feel justified in this level of snarkiness, given that i responded to a very specific claim:
>No website offers that kind of ease of use for _adding_ information
Obviously Wikipedia isn't great to upload your social security number to, but it does allow democratic adding of information which I cited it as an example of.
Please read the HN guidelines. You seem to require a refresher:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
>Don't be snarky.
Perhaps it was a little snarky - it was intended with good humour to point out how drastically far away the suggestion was.
Wikipedia is nothing like what this is for adding information in the way the comment says. Particularly because one of the very key points about this sheet is that you can copy it and add information. It's explicitly for that and Wikipedia absolutely does not offer the ease of use of filling in forms and adding your information on the go.
Most wikis are not very user friendly (UI, not about the rules and moderation), most people have used Word / Google Docs before so it's much more natural.
Have you heard of Wikis?
Have you tried to edit just a tiny section of a Wiki while being updated by thousands of Wiki editors?
It should be theoretically possible for Google to display a public Google doc as a search result. Google doesn't show good search results because they do not want to at this point.
Public spreadsheets (and forms) simply aren't indexed by Google; I'm sure there's a reason somewhere but I haven't been able to find it.
The plot thickens.
At the time of writing this, the linked-to Google Sheet redirects to an html-only view with this message: "Some tools might be unavailable due to heavy traffic in this file." In this html-only view, while the user can still see the entire list of sheets at the top, in-document links to other sheets do not work, and some text overflows its cell and is not visible.
Most important information appears to be visible still, but those who wish to add to or edit the document seem to be out of luck.
What went wrong? Perhaps each Google Sheet has access throttling, not ideal for users of high-traffic docs like this, especially if the users have critical information to share.
And yet, what other tool should they have used?
We need collaborative, easily-shareable, WYSIWYG document editors for situations just like this, except of course, their access should not be throttled, and their content should be discoverable by search engines.
Do we need a new web? A web whose content is able to be directly manipulated? A web that is collaborative by default?
Perhaps some sort of Fediverse Google Docs/Sheets equivalent? Where each user can host their own copy (if they want) and the pub/sub algorithm ensures that it's all eventually consistent, if higher latency than something inherently centralized like Google?
I guess author does not have much resources. It is probably single person, with no government backing. There is not even spanish translation!
In 2015 refugee crisis, website had much better organization. It had nice graphic and translation to 5 languages. It had upto date information about police locations, border weaknesses, and how to use free trains (avoid ticket checks). Volunteers were even giving away free phones with SIM data plans, bolt cutters, single use tents...
How is a Google App being useful representative of how Google stopped being useful?
And how do those people enter their information? Where is it stored?
This should be a lot of things, but this is a spreadsheet that was done probably by an end users, and thus is a superior solution to all the potential options that were not done.
There are a lot of sheets on this worksheet that are intended to be edited. Sometimes we forget that spreadsheets are popular because they are useful for the people who use them. They have an incredibly low barrier of adoption, are intuitive and pratical for editing, and frankly, for the average users, they do tables far better than HTML.
Why the fucking web has to be the measure of all things and everything needs to be hypertext? Why the web has to be everything and absorb all other applications?
There must be a reason why Visical was the killer app that really popularized the home computer for non-nerds, followed by 1-2-3 and why almost 40 years laters excel is still one of the most used tools.
Yeah, not everybody in the world is a developer, not everybody has to think like us, and frankly, sometimes we are pretty limited in our way of thinking, and way less creative than our users.
> And yet, it's being shared through a proprietary office suite service in the form of a spreadsheet that can't be quickly referenced or copied without loading an entire webapp.
I wish this was made obvious to users, but FYI: you can change /edit to /preview at the end of the URL to get something more like a webpage.
What? "Home Loss File System"? There is a new file sytem? And it's lossy? How isthat supposed to work!? click ... Ooooooh
But why does this not exist for those who already lost their homes years ago and are living on the streets?
A bunch of rich home owners have their houses burned down it's an emergency.
Tens of thousands of homeless people live on the streets and nobody bats an eye.
Just saying.
From the first (most top-voted) post in this thread from the person who put this together, states:
"We've disseminated 2700 of the physical file boxes to fire survivors over the last 15 years and excited about what the digital resource can become."
[flagged]
Victor Shaw died in the Eaton Fire last week with a garden hose in his hand. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-12/los-ange...
Accurate risk assessment is difficult when a fire is barreling towards you.
> Accurate risk assessment is difficult when a fire is barreling towards you.
Yes, hence it must be done (Step 0 above) _before_ there is a fire
Altadena being relatively high in scientists, there was an amateur forecasting group that predicted the fire and sent early warnings out based on how they modeled the Santa Ana winds and such.
I'm sorry but the amount of houses nearby that need to be on fire before I'm just getting the fuck out is less than any amount that people might reasonably consider a wildfire, my house is not worth risking my life. Even if I do manage to stop it from burning down without getting killed the damage to my health from smoke inhalation is not worth it.
I would also be extremely skeptical of any claims of mismanagement re: the Californian government you read online - it's being used as a political football and very little of what I've seen has any basis in reality.
Kindly: If you don't have anything to contribute to helping the folks actually affected, maybe don't pick a thread for tools for affected folk to start political grandstanding.
For my friends who have lost their homes, this is extremely useful.
As we know from the history of many disasters, both response and recovery are _extremely_ dependent on the local environment.
Disaster planning begins with input from local professionals and local survivors of previous local disasters.