Prometheus + Grafana?

[rwjack]

Since we still don't have a way to collect data from all devices into a single location, has anyone thought about storing data into Prometheus or Influx and visualizing with Grafana?

[drajabr]

I can see many useful use cases for activity watch if this became a thing. For parents, schools, organizations, and businesses, both good and evil uses.

I really wish someday to add it to my selfhosted fleet of services for family and friends : )

[rwjack]

The devs here seem to have an odd mindset, hence why development seems to have stalled, because "evil organizations will spy on their workers using AW - for free".

Might as well ban all guns with that logic, because "guns kill people".

[drajabr]

But even in the current situation it will be easy for any evil org to create a private fork and do the evil on it. Its only limiting the individuals who want to use it for actual good in their life and their family too. Like, better not develop AW basically if you worry from evil orgs using it for evil because surely, they will. BTW, If a company is providing laptops/hardware for their employees, it's their right to do everything "if they wanted" to guarantee that its not being used for other than their business.

[rwjack]

One possible good use case for personal users, merge all screen time into a single auditable location, so the users can help themselves understand what is eating most of their time. That would make it easier to create "IRL rules" and would probably help in actually going outside and touching grass, instead of staring at the screen all day.

Data and observability are everything, for both good uses, and bad. You can live in fear of 1984, or you can go ahead and create a Brave New World, however it may turn out.