As I had failed finding an app that was not ad-ridden or oldish, my girlfriend and I are using this (I am copying her values, to know when her period will be). Also contributing some code :)

This gets downvoted for being negative, but it was my immediate reaction when I saw "Mozilla": They're axing projects that don't align for strategic reasons that probably make sense, but is simultaneously very Googly.

Association with Mozilla is a cause for concern when considering the longevity of a project.

This is a totally valid concern. Initially we were considering augmenting our income with a B2B model to license the library we’ve built, but that didn’t pan out and our priorities have changed, so we solely work on the apps for customers now. I actually forgot this was even on our website and, since we aren’t trying to offer those services or license anymore, I’ve removed them.

Yeah, there is no support for “multi-dimensional” metrics. So systolic and diastolic would each have to be their own metric. Food tracking in Reflect could use some work, but if you link with Apple Health, Reflect can pull data from Cronometer or MyFitnessPal for example.

Any particular place you thought the premium was very aggressive? I’m open to changing that, it’s not the kind of feedback we normally get. Thanks for saying so

Reflect started as a passion project for myself and my partner with no intention to make a product out of it. By the time we thought to do so, we’d already put so much into just iOS that doing an Android version as well was its own huge project.

We still plan to implement Android, we have a roadmap where we track this: https://changemap.co/ntl/reflect/task/9239-android-version-o...

Are you going to have it be local only?

I think you would be interested in seeing what Flo has done using OHTTP: https://oblivious.network/ohttp

That’s a tough guarantee, ultimately you’re placing trust in the device’s security once you limit your attack surface to just local data. So that’s why we’re working on encryption with key custody. Any feature like cloud backups are explicitly opt-out by default so no one is putting their data onto someone else’s servers without knowing what they’re getting into.

Simple + open source + no access to network + no updates (idk about Android/iOS cross-app data sharing).

I was going to say operate it under a non-profit but then I laughed in Altman.

Duress modes are a frequently overlooked feature in general - e.g. I don't want to just block access to my location, I want to lie about my location entirely.

I don't get the downvotes. Plausible deniability is a valid concern when menstrual cycles and geolocation can lead to criminal repercussions in many states of USA [0].

Nevertheless, if I was a fertile woman, I'd be more concerned of my phone/tablet/car leaking my visits to an abortion clinic than a police officer checking my phone.

0. https://states.guttmacher.org/policies

No, because we don’t have any servers. We don’t track anything about our users, not even logs or usage.

Are you affiliated with OHTTP?

Do you mean for menstrual data specifically?

Currently for general data there is pearson correlation, five different anomaly detection algorithms, and T tests for significance among other things.

The work in progress we have for menstrual tracking takes temperature, flow, and past grund truth data into account. I know that’s vague, and it’s because my partner is working on it, not me :)

When we release the cycle tracking we’ll have a full writeup

I agree it could make sense one day but, as I mentioned in another thread, we don't have any servers and so we don't collect or host any user data (encrypted or not). In fact, I really don't want to; it's overhead and costly, and might involve compliance with HIPAA or GDPR, and I just would rather the user be in charge of their own data.

Having FHE for local data would be very interesting though.

Unfortunately no android yet, but you can track progress here: https://changemap.co/ntl/reflect/task/9239-android-version-o...

I'm building an app with the same concept but web based first and converted to Android and iOS via Capacitor, for now.

It's not released yet, but if you'd like to get an e-mail notification you could take a look here: https://dailyselftrack.com/

I understand that, and I kind if alluded to this being a concept less than a well thought out policy. If it was strictly profit, then all expenses of the business would be written against advertising and miraculously there would be 0 profit. My general point is that advertising revenue is insanely easy to get, especially with auctions and technology from google. Some of the problems and perverse incentives: - negative engagement in media - advertising screens at gas stations - popups everywhere - hardware devices you own display ads - software you purchase has ads - streaming services you bought without ads have ads added later

You all participate in society, so you get it. Advertising has become a tragedy of the commons and 2nd order effects are things like negative engagement and body dysmorphia. There needs to be a vice tax for advertisements to stop them from being bolted on everywhere. Lobbyists, smart policy makers, economists and lawmakers can come together to find the right mix. However, we should disincentivize it AND use it to make up for budget shortfalls.

Sales taxes are taxes on revenue, and they could certainly be advertisement-specific.

You can tax anything, even beards. Advertising is a business model, but it's a bad one that poisons the social environment. Advertisers are economically incentivized to lie and to push the common denominator ever lower. It is cancer.

I think in case of ad companies you could tax the revenue directly. They are strongly vertically integrated so there's really very little reason to track their profit rather than total sales.

The only reason you tax profits rather than revenue is that you want to avoid killing businesses that do useful things why operating at low margins.

Margins in advertising are huge and what those company do is pure detriment to all market actors on average.

There cpuld be harmful substance tax, akin to alcohol.

If corporations are indeed people, why isn't their income taxed?

They can have the mortgage interest deduction, just like me! I'm a people too!

Also:

>Is that really what you want?

Kinda

> Revenue isn't taxed. Profit is

What about VAT ?

While I expect most women buy in advance, I expect they also don't buy enough and so are out there mid-period at least some of the time. Their cycles also affect their buying patterns, so even women who are stocking up are more likely to buy differently in different parts of the cycle.

The real question is what does the manager do with the data. Across a city on any given day there are about the same number of women in every day of their cycle so it isn't like they are marking up pads on the 25th-28th day of the month to get women who didn't stock up. As such I don't think this data is useful, what is useful is when they discover a women missed her cycle and thus needs to get ads for pregnancy wear in a couple months. Since that is their need for data, the fact that it is noisy and not very accurate is still close enough.

That said, they probably are more accurate than you would expect despite all the noise. Not 100% accurate, but being greater than 50% accurate is a lot better than chance and should be obtainable.

You think the data brokers aren't aware of varying spending habits? You might be surprised to learn the number of people living day-to-day, cheque-to-cheque who don't have the ability to stock up on much of anything. These are the consumers who are "ripe for the picking" in marketer's eyes. Back in the late 90's this would have been much harder too, probably working with not much more than cash register receipts.

You're making a lot of assumptions there. The guy probably had a training dataset with real cycle data and shopping data and went off of that.

> Because even with hygiene products, people buy them before they need them and stock up.

One would think so, but in my experience this is not the case on average. Of the half-dozen long term relationships I've had, only 1 partner was ever prepared for the monthly inevitable. For everyone else it was always treated as a surprise. Suggesting to my current partner that she stock up on the products she just used was dismissed with an "oh I don't need that stuff for weeks".

The trope of guys not wanting to go get tampons, or uncomfortably navigating the feminine hygiene isle, did not just appear out of nowhere.

From an advertising POV, isn’t that even better? Then they’d know when to advertise to someone to increase sales.

That is, the marketers wouldn’t actually care about a woman’s cycle, but at which points they could monetize it.

(Good lord, I need a shower after just typing that.)

I think it's more about when to push than about what to push. Maybe there are specific types of products aside from what's obvious, or actions to take or not to take. Like avoiding discounts when customers are least likely to develop loyalty, maybe even how to rotate through choices of products like meats to vegs to dish soaps.

By the way, I've seen self proclaimed male on social media posting how they use these trackers to predict their irresistible sushi cravings. Apparently, and contrary to intuition, men also have the cycle, just less obvious. Pelvis opening up and such.

I don't tend to keep candy in the house. You could track my youngest daughter's menstrual cycle pretty accurately by how often I buy Hershey's bars with almonds. They are never consumed in our household other than during the first part of a particular week. My older daughter and wife don't have quite the same tells though.

They don't care about your menstrual cycle. Advertisers want to predict your purchase pattern to better target you. So, what you said just reinforces the idea that using menstrual cycle data for placing ads is useful. Essentially using your body against yourself.

> And with food, you're often shopping for a week

That’s not how people shop here in Europe

read up on that case. it clearly did have a pattern. that was no random guess.

i never pay with card and i don't join any member programs to avoid creating a purchase history. pattern or not, a lot can be gleaned from what i buy.

target

does she eat more ice-cream during menstruation or pregnancy? does she change flavors? there may be patterns that you are not aware of. only a steady ice-cream subscription would be able to hide that.