I find all this anti-screen stuff kinda weird. Why avoid screens one day week? Do you also avoid electricity? Running water and sanitation? Refuse to use a wheel or mechanical advantage? It's almost Amish to me. Where do you draw the line, and why? Why a screens but not e.g. electromagnetism?
I have young kids. There is A LOT of this sort of pressure and sentiment - that using a computer/tablet/phone is somehow inherently bad and harmful. My kids love watching TV but I am fortunate that they also love imaginative play with traditional toys (teddy bears, Lego, cardboard boxes etc) more and they only watch shows maybe 1 or 2 hours a month. I think it is because we don't have a physical TV in the house - there is no looming huge black rectangle in the corner reminding them all their waking time (we adults just watch netflix/whatever on a laptop after bedtime for the kids).
I think this is part of the problem. It's not screens that are bad, it's what you do with them and how you use them.
Just turn notifications off. Just don't look at twitter/Facebook/tiktok. It's not hard to just not use the brain rot stuff. I get it you are addicted - I guess just be thankful it's not alcohol or cigarettes. Get help for your addiction.
But I do not understand why on earth you would not use these amazing, life-improving, wondrous tools? Like if you needed to hammer in a nail you refuse to use a metal hammer "because technology" and what? you just bludgeon it in with your fists instead? I do not understand this rejection of hugely beneficial tools and technology that has made our lives so much easier.
>Just turn notifications off. Just don't look at twitter/Facebook/tiktok. It's not hard to just not use the brain rot stuff. I get it you are addicted - I guess just be thankful it's not alcohol or cigarettes. Get help for your addiction.
That part is precisely the problem. "Just get help for your addiction" is not how anything works.
It's incredibly hard for an addict to stop using the brain rot stuff. A lot of very smart people make a lot of money making it as hard as possible.
Why do you need to hammer that nail in every moment of downtime? If someone close to me pulled out a hammer to hammer in nails 5 hours a day with no visible beneficial result I would be worried that this person is pretending not to have an addiction
I have never understood addiction either. My whole life I’ve been told that I am addicted to “computers” or video games, because I spent so much time on it. But frankly there wasn’t much better to do and it’s just a hobby, passion that now pays my bills…
Only until I started smoking cigarettes and later stopped I realised what addiction really means, and how hard it is to kick it.
Why don’t you buy a TV and put it in your kids’ bedroom then? It might alert them before a natural disaster happens or something — it’s useful technology, after all.
1. Maybe because making life easier isn't always a good thing? That there are certain things which benefit from being difficult, or at least not as easy as possible. Especially for children.
2. There aren't billion-dollar corporations, staffed with teams of PhDs in psychology, whose sole purpose 24/7 is to get me to use a hammer more. That's a false analogy.
> It's not screens that are bad, it's what you do with them and how you use them.
Congrats on being a good parent, but there's a lot of people out there who put much less conscious effort into it than you apparently do.
Read some of the news URLs about "AI slop children's videos" for example, and try to imagine what happens when people give a 3 to 6 year old a tablet and unrestricted use of youtube to keep clicking on recommendations.
I'm not saying that having a day without screens or going completely no-screen is the best and absolute solution, but that it's a very real category of problem to grapple with and decide for yourself what's most appropriate.
Essentially what you’re saying is “if you’re addicted, why not choose to not be addicted?” and… yeah…
Personally my biggest complaint is not necessarily screen time in itself, it’s that the tech giants are dedicated to maximising your (and your children’s) watch time by showing a stream of addictive slop.
It’s a shame, there’s good content for kids on YouTube but the algorithm always biased towards addictive crap. And they’re cornering the market to the extent that other operators producing good kid-friendly content (like the BBC in the UK) get sidelined.
There is also a baby products online store in the Netherlands that for religious reasons is closed on Sunday. You can browse the site but you can't buy anything.
That was the reason I bought a lot of stuff at their competitor baby-dump.nl. Until BP bought BD, and instituted the same policy there...
It's their site, they can do what they want. And as long as there's competition I can even admire them for making a sacrifice for something they believe in.
This kind of stuff becomes a problem when it starts arguing that others must do this too. If someone argues that all shops must be closed because their religion forbids working on that day, then that's an issue. But as far as I know, the Baby Park people haven't done that. They made a personal moral choice and sacrifice. Good for them.
When you visit my site you are visiting my timezone. Same as if you tried to call me on the phone in the middle of your day but I was asleep during my night.
What attracted me to computers as a kid in the 90s was the promise of an always-on, never moody, deterministic machine. That was magic and finally a fixed reliable point in life, forever. Plus, with the internet, suddenly the world came closer, no matter timezone, things are always there.
We are already killing the deterministic part with LLMs. I can't trust the machine anymore to do tomorrow what I told it yesterday.
Now we also want to remove the always-on aspect? Arbitrarily? Because it's ...cool? I don't get it.
I remember some people doing this maybe 15 years ago, I think these types of hipster-ish trends recycle every generation or so.
I don't see it as harmful, but it's not for me either. My personal stuff goes down when my DDNS script fails or I accidentally trip the breaker, that's enough.
B&H Photo's website can be browsed on the Sabbath but you can't order anything. The company is owned and operated by observant Orthodox Jewish members of the Satmar Hasidic community.
If you visit the B&H retail store in NYC they sell all kinds of stuff for basically everything that is more "pro" level which is beyond what you can achieve with a regular smartphone with its built in lenses. Particularly for video production. Highly worth the visit if you're ever in NYC and have never been to it.
Lighting, audio stuff, equipment cases, backpacks, tripods, battery packs, that sort of thing. It's also stuff in the category of "Accessories" that have much profit margin built into them, much like how a Trek or Specialized branded road bicycle store makes much more profit from selling lights, bottle cages, shoes, than the bicycle itself.
Additionally they sell tons of the accessories that can be used to turn a modern $1500 2160p60 video capable smartphone into something more useful for amateur/youtuber level videography, like smartphone gimbals, bluetooth lap mic/receiver setups, extra batteries, cases... Stuff like what the 'smallrig' phone cages do.
In the US state of New Jersey some counties restrict the sales of tools and hardware (like something you might need to urgently buy for a home repair from Home Depot) on Sundays:
As a person from the west coast it is always funny to me to encounter places with "blue laws" for no product sales on Sundays, or "dry counties", primarily in the US south/southeast.
off topic but I wonder why client is the first query parameter in that URL. I guess there's some stuff on the search page that changes based on what you are browsing from? they already have the user agent data so I can't imagine it's for marketing data tracking needs
I'm using the main line firefox release on MacOS here, and yeah it does seem to do that... Clearly google already knows what browser I'm on from useragent as the most rudimentary ID and other browser fingerprinting measures as well.
(edit: one theory would be they're tracking how many URLs are copy/pasted and shared by firefox users to non-firefox users and then loaded by people with different browsers, there has to be some value to them in that data in the aggregate of millions of search page loads).
I figured leaving it into the copy and pasted URL is harmless and ultimately mozilla derives the bulk of its revenue from its search deal with google, so it's also a way of supporting continued firefox development in the most minuscule way.
It's their site and they can do whatever they like, but it's pretty silly. If you want to avoid screens, avoid screens. Don't make your addiction my problem
I'm reminded of the type of recovering alcoholic who impetuously accuses anybody who they know has consumed alcohol of being slaves to the sauce themselves.
"Trump is your president, don't make his problems to mine. If you vote for a shit president then keep him for yourselves and don't let him escape his sandbox."
Most non-restaurant stores are closed in Poland on Sundays. At first I found it a bit inconvenient, but as I've lived here longer (going on ten years) I really appreciate it. It's a forced "slow down" day that's society-wide. It also helps push back against the constant desire to inject money and capital into every aspect of life.
It would never be allowed in the US, but I do think a designated "don't buy stuff" day once a week would be a really good idea, as well.
Long before that, a known religious zealot used to close his online store on Sundays and put out a very in-character lecturing note if you tried to visit it anyway.
I try not to reply to snarky comments, but - it's not noticeably worse than other days, unless you want to go shopping in the biggest mall in the center of the city.
On Sundays, you can send packages via paczkomats (outdoor lockers) and convenience stores (Zabkas) but the post office, DHL, UPS, etc. offices are closed.
It's not been the case for probably more than 20 years, but I remember that in the past the official website of the Italian Postal Service [1] used to be closed out of office hours.
Japanese websites still do this. If you buy shinkansen tickets between 23:00-05:00 you get:
* JR central - you can buy, but not reserve seats, as the system actually registers your ticket at 5am
* Jr east - you cannot buy.
Some banks/government sites also simply don't want to work at night.
Very frustrating. To me it spells incompetence, but maybe there's some non-technical stakeholder who made a stupid rule once. For JR its probably some nightly accounting system - not 100% sure but I assume all the modern systems are just plugged on top of the ancient ones just like the airline industry does it.
I remember back in the days a Car Insurance website which only allowed you to use it during working hours. Never understood the mechanism, surely they weren't getting quotes live from actuaries or anything.
It contrasts with times before, when we actually had to wait for a monthly magazine, and even if we wanted to watch a movie, it was aired (say) the next Tue 7PM.
While now we have all convenience, there is no anticipation - or rest.
Sunday is my day for boycotting the effects of religion on society, so I take a break from observing any form of worship or abstinence on Sunday, just like I do every other day of the week.
Love it. I started a fun side project this weekend to also reduce my screen time: turning articles I bookmark online into a personal printed magazine that I can then read offline [0]. I just printed the first personal edition that I will read on my flight next week, including a few articles I found on HN :)
I first thought it was a neat idea, but the exception for his shop makes the closure look a little hypocritical.
"This site is closed on Sundays -- except the shop of course, the actual type of thing that is usually open or closed in the physical world, because when money comes into play, there is no pretending it wasn't just for show."
I find all this anti-screen stuff kinda weird. Why avoid screens one day week? Do you also avoid electricity? Running water and sanitation? Refuse to use a wheel or mechanical advantage? It's almost Amish to me. Where do you draw the line, and why? Why a screens but not e.g. electromagnetism?
I have young kids. There is A LOT of this sort of pressure and sentiment - that using a computer/tablet/phone is somehow inherently bad and harmful. My kids love watching TV but I am fortunate that they also love imaginative play with traditional toys (teddy bears, Lego, cardboard boxes etc) more and they only watch shows maybe 1 or 2 hours a month. I think it is because we don't have a physical TV in the house - there is no looming huge black rectangle in the corner reminding them all their waking time (we adults just watch netflix/whatever on a laptop after bedtime for the kids).
I think this is part of the problem. It's not screens that are bad, it's what you do with them and how you use them.
Just turn notifications off. Just don't look at twitter/Facebook/tiktok. It's not hard to just not use the brain rot stuff. I get it you are addicted - I guess just be thankful it's not alcohol or cigarettes. Get help for your addiction.
But I do not understand why on earth you would not use these amazing, life-improving, wondrous tools? Like if you needed to hammer in a nail you refuse to use a metal hammer "because technology" and what? you just bludgeon it in with your fists instead? I do not understand this rejection of hugely beneficial tools and technology that has made our lives so much easier.
>Just turn notifications off. Just don't look at twitter/Facebook/tiktok. It's not hard to just not use the brain rot stuff. I get it you are addicted - I guess just be thankful it's not alcohol or cigarettes. Get help for your addiction.
That part is precisely the problem. "Just get help for your addiction" is not how anything works.
It's incredibly hard for an addict to stop using the brain rot stuff. A lot of very smart people make a lot of money making it as hard as possible.
Why do you need to hammer that nail in every moment of downtime? If someone close to me pulled out a hammer to hammer in nails 5 hours a day with no visible beneficial result I would be worried that this person is pretending not to have an addiction
I have never understood addiction either. My whole life I’ve been told that I am addicted to “computers” or video games, because I spent so much time on it. But frankly there wasn’t much better to do and it’s just a hobby, passion that now pays my bills…
Only until I started smoking cigarettes and later stopped I realised what addiction really means, and how hard it is to kick it.
Why don’t you buy a TV and put it in your kids’ bedroom then? It might alert them before a natural disaster happens or something — it’s useful technology, after all.
1. Maybe because making life easier isn't always a good thing? That there are certain things which benefit from being difficult, or at least not as easy as possible. Especially for children.
2. There aren't billion-dollar corporations, staffed with teams of PhDs in psychology, whose sole purpose 24/7 is to get me to use a hammer more. That's a false analogy.
On one hand, I agree; on the other hand, that was the most succinct formulation of European culture that I've ever read.
> It's not screens that are bad, it's what you do with them and how you use them.
Congrats on being a good parent, but there's a lot of people out there who put much less conscious effort into it than you apparently do.
Read some of the news URLs about "AI slop children's videos" for example, and try to imagine what happens when people give a 3 to 6 year old a tablet and unrestricted use of youtube to keep clicking on recommendations.
https://www.google.com/search?&q=ai+slop+children%27s+videos...
I'm not saying that having a day without screens or going completely no-screen is the best and absolute solution, but that it's a very real category of problem to grapple with and decide for yourself what's most appropriate.
Essentially what you’re saying is “if you’re addicted, why not choose to not be addicted?” and… yeah…
Personally my biggest complaint is not necessarily screen time in itself, it’s that the tech giants are dedicated to maximising your (and your children’s) watch time by showing a stream of addictive slop.
It’s a shame, there’s good content for kids on YouTube but the algorithm always biased towards addictive crap. And they’re cornering the market to the extent that other operators producing good kid-friendly content (like the BBC in the UK) get sidelined.
It's not heroin that's bad, it's what you do with it and how you use it
There is also a baby products online store in the Netherlands that for religious reasons is closed on Sunday. You can browse the site but you can't buy anything.
The page is in Dutch, it explains that they're closed because get believe Sunday is a day for rest: https://www.babypark.nl/zondag/info-bp.html
That was the reason I bought a lot of stuff at their competitor baby-dump.nl. Until BP bought BD, and instituted the same policy there...
It's their site, they can do what they want. And as long as there's competition I can even admire them for making a sacrifice for something they believe in.
This kind of stuff becomes a problem when it starts arguing that others must do this too. If someone argues that all shops must be closed because their religion forbids working on that day, then that's an issue. But as far as I know, the Baby Park people haven't done that. They made a personal moral choice and sacrifice. Good for them.
Same for the SGP, the Dutch fundamentalist Christian party: https://sgp.nl/
I share few of their values but I quite appreciate this one.
Honestly, I don’t mind it. Our lives are so commercialized as it is. If I can’t order a new stroller until Monday, I think I will survive.
I told a friend one time, what if there was a web site that had opening hours.
He said, you can already see the opening hours of all the stores and stuff on Google Maps.
I said, no, not a website like that. I mean, the website itself is open 9 to 5 Monday through Friday, and outside of that it’s closed.
My friend looked at me and just said, why?
Idk, I think it would be neat, I said.
My friend didn’t get it. This guy gets it.
> My friend didn’t get it. This guy gets it.
They laughed at Einstein, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
> website itself is open 9 to 5 Monday through Friday, and outside of that it’s closed.
So you want people to read your blog at work because when they are off it's closed?
No, I want them to take time off from work to read the blog. Just as they do when going to the DMV, bank, doctor consultation,etc.
Plenty of these exist. The biggest I'm aware of is B&H Photo Video.
How does this work with time zones?
When you visit my site you are visiting my timezone. Same as if you tried to call me on the phone in the middle of your day but I was asleep during my night.
What attracted me to computers as a kid in the 90s was the promise of an always-on, never moody, deterministic machine. That was magic and finally a fixed reliable point in life, forever. Plus, with the internet, suddenly the world came closer, no matter timezone, things are always there.
We are already killing the deterministic part with LLMs. I can't trust the machine anymore to do tomorrow what I told it yesterday.
Now we also want to remove the always-on aspect? Arbitrarily? Because it's ...cool? I don't get it.
I remember some people doing this maybe 15 years ago, I think these types of hipster-ish trends recycle every generation or so.
I don't see it as harmful, but it's not for me either. My personal stuff goes down when my DDNS script fails or I accidentally trip the breaker, that's enough.
Exactly :)
In Israel, many sites are "closed" on Sabbath, unfortunately. This was a recent controversy about this: https://www.ynet.co.il/economy/article/rymwhdedmg (Hebrew)
B&H Photo's website can be browsed on the Sabbath but you can't order anything. The company is owned and operated by observant Orthodox Jewish members of the Satmar Hasidic community.
Any idea how did they survive the switch from digital cameras to everybody taking photos with their smartphones?
If you visit the B&H retail store in NYC they sell all kinds of stuff for basically everything that is more "pro" level which is beyond what you can achieve with a regular smartphone with its built in lenses. Particularly for video production. Highly worth the visit if you're ever in NYC and have never been to it.
Lighting, audio stuff, equipment cases, backpacks, tripods, battery packs, that sort of thing. It's also stuff in the category of "Accessories" that have much profit margin built into them, much like how a Trek or Specialized branded road bicycle store makes much more profit from selling lights, bottle cages, shoes, than the bicycle itself.
Additionally they sell tons of the accessories that can be used to turn a modern $1500 2160p60 video capable smartphone into something more useful for amateur/youtuber level videography, like smartphone gimbals, bluetooth lap mic/receiver setups, extra batteries, cases... Stuff like what the 'smallrig' phone cages do.
https://www.smallrig.com/ca/list/Phone-Rig.html
B&H is much more than just still photo cameras.
They sell professional photo and video equipment.
In the Netherlands there are plenty of websites which close on Sunday for religious reasons.
For example:
https://www.babypark.nl
In India, I remember many government websites that allowed form submission only during office hours.
In the US state of New Jersey some counties restrict the sales of tools and hardware (like something you might need to urgently buy for a home repair from Home Depot) on Sundays:
https://www.google.com/search?&q=new+jersey+blue+laws+tools+...
As a person from the west coast it is always funny to me to encounter places with "blue laws" for no product sales on Sundays, or "dry counties", primarily in the US south/southeast.
The first time I was in Silicon Valley, the most surprising thing was that equivalent of blue laws was every day with how early everything closed.
Still makes me wonder how anyone gets anything done, OTOH it explains how door dash, uber, etc could happen there - other places had less demand...
B&H Photo Video is probably the most well known example, they won't accept an order on the sabbath.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=b%26h+sab...
But the site still functions to browse.
off topic but I wonder why client is the first query parameter in that URL. I guess there's some stuff on the search page that changes based on what you are browsing from? they already have the user agent data so I can't imagine it's for marketing data tracking needs
I'm using the main line firefox release on MacOS here, and yeah it does seem to do that... Clearly google already knows what browser I'm on from useragent as the most rudimentary ID and other browser fingerprinting measures as well.
(edit: one theory would be they're tracking how many URLs are copy/pasted and shared by firefox users to non-firefox users and then loaded by people with different browsers, there has to be some value to them in that data in the aggregate of millions of search page loads).
I figured leaving it into the copy and pasted URL is harmless and ultimately mozilla derives the bulk of its revenue from its search deal with google, so it's also a way of supporting continued firefox development in the most minuscule way.
A well-known Catholic in Poland, he runs his own shop, which is also closed on Sundays.
https://cejrowski.com/sklep/
It's their site and they can do whatever they like, but it's pretty silly. If you want to avoid screens, avoid screens. Don't make your addiction my problem
I'm reminded of the type of recovering alcoholic who impetuously accuses anybody who they know has consumed alcohol of being slaves to the sauce themselves.
"Trump is your president, don't make his problems to mine. If you vote for a shit president then keep him for yourselves and don't let him escape his sandbox."
Spot the five differences.
Most non-restaurant stores are closed in Poland on Sundays. At first I found it a bit inconvenient, but as I've lived here longer (going on ten years) I really appreciate it. It's a forced "slow down" day that's society-wide. It also helps push back against the constant desire to inject money and capital into every aspect of life.
It would never be allowed in the US, but I do think a designated "don't buy stuff" day once a week would be a really good idea, as well.
Long before that, a known religious zealot used to close his online store on Sundays and put out a very in-character lecturing note if you tried to visit it anyway.
I bet the crowds on Saturdays are something to enjoy.
I try not to reply to snarky comments, but - it's not noticeably worse than other days, unless you want to go shopping in the biggest mall in the center of the city.
Unless you can also send packages there
Not sure I understand your comment.
On Sundays, you can send packages via paczkomats (outdoor lockers) and convenience stores (Zabkas) but the post office, DHL, UPS, etc. offices are closed.
Same in DACH
We would warmly welcome him in Germany
Window shopping is still allowed on Sunday in Germany.
But one must limit oneself to only 1 hour of window shopping to avoid falling foul of Reckverhilfplatsteinbedenkt
It's not been the case for probably more than 20 years, but I remember that in the past the official website of the Italian Postal Service [1] used to be closed out of office hours.
https://poste.it
Japanese websites still do this. If you buy shinkansen tickets between 23:00-05:00 you get:
* JR central - you can buy, but not reserve seats, as the system actually registers your ticket at 5am
* Jr east - you cannot buy.
Some banks/government sites also simply don't want to work at night.
Very frustrating. To me it spells incompetence, but maybe there's some non-technical stakeholder who made a stupid rule once. For JR its probably some nightly accounting system - not 100% sure but I assume all the modern systems are just plugged on top of the ancient ones just like the airline industry does it.
I remember back in the days a Car Insurance website which only allowed you to use it during working hours. Never understood the mechanism, surely they weren't getting quotes live from actuaries or anything.
With Internet, we live in an always-on culture.
It contrasts with times before, when we actually had to wait for a monthly magazine, and even if we wanted to watch a movie, it was aired (say) the next Tue 7PM.
While now we have all convenience, there is no anticipation - or rest.
Hey. We still have TV shows that air once a week (and people loudly complain that it takes too long)
Sunday is my day for boycotting the effects of religion on society, so I take a break from observing any form of worship or abstinence on Sunday, just like I do every other day of the week.
The shop link is still “open”.
"shop" still works
Turning a static site off is excellent ragebait
Stuff like this will really break your visibility on google etc.
Which doesn't really matter anymore as all Google will do is slurp it up and regurgitate it without attribution.
For good reason, lol
Love it. I started a fun side project this weekend to also reduce my screen time: turning articles I bookmark online into a personal printed magazine that I can then read offline [0]. I just printed the first personal edition that I will read on my flight next week, including a few articles I found on HN :)
[0] https://www.unscroll.ch
There are websites in Japan that are only "open" during Japanese business hours.
I first thought it was a neat idea, but the exception for his shop makes the closure look a little hypocritical.
"This site is closed on Sundays -- except the shop of course, the actual type of thing that is usually open or closed in the physical world, because when money comes into play, there is no pretending it wasn't just for show."
Skeuomorpharaseeism
Related:
2025 What if your website had business hours? (2022)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43647598