The emotions are relatable, but the examples are strange and don't back up his argument. It is true that there are many situations in modern life where a smartphone has become effectively mandatory.
But Ali Express is not one of those. It's very feasible to delete the app, or at least turn off the notifications. The quality of TV writing may have taken a nosedive but nobody is forcing you to watch TikTok Empire. If you long for the golden age of television, you can find disc versions of The Wire, Mad Men, The Sopranos etc. Often they're free to borrow at your local library. The App Store is indeed garbage, but I open it a handful of times per year and probably spend less than a minute to search for the app I want and install it.
The argument about losing control to devices would be much more effective if the examples weren't mainly cases where the user clearly has control.
From a website like that where you expect them to go missing, maybe. But that's not the point, the point is that useful functionality is getting gated.
You can on the desktop website, I do it all the time. Although in general I've stopped buying a lot of stuff on there since it seems like everything now costs 5x as much as it used to, you seem to pay for shipping on everything, and the ability to search for things is way, way down (it's actually better than it used to be, but still terrible compared with 6-7 years ago).
Geeze! Going to the AliExpress app to check a package is for when you remember that you ordered something over a month ago and are wondering if it'll arrive soon. Not for regular checking!
Then you look and see it made it to your country last week and give a gentle nod to the app, then close it. Because you know, "any day now, I'll have 1000 of that $0.01 thing."
This is true for almost everything. The bank is still open for 2 hours a day if you want to check your balance. The point is that this anti-pattern is being pushed for more and more functionality.
Like all addictions it's about habits and you compete with multiple trillion-dollar companies to shape your habits for you. Luckily, you are closer to where decisions are actually being made.
So the measures, in no particular order, but vaguely resemblign an escalation ladder:
1. Get a shittier phone. Something worth 100 eurobucks from aliexpress working on a slow mtk soc, outdated android and all that
2. Disable all notification forever, also incoming call ringtone with a voice mail saying you will return the call tomorrow
3. Get a landline or equivalent land-line like voip phone on a table in a hallway. With a voice mail of course.
4. Start leaving the phone at home when you go for a short walk or somewhere in a shop.
5. When you do take it with you outside, put it in a banana bag under the jacket instead of your pocket and then leave it in the bag when you get back home.
6. obviously remove all of the dopamine junkie apps.
7. don't look at the mail, chats, news, whatever is there before lunch, specifically don't let it be the first thing getting your attention in the morning.
8. doing a prayer 5 times a day and going to mosque or whatever you have to counter balance the influence of shaitain sitting your pocket for the last 10 years.
9. allowing yourself to use junkie apps for a dopamine hit when you actually need it but deciding the time and trigger yourself (separate phone with instagrahm turned off most of the time, only scrolling it while you are outside in the park in a nice setting after having a juicy piece of junk food, icecream or whatever, etc).
I did the numbers for the year 2025 and conclude that flying there will be cheaper, but then the orange monkey decided to do a short victorious war right in the hood of my favorite transit station to there.
Get GrapheneOS. Install FOSS apps whenever possible, via Obtainium. Signal if need be. A RSS reader. No social networks. Get a Kagi subscription to ensure no ads and bias.
That targets a different thing IMO. You can aim for privacy or you can aim for the thing being slow and irritating to use to disrupt the habit. If tech companies spend money to make their apps smooth to use, you can aim for the opposite and inject friction and reduce the amount of high you get from it and making it slower to reach so you can have a chance to take back the executive control over the task.
Except it's impossible nowadays, since most apps require Google Play Integrity attestation and doesn't work on GrapheneOS.
And if it wasn't for these apps (for example banking apps, since someone decided that it's now impossible to use your homebanking from a PC since it's not secure enough) I would already use a Nokia 3310.
Not true. I'm a customer of 3 top French online banks and of two top global brokerage cie and the apps work great. I have no issue whatsoever except with one health insurance app but their Web app is better anyway.
Only thing missing is contactless payment but there are European banks that support GrapheneOS without Google Pay so alternatives exist. And I can use Garmin pay with my watch (and offline and without Garmin Connect thanks to the FOSS GadgetBridge appp) if that was necessary.
Loads of banking apps work fine on GrapheneOS, and the vast majority of non-banking apps require even less attestation and so work on GrapheneOS like on any other Android with Play Services present.
Harder, not impossible. I've only experienced one banking app that doesn't work (and I didn't try disabling the security for it). I have another AOSP without google services and it's a bit worse but half of the banking apps work. Uber doesn't.
Not sure where you live but in the EU I think you can ask for either SMS or hardware token verification for the bank website.
The most annoying thing for me is "magic links" apps send via email to login. I don't have email on my phone.
when reading personal blogs, it's best to assume any statement as a reflection of their experiences and world-bubble rather than as verified facts. This is a blog, not a technical doc. while your frustration may be well founded, it's also self inflicted to a degree, you're expecting the wrong thing from the wrong place.
While we're on the subject of gripes with the modern internet, the fact that most social media sites that publish to a single feed flatten reality into a single format. People then apply uniform judgement to content with wildly different purposes (and subconsciously people ascribe more purpose to posts that happen to rise up the frontpage, even when the blog in question was just some thought somebody threw out in ten minutes)
Quite often it's really a question of gut flora and lack of knowledge regarding good eating habits.
Also fat cells are endocrinologically active, so they try to compel the person to, well, get fatter.
I've been doing this the hard way lately and there's still much that I don't know, because food and lifestyles used to be different, so my parents only told me what they knew from theirs.
To illustrate just how different, my great-grandmother reportedly disliked food that she described as "rich" - too calorie dense for her taste. By this definition cottage cheese was "rich".
The gut is an interesting component we are learning more about, for sure. But as an addict, it still comes down to changing your habits, which indeed fixes the floura.
I’m not sure I can really believe the often cited claim that a major component here is a lack a knowledge. Does anyone truly believe Cheetos are as good or better for you than broccoli?
The most obvious explanation to me is that we are just flooded with addictive food and bombarded with ads to entice us. That and healthy food presents more friction in terms of having to buy the ingredients and prepaid it, and we are all short on time and overstressed.
I doubt it. I've never been overweight in my lifetime. I have never had to put any effort into that. I simply cannot relate at all to the food-related struggles I sometimes read about overweight people having. It would be silly and condescending of me to claim that I simply have more strength of will here than they do. On the other hand, I struggle heavily with some things many/most people do not, and this is often blamed as a personal failure and weakness of mine. So I wonder if it's just that people who don't have any similar struggles think they are just superior beings with superior willpower.
Absolutely audacious to complain about being "forced" to install apps and in the next sentence complain about the Aliexpress app. Nobody forced you to install the aliexpress app. Nobody needs the aliexpress app.
Also people need to hate ads more. A single unwarranted notification will get me to disable all notifications or uninstall your app. If you don't hate ads enough, you'll find yourself being shown ads.
I think the author has good points but maybe we need to separate out a few things.
AliExpress is very much a user choice issue. It’s not a necessary service and it has a wide variety of competitors.
But the Apple OS nags for free trials and services should be something that is illegal under antitrust law. iOS and Android are the only two viable operating systems on the market for cellular phones. They are a duopoly. We shouldn’t be forced through promotions and ads in the basic operating system functionality just to have a basic communication device.
And we can say all we want about feature phones and flip phones and other similar alternatives but that’s bologna. 99.9% of customers are buying iOS or Android. From a numbers perspective there are no other options.
The author loved technology when it worked for him, now he toils in its service. Previously, it was additive, only giving and not taking; now it narrows options to only one: the app.
Obviously, we shouldn't let this happen. Keep paper tickets, physical menus, cash, etc. These things are human, made by and for humans. They make sense across the intelligence spectrum as they connect to us in the physicality of the real (which everyone understands).
Of course, the individual doesn't get to decide if all his government and city services app-ify themselves. What to do in that case? I guess this guy's chosen the path of minimal leashing: wearing the digital yoke as little as possible. That's just harm minimization though.
Perhaps it'll help someone to say this: It is possible to live without a smartphone. I do it. There's times when you can't use a service. QR codes are meaningless. You might occasionally be bored. I've always found an alternative or workaround to these issues. Yes, that's inconvenient sometimes (usually not though, surprisingly), but is that worse than being a slave to glass slab?
> Previously, it was additive, only giving and not taking; now it narrows options to only one: the app
This seems a bit dramatic. The issue is who is making the decisions. People have stopped being intentional about their decision-making, in a variety of ways, and tend to simply go with whatever the company providing the software recommends. This is the thing that we need to change. Using these services and using a smartphone are fine. We need to find a way to do it on our own terms, though.
This is very well written (and, yes, it exxagerates - but that's to heighten the effect).
My solution is to remember: when you're living in hell, you still have to go to work in the morning. And at some point you'll start knowing the demons' names and make small talk about how their kids are doing in college. How can you bring a little joy to a bad situation? Do a strange little wiggle dance and go sideways instead of staying on the pre-assigned track that's been laid out for you.
It goes from complaining about endless pitches of tech to pitching a gaming console. The tech pitching is a problem, but the need to be constantly entertained and fed some content or game is the real problem. Those are pacifiers. You stuff them in an adults mouth to keep them from actually thinking about what would improve their own life. Take the pacifier out and use your brain for your needs - what you should want to do, to make of the world, to make exist. See what happens next…
While I appreciate the viewpoint, I do not think the idea resonates personally. If I'm following, your idea is to take a brain submerged in this feedback loop from childhood and task it with the question: "what should you want to do?" Are you expecting new results? Is there some noble, obvious result you held back that you think this brain can come up with? Pick ourselves up by our bootstraps to go where?
I think the population starting to age is an interesting one -- the first one playing more-complex 2D + 3D games from an early age. I'm in this age group. In a world with nothing left to explore, and humans globally connected by commercialism, I think you don't need to be bothered with what capitalism is making of the world. Our brains are hooked on solving imaginary, complex problems. We're all on some weird ship at sea, migrating toward some unknown old-age destination. Probably an MMO.
I have lived in a tech-rich life since I bought my first single board home system in around 1975.
I think it is as easy as setting boundaries: practice meditation. Learn to enjoy sitting and doing nothing, both in the living room and sitting outside.
Then when the time is right, work hard for several hours to get important stuff done.
Food tastes best when we are very hungry, so we must go long periods of time doing mini-fasting a few times a day in order to enjoy food. Similarly, earning a living or experimenting with tech should be something that you sit down and do for a while, then do something else.
I've noticed a similar phenomenon: getting tired of networks and algorithms. I wrote a short essay with my thoughts on "Well Being in Times of Algorithms" [1].
If my phone demanded my attention as much as it seems the author's does with notifications, I'd probably not keep it with me either. I also feel tired of it, but it's difficult to remove access to the number of beneficial things I get from it. I try to limit non-FOSS apps and modify most of those to suit my purposes better, though that often feels like a lot of work done with the intent of saving work...
I think part of the problem is the frictionless and feeling like I can’t control the nature of the device.
I think my killer feature would be a phone that is only configurable at a laptop. You can install whatever you want, but it has to be at the laptop. Website allow lists on the laptop. You can uninstall and block things on the phone but you can’t reinstall or unblock them until you’re back at your computer.
I feel like all the screen time features are intentionally under designed. Their incentives are obviously to keep you in your phone as long as possible, while making you feel like they care.
I’ve read so many posts like these on hn, but I just don’t relate to them. I have loved internet access since my first dial in to a BBS in the 90s. I’ve been cruising the information superhighway at top speed every day since. There is always something new to discover.
I'm with you. There's so much cool stuff going on and new things to learn! Stuff to try and new tech to play with.
It sounds like the author got locked in some sort of, "I follow" loop where he got used to trusting certain companies to keep him interested and entertained, then they sold out to ads and the lowest common denominator of entertainment audiences.
The Internet is the same as it's always been! There's infinite ways to use it, full of all sorts of fun communities, new hobbies to spend too much money on (hehe), and endless amounts of people to engage with.
If your iPhone is bothering you that much, maybe it's time to try Android or go totally off the grid (so to speak) and install something like GrapheneOS on a used phone (the horror!).
How about designing your own damned phone? It's not impossible. Make a thick ass brick with a huge battery and dual screens that barely fits in your pocket but can do amazing things a normal phone can't: Give it an IR emitter so you can turn off TVs from a distance. A CO2 sensor so you can tell when any room you're in is getting stuffy. A friggin laser projector. Whatever!
Instead of being a passive intake of all things corporate Internet, make something. Contribute!
I recently switched to a used Minimal Phone (no longer being made sadly) and its been great for this. The best thing for me is to just make the phone completely unappealing to use, but still capable of essentials. A slow refresh rate eink screen helps a lot with that.
For the authors complaints about ads, I recommend paying for ad free versions of things you truly enjoy. Budgeting will mean you consume less and have fewer choices, but enjoy it more. And if something doesn't offer an ad free experience you can pay for, that's a great reason not to use it.
> When we first got computers, this is simply what they were. By default they did nothing. They sat there and waited for you to have an idea.
It's ironic that we've come full circle here. This is generally what AI does - nothing that isn't prompted, and yet still part of the end and nothing like the beginning of the internet
My solution to this is carrying two devices. One turned off iphone and a TCL flip 2. The flip phone runs android 11 so I can use signal to stay connected with international family, but for anything else it is useless other than calling, texting, and basic email
> I long for the days of driving through the night with AM radio, where at least the ads were interesting.
Look, I understand the issues the author has with our current world, though I'd argue there are methods to avoid many of the things they mention (like ads). But it was hard to follow between the silly examples (Steam Deck games needs updates? And?) and the legit issues. Also I'm not sure what kind of rose-colored glasses they are wearing but I will never agree that the "ads were interesting" on AM or FM radio. Thankfully I was not subjected to radio, and the ads which I abhor, for long before I gained control over what I wanted to listen to and when. To pine for such times is anathema to me.
This is such an incredibly pessimistic look at our present. I'll be the first to tell you about what I see as wrong in our society and the author make a number of salient points, but we live in an age of wonder. Yes, there is bad, plenty of it, avoid it is hard but not impossible. Or maybe I'm just an earlier version of the author who still believes in a Star Trek future (TNG/Voy/DS9, not the crap they are putting now, though Lower Decks was a joy).
My phone is a freaking tricorder, I control robots in my house, I turn on/off the lights with my voice, and I can build new software by talking to my computer. I don't deny the bad, nay, evil in the world, but what a bleak outlook this author paints.
Interesting. I don't know if my experience is helpful, or there are many (or most?) people like me, but I consider myself a total 100% Internet-loving Geeky Nerd.
And yet I never had (oh well, I did register and post 1-2 posts N years ago) Twitter, Twitcher, Threads, MySpace, Instagram, TikTok, Red Book, Facebook, any other -book for that matter, no Youtube channel, and I very rarely watch it. I also never "get information" from these. I don't understand how people do it.
So every time I got a "rabbit hole itch", I went straight to Google, lost in some niche blogs or forums.
Nowadays, of course, the Internet is gone - you can't Google a non-LLM blog, or there are just no non-LLM blogs anymore? So I go straight to Deep Research. I don't enjoy it, but I would never think to find my information on Twitter or something. Sometimes I will read a book. There are niche books with info that LLMs do not have, or have but it's shallow.
For "news" I have my trusty RSS feed from the days of Google Reader (now on Newsblur, happy customer for many years). If something starts to spam, I mute it.
Maybe all of this is just because I'm a loner without any friends. That's one possible reason.
I also don't have any streaming services. Everything you need can be... found elsewhere wink-wink, in good quality. We watch some older stuff, Breaking Bad, Person of Interest, some non-English stuff. Same with music. Let the dust settle and watch the good shows 2-3 years after. You also get the benefit of ignoring ones that get canceled (OA anyone).
Total tangent, but I really like the way this article is written; you can effectively read the first sentence of each paragraph, and it still conveys the same story in a coherent, summarized way.
What? Almost everyone talks about phone addiction, it's an extremely mainstream view. And Meta just got record fines for the addictiveness of their product.
> the offline option exists the way the wheelchair ramp exists at certain train stations: installed after the fact, satisfying a regulation, pitched at an angle no wheelchair on earth can climb. We are all expected to pretend grandma can make it up, and to act only mildly surprised when we find her at the bottom again.
It's hyperbole like this that breaks the illusion for the post. I'm not an editor, but if you're trying to make a valid point you need one man. Stinkeroo.
I'm not going to play this dissection game only to later be "checkmated" by a bunch of nerds rambling about and dogpiling onto nothing who can't see the forest for the trees. It's also replies like yours that break the illusion HN isn't full of bots.
If you don't think this entire post is hyperbole, you can at least see that it's yet another blogspam ad for MiSTer, right?
It's interesting about MiSTer. It was wedged into the article so awkwardly and suddenly that it felt like a definite advert, but it mostly said it was shit and only get it if you like frustratingly broken systems. I still think it was a reverse psychology form of an ad
Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.
The emotions are relatable, but the examples are strange and don't back up his argument. It is true that there are many situations in modern life where a smartphone has become effectively mandatory.
But Ali Express is not one of those. It's very feasible to delete the app, or at least turn off the notifications. The quality of TV writing may have taken a nosedive but nobody is forcing you to watch TikTok Empire. If you long for the golden age of television, you can find disc versions of The Wire, Mad Men, The Sopranos etc. Often they're free to borrow at your local library. The App Store is indeed garbage, but I open it a handful of times per year and probably spend less than a minute to search for the app I want and install it.
The argument about losing control to devices would be much more effective if the examples weren't mainly cases where the user clearly has control.
I don't think you can track a package now without the app on aliexpress. It might be another website but expect it to become more common
I find it hard to believe that all but a very, very narrow segment of society can't go 3 or 4 days without tracking a package?
From a website like that where you expect them to go missing, maybe. But that's not the point, the point is that useful functionality is getting gated.
You can on the desktop website, I do it all the time. Although in general I've stopped buying a lot of stuff on there since it seems like everything now costs 5x as much as it used to, you seem to pay for shipping on everything, and the ability to search for things is way, way down (it's actually better than it used to be, but still terrible compared with 6-7 years ago).
Geeze! Going to the AliExpress app to check a package is for when you remember that you ordered something over a month ago and are wondering if it'll arrive soon. Not for regular checking!
Then you look and see it made it to your country last week and give a gentle nod to the app, then close it. Because you know, "any day now, I'll have 1000 of that $0.01 thing."
> then you close it
You mean, then you disconnect the presentation layer.
AliExpress tells you the tracking number and the courier on the order page. I just tracked a package yesterday without touching the app.
Still using BoxOh
I mean, you don't really need to track the package usually, it'll get there when it gets there like in the good old days.
This is true for almost everything. The bank is still open for 2 hours a day if you want to check your balance. The point is that this anti-pattern is being pushed for more and more functionality.
> The people who love being connected never let the thing leave them be it pocket, palm, face-down next to the fork
I'm tired of convincingly presented falsehoods. I hate being on my phone. I also can't stop being on my phone.
Like all addictions it's about habits and you compete with multiple trillion-dollar companies to shape your habits for you. Luckily, you are closer to where decisions are actually being made.
So the measures, in no particular order, but vaguely resemblign an escalation ladder:
1. Get a shittier phone. Something worth 100 eurobucks from aliexpress working on a slow mtk soc, outdated android and all that
2. Disable all notification forever, also incoming call ringtone with a voice mail saying you will return the call tomorrow
3. Get a landline or equivalent land-line like voip phone on a table in a hallway. With a voice mail of course.
4. Start leaving the phone at home when you go for a short walk or somewhere in a shop.
5. When you do take it with you outside, put it in a banana bag under the jacket instead of your pocket and then leave it in the bag when you get back home.
6. obviously remove all of the dopamine junkie apps.
7. don't look at the mail, chats, news, whatever is there before lunch, specifically don't let it be the first thing getting your attention in the morning.
8. doing a prayer 5 times a day and going to mosque or whatever you have to counter balance the influence of shaitain sitting your pocket for the last 10 years.
9. allowing yourself to use junkie apps for a dopamine hit when you actually need it but deciding the time and trigger yourself (separate phone with instagrahm turned off most of the time, only scrolling it while you are outside in the park in a nice setting after having a juicy piece of junk food, icecream or whatever, etc).
"outdated android and all that"
But then don't do anything money related with it or use any important account details.
Well, that's the point. The actual money-controlling phone could be sitting in the drawer power off until you need to do something.
This also prevents spending too much money on impulsive purchases and take-away thai food when you should know better.
I was with you all the way until: less Thai food.
I did the numbers for the year 2025 and conclude that flying there will be cheaper, but then the orange monkey decided to do a short victorious war right in the hood of my favorite transit station to there.
Get GrapheneOS. Install FOSS apps whenever possible, via Obtainium. Signal if need be. A RSS reader. No social networks. Get a Kagi subscription to ensure no ads and bias.
Voilà
That targets a different thing IMO. You can aim for privacy or you can aim for the thing being slow and irritating to use to disrupt the habit. If tech companies spend money to make their apps smooth to use, you can aim for the opposite and inject friction and reduce the amount of high you get from it and making it slower to reach so you can have a chance to take back the executive control over the task.
I get no high from my phone/apps since there are no ads and no perverse incentives. I'm not the product of the services I pay for.
Except it's impossible nowadays, since most apps require Google Play Integrity attestation and doesn't work on GrapheneOS.
And if it wasn't for these apps (for example banking apps, since someone decided that it's now impossible to use your homebanking from a PC since it's not secure enough) I would already use a Nokia 3310.
Not true. I'm a customer of 3 top French online banks and of two top global brokerage cie and the apps work great. I have no issue whatsoever except with one health insurance app but their Web app is better anyway.
Only thing missing is contactless payment but there are European banks that support GrapheneOS without Google Pay so alternatives exist. And I can use Garmin pay with my watch (and offline and without Garmin Connect thanks to the FOSS GadgetBridge appp) if that was necessary.
Loads of banking apps work fine on GrapheneOS, and the vast majority of non-banking apps require even less attestation and so work on GrapheneOS like on any other Android with Play Services present.
Harder, not impossible. I've only experienced one banking app that doesn't work (and I didn't try disabling the security for it). I have another AOSP without google services and it's a bit worse but half of the banking apps work. Uber doesn't.
Not sure where you live but in the EU I think you can ask for either SMS or hardware token verification for the bank website.
The most annoying thing for me is "magic links" apps send via email to login. I don't have email on my phone.
What is a "banana bag"? I only know it from the medical usage, and don't seem to be able to find anything about the phrase otherwise.
Random link from google, normally costs less than that: https://trakke.co.uk/collections/all-products-in-stock/produ...
For other speakers of Generic American, it apparently means fanny pack.
when reading personal blogs, it's best to assume any statement as a reflection of their experiences and world-bubble rather than as verified facts. This is a blog, not a technical doc. while your frustration may be well founded, it's also self inflicted to a degree, you're expecting the wrong thing from the wrong place.
While we're on the subject of gripes with the modern internet, the fact that most social media sites that publish to a single feed flatten reality into a single format. People then apply uniform judgement to content with wildly different purposes (and subconsciously people ascribe more purpose to posts that happen to rise up the frontpage, even when the blog in question was just some thought somebody threw out in ten minutes)
My phone is pretty much always in my pocket, both in the sense that I always have it, and in the sense that I rarely use it.
It's the same group of people that say being overweight is a lack of willpower.
Yeah, re eating, smoking etc it is a question of willpower in most cases. Ay least there's now a pill/injection for it.
Quite often it's really a question of gut flora and lack of knowledge regarding good eating habits.
Also fat cells are endocrinologically active, so they try to compel the person to, well, get fatter.
I've been doing this the hard way lately and there's still much that I don't know, because food and lifestyles used to be different, so my parents only told me what they knew from theirs.
To illustrate just how different, my great-grandmother reportedly disliked food that she described as "rich" - too calorie dense for her taste. By this definition cottage cheese was "rich".
The gut is an interesting component we are learning more about, for sure. But as an addict, it still comes down to changing your habits, which indeed fixes the floura.
I’m not sure I can really believe the often cited claim that a major component here is a lack a knowledge. Does anyone truly believe Cheetos are as good or better for you than broccoli?
The most obvious explanation to me is that we are just flooded with addictive food and bombarded with ads to entice us. That and healthy food presents more friction in terms of having to buy the ingredients and prepaid it, and we are all short on time and overstressed.
I doubt it. I've never been overweight in my lifetime. I have never had to put any effort into that. I simply cannot relate at all to the food-related struggles I sometimes read about overweight people having. It would be silly and condescending of me to claim that I simply have more strength of will here than they do. On the other hand, I struggle heavily with some things many/most people do not, and this is often blamed as a personal failure and weakness of mine. So I wonder if it's just that people who don't have any similar struggles think they are just superior beings with superior willpower.
Absolutely audacious to complain about being "forced" to install apps and in the next sentence complain about the Aliexpress app. Nobody forced you to install the aliexpress app. Nobody needs the aliexpress app.
Also people need to hate ads more. A single unwarranted notification will get me to disable all notifications or uninstall your app. If you don't hate ads enough, you'll find yourself being shown ads.
I think the author has good points but maybe we need to separate out a few things.
AliExpress is very much a user choice issue. It’s not a necessary service and it has a wide variety of competitors.
But the Apple OS nags for free trials and services should be something that is illegal under antitrust law. iOS and Android are the only two viable operating systems on the market for cellular phones. They are a duopoly. We shouldn’t be forced through promotions and ads in the basic operating system functionality just to have a basic communication device.
And we can say all we want about feature phones and flip phones and other similar alternatives but that’s bologna. 99.9% of customers are buying iOS or Android. From a numbers perspective there are no other options.
The author loved technology when it worked for him, now he toils in its service. Previously, it was additive, only giving and not taking; now it narrows options to only one: the app.
Obviously, we shouldn't let this happen. Keep paper tickets, physical menus, cash, etc. These things are human, made by and for humans. They make sense across the intelligence spectrum as they connect to us in the physicality of the real (which everyone understands).
Of course, the individual doesn't get to decide if all his government and city services app-ify themselves. What to do in that case? I guess this guy's chosen the path of minimal leashing: wearing the digital yoke as little as possible. That's just harm minimization though.
Perhaps it'll help someone to say this: It is possible to live without a smartphone. I do it. There's times when you can't use a service. QR codes are meaningless. You might occasionally be bored. I've always found an alternative or workaround to these issues. Yes, that's inconvenient sometimes (usually not though, surprisingly), but is that worse than being a slave to glass slab?
> Previously, it was additive, only giving and not taking; now it narrows options to only one: the app
This seems a bit dramatic. The issue is who is making the decisions. People have stopped being intentional about their decision-making, in a variety of ways, and tend to simply go with whatever the company providing the software recommends. This is the thing that we need to change. Using these services and using a smartphone are fine. We need to find a way to do it on our own terms, though.
This is very well written (and, yes, it exxagerates - but that's to heighten the effect).
My solution is to remember: when you're living in hell, you still have to go to work in the morning. And at some point you'll start knowing the demons' names and make small talk about how their kids are doing in college. How can you bring a little joy to a bad situation? Do a strange little wiggle dance and go sideways instead of staying on the pre-assigned track that's been laid out for you.
It goes from complaining about endless pitches of tech to pitching a gaming console. The tech pitching is a problem, but the need to be constantly entertained and fed some content or game is the real problem. Those are pacifiers. You stuff them in an adults mouth to keep them from actually thinking about what would improve their own life. Take the pacifier out and use your brain for your needs - what you should want to do, to make of the world, to make exist. See what happens next…
While I appreciate the viewpoint, I do not think the idea resonates personally. If I'm following, your idea is to take a brain submerged in this feedback loop from childhood and task it with the question: "what should you want to do?" Are you expecting new results? Is there some noble, obvious result you held back that you think this brain can come up with? Pick ourselves up by our bootstraps to go where?
I think the population starting to age is an interesting one -- the first one playing more-complex 2D + 3D games from an early age. I'm in this age group. In a world with nothing left to explore, and humans globally connected by commercialism, I think you don't need to be bothered with what capitalism is making of the world. Our brains are hooked on solving imaginary, complex problems. We're all on some weird ship at sea, migrating toward some unknown old-age destination. Probably an MMO.
I tuned out when it switched, also. How to move on when job is in front of screen?
I have lived in a tech-rich life since I bought my first single board home system in around 1975.
I think it is as easy as setting boundaries: practice meditation. Learn to enjoy sitting and doing nothing, both in the living room and sitting outside.
Then when the time is right, work hard for several hours to get important stuff done.
Food tastes best when we are very hungry, so we must go long periods of time doing mini-fasting a few times a day in order to enjoy food. Similarly, earning a living or experimenting with tech should be something that you sit down and do for a while, then do something else.
I've noticed a similar phenomenon: getting tired of networks and algorithms. I wrote a short essay with my thoughts on "Well Being in Times of Algorithms" [1].
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46352747
If my phone demanded my attention as much as it seems the author's does with notifications, I'd probably not keep it with me either. I also feel tired of it, but it's difficult to remove access to the number of beneficial things I get from it. I try to limit non-FOSS apps and modify most of those to suit my purposes better, though that often feels like a lot of work done with the intent of saving work...
If you use those apps it is probably worth it, otherwise just delete them.
I think part of the problem is the frictionless and feeling like I can’t control the nature of the device.
I think my killer feature would be a phone that is only configurable at a laptop. You can install whatever you want, but it has to be at the laptop. Website allow lists on the laptop. You can uninstall and block things on the phone but you can’t reinstall or unblock them until you’re back at your computer.
I feel like all the screen time features are intentionally under designed. Their incentives are obviously to keep you in your phone as long as possible, while making you feel like they care.
This is the overwhelming feeling of our time and yet we continue on this abysmal path. What will it take?
Addiction of something you have to use is the hardest to break.
It's like getting stress-relief from eating junk food and stress from resisting cravings.
revolution of some kind
I’ve read so many posts like these on hn, but I just don’t relate to them. I have loved internet access since my first dial in to a BBS in the 90s. I’ve been cruising the information superhighway at top speed every day since. There is always something new to discover.
I'm with you. There's so much cool stuff going on and new things to learn! Stuff to try and new tech to play with.
It sounds like the author got locked in some sort of, "I follow" loop where he got used to trusting certain companies to keep him interested and entertained, then they sold out to ads and the lowest common denominator of entertainment audiences.
The Internet is the same as it's always been! There's infinite ways to use it, full of all sorts of fun communities, new hobbies to spend too much money on (hehe), and endless amounts of people to engage with.
If your iPhone is bothering you that much, maybe it's time to try Android or go totally off the grid (so to speak) and install something like GrapheneOS on a used phone (the horror!).
How about designing your own damned phone? It's not impossible. Make a thick ass brick with a huge battery and dual screens that barely fits in your pocket but can do amazing things a normal phone can't: Give it an IR emitter so you can turn off TVs from a distance. A CO2 sensor so you can tell when any room you're in is getting stuffy. A friggin laser projector. Whatever!
Instead of being a passive intake of all things corporate Internet, make something. Contribute!
I recently switched to a used Minimal Phone (no longer being made sadly) and its been great for this. The best thing for me is to just make the phone completely unappealing to use, but still capable of essentials. A slow refresh rate eink screen helps a lot with that.
For the authors complaints about ads, I recommend paying for ad free versions of things you truly enjoy. Budgeting will mean you consume less and have fewer choices, but enjoy it more. And if something doesn't offer an ad free experience you can pay for, that's a great reason not to use it.
> When we first got computers, this is simply what they were. By default they did nothing. They sat there and waited for you to have an idea.
It's ironic that we've come full circle here. This is generally what AI does - nothing that isn't prompted, and yet still part of the end and nothing like the beginning of the internet
My solution to this is carrying two devices. One turned off iphone and a TCL flip 2. The flip phone runs android 11 so I can use signal to stay connected with international family, but for anything else it is useless other than calling, texting, and basic email
> I long for the days of driving through the night with AM radio, where at least the ads were interesting.
AM radio sucked.
It still does, but it is cool you can make a radio for one with some wire and a razor blade.
Is this just an ad for the MiSTer?
Look, I understand the issues the author has with our current world, though I'd argue there are methods to avoid many of the things they mention (like ads). But it was hard to follow between the silly examples (Steam Deck games needs updates? And?) and the legit issues. Also I'm not sure what kind of rose-colored glasses they are wearing but I will never agree that the "ads were interesting" on AM or FM radio. Thankfully I was not subjected to radio, and the ads which I abhor, for long before I gained control over what I wanted to listen to and when. To pine for such times is anathema to me.
This is such an incredibly pessimistic look at our present. I'll be the first to tell you about what I see as wrong in our society and the author make a number of salient points, but we live in an age of wonder. Yes, there is bad, plenty of it, avoid it is hard but not impossible. Or maybe I'm just an earlier version of the author who still believes in a Star Trek future (TNG/Voy/DS9, not the crap they are putting now, though Lower Decks was a joy).
My phone is a freaking tricorder, I control robots in my house, I turn on/off the lights with my voice, and I can build new software by talking to my computer. I don't deny the bad, nay, evil in the world, but what a bleak outlook this author paints.
Interesting. I don't know if my experience is helpful, or there are many (or most?) people like me, but I consider myself a total 100% Internet-loving Geeky Nerd.
And yet I never had (oh well, I did register and post 1-2 posts N years ago) Twitter, Twitcher, Threads, MySpace, Instagram, TikTok, Red Book, Facebook, any other -book for that matter, no Youtube channel, and I very rarely watch it. I also never "get information" from these. I don't understand how people do it.
So every time I got a "rabbit hole itch", I went straight to Google, lost in some niche blogs or forums.
Nowadays, of course, the Internet is gone - you can't Google a non-LLM blog, or there are just no non-LLM blogs anymore? So I go straight to Deep Research. I don't enjoy it, but I would never think to find my information on Twitter or something. Sometimes I will read a book. There are niche books with info that LLMs do not have, or have but it's shallow.
For "news" I have my trusty RSS feed from the days of Google Reader (now on Newsblur, happy customer for many years). If something starts to spam, I mute it.
Maybe all of this is just because I'm a loner without any friends. That's one possible reason.
I also don't have any streaming services. Everything you need can be... found elsewhere wink-wink, in good quality. We watch some older stuff, Breaking Bad, Person of Interest, some non-English stuff. Same with music. Let the dust settle and watch the good shows 2-3 years after. You also get the benefit of ignoring ones that get canceled (OA anyone).
YMMV I guess.
Total tangent, but I really like the way this article is written; you can effectively read the first sentence of each paragraph, and it still conveys the same story in a coherent, summarized way.
Tech/phone addiction is real. But it will be years before anyone admits it.
What? Almost everyone talks about phone addiction, it's an extremely mainstream view. And Meta just got record fines for the addictiveness of their product.
> the offline option exists the way the wheelchair ramp exists at certain train stations: installed after the fact, satisfying a regulation, pitched at an angle no wheelchair on earth can climb. We are all expected to pretend grandma can make it up, and to act only mildly surprised when we find her at the bottom again.
It's hyperbole like this that breaks the illusion for the post. I'm not an editor, but if you're trying to make a valid point you need one man. Stinkeroo.
I’m not sure what part of this seems like hyperbole to you.
I'm not going to play this dissection game only to later be "checkmated" by a bunch of nerds rambling about and dogpiling onto nothing who can't see the forest for the trees. It's also replies like yours that break the illusion HN isn't full of bots.
If you don't think this entire post is hyperbole, you can at least see that it's yet another blogspam ad for MiSTer, right?
The Mister part is what seems like hyperbole? Or the ramp? Or not having good offline options?
It's interesting about MiSTer. It was wedged into the article so awkwardly and suddenly that it felt like a definite advert, but it mostly said it was shit and only get it if you like frustratingly broken systems. I still think it was a reverse psychology form of an ad
why make a point when the robot can spew out 1500 words of cliches and other nonsense
missing link to MiSTer https://retrorgb.com/mister.html
This is why we sail the salty seas. right here. if someone needs an explanation.
Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.
> I’m Tired of Being on the Network
But I'll post about it on the network
One can be against something and still make use of it. Don’t be ”Mister Gotcha”: <https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/>
I don’t complain about being tired of smoking anymore now that I quit smoking.