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.
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).
In a world where a random crackhead is all too happy to steal literally any box placed in your mail box or on by your door it can be quite useful to know exactly when the box shows up, or is at least expected to show up.
Most of us don't have to worry about random crackheads stealing packages from our mailboxes or doorsteps, so I think the parent's stipulation of a narrow segment of society holds.
> Most of us don't have to worry about random crackheads stealing packages from our mailboxes or doorsteps
Well of course, most of HN is extremely privileged and thus isolated from such problems. I wouldn't expect the average tech worker in a gated community or access controlled apartment complex to get it.
It's not a problem for 99% of the country. No "crackhead" is going door to door between cornfields with a mile between houses, scoping out everyone's porches daily. I'm sorry you're having those problems, but the world is a big place, don't assume everyone lives the same life as you.
Even for the narrow segment of society in that situation, you're not required to give your money to Apple and then stay home 24/7 to immediately scoop up your packages. You could get a lockbox too, and guess what, they're cheaper than phones.
> Overall, total estimated annual losses range from a low of $5.2 billion in 2023
to $16 billion in 2024
> In 2024, the U.S. ecommerce market reached an estimated $1.22 trillion in revenue
So... between 0.4% and 1.3% of packages by value are affected, concentrated in specific geographic areas. A narrow segment of society highly affected, complaining often and making the issue seem wider than it is. The rest of us living our lives as normal.
Well, no, I live in Romania and I get a SMS when the package enters the country (aprox. 2 days before) and the delivery guy calls me 10 min before he arrives. We're not priviledged here and I very rarely track a package.
I live in a small farm town, about the furthest you could get from a gated community or access controlled apartment complex, and have never had a package stolen either.
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.
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.
The package tracking will literally come to your front door, which is definitely not true for almost everything. Maybe it is true of your bank balance, if you still receive that by mail.
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).
Tried almost all of these, stuck on no. 7. If I have a browser I’ll browse, I have no social media apps at all, I’ll open HN and browse it happily, I even use Reddit on a browser with that atrocious webpage nagging you to install the app. I’ll use it in a PC if my phone breaks.
If I lock myself out of the browser, cut all communications, miss a phone call, I’ll not be able to do “something” that is not socially acceptable not to do. Life will create a situation, and make me feel like I’m doing something wrong, maybe I am.
Then there is all the good things, that article that got you hooked on a new idea, that contact that got you a better job, that friend you miss in another continent. My kid would not exist were not for the internet. When you are in a bad day you will convincingly argue it’s for the greater good, maybe you are even right that it was.
There is porn when you are horny, delivery services when you are tired and hungry, a map when you are lost, hobby items you can’t find locally, podcasts when you are lonely, all the music.
I think I’m not wired in a way that can healthily separate the good and the bad in a society that also can’t. I know something is wrong, but I don’t think I can fix it with tech.
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.
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.
I'm happy Fastmail (made by a small company) is much better and faster than Gmail (made by a advertising behemoth). Idem with GrapheneOS vs Pixel OS. The less friction, the shortest time spent using the phone, the most time to enjoy spending time outside and with friends.
I mean, whatever satisfies your desire for inner peace. I mainly don't open news in the morning because my news feed is "/asshole country/ bombed a city again and 4 people died, one of them is a 2 year old child, the entire other city is starving to death eating grass and there is a budged deficit next year to strike back at them doing this shit and allies are a bunch of weak man bringing bad times"
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.
Glad to see more HN commenters challenging this false assertion
The false claims of "It won't work" in HN comments keep getting more bizarre
Is it a myth, a misunderstanding, a lie. Who knows
Here the original comment did not even make any claims about mobile banking
But it still triggers a reply with a false assertion about mobile banking
Mobile banking differs from country to country
Not every country is the same with respect to mobile banking usage, not to mention mobile usage in general
For example most mobile users in the US don't install _any_ apps, banking or otherwise (phones may come with pre-installed apps)
As for people who would use GrapheneOS, a small segment of conscientious mobile users, I wonder how many have or could end up with multiple phones as a result of planned obsolescence and forced "upgrades"
In such cases they might have one phone that runs a corporate mobile OS and "approved" apps and another that runs a non-corporate OS that runs "unapproved" apps
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.
I have no idea what you're talking about. I haven't yet run into an app that requires integrity attestation and doesn't work on Graphene. Even my bank works, although it flagged me as someone who probably stole my password, until I scanned my passport and face a few more times.
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 in my pocket all the time basically, along with my keys and my wallet. I use it to respond to text messages from friends and family, read books on the Kindle app, check the weather report, and occasionally check Teams to see why my watch has been vibrating constantly with notifications for the last twenty minutes. Oh, and to talk on the phone once in a blue moon.
I get that I'm an outlier, but I'd worry more about the people that launch it across the room the minute they get home. Of course, if you're always picking it up and checking social media, that's also a problem.
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.
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".
This and most research points at eating habits being formed within the first few years of life. Once imprinted on you they are very very difficult to change.
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.
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.
People don't want to admit this because it is uncomfortable to blamed by the problems you yourself create, but if you are addicted to your phone to the point that you feel compelled to complain about the network (on the network, mind you), then it is entirely because you let yourself get addicted and you still let yourself keep being addicted.
The most insane part of this is the subtle-as-a-hammer-to-the-face MiSTER ad shoved in the middle of the article as if it made any sense whatsoever. And people are taking this guy seriously?
Addiction has a demand and supply component. I think we can all recognize that fact. Personal responsibility matters of course. However, ignoring the fact that companies spend trillions to make their products addictive is a very silly thing to do.
IMO the closest corollary we have is gambling. Most countries place strict limits on gambling, because it's so incredibly addictive to some people. We can see this very obviously in the rise of online gambling platforms like Polymarket it recent years. Without regulation, a lot of people will get sucked in and their lives will be destroyed.
I encourage you to read up on how addiction works. Your comment implies a severe lack of understanding about the subject. Alternatively, you could take a course on addiction at your local college. Always good to get educated!
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.
if fasting (and spiking your blood glucose with ostensibly bigger meals) is required to enjoy food, then something has gone quite wrong. I assume you're referring to more whole and less processed/sugar-infested food. in that case, maintain a consistent diet of whole foods, eat small meals throughout the day, and your palate will adjust.
nah, periodic calorie-restriction without feeling you 'have to' feels alright when you next eat, and, you can consciously choose a healthier snack in the moment to continue the nicer feeling.
Knowing you skipped a pizza and it's still available in the freezer (plus you still don't need to buy another one to replace it, yet) after growing up feeling overweight, eventually being overweight, and feeling the same during both periods - the price is an electricity bill for the freezer, not priceless.
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.
Yet services do whatever they can to convince the user to install their apps.
While I agree that the user shouldn't install unnecessary apps and probably remove most of what's installed, this is playing a rigged game.
On the one side a person who want to do something, on the other end countless very well founded teams trying to exploit our monkey brains.
> Yet services do whatever they can to convince the user to install their apps.
You don't need the Ali Express app to track your orders, yet the author seems to think so. If you think this is a rigged game then just don't play it.
Use your phone for what you need and let it be the end of it. The author is complaining about things as if someone were putting a gun to their head and forcing them to use the Ali Express to track their orders.
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.
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.
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.
You can have that. Here is a guide showing how to do it on an iOS device https://stopa.io/post/297
I think something similar exists for Android but you'll need to do some research.
It boggles my mind that this is how people experience phones and the internet.
1. Don't install any proprietary apps - open source only. 99% of these problems and ads go away. 2. Use an ad blocker in a browser that lets you use one. 3. Do not allow any notification except literally urgent things like a phone call or message from your partner.
If you do these things then the phone once again becomes a tool that serves you.
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'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].
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 enjoyed reading with recognizable moments. These days i do my best not to get distracted while reading but and regards to your story i'd put in the effort to finish it. Your writing style wasn't tedious, it just delivered your message! Very entertaining, thanks!
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.
Genuinely decent read, despite its length, with interesting takes, and while don't agree with all of them, it's well written, nevertheless.
I didn't realize until the very end, but his writing embues the distinctive latent resentment common among millennials whose family had a Mac in the 90s.
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.
This right here is exactly how you can be sure that the author has absolutely no idea what they are talking about. Nobody liked radio station ads and if they do, they can, quite literally, just tune into AM/FM radio and see for themselves how much they actually suck.
A million ways to complain about the state of technology, but this ain't 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
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.
People like the author have likely spent so much time soaking themselves in cynical/pessimistic online discourse that they don't realize how much it has poisoned their worldview. You have so much more agency in this world than picking which device you are at the mercy of. You can choose to use social media less or not at all. You can choose to read the comments sections rarely, and mostly ignore what they say. You can choose for your iOS/Android device to be a source of joy and delight instead of doomscrolling, or you can indeed choose to use something else entirely for some or all purposes. Those are perhaps not the easy choices, but sometimes the harder choice is where the rewards are hidden. I hope the author's experience with their MisTer is only the start of a journey to more control of their life and less being "very online".
Shut up man. Bar Starfleet Academy and the atrocious Section 31, recent Trek output has been great—don’t you fucking dare complain about Discovery.
But I agree with you that the author is just whining for the sake of whining. It’s a bunch of nonsensical unrelated complains on entertainment options that they could very well just stop using and nothing would change in their life.
I mean, dude is literally complaining about the network ON THE NETWORK. Fuck’s sake, man, just put down the goddamned phone and be done with it.
Interesting. I don't know if my experience is helpful, or there are many (or most?) people like me.
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).
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.
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.
If only the content didn’t read like a third grader trying to sound important. Just put down your goddamned phone. Just stop using Ali Express. Just don’t buy game consoles. Jesus.
Oh, I can. The next version of Android won't run on my current phone, and the official FLIR ONE app that drives the plug-in IR camera that I use to hunt for cold spots in my house for better insulation decided it would uninstall itself because they won't support "old" Android--I mean, they won't support the Android they already support.
So my phone just existing for too long has caused the software to commit suicide, making another piece of hardware I paid good money for not work anymore.
That's not so much a reason to "upgrade" as throw good money after bad money by buying a phone that I don't need to get an OS I don't want.
I mean, they could have just left the goddamn app alone. But they didn't.
The article started off good and I followed it with concurrence. Then he took a turn and went off on a tangent and never returned. He got sucked in to his own tech bubble. I see what he's saying but make those hard choices and draw your own line. I don't have any social media accounts, streaming services and I don't watch TV except for the occasional college game I get online or through OTA. If you don't want to be trapped in it, then just remove it from you life. I don't get all the app update notifications as I'm on Graphene OS and have all notifications turned off unless it's from someone in my address book. The phone is convenient and a useful too but you don't have to be a slave to it or the buzz, it's a choice.
> Apple pings me, yet again, about my three complimentary months of Apple Music.
This one drives me mad. I don't directly interact with the Music app on my phone very often so it feels like I have to dismiss that ad every damned time.
>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
They can still be that way. Using Linux, I tinker around with hardware, local network and security, software-defined radio, etc. Of course I get online and pore through support docs, email, some idle browsing like a normal person. but I do a pretty good job of separating the internet from my primary uses, at least for full-blown computers.
And that is why I will never use Windows for personal use. That separation becomes impossible. I don't want to be immediately jacked in to datafeeds from the internet and have my uniqueness assimilated by the borg.
> 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.
It is not “making use of it”, it is stuffing your face with chocolate and complaining about the chocolate industry. Don’t like the network? Stop using the goddamned network.
Ali Express is not mandatory. A game console is not necessary. Whining about the network ON THE NETWORK is most certainly not a necessity. Just act like an adult and drop the goddamned phone.
This isn’t a gotcha. It’s a problem that presents itself with a solution and the author seems utterly uninterested in taking it. This is complaining for the sake of complaining.
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
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).
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?
In a world where a random crackhead is all too happy to steal literally any box placed in your mail box or on by your door it can be quite useful to know exactly when the box shows up, or is at least expected to show up.
Most of us don't have to worry about random crackheads stealing packages from our mailboxes or doorsteps, so I think the parent's stipulation of a narrow segment of society holds.
> Most of us don't have to worry about random crackheads stealing packages from our mailboxes or doorsteps
Well of course, most of HN is extremely privileged and thus isolated from such problems. I wouldn't expect the average tech worker in a gated community or access controlled apartment complex to get it.
It's not a problem for 99% of the country. No "crackhead" is going door to door between cornfields with a mile between houses, scoping out everyone's porches daily. I'm sorry you're having those problems, but the world is a big place, don't assume everyone lives the same life as you.
Even for the narrow segment of society in that situation, you're not required to give your money to Apple and then stay home 24/7 to immediately scoop up your packages. You could get a lockbox too, and guess what, they're cheaper than phones.
You have no idea how common parcel theft is, do you?
> going door to door between cornfields with a mile between houses
That's not the type of situation most people live in.
>don't assume everyone lives the same life as you
Likewise.
https://www.oversight.gov/sites/default/files/documents/repo...
> Overall, total estimated annual losses range from a low of $5.2 billion in 2023 to $16 billion in 2024
> In 2024, the U.S. ecommerce market reached an estimated $1.22 trillion in revenue
So... between 0.4% and 1.3% of packages by value are affected, concentrated in specific geographic areas. A narrow segment of society highly affected, complaining often and making the issue seem wider than it is. The rest of us living our lives as normal.
Well, no, I live in Romania and I get a SMS when the package enters the country (aprox. 2 days before) and the delivery guy calls me 10 min before he arrives. We're not priviledged here and I very rarely track a package.
I live in a small farm town, about the furthest you could get from a gated community or access controlled apartment complex, and have never had a package stolen either.
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.
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 package tracking will literally come to your front door, which is definitely not true for almost everything. Maybe it is true of your bank balance, if you still receive that by mail.
Why aren't you keeping track of your balance yourself?
Do you track your bank balance yourself?
What's with the strawman? Why don't you verify the balance you keep track of is correct periodically?
> 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).
Tried almost all of these, stuck on no. 7. If I have a browser I’ll browse, I have no social media apps at all, I’ll open HN and browse it happily, I even use Reddit on a browser with that atrocious webpage nagging you to install the app. I’ll use it in a PC if my phone breaks.
If I lock myself out of the browser, cut all communications, miss a phone call, I’ll not be able to do “something” that is not socially acceptable not to do. Life will create a situation, and make me feel like I’m doing something wrong, maybe I am.
Then there is all the good things, that article that got you hooked on a new idea, that contact that got you a better job, that friend you miss in another continent. My kid would not exist were not for the internet. When you are in a bad day you will convincingly argue it’s for the greater good, maybe you are even right that it was.
There is porn when you are horny, delivery services when you are tired and hungry, a map when you are lost, hobby items you can’t find locally, podcasts when you are lonely, all the music.
I think I’m not wired in a way that can healthily separate the good and the bad in a society that also can’t. I know something is wrong, but I don’t think I can fix it with tech.
Do more research about the porn industry. It should disgust you. I don't touch it anymore.
"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.
I'm happy Fastmail (made by a small company) is much better and faster than Gmail (made by a advertising behemoth). Idem with GrapheneOS vs Pixel OS. The less friction, the shortest time spent using the phone, the most time to enjoy spending time outside and with friends.
I mean, whatever satisfies your desire for inner peace. I mainly don't open news in the morning because my news feed is "/asshole country/ bombed a city again and 4 people died, one of them is a 2 year old child, the entire other city is starving to death eating grass and there is a budged deficit next year to strike back at them doing this shit and allies are a bunch of weak man bringing bad times"
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.
Glad to see more HN commenters challenging this false assertion
The false claims of "It won't work" in HN comments keep getting more bizarre
Is it a myth, a misunderstanding, a lie. Who knows
Here the original comment did not even make any claims about mobile banking
But it still triggers a reply with a false assertion about mobile banking
Mobile banking differs from country to country
Not every country is the same with respect to mobile banking usage, not to mention mobile usage in general
For example most mobile users in the US don't install _any_ apps, banking or otherwise (phones may come with pre-installed apps)
As for people who would use GrapheneOS, a small segment of conscientious mobile users, I wonder how many have or could end up with multiple phones as a result of planned obsolescence and forced "upgrades"
In such cases they might have one phone that runs a corporate mobile OS and "approved" apps and another that runs a non-corporate OS that runs "unapproved" apps
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.
GrapheneOS fully lets you use the Play Store. Whatever assertation you're making is just false.
I have no idea what you're talking about. I haven't yet run into an app that requires integrity attestation and doesn't work on Graphene. Even my bank works, although it flagged me as someone who probably stole my password, until I scanned my passport and face a few more times.
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.
Ah, a bum bag!
of course -- it's just another term for a waist-crotch microsatchel.
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 in my pocket all the time basically, along with my keys and my wallet. I use it to respond to text messages from friends and family, read books on the Kindle app, check the weather report, and occasionally check Teams to see why my watch has been vibrating constantly with notifications for the last twenty minutes. Oh, and to talk on the phone once in a blue moon.
I get that I'm an outlier, but I'd worry more about the people that launch it across the room the minute they get home. Of course, if you're always picking it up and checking social media, that's also a problem.
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.
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.
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".
>ack of knowledge regarding good eating habits.
This and most research points at eating habits being formed within the first few years of life. Once imprinted on you they are very very difficult to change.
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.
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.
You’re fighting trillions a year in addictive engineering.
The tech industry has spent the last 20 years (and really in earnest the last 15, accelerating over time) making their tech as addictive as possible.
Current tech is egregiously addictive. It’s worse than most drugs.
The big tech companies are now the most successful drug dealers in history.
No, you're fighting just one thing: yourself.
People don't want to admit this because it is uncomfortable to blamed by the problems you yourself create, but if you are addicted to your phone to the point that you feel compelled to complain about the network (on the network, mind you), then it is entirely because you let yourself get addicted and you still let yourself keep being addicted.
The most insane part of this is the subtle-as-a-hammer-to-the-face MiSTER ad shoved in the middle of the article as if it made any sense whatsoever. And people are taking this guy seriously?
Come on now.
Addiction has a demand and supply component. I think we can all recognize that fact. Personal responsibility matters of course. However, ignoring the fact that companies spend trillions to make their products addictive is a very silly thing to do.
IMO the closest corollary we have is gambling. Most countries place strict limits on gambling, because it's so incredibly addictive to some people. We can see this very obviously in the rise of online gambling platforms like Polymarket it recent years. Without regulation, a lot of people will get sucked in and their lives will be destroyed.
I encourage you to read up on how addiction works. Your comment implies a severe lack of understanding about the subject. Alternatively, you could take a course on addiction at your local college. Always good to get educated!
If addiction could be solved as simply as "just don't let yourself be addicted", it wouldn't even be a defined term.
Come on now.
I don't see that as an ad. I have an original retro PC under my desk for my detox hours. His detox pill is just a smaller version of mine.
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.
if fasting (and spiking your blood glucose with ostensibly bigger meals) is required to enjoy food, then something has gone quite wrong. I assume you're referring to more whole and less processed/sugar-infested food. in that case, maintain a consistent diet of whole foods, eat small meals throughout the day, and your palate will adjust.
nah, periodic calorie-restriction without feeling you 'have to' feels alright when you next eat, and, you can consciously choose a healthier snack in the moment to continue the nicer feeling.
Knowing you skipped a pizza and it's still available in the freezer (plus you still don't need to buy another one to replace it, yet) after growing up feeling overweight, eventually being overweight, and feeling the same during both periods - the price is an electricity bill for the freezer, not priceless.
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.
Yet services do whatever they can to convince the user to install their apps.
While I agree that the user shouldn't install unnecessary apps and probably remove most of what's installed, this is playing a rigged game. On the one side a person who want to do something, on the other end countless very well founded teams trying to exploit our monkey brains.
> Yet services do whatever they can to convince the user to install their apps.
You don't need the Ali Express app to track your orders, yet the author seems to think so. If you think this is a rigged game then just don't play it.
Use your phone for what you need and let it be the end of it. The author is complaining about things as if someone were putting a gun to their head and forcing them to use the Ali Express to track their orders.
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?
Use a hosts file to block every website you don't need access to.
I was definitely disappointed when I saw that the last half was essentially an ad for this gaming console
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.
Just put down your phone. Job done.
Precisely.
revolution of some kind
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.
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.
You can have that. Here is a guide showing how to do it on an iOS device https://stopa.io/post/297 I think something similar exists for Android but you'll need to do some research.
iOS also has another way to dumb down the phone by limiting which apps are available: https://www.tomsguide.com/phones/apple-buried-a-perfect-dumb...
It boggles my mind that this is how people experience phones and the internet.
1. Don't install any proprietary apps - open source only. 99% of these problems and ads go away. 2. Use an ad blocker in a browser that lets you use one. 3. Do not allow any notification except literally urgent things like a phone call or message from your partner.
If you do these things then the phone once again becomes a tool that serves you.
I guess that means no concerts, no banking, etc. Hardly a practical stance.
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.
Smartphones are marvelous and incredibly useful. Nobody wants to renounce instant messaging or digital documents.
The problem is that unlocking your phone is like entering a casino, where everything conspires against your best intentions.
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
Now this is the most shameless plug I've ever seen. Congrats.
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 enjoyed reading with recognizable moments. These days i do my best not to get distracted while reading but and regards to your story i'd put in the effort to finish it. Your writing style wasn't tedious, it just delivered your message! Very entertaining, thanks!
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.
Genuinely decent read, despite its length, with interesting takes, and while don't agree with all of them, it's well written, nevertheless.
I didn't realize until the very end, but his writing embues the distinctive latent resentment common among millennials whose family had a Mac in the 90s.
> Everyone online speaks in the same broken loop of the same ten phrases.
This one bugs me a lot. The whole "YouTuber voice" or TikTok influencer schlock prose.
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.
This right here is exactly how you can be sure that the author has absolutely no idea what they are talking about. Nobody liked radio station ads and if they do, they can, quite literally, just tune into AM/FM radio and see for themselves how much they actually suck.
A million ways to complain about the state of technology, but this ain't it.
> AM radio sucked.
Right? Also it still exists and can be listened to. The ads were interesting? What?
I don't even know what the ads are on the podcasts I listen to because I can skip them instantly
It still does, but it is cool you can make a radio for one with some wire and a razor blade.
The tech was great. I mean the ads sucked. Maybe it was better before I tuned in.
> 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
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.
People like the author have likely spent so much time soaking themselves in cynical/pessimistic online discourse that they don't realize how much it has poisoned their worldview. You have so much more agency in this world than picking which device you are at the mercy of. You can choose to use social media less or not at all. You can choose to read the comments sections rarely, and mostly ignore what they say. You can choose for your iOS/Android device to be a source of joy and delight instead of doomscrolling, or you can indeed choose to use something else entirely for some or all purposes. Those are perhaps not the easy choices, but sometimes the harder choice is where the rewards are hidden. I hope the author's experience with their MisTer is only the start of a journey to more control of their life and less being "very online".
> not the crap they are putting now
Shut up man. Bar Starfleet Academy and the atrocious Section 31, recent Trek output has been great—don’t you fucking dare complain about Discovery.
But I agree with you that the author is just whining for the sake of whining. It’s a bunch of nonsensical unrelated complains on entertainment options that they could very well just stop using and nothing would change in their life.
I mean, dude is literally complaining about the network ON THE NETWORK. Fuck’s sake, man, just put down the goddamned phone and be done with it.
Yep to all of this.
Interesting. I don't know if my experience is helpful, or there are many (or most?) people like me.
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.
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.
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.
If only the content didn’t read like a third grader trying to sound important. Just put down your goddamned phone. Just stop using Ali Express. Just don’t buy game consoles. Jesus.
> I can't name a single reason I'd upgrade
Oh, I can. The next version of Android won't run on my current phone, and the official FLIR ONE app that drives the plug-in IR camera that I use to hunt for cold spots in my house for better insulation decided it would uninstall itself because they won't support "old" Android--I mean, they won't support the Android they already support.
So my phone just existing for too long has caused the software to commit suicide, making another piece of hardware I paid good money for not work anymore.
That's not so much a reason to "upgrade" as throw good money after bad money by buying a phone that I don't need to get an OS I don't want.
I mean, they could have just left the goddamn app alone. But they didn't.
The article started off good and I followed it with concurrence. Then he took a turn and went off on a tangent and never returned. He got sucked in to his own tech bubble. I see what he's saying but make those hard choices and draw your own line. I don't have any social media accounts, streaming services and I don't watch TV except for the occasional college game I get online or through OTA. If you don't want to be trapped in it, then just remove it from you life. I don't get all the app update notifications as I'm on Graphene OS and have all notifications turned off unless it's from someone in my address book. The phone is convenient and a useful too but you don't have to be a slave to it or the buzz, it's a choice.
> Apple pings me, yet again, about my three complimentary months of Apple Music.
This one drives me mad. I don't directly interact with the Music app on my phone very often so it feels like I have to dismiss that ad every damned time.
Then remove the app? I’ve just been cleaning up unused apps, and I could remove it. Not sure if that was always possible.
>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
They can still be that way. Using Linux, I tinker around with hardware, local network and security, software-defined radio, etc. Of course I get online and pore through support docs, email, some idle browsing like a normal person. but I do a pretty good job of separating the internet from my primary uses, at least for full-blown computers.
And that is why I will never use Windows for personal use. That separation becomes impossible. I don't want to be immediately jacked in to datafeeds from the internet and have my uniqueness assimilated by the borg.
I mean I can feel you but I am tired too but only for being on the network for work :D
> 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?
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
The Mister part is what seems like hyperbole? Or the ramp? Or not having good offline options?
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/>
It is not “making use of it”, it is stuffing your face with chocolate and complaining about the chocolate industry. Don’t like the network? Stop using the goddamned network.
Ali Express is not mandatory. A game console is not necessary. Whining about the network ON THE NETWORK is most certainly not a necessity. Just act like an adult and drop the goddamned phone.
This isn’t a gotcha. It’s a problem that presents itself with a solution and the author seems utterly uninterested in taking it. This is complaining for the sake of complaining.
I don’t complain about being tired of smoking anymore now that I quit smoking.