63 comments
I used to work in the games industry and this is a large split between older games and newer games. Traditional games like Super Mario don't "reach out" through notifications for you to play them more like Roblox. You are in control of the on/off switch
What a beautifully presented article. It rings true.
Growing up I’ve been feeling overwhelmed with the bureaucracy of life - maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t already have to manage an entire ecosystem of shit that I need to care about.
The older I get, the less I like new technology. I don't really like gadgets anymore because each gadget is an invitation to complicate, not simplify, my life. As the article notes, everything must be charged, updated, upgraded, signed into, sync'ed, monitored. If something goes wrong, you have to figure out what went wrong if you want to keep using it. At this point, I'd rather not introduce the complexity at all.
As a wise man once said, anything plus computer equals computer.
This is an interesting and more apt way to frame smart features.
One way I've found to avoid objects that come alive is to buy the commercial version.
- TVs aimed at commercial hospitality businesses let you avoid a lot of the bloatware and smart features that come bundled with it
- Commercial washer/dryers let you avoid bluetooth and wifi and other junk not needed to wash your clothes. These are available without the coin operated features
Commercial versions of consumer products are usually simpler, more durable, and don't have advertising and smart features.
They are also likely to cost more and aren't normally directly available to regular customers, like you need either a business license of some sort and to contact a representative.
It is true commercial versions are slightly more expensive. But this is the tradeoff of buying something more durable and meant to be used continuously.
But it's not true that they are difficult to buy.
For my two examples: Commercial washer/dryer sets available through any appliance dealer. Commercial hospitality TVs and other commercial electronics are available via Grainger.
Part of me wonders if things are like this because the masses have been trained to see their abuse as a good thing, in a similar way to how the american worker sees themselves not as exploited but as a temporarily restrained exploiter
The article (with its doom-scrolling) suggests some stats phones should have:
Dismissing a notification ...... 22%
Intentional use ................ 20%
Checking something that pinged . 18%
Replying to a person ........... 15%
Updating/configuring/fixing .... 12%
Unlocking, forgetting why ...... 8%
Managing a subscription ........ 5%
The real headache is that everything with a network connection needs system administration.
You can turn off the doom scrolling!
There's a great essay hiding in that page, but oh my goodness that is a frustrating format and layout.
A small plea to authors - if you absolutely must use scroll-linked animations and fade-ins, please at least make sure all the text is fully readable within 25% of the scroll height. It is so frustrating not being able to read things until they reach the middle of the page. Trying to look at images that aren't fully loaded until the top is already scrolling off the page! What's the point of having a 4k monitor if I can only use the top half!
Sorry, I try to keep both camps in mind as I build these things. There's a text version linked at the top, but the link is here: https://www.terrygodier.com/the-last-quiet-thing/ascii
Link at top...
Well, it's LLM generated for sure. I wouldn't call it great.
prefers-reduced-motion == 1 quiets that nonsense in a lot of cases, but many sites don't respect it. I wish this gratuitous animation fad would just die already. It adds nothing.
I find that it adds a lot.
> You have fifteen years of it.
For some of us it has been much longer than fifteen years.
Sure, screen time. But I am also deeply tired of just keeping things charged. Some of my stuff insists on special usb cables - because those cables contain chips that mediate between the <thing> and its charger. Its exhausting.
Yeah, it's something I think about a lot.
I have a smartwatch, I like it just fine, but I kind of think that smartwatches are actually pretty bad at being a watch. I had a Casio G-Shock for about a decade that I wore nearly every day [1], and I never had to change the battery. My Garmin Instinct Crossover, which is considered to have very good battery life, has to be charged every two weeks, which despite that seeming like a long time, I manage to forget about it every time until the battery is dead.
[1] I have a few fancy wind-up watches I wear to formal occasions.
I’m not willing to settle for less than the Pebble Time Steel’s week that it holds a charge for nowadays. I think that is about fine for me.
Yeah, I mean, the Instinct Crossover has been my favorite smartwatch that I've used, and two weeks is a decent lifespan for these things, but I do kind of miss never having to worry about charging it.
> This watch costs twelve dollars. It weighs twenty-one grams.
> This watch costs four hundred dollars. It also tells time. > It also tracks my steps, monitors my blood oxygen, measures my sleep quality, logs my workouts, reminds me to breathe, reminds me to stand,
I had quite opposite experince with casio. If I want water proof (like swimming) watches, I would have to buy bulky and super expensive gshock with GPS and tons of useless festures.
$20 chinese smart watch are completely water sealed, tiny and simple to use. I can even remove wrist band, to make them even smaller. Only downside is battery life is only one week.
While I agree with the article, I can't help but feel like the superfluous animations undercut it somewhat. Would be nice to have a version with the images/diagrams but without the animations - maybe add support for prefers-reduced-motion?
Right at the top is a conspicuous option to read as plain text, which takes you to https://www.terrygodier.com/the-last-quiet-thing/ascii
...which swaps the font for monospace (less legible for body text in my experience, my eyes start just glazing over) and swaps the images and diagrams for ascii art or in some cases omits them entirely.
There’s a comfortable middle-ground to be had between the two options.
I don't know what's the state in other markets, but where I live, Brazil, you always have the dumb consumer products. I think the only pathological example are TVs in which they require you to signin before being able to download streaming apps, but this is something that if you really must you can work around by buying a TV box.
Also, can't you just not give these products the password to your WiFi? Do they make fridges and wash machines that don't work without internet?
Funny story, but I didn't realise I much I didn't want an Apple Watch, until I got one. I exercise daily and most days I just want it to shut up.
This post says, “22% dismiss notifications”. Why do people allow this? I see people with phones that have 3 new notifications per 5 minutes and none of them are human being messages or human being event reminders.
Turn off every notification that isn’t actionable or joyful to you. The news isn’t actionable. Stop letting the news task you. Your social feeds aren’t actionable. Stop letting your feeds task you.
(And, yes, I’ll concede that Duo push is valid, because either I initiated that, or I have a problem to solve. Being employed brings some of us joy, after all!)
Notifications are not meant to fill the silences in your life. Your thoughts are. Not all the random drivel that phones opportunistically shovel into our faces.
I don’t really like this post because it rabble-rouses rather than owning up to the major failure of the author up top. Maybe it’ll help someone regardless, but it could have been a lot more direct with no less effectiveness. Missed opportunity, I suppose.
I want to. The apps want the opposite. Apple is unfortunately on the side of the apps.
By app store guidelines, it’s officially disallowed to use notifications for marketing. Of course the apps find their ways, at different levels of honesty. This has led to me turning off all notifications for some apps, but the problem is the mixing of channels. I don’t want my bank to send me ads, but I do want it to notify me about transactions.
> Turn off every notification that isn’t actionable or joyful to you.
I have notifications on for Uber Eats because I want updates when I order a food delivery. Of course, the app takes this opportunity to randomly (though infrequently) send me ad notifications during the other 98% of the time. Just this past week I've seen notifications for getting my Easter shopping done, and something for "National Burrito Day" which I'm sure is totally a real thing.
Unfortunately, lots of apps are like this. But are they annoying or frequent enough that I will turn off notifications? No, because I'd rather put up with it than have to remember to turn them back on the next time I order something.
I solve that in a hilarious way: by uninstalling the app when I’m not using it. Works perfectly, other than some slight sign-in friction, for e.g. airlines, Uber/Etsy, and so on. But I’d rather suffer through logging in with a saved password than receive notification spam — I can respect that others prefer the opposite way.
Managing these notifications (which are on by default most of the time) is a form of what I'm writing at here, isn't it?
Sure, notifications are inherently disruptive by nature and there’s an admin tax to turning them off. But unless you’re installing new apps every day, it’s a one-time fix and not an ongoing distraction.
That’s the realistic gray area in between the extremes of the argument. I enjoy the analog experience of my 20 year old Nikon the way you like your Casio, but they’re also both luxury items precisely because neither one is inherently important to daily life. They’re fun toys, not real tools.
Kinda but one-time disabling of notifications on a new app is setting the time on your Casio watch a couple of times a year. Do it once (or very infrequently) and you’re done.
Mine is a Timex Ironman :)
They’re only on if you clicked “Allow” on the permissions dialog for them, right? Or is this a thing where Android is forcing everyone to accept notifications by default? Or..?
> Screen Time gives you a report card. And if the grade is bad, the design makes one thing clear:
> That's a you problem.
> It measures your usage. Tracks your behavior. Gives you a weekly report card. If the numbers are too high?
> You picked it up too much.
> You spent too long.
> You failed your limit.
> Try again next week.
> Try harder.
> Screen Time is a blame shift dressed in a soft font.
> ... What if the exhaustion everybody feels isn't a moral failure but the completely rational response to being made responsible for an ecosystem of objects that never stop asking?
> Everything you buy is the beginning of a relationship you'll be maintaining until one of you dies or gets discontinued.
For adults: nothing requires you to use a smartphone. Buy that Casio watch if you want. Use those wired headphones and never pair them again (I do).
EDIT: Some things require a smartphone, not nothing.
>nothing requires you to use a smartphone
Another story from the hn front page today:
True. I amended my response.
There are exceptions. Also, curiously, some things require older hardware like faxes and do not accept newer hardware like smartphones.
I love this. Maybe it's because I've always subconsciously realised this (I do prefer my flip phone and my iPhone stays in a drawer at home) but I've never seen something put words to my thoughts more accurately than this has
Ironically, casio, the company behind the prime example is now doing these kinds of things: https://www.casio.com/us/moflin/
But they keep churning out the classic watches and they are everywhere and cheap.
The watch is interactive! Nice detail
I liked this, reminds me of some other discussion on recycling/global warming etc being pushed as the comsumers fault
Some of these fonts and transitions I like a lot, but sometimes it feels like there are a few too many fonts on screen.
It has a plaintext version which I appreciate (though I wish it were actual plaintext instead off formatted html with the aesthetics of plaintext)
Oh my god this site is so cool. I just want to say — how much time did you pour into the typography and animations on the frontend? I absolutely love it.
You picked the right way to show each paragraph — what to expand, what to keep short, what to highlight. I couldn't stop scrolling. UR an artist! maybe AI can help style every line of text, but it can't make something feel this good to read.
A lot! The Casio up top is fully functional (click the buttons!)
oh my god this is so pretentious. At least use high-contrast color if you want me to read your deep philosophical treatise on Technology These Days
I'm getting into woodwork. I just bought a vice made in the 1940s, the same one my grandfather used. It's finished. As are my chisels, and my cast iron cookware. It's definitely refreshing.
Loved this. A lot of what's kept me sane (and what my wife is now trying to learn from me) is how absolutely merciless I am on notifications. Every time an app buzzes me, it damn well better be information I want, and if it isn't, I change the settings or revoke notifications altogether. If I am not shopping, I do not care how good your deals are. If I am not bored, I don't care what the Anxiety Machine has found to show me.
My devices serve me, not the shareholders of their respective firms.
There is still a remarkable amount of friction here in doing so. There should be a one click button for "don't show me notifications like this", which incentivizes apps to have appropriate granular notification settings.
And don't even get me started on how Samsung on certain models hid the notification categories behind a feature gate with a random OS update.
Ha. Ha. Ha. He expects to still find a battery fit for the Casio watch 7 years from now! Good luck with that buddy!
Essay author here - they're readily available! It's just a CR2016.
ref: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Casio+F-91W+Battery+Replacement...
Just a humorous jab :)
Whoa there buddies! Some people need to learn how to take a joke!
People really are stupid these days...
You chumps still change watch batteries? My Stowa Flieger is powered by my arm movements.
My smart watch has become an invaluable digital prosthetic to help me backfill cognitive challenges that I’ve learned are related to ADHD.
“It dings all the time!” Yes, exactly, having a buzzer attached to my person at all times ensures I don’t miss appointments and that I leave to things on time.
Your thermostat that bothers you? It would be great if we lived in a world where energy was free, and there were no consequences for using as much energy as you want. That’s not the world we live in. And you probably don’t want to live in a world where the power company decides when you can and can’t turn on your AC. This is the compromise. I’m sorry you’re bothered by it — the consequences of other solutions to this problem are likely much worse.
It’s easy to forget that these things exist, and people buy them, to solve real problems. But writing a whole essay and just eliding that fact strikes me as lazy.
I agree to an extent. I also have ADHD and find these things useful, but the tradeoff is that to be effective they always have to be important in a way a cell phone or smart watch is very bad at guaranteeing since their main customer isn't the consumer but the advertising firm. I wish bespoke PDAs were still a thing (or at least, an easily accessible thing)
The larger point of the article is that these new devices are dependent on your continued labor to keep them running usefully. Moreover, this is a choice in how they're designed.
The article isn't saying they don't do other things, it's just not relevant.
For the record, I also have ADHD and I find the opposite impact on my psyche.