For that money and less you can get an older smartphone and strip it down yourself if you are inclined.

Or use accessibility settings (on iOS) to make it much less appealing to stare at.

My take is Safari is the new IE.

It is packaged with the OS. I can't get an older version of Safari without an older version is macOS. From a testing standpoint, this means we have a bunch of hardware or images we never update so we can test against.

That was the IE thing, it was baked into the OS. Also, trash dev tools. Crashes pretty easily with the console open for more than 30s.

Also trash video playback.

The bagel shop I go to has a $15 tumbler that you can get free refills with. I love this because a cup of coffee anywhere is like $3 and it's all margin. My new routine is go there, get a bagel with a spread for like $4 and get coffee.

I'm ahead cause now I have coffee and food. They're ahead because they're not even trying to compete with coffee shops. They just give away the free stuff. I've made my money back on the tumbler and they keep making $4/day off me.

What's the software equivalent?

Differences: coffee has non-zero cost everywhere. software has zero cost with ads. If I give away coffee, that brings people to my store. If I give away software, will people buy something to go with the free software?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50077713

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Imagine being a tech luddite. Flip phone, old PC you boot every time you want to use it, no internet presence.

You got to get produce on your bike and there's none because the fucking internet. This is the type of shit that tips people over the edge and go full Kaczynski.

Or if you're like me, maniacally laugh at the absurdity of over complicating basic infra.

The price is on par with the Amazon Echo Show devices[0]. Why anyone would shell out $300 buck for an Alexa with a screen is beyond me. With the appleHome, at least you can dump your phone and check in on things (not that I would do that either).

In conclusion, it doesn't seem like there's a huge apple premium on this device. Maybe the move is to cut into competing devices with the apple umbrella.

P.S. It would be dope if the display would follow you around in certain situations. Say you're cooking and moving left and right on the counter. With a fixed display, i would keep walking over to look at it, rather than an angle. Moving around the kitchen and looking up to see the thing you need would be dope. (not that I would use that either). But it would be the kind of polish that people dump cash on.

This has led me to passionately start my own media server again.

Anywhere between $100-$200 will get you a mini PC that you can use to host movies, series, music, audiobooks and ebooks. If you don't transcode the content then there's no need to worry about a GPU. Set it up headless in a closet.

From there you can use a mobile app to connect your phone/tv/any device to it and enjoy an ad free experience without streaming data over the internet.

My TV is a 15in CRT that I connect with a laptop. My phone is a 1st gen iphone se, with apps to stream.

I've found this setup less frustrating (and wildly cheaper) than spotify, appleTV/netflix/hulu, kindle and etc.

The current state of computing is such that I can't justify buying hardware that requires an app to use. If I want cameras, I buy the camera and connect then to my backend. If I want a thermostat, I do the same.

I like the tool. I don’t like how it’s the only tool all the time and has supplanted human communication.

The law could benefit from a "content crime", similar to a "hate crime". If you break the law, for the purpose of creating content, you get fucked in the ass. That would have worked for Whistlin'. "You voilated TN tax law, while being an internet clown".

Living in an east coast metro area, owning a 20yo car that doesn't pass smog and needs a lot of work to get there is a thorn in my side. So I've got a car I can't register and slowly fix on weekend. It'd prefer an additional tax on my registration for not passing smog, rather than not be able to register it and the car be rendered illegal.

Prefacing this by saying that I am constantly saddened by the scale of human activities and impact. It hard to find places that are untouched by human. But I sometimes ask what conservationism is trying to conserve. The parts that we find pretty and meaningful. It's not saving the planet, it's saving the insta background. That last one felt really cynical to me.

Down the line there is a state nature will be in. More/less plants and animals. Who knows. It might not be a pleasant state for people.

The concern seems to be that it will change faster than we can change. What happens if the climate of an agricultural area changes in a lifetime? or a generation? or a decade?

I like the Curtis stuff because it hits like old internet-core. It is entertainment that makes you think, but entertainment. Otherwise it would have been written work. But damn the guy can weave a story with some old videos and a soundtrack. As a genre, it's extremely approachable to make your own.

Sometimes it seems like shorts and tiktoks are like a bad Adam Curtis film. 30s highlights stitched together with no relation, garing transitions, ads.

Maybe I can put together a greasemonkey script to make YT shorts Adam Curtis themed. Maybe I won't feel as guilty, maybe it will all make sense.

Hack left and right, steal some cash, blame the agents. Just slide under the radar while the big boys are making a mess and no one is using the stick.

Just an idea. Not a great one. But such are the times, new game is at play.

Like all other hobbies, it asks up.

It seems that life is lived smoothly, not when you focus on good or bad friction, but when you know where you're going.

Good and bad depends. Heard about frictionmaxxing (hope it's fake). The idea of using a dump phone or not using a coffee pot with a timer. That sort of thing. Add friction into life to feel something. That's weird. Because the second you actually need the convenience of a smartphone the friction becomes bad. It gets in the way of where you're going.

For me the answer (which I hope to internalize), is to always know "what we are doing here?" and stay connected with that. I find the mindless scrolling, the binging and all the unsatisfying behaviors creep in when I drift (or cowar) from answering that question.

Technopoly[0] on how society is now organized with technology as the end as well as the means. Technology giveth and taketh. There are winners and losers. Winners are those make use of the new technology. Losers are those that cannot. The more technology permeates our lives, the more this disparity will permeate society.

The End of Education[1] discusses the purpose of education and ways to pursue that end. The end of public education, in his view, is to create a public. A society with common goals and a common narrative.

What I appreciate about Postman's writing is his restraint in calling something "good" or "bad", but rather looking at tradeoffs. Posing the question of if the tradeoffs are acceptable for our ends. I walk away optimistic from his readings. Haidt is more gloomy and likes romanticizing his "past". He contrasts pressing images on glass in texting to the feeling of picking up the phone to call a friend, but ignores that the telephone itself had profound impacts on society.

Shout out to Amusing Ourselves to Death[2] which develops ideas around how visual mediums, ie video, carry different messages than say text. Dovetails nicely into the social media conversation. But it broadens your view of TV and its impact.

One day I'll get around to writing "Prompting Ourselves to Death" as an hommage.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technopoly

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Education

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death

I use this prompt quite a bit. You get a lot of mileage out of it. But I have a pretty good idea of what I don't understand and am very focused on what I'm after. If you don't know what you don't know, then it's a mess. Even more if you don't know how to express what you're trying to understand.

In education, meaning primary and secondary, a narrative is used to provide motivation and create an interest and curiosity for the subject. I already have that, so it's much easier than digging through textbooks. The AI doesn't do that now.

AI in learning mode has the same shortcomings as virtual classroom. The physical presence of a teacher in the room. Sets the tone.

I remembered that I don't listen to music when I run. Because for me it is a crutch. If the music is hype, I run too fast. If it's the wrong song late in a run, I stop and maybe switch the song. Either way, it keeps me from pushing me. Pushing me that day and pushing me in general to grow.

AI is the ultimate crutch for me. It's pumping out exactly what I intended, I'm hype. It's missing the bit, I give up. The common denominator is that it's one more thing to keep me from thinking harder, pushing myself, basking in the discomfort. And I think that is the problem with tools. The more you lean on them, the more you atrophy in that realm.

There's something about friction that switches on the learning part of the brain. Education, more generally, growth is all about the right amount of friction or stimuli to promote growth. In the past, the friction was too high and on average people did not grow. But as the friction drops, the education doesn't proportionally increase. Because we like our crutches and cling to them.

To play devil's advocate, I use the socratic method in my chats and get a lot out of it, that I otherwise wouldn't have bothered to learn.

In my mind, eventually it has the same fate as twitter? KTLO ops for printing money.