As someone who owns a dumb flip phone, it's funny to read someone's enthusiastic account of their life-changing experience of... living exactly the way I do.
But on the other hand, I get it. This sort of thing (facebook, hacker news, freaking imgur) sucks up so much of my time (albeit on the desktop), and for what? Occasional interesting tidbits, and frequent annoyance and frustration? Some of it is straight-up bad for me, no way around it, but the amusing little bits keep pulling me back. imgur is the worst one for me... the community is unmoderated and uncoordinated, it's a pile of least-common-denominator bs that's as bad as anything on reddit ever was, and yet the only way I've been able to break away from it is to block myself from viewing it.
I've rightgraded from smartphone to flipphone, and am mostly happier for it. There are a few exceptions, the principle one of which is transit apps -- NextBus and its kin are life changers when it comes to using and really being able to rely on public transit (and that's even though the apps and their interfaces still suck in many, many ways).
It turns out that there is a minimal Web interface to the one transit app I've used to date that works with my flip-phone's very minimal Web browser. I'm not sure if that's sufficient for me or not (I'm starting to think that it would be really cool for local stores and such to post pending arrival times for nearby stops).
I've also still got my old Android device which as a WiFi mini-tablet is still somewhat useful. Though I'm strongly favoring replacing that with a Nexus tablet. The ability to carry around the several thousand texts I'm currently researching would be a bit of a bonus.
A stripped-down smartphone has quite a few advantages over a dumbphone. Notice which apps are installed: Google Maps, subway maps, Rdio, Uber, Instacart. As he says, these things are like living in the future.
Dumbphone plus a GPS device, mp3 player could so the same. I still prefer my Sansa clip to my phone for music (I never even set the phone up for music). Small, battery lasts a while, and I basically don't need to worry about it. I even put one through the washing machine and it worked after a couple of weeks.
As a side note, I find my Android phone a serious step back in usability. I would say I hang up rather than answer close to 50% of the calls. Can't I just get a physical green answer button back, rather than stupid swipe gestures.
"Do the same" - if you're now using 3 devices to do something that 1 can do, you're not doing the same. This is important to some.
Also, the Sansa doesn't stream, so it's not really "doing the same". Some like their own curated music and for that an on-device music player is fine. Some others (me, for example), want a radio style stream where I don't know what's coming.
> I would say I hang up rather than answer close to 50% of the calls.
I get you might not like gestures, but HALF of the time you mess it up? Let's not resort to hyperbole.
There are other callers/dialers on the market too that might have controls that work better for you also.
So, yeah, you might be able to make do with your use case and tolerances, but your needs are not everyones.
How do you know how many times I have pulled the phone out of my pocket and fat fingered a hang up? Lets not resort to speculation because it doesn't happen to you.
That's terribly awkward to carry around. Also, a GPS device doesn't tell me when my next bus is due (there's about 45 minutes between my buses). I also now only require one charger for my GPS and MP3 player. I can also look at cat pictures on the bus.
The Sansa Clip is a great mp3 player. All it does is play music (which is a big plus in my book), it's really small so it's great for running or other similar things, and the physical buttons make it really easy to use one-handed without looking at the screen.
When I got my first good-quality smartphone, I had planned on moving all my music over to it, but stopped when I found that the Clip was really a better device for music.
> I would say I hang up rather than answer close to 50% of the calls.
Then you're an outlier. Through common sense, it should be obvious that the vast majority of people don't run into such problems, or it would be a much more widely talked about problem. Hell, people made a huge fuss about "antennagate" when it was really only encountered by a fraction of iPhone 4 users.
Interesting sidenote that while 2 sibling comments praised their Sansa music player, we had one from audible for audio books and it's been so frustrating that I think of it as the worst mp3 player I ever used.
It's still really hard to get around the privacy invasions of a smartphone, though. I'd like something without GPS and for which I can completely control the OS and environment. CyanogenMod seems to be as close as I'm likely to get to that at present.
Richard Stallman, as usual, was quite ahead of the curve on this topic when he noted that he didn't carry a cell phone of any kind because of the privacy considerations associated with logging your location, accurately with triangulation, against cell towers.
The instant you start using a cell phone consistently, you've effectively handed over a log of your location history to whoever can convince the sysadmin in your cellular carriers NOC to to give them the data. And that's a pretty big list.
- When people want to point out that "Stallman predicted this X years ago," they phase it as, "Richard Stallman was right, as usual." Richard Stallman is not infallible. Overstating one's case doesn't win any new friends.
- There are many of Stallman's "followers" that are very aggressive at promoting the GPLv3 over all other open source licenses. While this might not be Stallman's personal position on the matter, if definitely doesn't win many people over (and probably pushes many away).
- Richard Stallman isn't necessarily the most lovable and charismatic figure. While people shouldn't factor that in to things when evaluating his message, they do.
But in a corner of the world where predictions are a dime a gross, Stallman's made many, and his record of hits is considerable.
Adding to his credibility and significance are the fact that:
⚫ He's not commercially vested in his predictions. Unlike virtually everyone else in the space, whose "technology forecaster" title is followed by some company name.
⚫ His logic is Talmudic in its rigor. If Stallman has a position on something, it's virtually always because he's thought it through very thoroughly. Even if you don't agree with the conclusions (or if it turns out he was wrong), you're almost always better off knowing why he came to that conclusion.
⚫ He gores sacred cows. Much of the antipathy toward Stallman comes from those whose business model he's just invalidated. Or worse, proven to be utterly and completely socially and morally indefensible.
When people take the phrase: " Stallman was right, as usual." and suggest that this is a claim of infallibility. Overstating one's case doesn't win any new friends.
The claim is that on these issues Stallman is more usually right than wrong. Do you have anything that suggests otherwise?
'As usual' is unnecessary unless you're trying to passively aggressively say "I told you so," or imply that people should blindly accept everything that Stallman says.
I would hardly tell anyone to blindly accept everything or anything Stallman (or for the matter, any charismatic leader) says.
However, "I told you so" is a phrase much needed these days... specially directed towards people that insist on making the same kind of mistakes that drove us to the mess we're right now.
If you wonder why people don't listen to you, phrasing like this comes across as condescending, and that you have some sort of belief that Richard Stallman is infallible.
It's a trope (Richard Stallman was right, as usual), that I was intentionally paying homage to. Genuinely sorry if it annoyed you that much, certainly wasn't my attention. I really have no feelings one way or another towards Stallman, other than being amused at his hit rate on these type of predictions that people mock him for.
If the phone's off, that's going to be less useful. And the tower-tracking location granularity's much lower than GPS Though I don't know what the reporting intervals are. Some smartphones (or their apps) were reporting location data every 10 seconds, with accuracy measured within a few feet.
Can't find that article at the moment, though another reports that location information is logged "at least several times an hour":
Here: "In a six-month period — from Aug 31, 2009, to Feb. 28, 2010, Deutsche Telekom had recorded and saved his longitude and latitude coordinates more than 35,000 times."
Except in certain situations when you're probably pretty lucky to have it on.
I had a friend who ran off the side of a mountain in Colorado. He called 911, but had no idea where he was (he was from the Midwest). Within about 40 minutes, they had triangulated his location and had a tow truck and emergency vehicles routed to get him out.
Without his phone and the ability to locate him, he was pretty sure he wouldn't have made.
If he's called 911 then ipso facto 1) his phone is on and 2) all location features are activated (on pretty much any phone of recent memory), as dialing 911 enables just this.
The fact that the exception proves useful doesn't mean my phone should transmit and the telco provider, app manufacturers, and others record, possibly indefinitely my location data every few seconds.
If you haven't read Maciej Cegłowski "The Internet with a Human Face", do. It's quite simply one of the best and most completely cogent arguments against the advertising-supported services model I've seen ever and anywhere. He's "idlewords" here on HN.
While it is obvious that turning off the phone helps, it's good that you make that point as I cannot remove the battery from my smartphone, a problem most "dumb" phones don't have.
>It's still really hard to get around the privacy invasions of a smartphone, though. I'd like something without GPS...
I have only ever wished for the opposite, an app/feature that will log my location, frequently. I don't particularly care if it's stored in the cloud, as long as it's also stored on something of mine in a portable format (CSV, etc). I am thinking of this in terms of potentially catastrophic events where proving my location at some given time would be incredibly helpful, say, when the spouse/boss/police need to know, and the stakes are risking my marriage/job/freedom. Even more helpful would be if the app integrated with the fingerprint reader, to help prove that not only was my phone at this location, but with very high probability, so was I.
Why are people so interested in destroying this information about themselves? Is it "because freedom"? Or is there a real, practical threat that we open ourselves to when this information is out there? I am genuinely interested in knowing.
Regarding maps: is there an app that lets you save out Google Map info offline? I'd like to be able to type in a city and have it save all the data.
I was thinking of having my setup just be a dumbphone plus a wifi-only tablet. The tablet would have utility apps, including this offline-map app. I'd just need it when I'm lost or need to find something nice to eat. It should also have Yelp data on it, and have the ability to update the map and Yelp data when I'm wifi connected.
If I'm travelling to somewhere, I can preload the tablet with the new city info at home.
To me, the worst one are the regular news, especially if there are comments. Not only you don't learn anything, but it leads to bitterness and anxiety and give you a wrong perception of the world. At least, hacker news is informative and the comments are of high-quality. However, I wish I was able to read some articles more thoroughly rather that passively browse.
> To me, the worst one are the regular news, especially if there are comments. Not only you don't learn anything, but it leads to bitterness and anxiety and give you a wrong perception of the world
This is known as Mean World Syndrome, and it's a real thing[0].
Agreed, I'm actually grateful that I stumbled upon HN last year. At first, I thought the content posted here would not suite my taste and then I checked HN comments on each post and I knew immediately that this would be my homepage.
What I like about HN is the built in procrastination tool.The fact that the community knows that HN can be a distraction and they actually built a procrastination tool is awesome. You won't see Facebook, Instagram or Twitter give you an option to stop procrastinating.
I stopped reading regular news and the comments, at most I will read articles from well informed media websites. Also over the years, the quality of articles from news sites has dropped massively. I feel like they are writing just to get hits on their websites. Add a misleading, controversial heading in the mix and it just makes the whole experience worse.
I am glad you're spending time on HN to discuss this. For me it's about finding the right balance between isolation and being part of communities. Take for example phinished.org. It is a completely anonymous community for stressed out phd students, that seem to be perfect for those day when you're just to stressed out or to damn bored to do anything really useful. Sometimes it can be extremely useful to be part of a community like that. Sometimes you need distraction free days.
Smartphones, like iPhone, are only 7 years old. It will take more years for people to learn how to live with it. Smartphones have already been coined "the new cigarette", used by stressed out people to calm down on café's and public places. In the future we'll probably have professional help for people who want to quit fiddling with their phone all the time.
I am on a computer all day long, I still have a flip phone, and people look at me like I am crazy. They all know I am a tech type guy, but question why I have a flip phone. Thing is, when I am off the computer. I dont want to think about more computer things. Glad others are finally realizing how terrible this is. You go out in public and everyone is sitting down at dinner with their friends surfing the biggest social media site at the moment.
The common factor in all these time-sinks is not the phone, but it's the internet. I have a smartphone and although I could definitely live without it, the only thing I've done is disable data. Rather, I'm too cheap to pay for data. What difference does that make, you ask?
One, on messaging, people would use text to contact me or each other if they notice that WhatsApp/Talk message hasn't reached for a couple of minutes. And a call is very helpful to transmit high density info in short time.
Two, I can still use my very nice phone with a large screen to watch videos, read ebooks on the go like if I'm in a bus or something. The difference here is that these things are not infinity-sinks in my experience - I can go 1 hour or so reading a book on a cellphone but then need to take a break which is when you look up and around. Also, subconsciously, the permanence of the book/video prioritizes real world interrupts (in an embedded programming context) rather than blocking them.
Then, you always have music that you can copy to the phone and listen to if you don't want to put your face to the screen. This enables you to move your head around everywhere and still not be all that bored because you still have that music going on.
If I absolutely want, which is almost never, I play games but I find that mobile games are not something that I like so it never comes up at all.
But a lot of time, I've just noticed myself looking around, just absorbing the world around me and being in my own thoughts rather than a forced stimulus and I find that relaxing unless I'm stuck in a very noisy environment in which case the earphone doubles up as a noise blocker.
And the general trend I've heard here is that you need to be on email. But work already has wifi and if you're at work your computer is right in front of you. Secondly, aren't you making a big mistake by configuring work email on your phone?
Maybe I'm the second coming of RMS but I do not install Facebook and Twitter apps on my phone for privacy reasons. Checking at most once everyday seems to be enough for me but I know that's not the case with everyone. It seems a lot of plans are made over fb for you guys, which is understandable - we use hangouts and whatsapp over here, but primarily whatsapp. But more importantly, for immediate plans we generally use SMS and phone calls which might be why we're not as reliant on facebook. FB is considered more of a public 'show-off' billboard than a private friend group.
So yeah, maybe this was worthy of its own blog-post but my gist here is that turning off the data does wonders. You still get to retain those handy unit converters, two factor authenticators, password wallets and other things that are yours without the Skinner box annoyances of the infinity-sinks.
Of course, before someone rants "You don't know how important it is to have internet on my phone", I'd say you're obviously right. However, maybe after reading my post, you realize that it isn't all that important then kudos to you. You should atleast try it once before knocking it right? A lot of times we think "It's impossible to get through without X" but humans are surprisingly adaptive and can cope without X just fine.
I'm just sharing my experience, hoping that it's useful to you.
But on the other hand, I get it. This sort of thing (facebook, hacker news, freaking imgur) sucks up so much of my time (albeit on the desktop), and for what? Occasional interesting tidbits, and frequent annoyance and frustration? Some of it is straight-up bad for me, no way around it, but the amusing little bits keep pulling me back. imgur is the worst one for me... the community is unmoderated and uncoordinated, it's a pile of least-common-denominator bs that's as bad as anything on reddit ever was, and yet the only way I've been able to break away from it is to block myself from viewing it.