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Comment by tclancy | Hacker News Reader

Calling a phone a simple “consumer device” is a lot of hand waving. It’s my bank account, my access to a number of services, an identity provider, etc. I don’t trust myself to secure an open phone and I do this kind of thing for a living. It’s the asymmetric problem: I need to be right 24/7 forever, a bad actor only needs me to slip up once.

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The need for you to do banking, and employees do MFA on a phone and thinking that doing requires a secure and closed phone is again a spillover of offloading costs to users.

We did have hardware tokens for corporate logins and banking needs.

There is no real reason why an open phone cannot be secure for sensitive applications.

I do not even own a cell phone and have not for approaching a decade. I live a modern life as a founder and tech worker.

I have a house full of servers and self host virtually my entire digital life and even my own usage of AI, but when I leave home I typically carry no electronics at all.

We convince ourselves we need phones, but I promise you, they are optional. Being offline a few hours a day is also good for your brain.

Not everyone’s life is your life. Not everyone living not your life is doing it wrong.

> I don’t trust myself to secure an open phone and I do this kind of thing for a living

> Not everyone’s life is your life. Not everyone living not your life is doing it wrong.

The irony.

What’s the irony? You have a tendency to appear in any thread about phones preaching the Gospel of Digital Detox without seeming to consider the level of privilege required to be able to live like that. Could I do it? Sure. Is life too goddamn short from my perspective to do it? Also sure.

I don't remember advocating digital detox anywhere. Are you mistaking me for someone else?

But I do advocate pretty strongly for open phones because they are becoming indispensable for leading a normal life without becoming a digital hermit.

They should be either open and indispensable or closed and dispensable, not indispensable and closed at the same time.

Ah sorry, mistook you for OP.

Never claimed otherwise. I just want to always make it clear people have a valid third choice in threads where people are talking as though Apple and Google are the only options. It is a prolific false dichotomy and I do not mind being That Guy.

I make an actual case for the things I advocate for and actually live my convictions.

Why everyone would is better off electing Apple or Google or Meta to decide what software we are allowed to install, what content we can share with our friends, when our data should be deleted, and when it should be sold to the highest bidder that wishes to manipulate us at scale?

I am convinced surveillance capitalism is a net negative for society, but if you really think otherwise, please make an actual case for your own view instead of complaining about me making mine.

> We convince ourselves we need phones, but I promise you, they are optional.

Many people's employer's use of MFA (including my own) says otherwise.

For many people ensuring their spouse and/or their children's school be able to reach them for emergencies and sudden matters says otherwise. Or an elderly parent (e.g., location tracking).

> Many people's employer's use of MFA (including my own) says otherwise

yubikey/nitrokey. Much more secure by a mile and works when your phone battery is dead. I switched multiple past employers from apps to these, joining as an SWE.

> tracking elderly parent (e.g., location tracking)

meshtastic asset tracking tag which will work even in emergencies when cell towers are down.

> children's school be able to reach them for emergencies

call-to-one-way-pager bridge, or voip-to-meshtastic bridge. Cheap to free solutions that will also work when cell towers are down.

Hit me with more perceived blockers if you are actually interested. Give me your gotchas. I have probably heard it all and am passionate about engaging people on this topic.

My wife and I have lived without a cell phone subscription for going on a decade and live a modern life as silicon valley tech workers.

Most have the choice to enjoy mostly the same lifestyle they have today, without Apple or Google or proprietary software or cell phones or even debit cards. There are reliable solutions for everything outside of the US surveillance capitalism bubble for those that actually want them.

Exiting surveillance capitalism is possible without major lifestyle changes.

Read Digital Vegan by Andy Farnell.

> Exiting surveillance capitalism is possible without major lifestyle changes.

It really isn't - credit rating agencies are the most egregious examples by far, and next to impossible to opt out of.

Plenty of ways to build credit without revealing where you live or what locations you frequent and what you buy at the drug store. You can get a line of credit, take it out as cash, spend it privately, then pay it back. They learn nothing about you except you pay back your loans, which is the signal they need to give you more credit.

Where will give you a line of credit without knowing where you live? I'd be interested in _specific_ examples - I did not find any when attempting to actually build US credit when I moved here.

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