Digital minimalism
vitalik.eth.limo
vitalik.eth.limo
Have not carried a phone at all since. I rarely carry any electronics at all and exclusively use cash in person to make me mostly digitally invisible IRL.
Stopped using X and all big tech services. Google, Apple, Microsoft... even deleted my Facebook and Linkedin with thousands of connections. Github I have not used in years and will probably delete once I finish migrating repos to my self hosted git.
Other than email, Matrix, and online forums like this one, I pretty much just use a terminal, and will probably do those things in a terminal soon too as my locally hosted AI helps me rapidly write better CLI tooling.
Also exclusively use freely licensed open source software and self host almost everything I rely on, including AI. I have never been happier or more productive in my entire life.
So it is a little hard for me to let that go as everyone becomes more and more spread out in the world. It's a weird soft 'push' of information that I am able to keep up with and enjoy.
Still, I see the ugliness of The Attention Economy...
It's weird finding a balance.
But ... I do notice a lot number of people who just sit there watching reels. So FB is probably doing just fine.
How do you meet new people and engage with your community if you don't have a phone or aren't using to use the corporate media apps? Is in person enough to get you by? Generally curious because not having a cellphone seems really hard or maybe that's just a misplaced anxiety on my part
Church, friendly local game store, kids sports and activities, the general category of "festivals".
I met most of my friends at hackerspaces, board game nights, conferences, giving conference talks, parties, bars, etc. Put yourself out there in spaces where human beings of likely overlapping interests exist and you will make the friends that matter most. I first had a conversation with my wife of over a decade by tagging along with a bunch of strangers to a random pizza place. My wife did not use dating apps at all, so in person was the only way a guy could have met her.
I also open my house once a week to anyone I know, and host events every month or so. Met a lot of friends-of-friends that way.
And look, I get it. Doing all that is scary. I still have a lot of anxiety about hanging out with people I do not live with, and I do it anyway. Never regretted it once.
Spending time around other people in person makes us better people.
Also, in not all countries is it acceptable to talk to strangers in public, like your pizza place example. In Finland this will make people very uncomfortable, though you might get away with it if you are a obvious clueless foreigner (or an unusually charismatic foreigner). About the only place it is acceptable is bars after a certain level of inebriation, but that is not the kind of interaction many people will find worthwhile.
The Nordic countries have been like that for long years, but I think this taboo is spreading because young people in some Central and even Southern European cities, even with a history of cafe culture and large student populations, are complaining online about the difficulty of meeting anyone when out and about. Telling someone that they should just take the first step isn't necessarily a solution, because like climate change or recycling, this is maybe something that cannot be solved by idealistic individual action but requires policy changes.
I moved a lot growing up, and had to make friends quickly. I got pretty damn good at magic. When a stranger suddenly starts complaining about how spicy the burritos are and blows an actual fireball randomly, you end up in fun conversations with strangers.
My version of it these days is giving tech talks even when they terrify me, because it helps me find the select few people who share my interests faster.
But also if 9/10 strangers blow you off when you try to chat them up, who cares? That is their problem. The 1/10 are going to make it worth it.
Maps: Knowing what's around me physically, up-to-date information, public transport routes, etc. I found some remote paths on CoMaps in the UK which I walked recently, without the aid of the app I would have not known about these.
AntennaPod: the wealth of information and interesting topics I've been exposed to via podcasts is hard to overstate.
Home Assistant: being able to control my home, optimise the energy usage, improve security.
AI: I can talk to an AI anywhere. Instantly upload a photo, for example I use this to identity plants.
None of these things try and draw my attention all the time - so they don't affect your focus. They are there when I need them, and then are in my pocket when I don't.
You are also missing out on a lot. In fact, there's an infinite number of things you, too, are missing out on.
And I do something often almost no human in the developed world ever does; I get lost. I wander a bit. I give myself a bit of extra time so I can try alternative routes and see if I figure it out and maybe see a new part of my city along the way.
I look up maps in advance and print those when going somewhere the first time on a tight schedule, but that is about it. For the most part I just actually know my city.
Also research on Taxi driver brains indicates regular reliance on a GPS makes you as much as 20% more likely to develop Alzheimer's.
Turns out not using parts of our brains ever is bad for them.
> AntennaPod: the wealth of information and interesting topics I've been exposed to via podcasts is hard to overstate.
When I want music on the go I take a small standalone Rockbox media player. Can handle podcasts or years of music no problem. No internet on the go needed.
> Home Assistant: being able to control my home, optimise the energy usage, improve security.
I love Home Assistant and I optimize and automate it when I am at home, so I do not need to away from home for short periods. For long periods, I check it from a laptop at a hotel once a day or so and that is plenty.
> AI: I can talk to an AI anywhere. Instantly upload a photo, for example I use this to identity plants.
I use a notebook. I write down things that interest me. I do not need instant answers to every question. That leads to endless answers we remember few of. Better to be intentional with research that we still think matters in a day. Most of the things will not matter in a day, but there is a note just in case.
I once had google glass full time so I was never a second away from information and screens. I had every wearable that existed.
I am thankful for now not being reliant on any of it to be happy and productive on the go. I like to use computers intentionally at fixed locations so I can walk away from them and have a forcing function to exercise other parts of my brain.
With regard to "GPS brain", a way to avoid it is to do OSM mapping while one is out and about. Then you are forced to get your bearings in a way that activates those parts of your brain, and in most cases you could backtrack or do the journey a second time even if the phone map were unavailable.
To your maps example, some of my best road trips are not “optimized” but take two lane roads that are out of the way. Some of my favorite trips involve coming across places we came across by sheer happenstance. I also think boredom is the cocoon of creativity. But we have all but eliminated it from our lives when we constantly have a screen within arms reach.
> Stopped using X and all big tech services.
This right here. I haven't given up my cell phone yet, but I run GrapheneOS on a Pixel without Google anything and only with a handful of basic apps (OSMand, K9, Home Assistant...). If something can't be done in the browser, I pass.
Don't forget that your car may also have a cellular modem and rat out your driving habits to dealers, data brokers and insurers.
This is why I never drive a car I cannot repair myself in a pinch that requires zero software or even a working battery to operate, which means low tech, manual transmission.
You can get an ICP license easy with fake documents. Nonograph exists in China as "animal welfare" and "business to business" web portal even though it is for anonymous writing / leaks. I used to own the domain `秘密.网络` which literally means "secret[.]network".
> your modem and IP are connected to your ID etcetc
No different than America. Your modem and IP are tied to the billing contact.
> you are basically tethered to a phone
Weixin is a problem, but the other apps usually are not necessary.
Nothing I've heard or seen about Twitter is enticing.... but I'm old and cranky. Not quite as old and cranky as Donald Knuth, who stepped away from email after 15 years, writing:
I have been a happy man ever since January 1, 1990, when I no longer had an email address. I'd used email since about 1975, and it seems to me that 15 years of email is plenty for one lifetime.
Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don't have time for such study.
You can certainly communicate deep and lasting thoughts in 140 characters.
[1] https://x.com/michael_nielsen was among the highest quality accounts when he posted regularly.
The thing that I’d been looking for on this minimal setup was a way to prevent access to the browser or installing apps at will. It was easy enough when I was on iOS. I just used Apple Configurator [1] to block Safari and the App Store, but on GrapheneOS, there was no great option.
Recently I made a device owner app [2] which allows hiding any UI app and locking itself. It ended up being quite an elegant solution as it allows full access to app stores for updates (new apps you install are hidden until you unlock and approve them). The only way around it is with the lock code or a factory reset.
This makes my phone a quite private device whose functionality I intentionally set ahead of time. It can only do what the apps I’ve chosen can do. I prefer browsing and similar on a computer.
[1] Apple’s Mac MDM app anyone can use. You need a Mac and to factory reset your phone first.
I treat my phone as stateless by default. I don't keep many non-stock apps installed. The obvious exceptions are authenticators, I hate it but I get it, and I need my banking app. Pretty much everything else is ephemeral and disposable to me. If I genuinely need an app, I install it, use it, and wipe it.
The imposed friction here kills the compulsory behavior. Do I really want to see what's on Instagram? No, I really don't. Do I really want to spend $7 for a mediocre latte at Starbucks? No, not really. This unintended side-effect has been great. I have no tolerance now for modern retail coercion, and opting out of the enshittified layer of everything has been great for my wallet and my sanity.
Between 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. I cannot use YouTube, Vivaldi, The real estate app, WhatsApp, etc.
If I want to unblock it I have to wait down a 3-minute timer to make sure that I really want to turn off the blocker
It is really interesting to see a third-party client for Twitter still operational. How is this still possible? This seems like an unauthorized third-party hack that would likely get shut down with too much attention?
Which is not to diminish the author's point (which I interpret as twitter is a cess-pit and think hard about what social media you want to engage in and the interface you want to use.) My point is you don't have to spend time on twitter to benefit from this world-view.
EDIT: I don't see any downsides to being able to use OpenStreetMap, have used it from a KaiOS phone too.
I do text browsers because I live my life in a terminal and it's easier than double-clicking on another part of the screen and waiting for the graphical browser to launch. I also only have 16Gb of RAM, so I can only have a few browser windows open at a time.
And yeah... using a mapping site on a text only browser would suck.
And using Twitter/X even with a different client... it's not really minimalism is it?
I can agree to some extent about the gripes with social media. It's why I prefer using Substack over Twitter, Reddit, etc. It is much more limited, but certainly not as toxic. BlueSky has also been decent in my experience.
Similarly, I think for people who are stuck in prison in Burkina Faso, I think much of this things also don't apply, as they don't have the freedom to chose if they want cellular service or not, if we're going through scenarios where all of those things might not apply :)
It's a shared personal experience, it is what it is? I don't think author is advocating that everyone in every circumstance should try to emulate all of those things. You read it, build your opinion, then learn from what you found useful and ignore the rest. If something would be impossible because of your personal circumstance, then you can just not think about that.
This is what reinforces the problem.
When we choose conveniences, we reinforce them. This makes it harder to get away from the things that brings us that convenience.
Conveniences to be able to get a hold of anyone in seconds rather than waiting. Believe it or not, there was a time when we were just, not available. It was OK.
Did that mean that things were a little more challenging? Of course, road trips or going anywhere new meant more upfront planning. Not knowing where your children were brought anxiety which meant rules. However, it was all manageable. By ALWAYS choosing conveniences, we shut the door on alternative options which in turn make it harder to deal with inconveniences.
I’m struggling to see how having anxiety about losing your children is better. I’m struggling to understand how knowing where they are would lead to having fewer rules.
I struggle to figure out how my friends being more available to text is a negative. What was character-building about calling them on a landline or losing contact with them entirely as an alternative?
I got chicken pox as a kid, that doesn’t mean my kids should get it.
I’ve had arguments like this with my parents about urbanism. When they grew up, the city was dirty, crime-ridden, etc. They also grew up during a time when the automobile was like the tech industry of their day. It was an innovation that changed their lives for the better in their opinion and lived experience. Their house got bigger, their car got bettter and lasted longer and their neighborhood got cleaner and safer, in their eyes.
My parents feel like trying to use the car less and switching to public transit or cycling more is like denying progress. What was the point of all that innovation and progress if we are “going backwards” in their eyes?
The end result of these discussions isn’t that I don’t believe in urbanism anymore, but I’m now more accepting of their point of view on the subject. I see their viewpoint as more valid than I used to. There’s nothing horribly wrong about their way of life even though I don’t necessarily want to adopt many aspects of it.
Teach independence/self-defence/street smarts, encourage weight lifting for older kids, therapy/meditation for yourself (some anxiety is natural of course!), move to a safer city, have more children (easier to pair them up on adventures, plus less subconscious physiological fear of losing your one and only child), distract yourself and stay busy, go with them to places the first few times to assure yourself then take off your training wheels. Or just say no to certain things.
It doesn't seem to me a special case of anxiety that can only be addressed by spy apps and knowing you might be able to instantly contact them.
“Move to a safer city” is a lot more expensive than a phone plan. A lot of people don’t have that luxury.
I agree that all the things you talk about are life positives but the way I see it, giving a kid who is old and mature enough to use one a cell phone is like a $15/month cost proposition for an outsized benefit of being able to contact them.
That’s a wild thing to say out loud. And absolutely doesn’t solve the problem. Kids need to have their own friends and own social circles if you want to teach independence.
I am not saying that those things have no value. The opposite is definitely true. However, you are accepting a lot of baggage by reinforcing the systems that bring those conveniences. Now, you MUST have a cellphone or you are a Luddite. You MUST have a cellphone or you can't read a menu at a restaurant, unlock the door to your hotel room or access your bank funds.
You now have lost digital sovereignty to large corporations because you need to be able to get a hold of your kids within seconds.
All conveniences come with costs that you and society must bare.
I also don’t think some of the conveniences I talked about have much of a cost. My kids having a cell phone with basic phone and texting capability isn’t a digital sovereignty issue.
And I’m not sure if digital sovereignty matters if the alternative is digital abstinence.
That’s like saying “When you buy a Toyota Camry your life is beholden to Toyota, you should just walk to your destination.” The trade-off isn’t really even, is it?
So why do we do it? Because we can't imagine living without the convenience of our phones.
I’m all for reducing trips and being more mindful about car dependency but I’m not personally going to sell my car because I can afford it and it makes my life better.
I’m fine with cars being a beneficial convenience, an attainable luxury for the masses, but I think that any area with sufficient population (which isn’t very much) can support the idea of families being able to reach a significant percent of their daily destinations without a vehicle, and perhaps even preferring to do so.
It also saves a tremendous amount of resources and cost of living to reduce car trips per week per person by even a small amount.
You're arguing that car dependency is fine (for you). I'm arguing that car dependency is a good analogy for phone dependency.
Of course it is, the first version of Twitter was a texting platform. You can't draw some line and say that this is the end of the baggage that comes with this convenience because that is not how the world works. The inevitability of social pressure means "keeping up with the Joneses" so your kids need to communicate with others, not just you.
Just because it doesn't come in the form of an app doesn't mean it is safe or come without risks.
I’m failing to see how Twitter is relevant.
I’m failing to see the “keeping up with the Joneses” factor here. I am talking about basic cellular service not a $1,000 iPhone loaded up with brain rot apps.
Regulated in what way that is relevant to the concern about digital sovereignty or privacy?
> I’m failing to see how Twitter is relevant.
My point is that voice and text ONLY (dumb phones) isn't some significant change from apps in terms of the concerns I am raising.
> I am talking about basic cellular service
If you and your children can maintain that situation, great, it doesn't change that society has NOT accepted that. That society sees you as unusual for not conforming. Which is the entire point of my argument. The pressure to conform doesn't yield because of a single person's choice and many use the arguments you are using to maintain their children's access to a $1,000 iPhone loaded up with brain rot apps.
I am really just not in any pickle and don’t lose sleep over any of this. That was my original entire point is that sometimes it’s acceptable to allow things to be convenient.
We made all of this work before phones even existed. Getting your attention siphoned away by your phone isn't a convenience, it's an unhealthy dependence.
I never understood those with the need to ultra optimize every millimeter of their existence and I find this kind of posts extra boring
- Not using social media at all
- Not using your phone at all
- Not using AI at all
No AI is easy, I don’t want it.
No phone is inconvenient sometimes, but I’m well aware I don’t want my life to be more convenient, I want it to be more fulfilling. I do things that are inconvenient because I want to. Bake bread, chop wood to heat our house, hunt to fill the freezer. I talk to people face to face, I live basically the same as I did as an adult from 2000 onwards.
I spend my days outside where there is no cell service anyway, and have no interest in being contacted or contacting others. The people with me are who I want to spend time with.
> Explore ways of greatly decreasing or scoping your social media use ... Get the information benefits of the platform without getting sucked in to the vortex
This is more or less what Newport is recommending. Find ways to get the benefit of digital technology while refusing the manipulative aspects and other downsides.
EDIT: oops, TFA doesn't actually mention the book, I thought it did. I think this point still stands: "minimal" does not mean "none".
- the web (I am posting on HN after all, although I recommend a very stripped down browsing experience)
- general computer use
It's telling that you interpreted that (rather circumscribed) list as total digital abstinence. Social media, smartphones, and AI are all relatively recent appearances on the digital stage.
I still don't think minimalism inherently demands what you're suggesting. If you don't find social media has any beneficial uses for you, it makes sense to cut it out of your life completely. Someone else might find they need some specific things from it, and decide to keep some engagement - on their own carefully dictated terms.
You actually can just leave Twitter and read a book instead.
- Social media minimalism
- Cell data minimalism
- Web minimalism
What you say is true about the 2nd section, but the comment you are replying to is referencing the 1st section which states, in part:
"I did not leave X the platform, but I did leave X the interface. Instead, I have been doing most of my tweeting through Firefly:
Firefly is a multi-client that combines together X, BlueSky as well as Farcaster and Lens (both partially-Ethereum-based decentralized social media platforms)."
having a phone with "flip to shhh" (put it face down, notifications are silenced) is really nice
When I decided to take a break from being terminally online, I didn’t turn off the phone feature but leave Wi-Fi on so I could still check my socials on the office Wi-Fi; that wouldn’t have actually done much. I forced my phone off the bulk of the internet by turning off Wi-Fi and disabling cellular data for everything but a few core apps like Messages and Maps.
Love or hate it, he invented the 2nd -- maybe even the 1st -- most impactful form of cryptocurrency.
Twister is a cancer that doesn't need replacement.
When Elon took it over I decided to go cold turkey and delete my account altogether so I couldn't go back. Best decision ever. I have twinges where I miss it, but I'm much better off without it.
I had already deleted my FB account about 12 years ago when I realized it wasn't making me happy. I still have IG which was great years ago (see your feed and then it stops when you've caught up), but I dislike what it's become (ad/promoted accounts infested). I still use it to share pics with friends/family and see but I use Screen Time (iPhone) to limit it to 20 min a day, and I had someone else set the screen time code so I can't just extend it. Works well and keeps me in check.
Thankfully HN doesn't have the same social media hooks so it's easier to keep in check. A couple of years ago I made some comment that dang didn't like and got my posts limited (max 5 within 12 hours, I think). It bothered me for a while, but now I'm actually happy because it acts as a limiting factor, so I wouldn't even ask for it to be lifted.
some self-promotion here but I was also tired of where IG went and built an app that was more what I was looking for; it's called people you know and it's on android and ios
My feed there used to be cool physics stuff. Now it’s just all the people in the world who want me dead and for every real one of those 99 bots joining in.
Sounds like modern Twitter to me. Glad I deleted my account years ago.
I vacillate on the value of seeing this stuff. Sometimes I think its important my radar be aware that these attitudes are way more prevalent in society than they used to be. Lot's of my not-on-twitter peers I suspect are in a bubble and don't realize how much societal decay there has been around norms and batsh*t conspiracy thinking. As a citizen I think it's important not to be in a total bubble until the frog boiling temperature is reached.
At the same time, I'm pretty sure that low grade daily exposure to "look at all these neighbors of yours who wish you were dead" overstates the prevalence and the fact that the people who feel this way do so in no small part because they are getting a daily algo feed claiming I wish they were dead (spoiler - I don't want them dead). Since I find it really hard to break my Twitter addiction there is something about all of these emotions which keeps some susceptible humans like myself clicking, but like the article says, it's quite rare that I emerge from an hour of Twitter scrolling feeling anything but gross.
All of this is frustrating because I was very late to Twitter. I joined a year or two before the acquisition. I loved how I could connect with all sorts of interesting brilliant people in all sorts of interesting fields. I wish I could get that back but I guess that iteration of Twitter didn't sell enough ads.
nuts. i joined in 2008. that was when it was cool.
I have no doubt there ARE people out there with those horrific views and ARE actually making AI generated meme slop and posting it feeling satisfied, but I choose to believe that the vast majority are bots, and a fraction of the real humans doing it learned it from the bots. Just reading that sort of shit over and over again can change how you think about things if you aren't vigilant and the outcomes are more division. Plenty of bad folks in the world just want the division. They want people mad, and feeling afraid.
The times I've had the misfortune of reading replies on xitter, even on what should be technical topics, they have consisted of extremist maximalist takes with others chiming in to call them "based" [0]. Whatever its "algorithm" is, it definitely leans into the outrage farming / Balkanization project, regardless of the bots.
[0] which from context would seem to be shorthand for "freebased", as in smoking crack, despite apparent intent to the contrary
The moderate on twitter is the proverbial old man yelling at clouds but imagining the clouds are actually some relevant audience of non-bots. I do admit we may define moderate differently here in which case there is a chance we are talking past each other.
My experience as a young adult in the UK was that most people I knew had moved from Facebook to Instagram & Twitter in their early 20's.
Normal people whose interests would be things like football, going out drinking, and reality TV. The extent of their politics would be sharing a meme of Boris Johnson or complaining about COVID restrictions. I don't like the word 'normie', but that's exactly how you would describe them.
Looking through my following list now, these type of people have now either deleted their account, or haven't posted in years.
I don't think it's entirely political. But the rebrand to X and Musk's involvement made using it very uncool. It's seen of in the same vein as Facebook now, it's kind of embarrassing to admit you still use it.
LLM auto-translations haven't changed that much. The current corporate seems to be trying to figure out why and whether those remaining huge mass of foreign users lean left or right by the criteria of US politics, but still haven't have any clue about that nor had accepted that non-English-speakers actually don't speak English lol(or, to say, find translated contents natural as speeches with reasonable flows of logic, to be even more blunt)
edit: since this is under a dead comment that might not bother too many: I'm suspecting that there must be two competing hypothesis inside the org that owns Twitter, one being more preferable than the other depending on where one is coming from, that users still remaining on the platform and active on it must be either A) appreciative of ultra right turn of the platform with increasingly dominant right wing ragemaxxing contents, or, B) they just exist as a colossal autonomous parasitic self-contained isolate hivemind that had always been at least equally influential as the host but now is also physically bigger and therefore more influential than what its owners consider the host.
Frankly, I find the Malfoy trend that was going on couple weeks ago to be highly sus, that it smelled like an artificial boosting campaign to map out political leanings of user clusters which has to be right leaning from the hypothesis A. It makes sense as to me as one, given my unique knowledge of political controversies surrounding Harry Potter and ... opinions expressed by its author JK Rowling, which absolutely everybody here knows about. And I'm imagining that, if it had been such an experiment, it must have been horrifying to watch the Potter villain simply accepted as completely non-controversial wholesome pro-LGBT pro-gay left-to-center content among the most influential and knowledgeable and skilled of Twitter users like nothing had happened since 2016 or so, supporting the undesirable hypothesis B, although that seems to have always been the reality to me.
The moderate views are always seen as too "boring" or "naive". There's always a vocal crowd who wants to tell you about it. Anyone willing to leave a comment is already too engaged enough to take a step back and find nuance in what is not being said.
I kinda believe this. The web for collaboration, work, dumping out information and doomscrolling is a great tool, but I think is bad for any kind of socializing or 'communitizing' at a human level, where you are forced to treat humans as such instead of looking at some transduced digital representation of a real person in the form or chars or pixels prone to dehumanization.
lol, looks like someone haven't learned from the early internet of the 90s
people talk on internet *because* going out in real life is not a preferable option
Social media is like a townhall where humans and bots interchange information, meme, find work, collaboratrs and meet n greet (socialize).
But just as in real life, spending your entire existence in the town hall is akin to being homeless.
I think that's telling. If you're reducing digital human interaction on social media (which yes, has its share of problems) but replacing it with "social" interaction with AI, that's not minimalism. You're replacing one vice with an even worse one and coping about it.
The main problem is that talking to AI is like talking to a human without any of the thorny parts. It's only going to be nice and helpful and always available to you. Chatting with AI is to social interaction like candy is to a balanced diet. Sure it's more instantly gratifying but long-term it's really bad for you. You need the thorny parts to build important social skills like tactfulness and navigating conflict.
But that’s better than social media, which substitutes human interaction with chronically online weirdos. At least AI is smart and respectful.
But I'd also guess that interacting with AI is better than unhealthy humans, esp those put in front of you by social media.
You could always try "You are a thorny internet troll" as your system prompt instead. Works wonders.
> social skills like tactfulness and navigating conflict.
We're not still talking about social media, are we?
(I agree that substituting AI for human interaction is bonkers, btw. But I'm not sure social media helps, or doesn't also involve mostly AI interactions these days.)
I'm trying to work out if your own commment was satirical, replying in that prompt's form -- if it was, then kudos. If not:
> It doesn't change that your interaction with it is always consequence-free.
I entirely agree, but this is a major issue with social media currently too. Neither AI or social media improve real social engagement skills, sadly.
If you are using it as an assistant, coach, or deep researcher to chat about interesting things with, then no.
Sherry Turkle breaks it down more here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMiR-GxTrtM
This is why I'm a huge proponent of something like "small AI."
People are using LLMs to fill friendship, romantic, and mental health voids. Instead of turning to friends, lovers, and therapists/priests/mentors.
Obviously depends what you're doing, and not suitable for everyone, but it's an unhelpful generalisation to say AI in its current form is purely a paid product subscription.
That's precisely why something like signed distributions packages are way more secure than curl bash'ing.
But many simply don't understand that. We had plenty of forged Web certificates likely. And even without that, with curl bash'ing anything sensitive you have to cross fingers that the server ain't serving one in 10 000 request with a backdoored version.
With curl bash'ing everybody is trusting every single time that the server ain't compromised or intentionally malicious.
At this point I've lost any hope: people simply don't understand security.
And as long as we'll have people saying that curl bash'ing is just as safe as signed distros packages, we'll have daily posts about major security incidents.
Security is a mindset and most people simply don't have it.
I did not leave X the platform, but I did leave X the interface
Rant aside, beside social media minimalism I am also a big fan of compute minimalism. I don't use VScode with 100+ plugins or a zsh maxed up with so much bells and whistles that the terminal looks like Christmas and respond with the speed of microsoft powershell.
But I guess most people in SF are in the opposite camp.
That’s what I thought the article would talk about. If it were social media, I’d rather buy a cheap used phone, put the app on it, and turn it on only when I want to check something. Then it’s off. But I deleted/haven’t logged into my accounts for years now.
As for as minimal compute goes. my daily driver is an old laptop I put OpenBSD on. I also have an m1 air that I mostly use for shopping and meeting. Then an iPad for reading. But the key thing is that app and software are tools. It’s either tied to an activity (even relaxing ones) or it’s not used. No ricing or theming, just basic configuration to get the job done.
But then again, he's already fabulously wealthy and could just walk away from the space forever if he wanted to and be just fine.
If I were him I'd just hire a person to handle comms on it for me but I suppose that's not really minimalism.
Digital minimalism is less time on devices/platforms.
This article is more about digital curation, which has value in it's own right.
It is funny to have witnessed the conversion from the default state of people is being not connected digitally to being connected digitally and once people start living with the 24/h connection they start the perceive simply being out of cell network as carrying inherent risk.
I've noticed people reacting to going hiking beyond cell networks with a "but that's dangerous!" response. Being outside of cell networks was the natural state of being for the vast majority of human existence!
And it was dangerous.
Also: I grew up just before cellphones started to be a thing and I felt a lot of times as a kid the frustration of not being able to contact someone remotely.
Sounds great.
> But it's just using social media less, not using the Internet on your phone and using the CLI more
Never used social media, my phone only gets internet via a cable connection and I only use GUI where the CLI isn't capable enough, like a web browser.
Not sure what I was expecting. It's great advice, but kinda preaching to the choir.
Particularly if you comment.
Its definitely not a super toxic site though, but its social media. Same as discord and other chatrooms. Something like IRC we would have called by another name in the past but I think nowadays we could say it's a form of social media.
I agree it needs a definition and its no easy limes to draw, but id put it around algorithmic infinite feed recommender systems.
HN has no recommender system so I dont count it in. For me, its a forum. Plain, sometimes boring and often deep & rich.
HN front page is digitally curated. HN has an opaque post ranking algorithm.
> How are stories ranked?
> The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted. Comments in threads are ranked the same way.
> Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
Ever noticed the YC posts that cannot be commented on?
Opaque ranking algorithms?
Human curation / moderation?
Automated curation / moderation?
Voting / flagging?
Infinite scroll?
Images and/or auto-playing video?
Advertising inline with posts?
Profit motive to get users to do certain things?
I don't know where you draw the line, and what makes Facebook harmful but Hacker News not harmful.
This is the problem. Text only allows you to consume a certain amount of information at once. Anything more is harmful imo.
I find it surprising that the thing that's missing from the list is to me the only thing that matters, the creation of an identity and social graph. I don't think the algorithm or technical details are that important, the qualitative difference is that on social media you are someone. You have a persistent profile, you have "friends", you invest in building rapport and status, you have followers or are a follower.
On social media you interact with people, not with topics. There are creators, not discussions. On HN you could for practical purposes shuffle everyone's username each morning and it wouldn't matter for 99% of us, and that eliminates most of the dynamics associated with social media today.
If you want to retroactively attribute the term to things, you'd also have to add it to newspapers featuring reader's letters. But that's not what social media is.
Interesting... are you using a particularly old blackberry or PDA? Or is this something you've got your modern phone to use.
"Around the same time, "Crypto Twitter" was spiraling into a mood that I saw described as "financial nihilism": roughly, that the natural end state of blockchains is gambling, this is good, and if you dislike this and wish for something better then you are a stuck-up elitist prick. Naturally, I had (and continue to have) my intellectual disagreements with both of these trends." (This is the guy behind Ethereum.)
So he built a tool that allowed him to post simultaneously on multiple services. That's not digital minimalism. That's a spamming tool.
> My primary goal in doing this was to support decentralized social media, and to continue to engage with X but in a way that distributes network effect rather than locking it in. But in my months of using Firefly, I found that it also has a different effect: I feel much better using it.
> I suspect the primary reason is that while Firefly allows you to tweet, and see other people's tweets, it is missing one central part of the X interface: The Algorithm™.
What he likes isn't being able to spam multiple networks, he likes the change in the content presented to him.
It really is a big difference.
That said I would only -consume- content ripped from YouTube. I have no account and no interest in publishing there.
I have reduced my social media to two sites: Here and Mastodon (with a very limited follow circle). I don't follow tons of ad-ridden websites. I have a self-hosted RSS reader, following 10 feeds. Instead of following junk tech news, I read LWN.
Next step might be enabling antiproc on HN to reduce my time here, since I added time limits on applications on my phone and love that artificial limit.
I have limited energy and I want to focus it instead of spreading it around. Otherwise progressing beyond a certain point becomes impossible.
We need more of these types of apps; the challenge is keeping it updated and synced with new information.
Only the uncompressed XML is 2.2 TB. Since you’re anyways not want to read that in a text-editor, you’re probably better off with downloading the planet data in the binary [PBF] format, which is “only” 89 GB…
Or just get an extract from Geofabrik, where the whole south of US (for example) is less than 4 GB: https://download.geofabrik.de/north-america.html
[PBF]: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=PBF_Format
What a "fantastic" era we're entering into. I think eventually these people will have a minimalistic life, with malware stealing everything
Having some kind of notification system would be helpful as well, since most platforms are actively trying to minimize the accounts you follow and replace them with their algorithmic suggestions.
For more details read https://citizenlab.ca/research/uncovering-global-telecom-exp...
Still, many of us are experimenting with ways to decentralize power and have no interest in the traders and grifters. We have an interest in buying things online with privacy like VPNs or servers. Donating to people that were cut off from banks like political dissidents. Having some access to liquidity that will work even when a false accusation freezes your bank accounts. Or a way to pay creators tiny amounts of value in exchange for content without needing ads or big payment network fees. See projects like LBRY making an alternative to Youtube. Most of the interesting things happening in crypto are happening quietly without VC marketing budgets to attract the finance bros.
It is important these experiments continue to evolve until something checks enough boxes for the average person to trust it more than a bank or paypal.
This may take decades to get right, but humanity will be better for it.
If all money is fake anyway, I want fake money where the value is decided by the market, not by one person.
> I propose a philosophy of technology use called digital minimalism in which you radically reduce the time you spend staring at screens, focusing on a small number of digital activities that strongly support things you deeply value, and then happily ignoring the rest.
I wrote something for myself that fits my style of link consumption. Uses sqlite tables for search
https://github.com/rumca-js/OfflineWebSearch
I also use my own search index to find domains, channels. I find less often distracted by some algorithm trying to exploit me
My Instagram app (besides showing no ads) shows just the stories and feeds of people I follow, chronologically. Just a couple days this way will make you realize how little content there is, my friend's Korea trip has been the top one for like a couple weeks already.
Then you can get the DMs to avoid FOMO and realize how antisocial the whole thing is.
No idea if it works for x, I left that long ago and everytime I've checked out of curiosity I've been shocked at the absolute cesspit it is.
I have tried this very same thing on https://grimoire.bio. Large corpus of biological knowledge with detailed visualizations that are shown immediately upon searching, but adding LLM answer when missing/needed.
I have never seen a Hitler post but if I saw one I would immediately block that user and the algorithm knows that. It doesn't show me people arguing it shows me debates and tech. Because that's what I taught it to do. It is not even hard it just requires a little discipline.
When a friend sends a link I refuse to click on it unless my VPN is on and I'm using Mullvad Browser. I don't want their taste (which is quite often look at this outrageous thing) ruining my feed.
There are 4G mainboards you can buy and projects like https://www.nokia3310lteproject.com that aim to bring them into the modern world but for me these don't go far enough as they try to preserve the original UI. For me, the ideal device would be a 4G/GPS/Wi-Fi/Bluetooth-capable Nokia brick with modern interpretations of apps for maps, music, messaging etc. with optimized user interfaces for the limited screen space their tiny LCDs offer.
truth is, all most popular platforms have an insane amount of toxicity. it doesn't strictly comes from the platform it self, but from people.
It’s clear that many people don’t understand how the algorithms work. There is no such thing as “bad” engagement on these platforms. Engagement is engagement. Whether you’re supporting the content or violently opposing it, you’re feeding into boosting it further.
If you’re sick and tired of algorithms pushing crap on you that you don’t like, you need to ignore it.
Tools like Firefly that remove you from the algorithm definitely help, but as long as people are engaging with the content, the problem will never go away.
ive spent a lot of time on that topic, and tech always comes up just short of producing a truly distinguishing luxury good.
the ones that succeeded became the macbook and iphone, blackberry, early facebook when it was only open to ivy schools, blue check twitter, tidal, early slack, Signal, and some others.
the looming question is, what is luxury? the answer as a positive definition is a kind of alchemical mystery. its failure mode is vulgarity, its imitations are cheap, economics only criticizes it, and its very context specific.
my working model is a triad of desirable, thoughtfulness, and belonging, where you can describe a luxury product on these axis and predict whether it will succeed.
for minimalism, notable challenges are things like the ReMarkable tablets that are high desire and thoughtfulness but lack the integration for belonging.
post-systemd Linux has low belonging vs the bsd communities, and is kind of mid in nerd desire and has too much slop attached to be thoughtful.
when you take an obvious luxury product like the proverbial LP pullover or a Ferrari, they imbue a belonging, where an entry level watch or a lamborghini do not. "class" was always a dumb framework bc its critical instead of constructive.
digital minimalist luxury hasn't really been invented yet in spite of some really good attempts. id argue because they lack something in this triad.
My gut is telling me it's "belonging".
access X only on Tuesdays
Surely he sees that the nihilists are winning. Crypto's main use case at this point is undeniably deeply corrosive corruption and money laundering, and as far as I know there's nothing plausible on the horizon to replace that (I kind of stopped paying attention after crypto industry leaders started meeting with Trump, though.)
B)Specifically regarding self custody? Quite a few. Argent is one notable example https://argentwallet.io/
I'm simply curious as I've always seen defi as weird because nothing i've seen seemed useful.
Rocketpool is a project that allows users to contribute to the proof of stake system with very small amounts of capital, and share in the returns thereof, again trustlessly.
There are miles and miles of useful projects out there. Any truly permissionless ecosystem is going to be full of scams, that's the nature of the beast. It doesn't mean that there aren't extremely clever and elegant projects being built by very talented teams of developers trying to make something that reduces the amount of global suck.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_Sigma_Phi
> Founded in Abilene Kansas, in 1931...
Wow, that's not a leap I would ever have made, let alone posted online. The rest of the article felt similar, like it was well intentioned but maybe somewhat unrelatable: hopping off X by using a different app to read/post, quitting mobile internet by mapping every hotspot in town. Maybe it's relevant more as a break from the author's norm?
I’m going to sound like an ass, but is this the sort of crap we’re going to see published in 10yr when all these crypto folk grow up a bit and start reflecting on their “glorious revolution”?
At least the Beanie Baby people realized it was ridiculous.
I guess the better comparison is dotcom folks, and they were pretty insufferable for quite a while
I realize that this kind of remark is better-intentioned than it comes across on the internet. In personal conversation it can be just another way of chatting and making sense of the world. Tone of voice can do a lot to modulate pejoratives.
But in an online forum like HN it degrades and makes conversation more shallow, and tends to evoke worse from others, leading to downward-spiral-mode, which we're trying to avoid here.
Thanks for all the work you put into making sure this place isn’t a cess pool.
Not sure who you mean by "this person" but if you mean the author of the article, that would be dipping a toe into personal attack, which we really ask people to avoid here.
(Note the "evokes worse from others bit" in my comment below—I'm sure it's not what you intended but this is exactly how that works.)
(Also of course, persons don't need to be relevant for articles to be interesting, and it's the latter that we're shooting for.)
> Click on the tweet and look around its quotes and responses, the same way that someone would morbidly stare at a car accident.
Twitter gets money from ads. They can sell more ads for more money when they can demonstrate eyeballs and eyeball time. Therefore, they're incentivized to keep your eyeballs on the app for as long as possible. If that means putting car accidents in front of you, that's what it'll do!
I strongly believe that social media is basically a lost cause for this and a few other reasons. I tried out Mastodon and Bluesky, but people there don't seem to actually be interested in conversation, and there's physical limitations that prevent meaningful conversation anyway in the form of character limits. ~200 characters is simply not enough space for anything meaningful to be conveyed, so the platform selects for snippy clapbacks and pithy virtue signalling.
I'm also unconvinced there's anything of value to be had from these platforms, maybe including HN. I seem to be hearing about the new hotness in the AI space for example by just regularly attending coworking events. I guess if everyone stopped using Twitter, that would stop being the case. Or maybe we'd go back to RSS...
There are parts of the community where it's a lot better (atmosphere and open source devs, some digital artists who are not vocally pro/anti AI) but most people will see the front page that's almost exclusively US politics and get turned off.
I don't know how to fix this. Maybe create a new site that starts out focused on a specific large, politically mixed group like gaming or football fans and then expands to a general audience. Or use a personalized algorithm by default and initialize it randomly so new users see more diverse content.
I finally unsubscribed from the RSS feed of a web comic creator who has for over a year now (I think) not posted a single comic that is not about AI.
I mean there is not a single plot point beside "AI is bad" in those dozens of newer strips. I‘m not exaggerating as a rhetorical device, I mean this literally.
I‘m actually sympathetic to his view, but I came for the wonderful world and drawings. I‘m sad about the effect AI had on this artist, because yes, he‘s objectively endangered and right to protest it, but it has already taken away his oeuvre in a way.
(imo)
1. Small social like Discord, WhatsApp / facebook groups, Bandcamp (I was recently invited to a topical group there).
I have some designs for something like ATProto by fully permissioned and focused on small social modalities. I'm not interested in platforms with globalness, reposts/quotes, or blocking (fence sitting this one tbh)
2. Spending more time offline, with people in real life, then taking those social dynamics and interaction patterns back to online ones. We are currently doing the opposite as a society.
What's really notable is how the tone of a small subreddit post changes completely if a post gets boosted to everyone's front page. There's a small cycling sub I read with good posts about routes, tips, and advice. When something reaches the front page, it becomes a shitshow of car v bike culture war bullshit.
Substantial discussion of some hobbies has moved from Reddit to invite-only WhatsApp groups, precisely because Reddit went downhill. (This is true for long-haul bicycle travel, for example.) Unfortunately, on WA, too, everyone is on their phone, so messages are on average too short for comfort, and also there is no FAQ culture so people just ask the same questions again and again.
You are using it, because you were told you need it.
Before making blanket statements like that, please always remember HN is an international community, and countries are different.
Can you name those banks?
> Or living in a country where access to government services, public transportation and/or the healthcare system is now via smartphone.
Can you name those countries?
> And just try living in China without WeChat at all.
I can't follow.
A cheap smartphone left at home and powered on occasionally to log into the bank's website should be enough for this. No cell plan, just WiFi. If you want to carry a cell phone and actually use it, I would suggest a degoogled Android ROM. By cutting out Google, privacy is significantly increased.
For me, it is a wonderful mp3 and audiobook player that also acts as a portable harddrive.
Loved ones can send it an emergency txt in a true emergency.
There is a lot you can do with a portable little computer with a nice screen that has nothing to do with the nonsense most people use it for.
majority of consumers needs every bits of benefit to get by their lives.
minimalism is a lifestyle for the upper middle class to give up the convenience to protect their own privacy. while its no wrong protecting yourself, it doesn't change the system for broader community.
You know, it really is entirely optional to hang out at the Nazi bar.
> A phone connected to cell is an always-on tracking device
A phone connected to wifi is also an always-on tracking device. You can't really escape this without removing the "phone" part of the equation
For example just yesterday there was a tweet by Richard Sutton.
Even Zuckerberg tweets.
Having worked for the man some time ago, I'm pretty sure a bowl of oatmeal has more insightful things to say
But misses the point. The guy owns his own Twitter competitor, yet has to go there if he wishes to have any influence.
It's where influential folks post. Whether you like it or not.
It's where a bunch of rich (and often very right-leaning) assholes post. I'm not clear that correlates with "influential" outside of very specific circles - certainly all the thinkers and doers I used to follow on twitter left long since.
That is this next Tuesday, four days from now.
example: https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/voters/helpful-information/...
Phones are not inherently bad for privacy. The cell connection, telemetry, and default apps are the main problems. The first can be solved with airplane mode, and the latter two with a custom OS (or an iPhone to an extent), just as you’d install Linux for those advantages over Windows. Due to their security model (app sandboxing, permissions, exploit protections), they’re a much better place to start for making a private OS that protects user data. GrapheneOS with airplane mode is more private than most desktop setups.
For most people, the phone records and relays network SSIDs it sees as well, even if not connecting to them.
I just don't understand what do you think you are getting from these places besides filling your head with nonsense?
Try not checking the news for a week too. What did you really miss? Right now is the best time. What does it matter if you miss the election results?
It is just a compulsive information consuming hobby with negative return. If you stopped wasting your brain power on this for a week you would probably be surprised how much more time you have to spend on things that are actually intellectually interesting.
What tech news that matters would you not hear about on here? Again, nothing.
Getting this experience is simple: don’t click or garbage, occasionally block content you don’t like.
My guess is that it's because filtering is irrelevant to the anger towards X, or rather, Elon. That's fine, I don't have a horse in the race.
That said, I agree with you. X is the only social media site that filters out stuff I've expressed disinterest in. This has been true for at least a couple years. I only need to hit the "Not interested in this post" or "mute" buttons maybe once per week.
So for me, I see nearly zero politics, engagement bait, or slop (in the traditional sense). I see a lot of people working on really cool stuff, talking about it in real time, who just want to keep the focus on those topics.