I tried everything under the sun including the grayscale trick, and at the end of the day there were three things that worked. Putting the phone on silent, putting it out of sight, and simply turning it off.
This resulted in 5 hours of phone time per day declining to 1 (it's my companion at the gym plus during most meals and that's OK).
Everyone's approach is going to be a little different depending on the rhythm of their life. For me the phone usually stays turned off for most of the morning now. It's in a drawer for most of the afternoon/evening. If I'm out and about it's in my pocket or bag on silent. It briefly gets unmuted at times when I'm expecting a delivery, appointment etc. and that's about it. The bar is high because the peace of mind is too great to lose.
I mean, this very discussion is a case study in the supremacy of text. I skimmed the OP's blog post in thirty seconds and absorbed his key ideas. Your link is to a 54 minute video on an interesting topic which I unfortunately don't have time to watch. While I have no doubt that there are interesting ideas in it, video's inferior to text for communicating ideas efficiently, so most people reading this thread will never learn those ideas.
Text is certainly not the best at all things and I especially get the idea that in pedagogy you might want other things in a feedback loop. The strength of text however is its versatility, especially in an age where text transformers are going through a renaissance. I think 90%+ of the time you want to default to text, use text as your source of truth, and then other mediums can be brought into play (perhaps as things you transform your text into) as the circumstances warrant.
Actually, you might want to check the video again, it has sections and a full transcript on the right side, precisely to make skimming easy!
> video's inferior to text for communicating ideas efficiently
Depends on the topic tbh. For example, YouTube has had an absolute explosion of car repair videos, precisely because video format works so well for visual operations. But yes, text is currently the best way to skim/revisit material. That's one reason I find Bret's website so intriguing, since he tries to introduce those navigation affordances into a video medium.
> The strength of text however is its versatility, especially in an age where text transformers are going through a renaissance. I think 90%+ of the time you want to default to text, use text as your source of truth, and then other mediums can be brought into play (perhaps as things you transform your text into) as the circumstances warrant.
Agree, though not because of text's intrinsic ability, but because its ecosystem stretches thousands of years. It's certainly the most pragmatic choice of 2025. But, I want to see just how far other mediums can go, and I think there's a lot of untapped potential!
The fidelity and encoding strength of the "idea" you got the gist of from skimming might be less than the "idea" you receive when you spend the time to watch the 54 minute video
I came back here after the video (btw he speak very deliberately, watching it at 1.5 or 2x while digesting the message is fine)
I'd compare it's message to a "warning !" sign. It's there to make you stop and think about our computing space, after that it's up to you to act or not on how you perceive it.
That's totally wishy-washy, so it might not resonate, but after that I went to check more of what dynamicland is doing and sure enough they're doing things that are completely outside of the usual paradigm.
A more recent video explaining the concept in a more practical and down to earth framing: https://youtu.be/PixPSNRDNMU
(here again, reading the transcript won't nearly convey the point. Highly recommend watching it, even sped up if needed)
I want Framework to succeed, but the author's objection isn't unreasonable:
> For a premium price I expect a premium laptop, but the Framework 16 feels more like a €1200-€1500 laptop at best... two thousand Euros for this kind of laptop is just absurd
For most people the long-term total cost of ownership is going to be a major factor when they consider a more repairable laptop. Sure, generating less e-waste is nice, but saving money is probably the main point. What the author is asserting here is that to get the repairable laptop you need to spend 50% more for the same specs! As well as accept that the form factor is bulkier etc. At a 50% premium you do have to question whether you're going to save a meaningful amount of money in the long run.
For me I probably would - I find uses for machines that are a decade old and the repurposability of Framework components is pretty interesting. But interest in this level of reusability is a pretty niche market.
I think the Framework 16 is too expensive. They can access a niche market at these price points but to get bigger they will need to find a way to deal with the cost issue. PC World's review of the Framework 13 this year was: "A steep price for a compelling upgrade."
>But interest in this level of reusability is a pretty niche market.
We're getting to a point where some people don't even have a laoptop in their household. I think "serving a niche", especially one willing to pay 1000+ for tech, isn't a bad thing here. The tech required for browsing internet and streaming videos doesn't need to spend more than $500, or even get a windows/mac.Chromebooks will happily cut into that entry level market.
This is all before mentioning how memory prices will only make the problem worse for all consumer electronics.
If you want user serviceable equipment - example: phones, computers, cars, bikes, washing machines etc, you will have to deal with the issues that come with it - the same as the inconveniences that come with user serviceable software AKA open source software.
The reason being that a device which has been tested to work with only a fixed set of parts will likely have more of the issues ironed out in comparison to a device which has to work with a much wider range of devices.
You may not get the same form factors because user serviceable equipment will tend to be bulkier - for instance, you may not be able to get ultra thin laptops, phones etc.
However, these inconveniences are worth it because the alternative is that we will find ourselves in a place where the equipment becomes more and more adversarial to consumers.
It's an attempt to escape the control of the system but it's a reactionary approach, which at the end of the day, is just letting the system dictate how your life unfolds in a different way.
To live well and accomplish OP's goal in the modern era you have to understand that the attention economy has won, completely and totally. You can choose to live your life in a proactive manner: motivating force arises internally, through contemplation, meditation, deliberate study, and intention.
Or you can choose to live it reactively: you look at what just popped up in your feed and you write a blog post about it.
We're living more reactively than ever now. It's stifling creativity and individuality, it's creating depression and anxiety. The answer is to unplug and let the motive force for your actions start coming from your internal world again. It's okay to be influenced by the outside but we're more possessed now by derivative slop (see how all brand logos have essentially become the same) than we probably ever have been. It's time to unplug from the hive mind and wait in the resulting stillness for the next step.
I totally get this sentiment and I think it applies equally to the actual dating apps, these apps are all garbage fires that you don't really want in your life, but they do have utility if you want to date.
So an idea I've been thinking about lately, is that evolution didn't produce humans that were wired to date forever. These app publishers undoubtedly would prefer that you keep using their apps until you die, so they're happy to see you also keep dating until you die. But that shouldn't really be how things go and it's not how most of us are wired. Most humans throughout history went through a brief courtship period and then they settled down with someone, even if that person wasn't perfect.
The app has utility in that courtship period, but the activity itself is meant to be temporary, possibly even brief, and ultimately give way to something else. The app publisher has an incentive to make you forget that.
I'm also a recovering social media addict, it was a slow and painstaking transition but the benefits in terms of attention, concentration and attitude have been profound. The main metric for me was going from almost 5 hours a day of phone time 2-3 years ago, to about 1 hour today. Of course the socials still snuck in on other devices but that was the main thing which killed the poison at its root and then eventually all the offshoots withered.
The apps condition you to come back through a feedback loop. Once I broke the feedback loop enough times the whole idea of going into one of these apps or sites and watching my life disappear into it started to feel revolting, like I just knew it was going to make my day worse not better, then the hold was gone.
The next battle I see on my horizon is that I sometimes watch 20-30 minutes of YouTube subscriptions in the morning with my coffee. There's some good content, but sooner or later Google's going to try and kill my ad blocker and probably look for new ways to creep that time up into hours instead of minutes. I know it's coming and I'm ready to die on this hill rather than lose my morning. I will do absolutely anything to continue blocking ads, up to and including saying goodbye to YouTube, to Google, to a web browser, putting only TUI interfaces on my TV, anything.
My favorite small act of defiance this year was purchasing a $120 deluxe hardcover edition of the Lord of the Rings trilogy - that's a great work I enjoy enough that I'm happy to read it many times over the course of my life, it improves my attention span instead of worsening it, and it won't show me a single ad ever. So I figured in terms of recreation, it's one of the best investments I could make. Perhaps several of such omnibuses on a shelf next to a comfortable armchair is the best defense against Big Tech.
The broader discussion but especially this little exchange reminds me of a similar situation with Ubuntu.
At one point they were the darling of the desktop Linux space and much beloved by an online community of highly principled people who didn't pay them anything.
Those same people then utterly blasted them when they tried a few monetization/promotion features that fell flat, like the Amazon lens in Unity. I had no love for that lens but it was easy to remove.
Shuttleworth gave a fairly telling interview afterwards which basically amounted to "Fuck these guys, you can never make them happy."
Canonical proceeded to focus on the server side where there's more money, fewer loud freeloaders, and now they're somewhat more evil.
There is also a whole strain of thought in SaaS which says don't ever have a free version because those guys always end up being the biggest complainers.
I think you have to accept that no company is going to get it 100% perfect and if you're too loud, annoying, and you're not giving them anything in return, they may just take their ball and go home.
Being the company that does the right thing is arguably not worth it, the devil's advocate argument is, some guy online is going to ride you even harder because you said you were trying to do the right thing, so better to stay quiet, or even cultivate an air of vague evil instead, then they won't bother.
Perhaps also related: the idea that riots are stupid, because rioters are inevitably protesting someone/something that's far away, even as they set fire to local businesses owned by members of their own community.
Ubuntu freeloaded on Debian so its fairly reasonable to consider the ubuntu skin to not be worth having if the result is advertisements being pushed onto users.
Companies that want to freeload on a free software community will always have a hard time. They may be praised in the beginning if they bring fresh and new energy, but trust is only going to work for so long until the "monetization features" starts being pushed. Historically that only works if the company reforms the original in such a way that it essentially is a completely different thing. Ubuntu today is still just a skin over Debian that users can easily replace.
Accidentally the best thing Ubuntu brought to Debian was the release schedule, which the Debian community adapted. Without that advantage there isn't much point to Ubuntu unless Canonical continuously pour a lot of money and developer time for free into the ecosystem. A lot of people commented at the time that such a thing wasn't sustainable.
If no company can make a fully free and user respecting browser then Mozilla the foundation should dissolve Mozilla the corporation because it doesn't fit into the state goals of the foundation.
> There is also a whole strain of thought in SaaS which says don't ever have a free version because those guys always end up being the biggest complainers.
Not just free, but also cheap. I have found the less someone pays the higher the likelihood they are a problem customer.
Look at them all downvoting us for saying it. It's like a force of nature, the reaction to comments about it proves that it's true - the complainers sure enough come onto the free forum and blast down comments about it :)
I like free stuff as much as the next guy but I think this is just some fundamental aspect of psychology, like you don't value something as much if you didn't pay for it. Within our business we see this all the time, customers who pay a lot tend to be satisfied and limit their criticism to the things that really matter, customers who pay a little or are just proposal shopping will take up a huge amount of time and have a lot of minor complaints. I have heard about this at many other businesses
It's worth noting that this was a pretty active debate as TVs were going from one in the household to one in every room. "We don't want to put a TV in our kids' room, it'll rot their brains." And there was research to back up that it had a negative effect to some degree.
So why are we surprised that when we put a TV in the kids' hands things got even worse? Meta testified on the stand recently that they're not a social media company anymore, they're now all about video. Tiktok is the new TV. Every app wants to Tiktokify. The money from TV, just pushing an endless stream of video to someone, is very good.
We were able to go back to one TV in the house (at least I was), and even avoid a big chunk of the ads when watching TV (by paying for Netflix/etc) and even radio (Spotify/etc).
Except we now we put a garbage TV in every hand.
It's a terrible idea because it's a tiny screen; because it's not a shared experience, but an isolating one; because it's been proven that it's bad for eyesight/myopia. But most of all, it's terrible because the content is crap.
Spending hours watching a never ending sequence of low effort 2min videos that need to deliver on the first 30s (or they're skipped) is not the way to make anyone smarter/saner.
This resulted in 5 hours of phone time per day declining to 1 (it's my companion at the gym plus during most meals and that's OK).
Everyone's approach is going to be a little different depending on the rhythm of their life. For me the phone usually stays turned off for most of the morning now. It's in a drawer for most of the afternoon/evening. If I'm out and about it's in my pocket or bag on silent. It briefly gets unmuted at times when I'm expecting a delivery, appointment etc. and that's about it. The bar is high because the peace of mind is too great to lose.
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