Just wanted to say how much thinking I get done as soon as I lie down in bed with the lights out. Of course, Sometimes, this goes off the rails, and I can't sleep. But generally it is a testament to having little to no sensory input, (in the dark, lying in bed) to be free to think clearly. ;)
A psychiatrist I love to listen to on YouTube, Dr. K, says that what you are explaining is caused by not giving the brain enough rest time (overstimulation). He says rest time is necessary for the brain the kind of sort through/debug things.
Much like sleep, if you go without for long enough, you will randomly start sleeping whenever you get the chance. So, when your brain is constantly "on" and your brain finally gets a chance to calm down, it will start running through all the shit that was blocked out due to being overstimulated.
Honestly, the move to soft keys and touchscreen UIs for basic vehicle operations was one of the worst trade-off decisions. Touch UI makes sense for complicated device interactions, such as a navigation systems. But these are typically supplemental features to driving. Replacing basic functions like climate, or volume controls, etc was insanely foolish in my view.
Imagine if you had to look at the steering wheel or gas pedal to confirm you interacted with them...
We are gifted with highly precise and sensitive devices (hands) for manipulating objects which can detect even the slightest interaction by feeling alone, and to replace that with something that requires visual or auditory feedback..in a car...was a reckless move.
Yeah, I know the format might not be everybody's cup of tea, but they have some pretty decent breakdowns and a lot of great information that would be great tools in any product or designers toolbox.
Because of this kind of practice, I act as a content curator for my kids. I do my best not to shelter (challenging, but doable), but to educate and train them to spot these kind of subtle (and not-so-subtle) schemes. Are you playing the game, or is the game playing you?
It's half an inside joke and half serious in our house, but I quote WOPR in War Games to the kids every so often:
"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."
The good news is that there are loads of great alternatives to these casino-like experiences, and it's just a matter of avoiding this stuff, and choosing the good.
This is exactly the problem. The shift to online always, and "free to play" casino-style micro-transaction hell-holes is still a garbage experience. And this is multiplied when you have kids, and you want to just buy them a good game.
Thankfully, a lot of other studios have rejected this. Even though Cities: Skylines has its long list of paid DLC (some great, some meh), at least you don't have to buy them, or have internet to build a city by yourself.
Lastly, and this is anecdotal but, if you make a good game, and respect me as a player, I am more than happy to shell over money for it. I'll pay for quality. Penalize me, nag me, treat me like a child or a criminal, and my money is going to a competitor who doesn't. (I've always felt it was absurdly insulting to plaster anti-piracy rubbish on DVD's...that someone just paid money for. It's the same with games.) Forcing paying customers to suffer because some people steal things, is a losing strategy.
Having not used a smart phone for ~5 years now, I can say that it is totally a workable solution - however, there are, of course trade-offs, and several persistent annoyances. Rather than get into a list, I will present the one thing that I find the most frustrating:
Our society expects you to have and use a smart phone for nearly everything.
This might be less annoying if it meant only new functions or supplemented old things, but in my experience it's the opposite. It's often the most simple low-fi things we have been doing for ages, that have been overhauled to require a smartphone, app, and data plan. It's hard to be looked at as 'the person complicating things', when everybody else expects you to carry a luxury item (and an expensive monthly service bill), just to perform a basic task, like paying a bill, or reading a menu.
I'm not one to wander around expecting society to cater to my own needs, but I openly admit that I find this Twilight Zone-like first-world problem (What do you mean, you can't use our app?) the most infuriating.
With that said, you can still get by in most situations, but I don't see the above getting better on into the future, unless there is some cultural revolution about how view and use technology.
Calling a smartphone a "luxury item" if you live in America (or similar) is a bit disingenuous. Anything that has 85% market penetration is by definition not a luxury item.
In some countries this could be an accurate description, though. And I agree with the overall sentiment, I would like it to be easier to get through my day without using a smartphone.
Yeah, even as a smartphone owner, I find it annoying how some places just assume you're able (and willing!) to install some arbitrary app to do business with them, etc.
That being said, it really doesn't have to be all that expensive. Sure, if you buy the newest iPhone every year and get a high-end Verizon plan, that'll cost some dough. But you can get a used or low-end smartphone and a cheap plan - they're out there: https://www.tomsguide.com/us/best-cheap-cell-phone-plans,rev...
> Yeah, even as a smartphone owner, I find it annoying how some places just assume you're able (and willing!) to install some arbitrary app to do business with them, etc.
Especially when they're a broken mess.
This summer I visited LA, and at one restaurant they had a QR-code menu. They didn't require installing any app, it just sent you to some web page.
I had good service (outside, LTE, full bars) but it was impossible for me to see the menu. The thing would never load. Sometimes it would somewhat load, but when scrolling and trying to pick things (it was an ungodly mess of drop-down lists) it would disappear again.
> But you can get a used or low-end smartphone and a cheap plan
The above was on an iPhone 7, which I admit is "old" (but it is up-to-date software wise). So, I wonder what you mean by "cheap low-end phone", and how that would compare with mine. Especially since we have some low-end Android phones at work, which are "current models". And the scrolling in the settings app, for example, feels much less smooth than on my geriatric phone. They just lag all the time. My phone basically never does that, which is the reason I'm not particularly looking to get a new one.
This was the first time I couldn't have my phone do what I needed. The site worked well-enough on my friend's 11 pro.
It adheres to the definition. The problem with the phrasing is that nearly all people in America and many other countries are inundated with luxury items to the point where we view them as basic necessities. That doesn't make them necessities, they are still lifestyle choices that while more affordable than ever are still superfluous to our existence.
At least in Germany you get a Smartphone for way less than 100€ and a call + SMS + 4GB data flat for 5€.
If that is luxury what is going to the cinema for 20€ (movie and popcorn) for 2 hours?
I never bought a smartphone for myself, but I've seen 100 EUR smarthpones, and what you get is just a toy (unless you want to do your banking or login to e-mail on a Linux device with severely outdated kernel and no OS updates, which can't go for a few minutes without phoning home, wherever that is)
More expensive ones are not significantly better, either, unless you pick a brand known for keeping up with security updates.
Although I do not live there, I have a SIM card from Italy (Fastweb) which for 6€ lets me have 50GB Internet (of which 6GB could be roaming in the rest of Europe), 100 sms and unlimited calls.
Recently moved and didn't have internet service setup yet. I got an unlimited data bundle from them for £17 for 30 days. Felt like a pretty good deal, and it didn't get throttled at all. Latency was a slight issue with zoom calls though.
You don't get that consistently. You can go to check24.de and get their sim.de offer for 5gb data and sms/telephone flat, but that's a limited time deal. So technically yes, but in general you are more in the 8-10€ ballpark for this kind of offering.
No kidding. India has GDP per capita less than 2.500 USD and mobile phones are ubiquitous -- old, poor, kids, whatever. Plus service is dirt cheap. Reliance JioPhone is insanely cheap: https://www.jio.com/en-in/jiophone
Yes the idea a number of business have that everyone has a smart phone and can install an app ... or they have decent internet in the first place, I find maddening, not for the resulting situation but for the picture of what sad standards must exist, either the big wigs are deaf to the developers, or they've hired in technical people who are one trick ponies / low over skill set. I have a simple rule: If the business doesn't have a functioning web site, why should I trust some fly by night app, sorry, no can do. Turning off (or more quietly breaking them) non data phone access services won't work on me either.
After being given a few years ago an old, pre google raising its ugly head samsung, which I loved, I went on to purchase four more cheap phones on sale, the last two were merely to install apps that needed a much newer OS. My experience with the newer and cheaper phones were not the best. The last being damn right nasty with poor ability to properly clean up the phone's limited amount of storage, and permissions set that no app (I use) could write to the sd card. Sadly if that was the only small issue I might have considered it worthwhile to root the device. Reset ultimately freed up the internal storage space and it's now an excellent hotspot device and phone ... if I think to change the settings back to accept calls.
> luxury item (and an expensive monthly service bill)
Before applying any subsidies for low income people, you can get a perfectly usable smartphone for under $40 and unlimited data cell service (slow but usable for basic tasks) for $10/month. An iPhone, with service, can be had for a total of under $50/month.
Nice reply. I laughed. At the office, when I am asked "Do you really need it?" I sometimes answer: "I don't _need_ my left leg, but I really like it." Same for toilet paper in the stalls.
Cash and bank accounts are two systems in parallel. Cars and public transport (or bicycles, or walking) are systems in parallel. Good clothing and poor clothing are systems in parallel.
A physical driver license and a digital driver license are systems in parallel. Banking/services on a mobile phone and visiting a physical store are systems in parallel.
Interesting. It's easy to focus on public life catching up to technology, but we're also pretty good I'd say to stay backwards compatible. But who defines what should be minimally required anyway?
Pen and paper? Obviously. Smartphone? Internet? Phone?
I was kinda using 'luxury item' rhetorically more than specifically, but it seems to have derailed the main point. (Whoops. Live and learn.)
With that said, expecting anyone to shell out x dollars/month, so they can pay to park, or scan a QR code - rather than tapping a plastic card, or handing them a piece of paper - doesn't really feel like technological advancement.
For clarity, I believe there are many other things that Smartphones do, which definitively make life simpler. (I believe technology should make life easier, or better - or at least be useful.) And, I even think it makes sense to have certain utilities combined that don't really provide an advantage alone, such as: If you can pay with a phone and not need to carry another payment method, sure - why not just pay with a phone?
Again, the point I was trying to make originally was if you choose not to use a smartphone, you will run into situations where a stupidly simple process has been not supplemented (or improved), but totally replaced with 'you need a phone and data plan'.
< Disappointed Muhammad Sarim Akhtar Meme >
This is a real frustration point that anyone considering living without a smartphone will run into.
> It's hard to be looked at as 'the person complicating things'
Recently I caved and bought a smartphone, but I remember a time before that when some friends and I went to a bar.
Someone paid the bill and asked everyone to Venmo him their share. Lacking any immediate way to do that, I reached into my wallet and handed him some cash.
He looked a bit perplexed. "Oh, don't worry about it."
As the younger generations stop rolling their eyes at 'old people' and become 'old people' themselves, I think the problem will be corrected. Requiring smart phone apps is discriminatory, unsuitable for for many people due to an array of disabilities. Some of which, like worsening eyesight, will happen to all of us given time.
Supporting these people are one reason why we won't get beyond SMS based two factor authentication for the foreseeable future.
I went to the dentist recently and they required me to open a link in a text message they sent me to digitally 'sign' their paperwork. Without a smartphone I would have no way to do it. Yes, our society today expects you to have a smartphone.
I have a smartphone and this annoys me to no end. No I don't want to zoom through your menu in some PDF format which doesn't render nicely on my phone.
I have left restaurants because of this, and told them why.
Let's say you have kids and you want to use any of the family settings (e.g. Screen Time) Apple, Google, etc provide for an iPad or Chromebook: All app based.
I happen to use an old iPad just as an admin panel for these cases, but the almost complete lack of any desktop or web interface is stupidly depressing.
Oh man, I have been wondering about this experience myself - though if it would all work with no smartphone at all (I have been rolling with the LightPhone II for a few years now).
It had seemed like stand-alone watches were nearly there, but not quite the last time I dug into it. But it works for you?
It depends on what you mean by stand-alone. It works for me as a stand-alone device for days at a time, but you still need a phone to set up the watch and my phone plan is like an addon to the phone so you need that to set up the account. I don't think you can set up a line for these watches in the US without the "host" phone.
Somewhat related (pardon my jumbled transcription):
"Sciences generally are divided up into two types: Pure, or Applied sciences. Applied sciences obviously undertake things that improve society. Pure science exists pretty much to satisfy human's curiosity.
Astronomy is perhaps the purest of sciences; like music, you could live without it.
You don't need it for your daily life. And for that reason it is important that the results of astronomy, this pure science, be put before the public. I feel that very strongly.
Frequently we are asked, 'So, in a world where there is hunger, why study astronomy? Why devote funds to astronomy when those funds could be used to improve mankind?'
My answer is that if you define an ideal society in which everyone has food, clothing, shelter (a roof over your head), basic medical care -- in fact such societies exist: your local prison, or jail. Each inmate has food, clothing, shelter, and medical care (not the greatest).
When the doors are opened, do people rush to get into that ideal society or do they rush to get out?
(chuckling)
We know what the answer is: they rush to get out. Why? Because as important as these necessities are, the fact that you are not free to follow your desire (so to speak) is even more important than having food on the table.
And astronomy is that [following your desire].
There is an inborn curiosity, I think, in all of us to address these questions of what's our relationship with the global environment? How did we get here? To what extent has the universe evolved in such a way that life has sprung forward?
And I think that is something that is fundamental - so I think that public outreach for astronomy is something that is really crucial."
-Dr. Robert Williams, Astronomer, Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) from 1993 to 1998. Father of the Hubble Deep Field project.
+1 for Svelte/SvelteKit. Svelte's DX feels like you are just using JS, CSS, and HTML - but you get all the new hottness of the other framework packages as you need it.
