Going to plug my project Fraidycat here. Feels like it satisfies many of these. http://fraidyc.at/
It compiles RSS feeds and YouTube, Twitter, etc into a dashboard-like view rather than a crowded timeline. No notifications, no algorithm. Just a tool for a human. Easy to “move into the periphery”. Very calm, even when I’m following 100s of people.
What is "EST"? I know it's not the timezone. Given the frantic exclamation marks, probably it is "Everyone Stands Together" (had to look up: "EST + Urban Dictionary").
> The unusual name of the wine region dates back to a 12th-century tale of a German bishop traveling to the Vatican for a meeting with the pope. The bishop sent a prelate ahead of him to survey the villages along the route for the best wines. The 'wine scout' had instructions to write 'Est' (Latin for 'There is') on the door or on the wall of the inns he visited when he was particularly impressed with the quality of the wine they served so the bishop following on his trail would have known in advance where to make a stop. At a Montefiascone inn, the prelate was reportedly so overwhelmed with the local wine that he wrote Est! Est!! Est!!! on the door.
Ah, thank you for correcting (and also for quoting the relevant bit). That's one hell of an obscure reference. :-)
To complete the digression (from the same Wiki):
... the wine often receives mixed opinions with wine experts ... describing in The World Atlas of Wine 'Est! Est!! Est!!!' ... as "usually the dullest white wine with the strangest name in the world."
I just wanted to add my voice to the growing chorus of people saying that the explanatory video is amazing. I shared it with several friends. I love how earnest and straightforward it is, how it’s focused and honest and NOT super slick and bland like every trendy thing in the world right now.
I feel the same about the UI. It’s cozy. I will be installing this next time I’m at a computer. I agree with others that I would gladly pay for this, support it on patreon, etc, especially to help pay for the web hosting to make this into e.g. a website I could use on my phone.
The two of us who work on this project do not feel deserving of this effusive praise. But it is very encouraging to hear. We will try to live up to this!
That video introducing this project, oh my. Your delivery and what you're saying are just such a pleasure. Totally convinced me to take this for a spin.
Yeah, that's high quality stuff. Unlike many projects were it's about the what the tool does, this one clearly nails down the why and it's done in such a brilliant way I couldn't stop watching it and be amazed.
Cool idea and nice video explaining the project! As it's described it seems like I would be able to create one record for a real person and add multiple links if they have more than one URL I want to follow. But it looks like I have to create one "follow" per URL. What are your thoughts about grouping "follows" that belong to the same person? Should the top-level model in the user interface be real people that you want to keep up with or URLs that you want to keep up with?
My older brother developed a more sophisticated version of this idea a decade ago and never released it to the public. You're showing successfully that the old internet 'dashboard' idea still hasn't died yet and I think it's valuable still.
The internet's content should be controlled by the individual, not the feeds a big reddit,hn or facebook gives you. Simple good tools like what you provided should be a good step in cultivating an internet garden that can integrate into people's lives in a more orderly fashion.
Would love to talk to your brother or hear more about this tool. Fraidycat is definitely quite simple on the surface - which might be an advantage, but I am also curious what 'sophistications' could be brought in.
Mostly on the design side that fit a high quality mid 2000s perspective. The next step for content aggregation is tiered ranking of qualitative properties of each news piece. I have a few ideas on what might provide that but it is not a fully formed thought yet.
Yeah, I'm pushing back hard on algorithms and ranking here. Not sure if that's what you mean. I like that it is a dumb tool that isn't doing any concealed magic. It's absolutely apparent how it ranks things. It's then up to the human to explore and curate and shape from there.
However, I do see a place for search. I would love to add search terms like 'Nicholas Cage' and any time his name comes up (or perhaps even a related topic) I can track that.
Oh wow, this looks just like something I’ve been meaning to build for a while now, but couldn’t find the time. Definitely taking this for a spin. Your intro video is great btw, and I also love your own site, the style is just pure love![0][1]
>There is no news feed. Rather than showing you a massive inbox of new posts to sort through, you see a list of recently active individuals. No one can noisily take over this page, since every follow has a summary that takes up a mere two lines.
Pretty much what Telegram does.
Yet people are finding their ways to abuse this approach and "noisily take over" your attention.
I've thought about that - but have been hesitant until I'm sure it's to a level of quality that I can live with. (The project is only about a month old.)
What am I doing wrong? I installed the Firefox add-on, addded some RSS feeds then closed the tab. When I opened it again, I got an empty faidycat feed, as if I added nothing.
Sounded nice, but I couldn't add a twitter account I wanted to follow because of unspecified network issues, so I'll return to it whenever I come across it again.
Yes, strict tracking will still block extensions. I hate the way permissions work with Fraidycat - I shouldn't need access to your website data to do this, for instance - I just need the ability to access URLs without using your credentials. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a permission for that. (Admittedly, I doubt they had something like Fraidycat in mind when designing the web extension API.)
Yes, just did an audit, it worked 90%, it seems some categories didn't get imported and just ended up in "Home", but it seems they all came across. It might be something to do with the categories from Feedly with multi-word titles.
Few days back, I was thinking on similar lines about Instagram. It does not respect norms of our society. Consider this, our society deeply values competence but Instagram does not seem to take it into consideration at all. A user promoting his content or using proper hashtags or generating activity on platform will be promoted more than the user who just posts brilliant photographs.
Who I maintain relations with and who I don't is not other people's business similarly who I follow and who I don't follow should not be visible to anyone except me but that is not the case.
I can go on and on about similar things but the bottom line is everything on Instagram is designed in a way such that it generates more activity on platform and ultimately more revenue. This is true for almost all the social networks though. A social network that respects norms of our society and does not attempt at maximizing revenue at users expense will probably fill the void left by the existing ones.
> Few days back, I was thinking on similar lines about Instagram. It does not respect norms of our society. Consider this, our society deeply values competence but Instagram does not seem to take it into consideration at all.
I don't think this is quite right. Instagram mirrors society and amplifies it.
In fact if anything, Instagram levels the playing field. Now anyone can go on IG and gain an audience. Whereas in the past, you'd have to go through a series of gatekeepers for your work as a photographer to see light of day and get in front of an audience. And that process was much more flawed, and didn't guarantee competence either.
Don't get me wrong, Instagram has many problems - but not in the way you're suggesting.
> Who I maintain relations with and who I don't is not other people's business similarly who I follow and who I don't follow should not be visible to anyone except me but that is not the case.
Then make your profile restricted? You don't have to have a public presence on Instagram. Lots of people lock their account down.
> This is true for almost all the social networks though. A social network that respects norms of our society
What even are these "norms of our society" that you keep referring to? There are no norms - there are really only moments in time. Whatever bubble you're living in, is simple one possible version of reality even in your own country. Again, you may not like it - but Instagram is a mirror of society in many ways. Norms are changing all the time. There is no guarantee that the "norms" you grew up with as a child will endure through your adulthood and so there shouldn't be an expectation of it either.
I'm sure similar arguments you're making were also made for Radio and TV when they were the primary carriers of culture and media.
Can you give me examples of this? Because I don't see it amplifying anything but its own revenue. I do see it amplifying negative traits of humans though.
> Instagram levels the playing field. Now anyone can go on IG and gain an audience.
That's what social media is for. In fact, its a basic requirement.
> Then make your profile restricted?
I have a private account. What about the 200 followers that I have? They can still see what I follow and not long ago they could also see what I like.
Why do you even need to show people how many people I am following or how many followers do I have or how many likes I have on my photos. We don't go through life telling everyone how many friends do I have, do we?
Some people do want to show it but at least give us the control of these things?
> There are no norms - there are really only moments in time.
You hit the nail on the head. This is the actual, real, definition of "free" (as in "free to use"). Every instance of that term should be surrounded by red blinking scare quotes.
Or regulation that curbs our outlaws this cancerous business model. If you can't profit without wasting people's time and/or stalking them then you shouldn't be in business.
We have regulation that somewhat works (there are exceptions of course and corruption is a thing, but at least there's an attempt) for other negative impacts on society (environmental damage, etc) but absolutely nothing for tech despite these new apps & services turning people into addicted zombies.
It is both. The app takes your attention and divides it up into (A) things you want to give your attention to (people you follow) and (B) things you don't (ads).
It's not just about (B). There is a tricky balancing act involved. A company that does too much (B) ends up with an app that users don't like and stop using. A company that does too much (A) produces a beloved app right up until the point that the company runs out of money and folds.
> A company that does too much (A) produces a beloved app right up until the point that the company runs out of money and folds.
Because they have to compete with people doing lots of (B), and giving the app away for free. I'm increasingly feeling that "free + ads/surveillance" is the problem.
The attention economy is fundamentally cancerous. It is based on the premise that actually creating utility is more expensive than simply hijacking your mind with skinner box mechanics.
It's a social network and honestly one of the most pro-user ones out there. What it's really good at is recreating the web of positive activity that happens when friends meet and share what they've been up to.
On all platforms, its home view is that of things you've consciously chosen to curate to see. The home view has both overt and subtle indicators to tell you to leave the app: all the stories to view no longer have the red outline, the post you scroll past says "You're all done".
The notion that society rewards high competence people who do not promote is also prima facie nonsense. That is not at all the case, not economically, not socially, nothing. If you want to be seen, you have to promote.
Because, let's be honest, your photo is 10x as valuable to your friends because you took it. If I'm looking at the universe of photos, the probability that you took one in the top 20 I want to see today might as well be a measure-zero set and the utility I gain from that photo is such that I need a discovery engine to bring it to me to be worth it. I won't look for it. The cost-benefit is negative as soon as I type in a single search term.
But that shaky handheld phonecam video of my friend fucking around with glow poi and hitting my other friend in the face? That is cost-benefit positive at up to 1 hour of search. And that makes sense, because it's a true social network, it's about the digital equivalent of your social circle.
Instagram is a magical social network. It is the circle of friends meeting for a Sunday afternoon hangout, your rave crowd, your dorm room buddies. It is happiness incarnate.
What void left by the existing ones? Instagram, for example, is going stronger than ever. It's accomplished its goal of generating more and more activity on the platform.
What reason do you have for thinking the public at large is worried about the norms of society being maintained?
Calm Tech is one of those ideas that's been in floating around for decades but has never quite gotten the attention it deserves (... sort of a funny paradox, "pay attention to making tools you don't have to pay attention to").
This article doesn't mention some of the old standard examples:
Live Wire was a sculpture at Xerox Parc that twitched every time some number of network packets went through the office's router - you could get an intuitive feel for how much load was on the system.
There's an X Windows applet called "LavaPS" which shows all your unix processes as colored blobs in a lavalamp, sized by memory footprint, floating to the top by age. It gives you a quick impression of what your computer is doing - is one webserver process eating your whole core? Or are you getting forkbombed by thousands of little ones? Those look really different.
The definitive works on Calm Computing are a paper written by Mark Weiser (RIP) in 1996, "Designing Calm Technology" (which has unfortunately fallen off the internet)
and an O'Reilly book called "Calm Technology" by Amber Case (the Cyborg Anthropologist)
Ideally we'd go calmer than a "status light" or "status tone" - those are still pretty active! What can you convey with the color of a Phillips Hue bulb that changes slowly?
I just finished building a DIY word clock (https://bitbucket.org/sjoerdtimmer/wordclock/), which indicates time by lighting LEDs behind a laser cut stencil with letters, producing text like "IT IS A QUARTER PAST SIX". The display only updates every five minutes, calmly fading between word combinations. It is one of the least obtrusive technologies that I have!
Status tones made me immediately think of Star Trek. Imagine what if everything around you used status tones - the ambience will start to resemble that of a starship bridge in Star Trek - lots of things constantly humming and beeping in the background in a calming way (until there's some emergency, that is).
The vast majority of technology doesn’t need to notify you or somehow artificially announce its status. It seems strange, then, that a site on calm technology primarily concerns technology that does, devoting a good portion of the page to promoting ”calm communication” through buzzing, beeping and blinking.
We should instead question whether we need the information that is being communicated in the first place, because even a colored LED or a soft haptic buzz can be stressful when we know what they mean. Maybe we should minimize the use of such technology instead.
In my view, calm technology only functions when you use it. It answers your questions or solves your problems only when prompted to do so. Maybe a robot vacuum cleaner that beeps on faults and vacuums on its own initiative is helpful technology, but with alternatives that won’t have any reasons to steal your attention I can’t say that it’s calm technology. IM with a soft haptic buzz to notify you of the receipt of a message may again be immensely helpful, but an email account that I check myself when I feel like reading messages is more calm.
If your life seems calmer when you know exactly when you’ve received a message regardless of what you are doing at the time or the nature of its content, you should perhaps think of how to lead a calm life before worrying about whether a pleasant beep or a soft buzz is the best way to direct your attention to it.
> We should instead question whether we need the information that is being communicated in the first place, because even a colored LED or a soft haptic buzz can be stressful when we know what they mean. Maybe we should minimize the use of such technology instead.
This is why I love Apple for pretty much eliminating blinking lights in their devices, while other manufactures of laptops etc. still don't seem to get it.
The only lights remaining in my room at bedtime are the power strip and external hard disks, and even they can be annoying.
I have a dashboard at work to help me monitor a bunch of systems, but I still have a small BlinkStick LED cube attached to a Raspberry Pi Zero (probably overkill, I used what I was comfortable with) and it changes the LED color depending on a system status warning or failure. I already receive enough email that I filter to different categories, but having the LED bring my attention to the right place is way less stressful IMO.
Car dashboard lights meet most of these criteria and yet they are routinely bad. My partner had trouble figuring out the "flat tire" icon and they are a fairly intelligent, well-educated person. The icon was basically a circle with an exclamation point inside. The fact that it had a slightly flat edge actually made it harder to recognize as a wheel since we normally associate wheels as being perfectly round. It almost looked more like a steering wheel. There was no status code to look up, only an icon which they had to match visually against every other possible icon. And this is one of the most common warning lights to appear in a car, so imagine how much harder the more obscure ones are.
Roombas, which the article mentions don't use voice, actually did start using voice in the last couple of generations. And it's great. It tells you that it's stuck rather than just beeping sadly at you.
I'm not necessarily saying the car dashboard should speak warnings, as it may startle people on the highway, but I also think there's a lot to improve on.
Here's one explanation: I work as an HMI designer for an Automotive OEM. Since we have a fully digital driver display, I designed a feature to address your problem; it displayed a large graphic with a text explanation of what was happening.
Unfortunately, it was killed by our Customer Care team, who were, paradoxically, more concerned about giving the driver/customer negative information that might lead to complaints, buybacks, etc. Needless to say, there are many stories like this, and it shows that even though UX/UI design is the most apparent aspect of a product, it is only as good as the decisions made underneath it.
I recently rode in a car which, when started, lit up the dashboard display with the message “Correct tire pressure.” That took a moment to decipher, too. (Is the pressure correct, or am I supposed to correct it? And if you have sensors in all the tires to tell me that one’s flat—why not mention that info in the error message?) Evidently clearly stating “your tire is flat” is a big challenge for car designers...
the tire pressure indicator light (and most of the other lights on a car dashboard) is one of those icons that isn't necessarily easy to decode, but it's ubiquitous enough that changing it to something new would be worse. Maybe your partner didn't know what it means, but enough other people do that odds are the first person they asked would have been able to tell them.
I am currently building a personal journal app will become what I calling a "quiet social network" [0]. The idea seems similar of this calm tech, although they are talking more about hardware.
I am on the fence about notifications though. They can be very useful for the user. I am planning to add notifications, but probably all off by default, and the user decides very granularly what they want on. Does it seem the right approach? I would appreciate any opinion
What about a notification digest, where the user gets a list of updates every (day|week|<configured duration>)? Perhaps after explicitly requesting to receive updates about so-and-so. This allows the user to decide, "At 20:00 each night, I'll get a list of new stuff from my friends, and I'll take some time and peruse it," rather than getting blasted at odd times.
I wish this was an OS level feature on my phone and computer. I will often disable notifications from, for example, Slack on the weekends, and every time I do I silently wish there were a way to automatically control notifications per app based on time and day.
there are so many problems with our norms around social networks that I don't know where to start, but two of the worst for my brain are: 1) getting interrupted when I'm thinking about something else 2) the slot-machine-like intermittent reward feeling of checking constantly. and those two together mean that my phone is constantly saying "hey! stop what you're doing and lose an hour in the distraction engine!"
I have some ideas to change that. I have all of it on the website, but I will copy some relevant parts here:
"You will only see public entries from people that have both being included in your list and included you in their list. No stranges following you (or even knowing you have an account)."
"There will be no way to like entries, only conversations. Also, there will be no way to share content outside of the list of who posted. So no way to go viral and no instant rewards."
"All the design decisions above already point to a social network with less activity. Adding to that, you won't see any advertising on the site, so there is no incentive to keep you aimless wandering around here. Stay as long as you need to connect with your family, your close friends, and yourself. Then leave."
Ah I see. Just my two cents, but doing a MVP for a journaling app as website only seems very strange. The times I like to reflect on my day are evening and morning, both of which are usually when I am wrapping up for the night and have put away my computer.
I've been looking for something like this on mobile and would sign up in an instant if it was something I could use everyday.
Thanks! I did take the time to give it a good mobile experience. Actually, I designed it mobile-first, just not an app. Might be worth giving it a try.
I must say it will take some time to create mobile apps for it. I want to create the right product on the web, and then make mobile apps
I switched to the Android Headspace app recently and the juxtaposition of what they're trying to achieve (meditation / mindfulness and being in the moment) with the onslaught of unasked-for notifications, sometimes when I was already asleep, was jarring. They should be a poster boy for Calm Technology, but Tech just can't seem to help itself.
Tech products starts this way but eventually they need to make profit and then ads take over the product. The only way this works is for paid products.
I order a pizza, I have no choice but to provide details since they need them for delivery. Guess what happens next? Yeah, e-mail and SMS spam.
I pay hundreds of bucks for a complete Tado system (thermostat, radiator valves, etc). Guess what I get? E-mail spam about discounts for their "new" app which actually has less features than the current one.
I buy a PS4 and try to set it up. Even for a few hundred bucks for a new console, there is still bullshit telemetry and other crap I need to opt-out of, not to mention some half-assed attempt at a social network where I have to spend 15 minutes setting everything to "No one can see this" so I can regain some privacy because I have no desire to use the social features.
Heck, even some US government agencies (DMV I think) sell your data to scum and you can't even opt out.
I can go on and on. We need some actual ethics, and regulation as a fail-safe for cases where the former doesn't work.
I am in Europe and the GDPR is a joke. You are supposed to first complain to the company itself, give them a month to reply with a satisfactory response, and if not, then escalate to the country's privacy regulator which seems to do absolutely nothing according to my experience.
Can you imagine doing all these things every time your privacy is violated (every non-compliant cookie banner, tracker, newsletter, etc)? That would be a full-time job. It's almost like "justice" in the US, in theory you can win, in practice you have no chance unless you have billions to pay lawyers to fight decade-long legal battles on your behalf.
Much like my sibling comment, things have always been pretty fast and reliable in France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, UK, and the Netherlands.
I literally do these things everytime my privacy, just like I'd do with any other right, is violated. And no it's not a full-time job, that's precisely why I delegate.
Not using real data, unless the interactions are legally binding, helps a lot. Give it a spin maybe?
I am in the UK and my experience has been the opposite - they are helpful when it comes to questions but seem completely useless at actually getting things resolved. I file complaints regarding privacy and never hear anything again and the company continues with the bad behaviour.
> that's precisely why I delegate.
You mean you pay someone else to deal with the bullshit? It's a good strategy and I've considered it but it shouldn't be up to us to pay (with time and/or money) to investigate these issues, especially considering the regulation doesn't give you any way to recover those expenses even if the offender is indeed in breach of those regulations. There's also the problem of the people who would be the most affected by the privacy breaches are the ones that are less likely to have the disposable income necessary to pay someone else to deal with this on their behalf.
> Not using real data
Two problems with this:
1) It's hard to defend against data being collected in the background, and privacy plugins can be a double-edged sword by making you stand out more (the lack of data is data by itself). IP tracking is very hard to defend unless you have access to a huge pool of IPs and configure your computer to pick random ones for each host it's connecting to.
2) In some cases it's impossible - ordering goods, food or transport online. Some require identifiers like phone numbers you can't easily get in volume.
> country's privacy regulator which seems to do absolutely nothing according to my experience.
Well, then move to another EU country :D I've had ours issue a couple of fines based on complaints I filed, even pre-GDPR.
True, I don't file for every non-compliant cookie banner or tracker, but if they start spamming me despite not having authorized that use of the data, I do. But it's been quite rare in the past couple of years.
GDPR did a lot through fear alone. Companies really stepped up their game. At least the small and medium ones. The big ones knew that laws are only laws if they are enforced and that it's going to take "a while" for that to happen, and it will probably happen only partially. But the most important part was that now people have an increased expectation of privacy (even if it's still lower than even what GDPR prescribes in most cases).
But GDPR is just the 2nd step. The 3rd is the e-privacy regulation that is coming, hopefully in this mandate.
This is an important point that is worth including in this manifesto: calm technology must be paid for. It absolutely cannot be supported by advertising. Advertising is antithetical in every way to this philosophy and way of life.
As a corollary, I would add that there is an inequality problem here: those with means will more easily be able to afford "calm technology" that isn't ad supported. Those without will have to suffer through the ads. I don't have the answer to this problem -- just noting that we cannot seriously endorse the idea of calm tech unless it is ubiquitously calm, and that requires a different business model.
We can still endorse it, while recognizing the inequality. Look at cars. Only the well-off get up to date safety features. Yet of course we still endorse making cars safer. It seems unethical, but what's the solution? Ban cheap/old cars? That will just mean less well off people now have no car.
You're right that it would require a new business model, but I don't think there's a business model that allows "Free" and "Paid" users in a way that doesn't inevitably create an equality problem. If Free is just as good as Paid, no one would pay. If people wouldn't pay and it needs to be free, you'll need to monetize it and that's likely advertising.
Open source, community driven apps might be a good solution. But open source tends to be driven by tech people solving a tech need. Just having open code also doesn't solve a lot of issues, like an open source video platform still needs to pay for the data.
I'd go further and say that it only works for products that are paid for entirely up-front. If there's any ongoing revenue, that creates an incentive to optimize for engagement.
I want products and services that i can ignore - product owners should track their success by how infrequently i interact with their product, not how frequently i interact with it. And even on a monthly payment basis, if i don't interact with a product for a whole month then maybe they start worrying that i'm going to stop paying them.
Which is why we need regulation. Any ad-supported product should have a paid ad-free version priced at the average revenue per user (so no way to discriminate based on the fact that the user wants to pay).
html {
overflow-y: scroll;
}
body {
overflow-x: hidden;
}
This makes both the <html> and <body> elements scrolling areas, so that you see two scrollbars (the outermost one disabled), and keyboard scrolling doesn’t work until you click within the body.
Simplest fix is to shift the overflow-x: hidden to the html element, or remove it altogether.
The Android app for 100 Million Books is meant to abide by these principles...to the point I thought it made sense to call it an "anti-app"!
I see Calm's purpose seems to extend far beyond smartphone apps and consumer technology, but I was hoping more people would create "anti-apps" when I created mine, and it it seems like Calm is doing a better job than me of pushing for such things.
The number one rule I learned for interfaces is “Don’t interrupt the proceedings” , which means which means the tools should be optimized for the task and don’t burden the user with unwarranted windows, buttons, lights or beeps. Optimize for flow. Recognize the posture of the application.
That reminds me of the local bus/train commuting service. When you searched for a trip in their app, they'd put red warning triangles on delayed departures. Delayed departures are so common here that they eventually started using green warning triangles, to signal that the bus would (probably) be on time.
It is kind of funny to compare that early example of a notification, which was likely novel and rare enough to actually be exciting, to today's onslaught of notifications where at least for me it's extremely unlikely that any single notification is anything actually exciting or meaningful
I am becoming more and more convinced that keeping my data and programs on other peoples computers is not a good idea. They can not seem to resist the idea of 'harvesting' information from me to 'monetize' me for a small monthly fee. The PC revolution is over. The smartphone killed it.
> I am becoming more and more convinced that keeping my data and programs on other peoples computers is not a good idea. They can not seem to resist the idea of 'harvesting' information from me to 'monetize' me for a small monthly fee.
This has more to do with “free” services than hosting your data elsewhere.
If that were the case paid services wouldn't be doing it too. The reason they do is that there is no large enough incentive/consequence to make a convincing argument to leave that revenue on the table. It is neither hosting it elsewhere nor the "free" services which tend to be the worst examples of it, but rather the lack of any financially valid reason not to.
My issues is it is that data 'elsewhere' bit that they want. Even when I pay they want to harvest my data. Most of the time it is to do the opposite of what the main article is talking about.
The opposite of calm tech could be called something like hustle tech, where the interfaces create user stress by opening cognitive loops. Nagging indicators, garden path personal information extraction, leveraging users time investment, Nir Eyal's "hooked model" designs, automated sales pipelining (or spam), dark patterns, etc.
Funny that some startups by middle class people thought "hustle," meant energetic teamwork like on a kids sports team, whereas if you had any street smarts at all, hustle means getting leverage over someone by pre-empting their ability to reason accurately, often by bullying, nagging, feigning offence, and exploiting their agreeableness by making them think they "owe," you.
Preying on human goodness like reciprocity, empathy, fairness, and agreeableness is basically what a hustler and hustle tech does.
One thing that I’ve done that’s made my iPhone much less distracting, is to run the display in black and white.
This makes my notification badges scream for my attention much less. The whole phone feels calmer and less distracting. I have actually been doing this for over a year, and it’s been life-changing.
Another benefit is that due to the increased contrast of black and white, I can run my brightness way lower; this is excellent for battery life. Screenshots still show up in color.
I have an Accessibility Shortcut mapped to my side button to turn this on and off. If I want to look at a photo or something, I toggle it by triple-clicking my side button. It’s seamless and it stays out of my way.
For anyone who wants to try this: Go to Settings -> Accessibility -> Display & Text Size -> Color Filters. Flip the switch to enable and select “Grayscale”.
Then, go back up to Settings -> Accessibility -> Accessibility Shortcut and select “Color Filters”.
Thank you for these detailed instructions! I've been a longtime fan of grayscale screen, but often end up lapsing after a few days when I want to look at a photograph. Now I don't have that failure mode anymore!
Why can't there be multiple definitions for hustle? I agree that your street smart definition is valid, but I also think that energetic teamwork is an equally valid definition.
I wish there could be, but thanks to the "street" definition, when people hear the word "hustle" used inside a startup, many of them take it to mean, "This is an environment where dishonest, predatory behavior will be celebrated as ambition."
"Hustle" was one of my favorite words growing up, because it described something I admired and wanted to embody myself, but I have retired it from my active vocabulary outside of sports contexts, because if it's misunderstood, it's going to be misunderstood as something that I loathe.
My entire experience with "hustle" in the context of making money was as a near-synonym for scamming people. Not until I encountered HN and related startup culture did I read/hear it used in that sense. I bet if I told most people I know without such exposure anything like "hustling is an important part of my business' success" they'd look at me funny, as they'd take it as an admission I commit lots of fraud or something similar.
Yeah there's the meaning in sports which was probably the first I ever encountered, but it's pretty different from the startup/business definition (one might relate them, but they seem to me to carry pretty different connotations) and again, in the context of some kind of money-making venture my association with it was 100% "scamming folks".
Well, there are multiple definitions of hustle. They keep changing with the times and also depending on who you talk to. What one party might consider "selling", another might consider "being preyed upon". What one might consider "courteous", another might consider "sexist".
We are so eager to try and find a neat place for all our interactions. It never works like that. Pretty much everything ends up being relative.
Anywho, as far as definitions go "energetic teamwork" to me does not really qualify, because hustling in any commonly used sense is not at all required to be a team effort.
> Anywho, as far as definitions go "energetic teamwork" to me does not really qualify, because hustling in any commonly used sense is not at all required to be a team effort.
The point of hustle in the “kids sports team” context is that a team that “hustles” can beat an equally skilled team that doesn’t. In my experience this is also true of other kinds of teams and even in contests among individuals.
Where the street vs. earnest definitions overlap is it means to "seize the initiative." You get leverage in both contexts, the question is whether you seize the initiative by having something to offer, or by fabriating problems for for your target to solve.
A sign-up wizard that splits up users' PII entry so they are invested in the process by the time it asks them for the valuable stuff is a good UX tech example.
Spam messages that pretend to be bills or from an authority are well into dishonest territory. The key difference seems to be in the honesty of the problematization. It's a continuum.
The best hustles play on the target's conceits, the worst on their virtues. 3-card monte plays on greed and a sense of superiority.
Business ones are basically blackmail like, "everyone thinks you're a smart problem solver who is easy to work with, if you want that to continue to be true, you will solve this problem for me, I'll let you know when you're finished." Less tech oriented, but the leverage pattern is similar.
Because there is a lot of difference between the two and yet both definitions are in the same general domain. So if you use the word and mean one definition, but the person you are talking to hears the other definition, you are in for some most interesting communication problems. If you tell me that you are good a hustling during a job interview, I will most definitely not hire you.
Because when you say one and mean the other, it legitimizes the wrong kind of behaviour, and people don't have the words to describe it so they check out and call it "toxic."
I've not encountered the HN meaning of it outside startup culture, specifically. There's a kinda-similar definition in sports that's common but not quite the same, and then if you're talking about "hustle" as in "part of a money-making venture" it means you're running a scam or shady semi-legal or illegal business of some kind. Everywhere except HN and broader tech startup culture. Though that usage does seem to be spreading.
[EDIT] for context, my upbringing was very much not in "street culture"
[EDIT EDIT] I may be alone in this, but I dislike the HN use of the word on the grounds of both other definitions—the sports version strikes me as trying too hard to associate business with sports as a kind of borrowed glory or, in the worse cases, lame machismo, while the way it also—by my own prior association and in the ways the use of the term differs subtly from the sports meaning—brushes up against the "running a scam" definition is bad on its own, obviously, but also makes the sports association grosser, somehow.
I suspect these anti-social patterns will only become intensified should the AR vision become reality. Who is going to push back on supporting and actively reinforcing the common vices of pride, vanity and sloth when designing, for instance, facial filters and entertainments? No one that matters.
Wish my Sony headphones had this for when switching modes or battery low indications.
Currently it will mute all sound and speak in a voice regarding what is going on with limited info, instead of some clear beeps. Get to the point tech!
> Technology should require the smallest possible amount of attention
The challenge — and I believe this is one of the fundamental challenges of the Information Age — is that the business model of most companies making tech today is that user attention funds the development of the technology.
Every ad-driven business rests on this trade: We give you software X and in return you give Y% fraction of your attention. We sell that attention to company Z which pays us in cash.
Tech from these companies cannot reduce the amount of attention the software consumes without directly affecting their bottom line and their ability to deliver tech to users in the first place.
I would like to think we’re heading toward a future where people will want to pay for products and services to reclaim their attention - as opposed to using free ones that deliberately track and optimize for your engagement.
The past 15 years of social media has been a terrible experiment in attention-driven business models.
I’d like to think I’m helping buck this trend with my current project - a subscription based social network called Thread - https://get.thread-app.com
I'd like to think that too, but most people don't have the money or inclination for calm tech. We want distractions from the uncomfortable truths, and Facebook is happy to provide distraction with comfortable "truths."
It boils down to incentives. When entire business models are built around hijacking your attention and keeping you "hooked" for as long as possible, you can't expect calm technology.
Voting with your wallet isn’t always an option when the advertising cancer has already infected everything. See my earlier comment for some expensive examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21802985
The more generalizable version of "vote with your wallet" is to stop using those services, if possible. Eventually, those companies will either stop engaging in this behaviour or die.
The thing is, I'm pretty sure "free" spyvertising-funded stuff harms both paid and actually free, as in non-commercial, solutions. The market for the former is reduced significantly, and with the demand/audience for the latter also hollowed out, the incentive to work on them is reduced, in a feedback loop (worse actually-free product or service, more users go to the spying one, repeat).
I've seen a company try to build a streaming/DVR box. It failed for a bunch of reasons but among those was that it wasn't expected/able to spy on the user and monetize the data—all its competitors did, and they all sold their devices, retail, for right at what these devices would cost the manufacturer to build them (in part, but not entirely, because they're subsidized by spying), so if they wanted to make any money and wanted to actually get on store shelves (often a minimum margin required) they were talking a significantly higher price; meanwhile most people aren't even aware that their competitors are spying on their users in some super-creepy ways, so that's a really hard sell, especially if you aren't already at or beyond feature parity.
I love this philosophy. Ideals to strive for. It is self-evident to me that once we get past these salad days, this spasm of raw capitalism, "content", and absurd business models, internet tech will approach a new equilibrium where it is something that is in the background, always present, but never seen, like a utility.
Maybe 10 years, maybe 100, but the sooner the better: a world filled with pinging "push notifications" and advertisements is not one I would want to gift to future generations.
You cut off the relevant part of the description. It tracks your sleep cycles so it can wake you up when your are naturally in a light part of your sleep cycle. That way you aren't going from a dead sleep to being jolted awake by an alarm. I used it for years and really liked it.
Not only that, why plug Sleep Cycle and not Sleep for Android? I use it to quantify my sleep to actually understand my incredibly odd non-24hr sleep cycle, and do so to actually put technology to a non-interfering, but useful, role.
I felt the same, but some of the comments here have enlightened me as to the reasoning (helps keep you from going from a dead sleep to being jolted awake by an alarm), so thanks for raising this question!
It compiles RSS feeds and YouTube, Twitter, etc into a dashboard-like view rather than a crowded timeline. No notifications, no algorithm. Just a tool for a human. Easy to “move into the periphery”. Very calm, even when I’m following 100s of people.