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by jorisw 14 days ago
A hardware solution to a personal behavioral problem.

I've seen people use Screen Time on iOS to help them 'adjust' their behavior. There was a thread on this just the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48312443

3 comments

“I’ve decided to stop going to the bar, as I am trying to be healthier and I think the atmosphere there leads me to drink more than I’d like.”

“Sounds like a geospatial solution to a personal problem.”

“...”

I see nothing wrong here. You cannot fight several teams of customer retention (no idea how it’s called) when you are already deep in their hands. Sometimes the best way is to remove or limit their products.
> customer retention

I suppose you're referring to engagement maximization algorithms (my words) of socials?

> already deep in their hands

If a person observes they're sensitive to these, do they really need an additional device to disrupt their reactive behavior and be a little bit more deliberate in what they do?

> remove or limit their products

Is deleting the apps or using them in moderation[1] really so hard?

[1] One form of moderation I've found is to disable notifications for those (if not all) apps. Again, seizing control instead of being reactive to whatever some platform/app/device decides to shove down your throat at any given time.

> Is ... really so hard?

Anecdata: I implement most of my behaviours on a kilo of fatty meat and neurotransmitters. It's not a great stack; it has a massive attack surface. It's also orchestrated by an endocrine layer, which is precisely the wrong way round.

I didn't select this architecture, I was instantiated with it, and there isn't a nice migration path.

Zaibatsus - Meta, Condé Nast - outgun me and my biological peers by many orders of magnitude. They can attack vulns that should have been patched in the Precambrian, they have research departments, and they can A/B on millions. We're lambs to the slaughter.

Brain modules cannot be unloaded, so if you were compiled with `addictable=on` then you have no defence-in-depth against an entire class of attacks. If they get through the gate, they have a good chance at persistence.

Hth you understand the difficulties faced by bio-organism admins.

it's not personal if most people are doing it
You're saying DumbPhone is a potential mainstream product?