Digital Minimalism

for me "minimalism" has some kind negative cannotation as I somehow have to think of this bug living that is being promoted heavily recently. I want to find the perfect balance in between. Not too much not too less. With digital minimalism meaning to stop unnessecary usage of especially mobile devices, which are basically nothing else than portable slot machines. How did you do it? How did you break free of the mobile slavery? My use of mobile devices has taken overhand recently. I would spend hours lying in my bed, browsing the chans. It would be the first thing I would do in the morning. Wasting away this massive free time I have. I wouldn't even consume media anymore. This old crusty thinkpad is perfectly usable for the basic tasks I used those "smart"phones for. With the difference that I can't pull it out of my pocket and get those easy dopamine rushes. You don't necessarily have to get rid of your mobile altogether. It suffices to just delete certain function such as web browsing and similar things. I will put a vanilla android rom on one of them and continue to use it for nothing else than music playing and camera functions. Of course mobiles arent the only problem. Many - especially here on the chans - struggle a lot with excessive internet usage. This kind of compulsive communication with strangers on the internet is just too addictive for people like us. So maybe you have some practical solutions to the problem. How to actually use this technology for practical porposes and stop this kind of compulsive behaviour. I hope this is the right board for this topic. I couldn't find any similar threads.

Go all-out on privacy (Tor, disable JS, whatever else you like) because many convenience entertainment websites will block you automatically. Block the rest that haven't already blocked you. Don't carry a device with you, even if you must keep a mobile for work, leave it at a "work space". A little boredom at the bus stop or waiting on someone is a good thing. Digital recordkeeping - write about your planned goals, write a routine to achieve them, and keep a nightly journal to self-criticise on maintaining your routines. "Digital" means you're forced to acknowledge them whenever you use your device. Hope that helps OP.

>>32327 >>32331 Also, maybe /hum/ would have been a better place for discussing the personal impact of tech, rather than tech itself.

>>32331 Yea. This journal thing. I might try that. >write about your planned goals Do you have any recommendation for an android app that lets me better organize those things, some kind of schedule app?

>>32332 But I intended this thread more for practical discussion. So I thought this would be the better place for that...

>>32337 There's one on F-Droid called Loop Habit Tracker that I used for a bit. Might be what you're looking for.

>>32340 alright. thanks

>I would spend hours lying in my bed, browsing the chans. >I wouldn't even consume media anymore. What do you think chans are?

I thought phone garbage was stupid from the very beginning and never fell for the hype. #1: I like devices dedicated to one task and actually doing it well, so I use phones to call people and save the rest for handheld game systems, calculators, and actual fuarrrking computers with keyboards. #2: I like buttons with tactile feedback and I see the iPhone design archetype as one of the most disgusting regressions from user friendliness in the history of planned obsolescence.

>>32331 > if you must keep a mobile for work, leave it at a "work space". sometimes I feel like I live on another planet because this sounds so out of touch to me Who could afford to do this? >Sorry sir I intentionally leave my phone at my "work place" so nobody bothers me when I'm home

>>32371 If you work from home for example, I would be reffering to your desk at home. If you expect to get calls outside of work hours and that people will be upset when you don't answer them, to me that reads like another problem. Anticipating a "Your relative just slipped on the stairs and died," call is a valid concern, but in which case, get a dumbphone. If the only purpose for your mobile device is sending and receiving calls and texts, I don't think a great deal of advancements have been made in the last decade or so.

>>32370 Because of their inconvenient size I've always thought mobiles were moreso consumption devices than anything else, any "real typing" becomes difficult and you're largely stuck with whatever GUI is provided. >save the rest for handheld game systems Thought I was the only one. People seem to expect that I would use a PC for games too. But online sales (Steam) of games is a spyware-loaded platform, and I don't want to risk buying physically for it to run into problems with Linux. That, and whereas the form of computer keyboards has evolved around work, the form of console controllers has evolved around play. I find buying old consoles and old games circumvents privacy concerns, while also being cheaper anyway. Though I'm sure it's possible to physically remove network-capable hardware from later games concoles. Polite sage for off-topic.

>>32363 I used to watch anime and a long time ago also enjoy video games. That has evolved into spending hours upon hours switching between tabs and getting just enough small dopamine kicks every time a (you) would appear to repeat this habit every day for years. I think we have a different definition of media

>>32327 One of the methods is like meditation. There is a kind of meditation which is poular in the west, where you just sit, close your eyes and focus on your breath. Whenever you notice intruding thoughts, don't force them away, acknowledge them and re-focus on your breath. In clinical studies this technique has shown to increase attention span, decrease anxiety and stuff like that. Now use the same logic and apply it to everyday activities. Whenever you feel the urge to do something (check social media in bed, browse the chans in bed, whatever), notice the urge, consciously acknowledge it and then make a decision to do something. Either decide to actually browse or decide to do something else (get up, shower, work, whatever you want to do, it's your life, not mine). It's not so important what you decide, it's important that instead of doing stuff on autopilot, you see what your autopilot wants and make a conscious decision whether you want to do that or something else. This won't make you into a new human from one second to the next, but even the reflection on what you do will change your behaviour over time. You can also do stuff like tor and so on, but when you really want to you'll just disable it and browse anyway, lol. But still it is useful as a reminder that you actually want to think about what you're doing. And also using tor/no js etc is a good practice for other reasons too, obviously. Good luck!

I bought a dumb phone - Nokia 105 and use it instead of an old busted smartphone I had. I only ever use this smartphone for listening to music when I work out. I also recently got derezzed from discord for saying nigger a lot, and thus I don't really talk to people online anymore except for one or two posts on imageboards a day. There's nothing wrong with browsing the internet when you don't have the brainpower to study or do more demanding things. Just make sure to only do it when you're really spent, and consider taking a walk or working out instead.

>>32327 I do the same with my desktop computer modern people like OP or those smug tech journalists and old people blame on smartphones: I suffer from compulsive slot machine addiction while browsing things that weren't remotely touched by social media corporations or meticulously picked by algorithms written with latest attention psychology research. I browse obscure chans, deep webpages and hobbyist chatrooms, thus unless I am deeply wrong in my perception of reality, and all these "independent" things are made as an evil plot to enslave me in my own room, the so-called "kids these days stay glued to their smartphones all day because of facebook" problem is not an artificially fabricated one by evil venture capitalists, it's either rooted deeply into post-industrial information overdoze way of living, or just plain olde human trait. P.S: I don't own any kind of phone because I have nobody to to talk besides my parents.

>>32374 > If you expect to get calls outside of work hours and that people will be upset when you don't answer them, to me that reads like another problem. Where do you live where this isn't normal?

>>32418 You are not considering that there are no isolated contexts any more, everything is a top-down pyramid of information. All the people in the hobby chatroom have social media accounts, they will inevitably relay that to the hobby chatroom. And none of the things you listed generally escape from the consumerist attitude that permeates Earth 2020. Those contexts are just different branches of the same thing, populated by the same people. It was already in place decades ago but now you're starting to see its full effect. You have to get out or you'll get absorbed, because no matter where you are, you're dealing with people who are part of the same ecosystem and this also affects the environment that you perceive as independent or isolated. Nothing is isolated or unaffected.

how do you do it? there's really only one way, install 9front or openbsd

>for me "minimalism" has some kind negative cannotation as I somehow have to think of this bug living that is being promoted heavily recently. poltard detected. stopped reading there. "minimalism" is just another word for basic software engineering skills. instead of including a web browser to display a text box, you use a text box widget. instead of using XMPP to implement chat in your video game (and inherinting all the security issues that come with a typical XMPP COTS solution), you write a few lines of code to implement chat, preferrably without unicode, lol >inb4 b-but minimalism didn't save my software from being soykaf yep, it's possible (and exceedingly likely) for software to still be soykaf while being minimalist. this has nothing to do with minimalism, but an industry saturated with meatheads, yourself included

>>32418 Pretty much anywhere where worker rights are at all meaningful. Overtime is part of contract negotiations. So basically almost every western country except USA.

>>32327 Start an online anonymous diary like this anon >>32623 it'll satisfy your need for screen but you'll actually gain something from it. Switch to a dumbphone cold turkey, if you happen to switch back a few months later you'll at least have broken your old habits

>>32501 even in the USA it depends on the industry. pencil pushers and code monkeys get fuarrrked over because they aren't unionized. when i worked a teamsters job not only were weekly hours pre-negotiated, but also the amount of hours you worked in a day, the lengths of breaks and how often they happened, which breaks would be paid, which ones were optional. working on weekends automatically counted as overtime. unscheduled shifts were overtime... it was great. now i work at a university and the union isn't quite as strong but i still have hours pre-negotiated and i get a lot of protection re: pay cuts, raises, and layoffs written into my contract.

>>32327 I am currently also quitting the mobile life, because there is nothing positive I am getting out of this. I have NoScript on all of my browser and regulary log out off my e-mail account and other stuff to communicate. My iShit-device has a mode where it blocks between 6 am and 6 pm all apps except my train app and the phone app if someone wanna call me. Also i dont drag it with me anymore. Shitting got boring these days, but more peaceful. I am currently using ubuntu with i3wm and just if i want to play vidya in the evening i switch to windows and when i play my browser is closed so i do not browser during two matches of rainbow. I got more peaceful since I am doing this. I getting bored again and then I search for something good to do like reading something or hanging out with my family.

>>32434 Other question ... why should you/I care? I mean if they call me in my freetime and I dont answer that calls and they are mad ... so what? If my boss would fire me for this behaviour it is not the right workplace for me because he does not appreciate my work and how I am doing it.

>>32684 >code monkeys get fuarrrked over because they aren't unionized. oh yes that 60K/year 10-4 before even finishing college was so bad for me i even hear programmers even all work from home now

>>32327 >My use of mobile devices has taken overhand recently. >I would spend hours lying in my bed, browsing the chans. It would be the first thing I would do in the morning. Wasting away this massive free time I have. >I wouldn't even consume media anymore. The problem is not the devices but it starts with you. >>32337 see >>32596 webm. >copy/cut text from anywhere >malicious app tried to read clipboard but then it was denied >that is after some workarounds If you have non-foss apps installed like demosntrated, they would eat your clipboard data all the time. Now think for a moment what else they sniff from you, any app can do this without special permissions. Don't blindly use your android device as a place to store private data/info unless you've mitigated the problems. Check the post.

>>32717 Calm down it isn't a competition, it's an observation about workers' rights across industries. I also worked a tech job at a multinational corporation all throughout college, and while the pay was better it wasn't unionized so the employers could get away with a lot more bullshit. Really the pay has to be better otherwise nobody would put up with them.

>>32717 what kind of magic job market do you think there is where every programmer is guaranteed a high paying job straight out of college? I've applied for hundreds of jobs and got ONE screening interview. This includes using all the connections my dad has from working in the industry for twenty years, and loudly advertising that I'm a way better coder than your average brogrammer. Most of them never even formally rejected me.

>>32806 just curious, what do you do? for what did you apply? web dev?

>>32806 Have you considered that if you have been rejected from hundreds of jobs and use like brogrammer, you might be the problem? Check your social media profile. Present a more professional appearance. Be more polite. Reevaluate your actual qualifications - Dunning Kruger Effect is a thing.

>>32794 i think i posted something explaining how the programmer job market actually is but now i cant be bothered to think after reading this post >>32806 LOL WUT i have zero sympathy if this not fake and gay but you are one of those C elitists

Check out thread >>31376. Having some kind of limitations and rituals involved in using the internet is a good idea. Like only using the internet while sitting at a desk, and only on the computer. Smartphones give you dopamine too quickly and without any effort.

Tech should help you interact with the world, not dictate how you should

>>32806 >loudly advertising that I'm a way better coder than There's your problem. Don't say that you're better. Show that you're better. And don't be loud about it.

>>33037 >>33038 technology dictates what man will become, technology will become our nature

>>32832 >just curious, what do you do? for what did you apply? web dev? pretty much anything but web dev. I applied for anything I saw that I was even vaguely qualified for. >>32835 I decided to get rid of my LinkedIn because it wasn't helping. I have no other social media and no interest in getting one. For politeness, I don't know how I'm supposed to be polite when I'm just filling out a form and never getting a response. >Reevaluate your actual qualifications - Dunning Kruger Effect is a thing. Everyone I have ever talked to says that you should apply to jobs you don't feel qualified for because most of the requirements aren't really requirements anyway. >>32844 >but you are one of those C elitists nope. >>33051 My impression of the tech industry(from a short internship) is that seeming good is more important than being good, so why shouldn't I try to make myself look as good as possible?

>>33070 I should note, this soykafty job market isn't unique to me either... most of my friends fresh out of college are unemployed as well(or are working soykafty jobs that they don't need a degree for)

>>32371 You have no obligation to be at anyone's beck and call all day. Of course, unless the nature of your work is unstructured and sporadic, like a freelancer. Then it's on you to communicate the window of availability. I've never owned a smartphone until recently, and only leave it on if I'm expecting communication, 99% of digital time spent at a desktop. As long as you check for messages every couple hours, there's only benefits for choosing this style, barring the 1% of people with jobs so critical that an hours delay is make or break.

>>32327 Anyone affected by this would find great use in this book, it's brilliant. Not only does it address the issue of compulsive and low-value internet usage, it offers great advice on maximizing the quality and quantity of your work. The information is based on the work habits of some of the world's greatest thinkers, and also on psychological and neurological studies, and even some philosophical perspectives.

>>33393 Oh, and it offers arguments for why the type of "deep work" which maximizes quality/quantity is not only becoming more scarce in society (due to the mass adoption of disjointed and distracting work habits in the workplace, and also due to the distracting nature of the modern internet), but also for why it's becoming increasingly more valuable (it allows you to stand out in the international marketplace which the internet has created). The author is also a CS professor, so many of his anecdotes/examples could be interesting to the average lurker. --- I also just noticed the author has a new book dedicated to digital decluttering. I haven't read it yet, but it looks to be just as good as "Deep Work".

>>33393 I'm sorry, but this sounds just like the generic endorsements you can find on a bunch of other books that are trendy in Silicon Valley. I've had enough of reading the likes of Seth Godin after being misled by reviewers, how do I know this isn't the same thing? The kind of guy who sells a book based on repackaging common sense information to make it sound scientific and fancy.

>>33399 >>33399 The poor quality of most self-help and pop-sci books has set a really low bar, but this one is actually good. In my opinion. Sorry if you've been reading too many "generic endorsements", I've tried recalling and summarizing the book's points and the value I've personally found in it. Just check it out, it's a quick read. Even if it was 100% "repackaged common sense information" (and it's really not), such common sense information can be useful if it's arranged in a structured, concise and well-written format, as opposed to a thousand disjointed and and contradictory imageboard posts and articles. But again, it's not "repackaged common sense information" anyway. If anything, the book argues this kind of information is becoming increasingly less common sense, and I'd argue the same.

>>33405 I didn't mean to attack your post in particular, it's just that, as you could probably tell, I'm tired of those generic books. I guess I'll take the dive at some point, if anything because I've seen it being recommended in lain more than once.

>>33397 > pdf > in a minimalism thread here is an epub version instead, lainon. enjoy reflowable text

>>33417 I wish DjVu were used more.

>>33417 Also, why split your post unnecessarily like that? Why not do the following: >>33397 > pdf > in a minimalism thread here is an epub version instead, lainon. enjoy reflowable text Doesn't that look much better? and the post is shorter.

>Digital Minimalism I've also been thinking about this for quite a long time. Desktops are bloated and I've been meaning to replace it with something more minimal. I had an old laptop which now works as a HTPC ever since the display fuarrrked up, removed the display and got around 8-10W power consumption paired with a energy saver monitor. Its got enough processing power to browse the web but after the recent 5.x kernel updates and intel mitigations, the processing power became sluggish and some of the highly compressed 10-bits video would experience mild stuttering when it didn't with older kernels. I'm thinking of either upgrading to a thin client or a NUC with processor immune to those mitigations or maybe a low power laptop with thunderbolt for eGPU. For the mobile stuff, maybe a dumbphone, all apps would be emulated in shashlik, and maybe some good old usb dongles for mobile data since I don't want a smartphone doing its thing and using hotspot is like kicking dead whales down the beach. I've seen soykaf from capturing what a smartphone does if it didn't have a firewall and I was disgusted how much it does. Even the amount of work to debloat a phone, disable all its spyware just led me to give up and it's beyond saving and doesn't fit with minimalism. I'm thinking maybe a thinkpad with thunderbolt and coreboot is thunderbolt even supported by coreboot.

I have the opposite problem of most people here. I was homeschooled for the entirety of high school and most of the 2010s I lived on my PC. I had no money or friends, when I wasn't doing online school I was rotting away reading Reddit or playing vidya. My life changed pretty fast. I got a job a car a phone. And growing up only using m+kb makes a touchscreen like kicking dead whales down the beach. Its truly awful, I'm still on my phone a lot but only for lainchan, messaging people and music (not streaming). It's too frustrating to do anything else with! But I go back to my PC and lose 5 hours in the blink of an eye doing nothing. I try to read books, or do laundry, or work on my car and can't pull myself away. What helps the most is just never turning it on after work. It's like a hypnotoad.

>>33417 You clearly don't understand what PDFs are needed for. No, your electrophoretic price tag factory byproduct """e-reader""" aka glorified dime novel consumption device with spyware is not digital minimalism. PDFs can be read in full spread from computer screen or, more importantly: printed, your meme HTML wrapper is typical ebooknigger braindamage which doesn't solve anything other than introducing inconvenience into carefully edited and laid out medium meant for reproduction in paper.

I would want a neat pocket-computer `smart phone' interface. I don't like touchscreen. Many a pocket computer has 3 buttons (power, loudness). I don't do much with my pocket computer; it's primarily for emergency communication. I also read books or listen to music. Here is an interface I imagine for myself: read current book (scroll down: down button) listen random music (skip track: up button; pause: power button; resume: power button) through headphones (only while headphones connected) panic (depressing powerbutton continuously signals potential danger, entering my secret single-use combination of button depresses/releases signals safety, releasing powerbutton during potential danger interrupts the `potential danger' signal, to be construed as definite danger). receive emergency synchronous communication; interrupts e.g. voice call (accept: power button; hangup: power button) interrupts music (pauses it, resume it at call-end), text message interrupts book (message is displayed at the top of the screen, between what immediately before were the current screenful, the last prior screenful; scrolling works the same way as before). Short button presses work as usual e.g. loudness buttons adjust loudness, power button toggles screen on/off state. Simultaneously long-pressing all three buttons deletes the storage decryption passcode: to be entered by my computer via the data cable.

My x60 isn't powerful enough to run applications like discord. I still have a habit of browsing lainchan, but that's it. I use a flip phone because it's cheap enough to where I don't give a soykaf about it. There's also the added benefit of buying prepaid cards. I'm not locked into any contract with a cellular provider. It's as easy as ditching the phone. Breaking open my smartphone was fun and forced me to stop using it.

>>35271 not that i condone using discord (i recently gave it up) but since i feel helpful today you could use the program ripcord which is very lightweight and im sure it would work.

>>35386 Did you also remove the distracting stuff from the GUI? Very based lainon.

What about a phone like this but with a SIM card slot for data only/VoIP https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/wiphone-a-phone-for-hackers-and-makers#/faq

>>35599 >phone with a SIM card slot for data only/VoIP It's like a car for riding on gravel roads only. You probably want a detachable cellular modem to make the phone offline at given moments.

>>35386 Why do you have serif fonts in your title bar? Why do you do this to yourself

I just blocked domains of *chan, youtube, and lbry. Granted, this is on my desktop (/etc/hosts) since I'm not a heavy phone user, but I'm sure there are ways to accomplish the same thing. Generally, seeing the "domain can't be reached" message is enough to get me out of the brainless state that one has to be in to spend hours on those sites.

>>35677 strange, i never felt the need to use youtube period.

>>35677 strange, i never felt the need to use youtube period.

>>32327 the pinephone is coming out and has killswitches. The phone seems so low spec it's probably terrible for anything other than the occasional web browsing or text/call. Good for tinkerers but not good for social media addicts. I might purchase one and hope it will be adequate enough as a daily driver.

>>35912 yes i know the pinephone already came out i meant it is undergoing certain tweaks and optimizations on the os side of things to increase performance

>>32327 >I would spend hours lying in my bed, browsing the chans. It would be the first thing I would do in the morning. Wasting away this massive free time I have. Iktfb. How do I stop...? Sometimes I'll go a week or so getting out of bed first thing and reading before I go to sleep, but before long I'm back on the same soykaf. >>32696 >NoScript Huh, this is neat. I've tried disabling JS globally but it breaks too many sites I need for school/work. This seems feasible. >My iShit-device has a mode where it blocks between 6 am and 6 pm all apps except my train app and the phone app How to do this? Sounds like something I could really use. >ubuntu with i3wm Sounds like a comfy setup. I got an X220t on the way and am trying to decide what distro+wm to roll with. Is i3 configuration on ubuntu relatively painless?