I find all this anti-screen stuff kinda weird. Why avoid screens one day week? Do you also avoid electricity? Running water and sanitation? Refuse to use a wheel or mechanical advantage? It's almost Amish to me. Where do you draw the line, and why?
I have young kids. There is A LOT of this sort of pressure a d sentiment - that using a computer/tablet/phone is somehow bad and harmful. My kids love watching TV but I am fortunate that they also love imaginative play with traditional toys (test bears, Lego, cardboard boxes etc) more and they only watch shows maybe 1 or 2 hours a month. I think it is because we don't have a physical TV in the house - there is no looming huge black rectangle in the corner reminding them all their waking time (we adults just watch netflix/whatever on a laptop after bedtime for the kids).
I think this is part of the problem. It's not screens that are bad, it's what you do with them and how you use them.
Just turn notifications off. Just don't look at twitter/Facebook/tiktok. It's not hard to just not use the brain rot stuff. I get it you are addicted - I guess just be thankful it's not alcohol or cigarettes. Get help for your addiction.
But I do not understand why on earth you would not use these amazing, life-improving, wondrous tools? Like if you needed to hammer in a nail you refuse to use a metal hammer "because technology" and what you just bludgeon it in with your fists? Why would you reject tools just out of superstition?
I remember back in the days a Car Insurance website which only allowed you to use it during working hours. Never understood the mechanism, surely they weren't getting quotes live from actuaries or anything.
In the US state of New Jersey some counties restrict the sales of tools and hardware (like something you might need to urgently buy for a home repair from Home Depot) on Sundays:
https://www.google.com/search?&q=new+jersey+blue+laws+tools+...
As a person from the west coast it is always funny to me to encounter places with "blue laws" for no product sales on Sundays, or "dry counties", primarily in the US south/southeast.
There is also a baby products online store in the Netherlands that for religious reasons is closed on Sunday. You can browse the site but you can't buy anything.
The page is in Dutch, it explains that they're closed because get believe Sunday is a day for rest: https://www.babypark.nl/zondag/info-bp.html
Same for the SGP, the Dutch fundamentalist Christian party: https://sgp.nl/
I share few of their values but I quite appreciate this one.
Honestly, I don’t mind it. Our lives are so commercialized as it is. If I can’t order a new stroller until Monday, I think I will survive.
I told a friend one time, what if there was a web site that had opening hours.
He said, you can already see the opening hours of all the stores and stuff on Google Maps.
I said, no, not a website like that. I mean, the website itself is open 9 to 5 Monday through Friday, and outside of that it’s closed.
My friend looked at me and just said, why?
Idk, I think it would be neat, I said.
My friend didn’t get it. This guy gets it.
> website itself is open 9 to 5 Monday through Friday, and outside of that it’s closed.
So you want people to read your blog at work because when they are off it's closed?
Plenty of these exist. The biggest I'm aware of is B&H Photo Video.
How does this work with time zones?
When you visit my site you are visiting my timezone. Same as if you tried to call me on the phone in the middle of your day but I was asleep during my night.
What attracted me to computers as a kid in the 90s was the promise of an always-on, never moody, deterministic machine. That was magic and finally a fixed reliable point in life, forever. Plus, with the internet, suddenly the world came closer, no matter timezone, things are always there.
We are already killing the deterministic part with LLMs. I can't trust the machine anymore to do tomorrow what I told it yesterday.
Now we also want to remove the always-on aspect? Arbitrarily? Because it's ...cool? I don't get it.
Exactly :)
In Israel, many sites are "closed" on Sabbath, unfortunately. This was a recent controversy about this: https://www.ynet.co.il/economy/article/rymwhdedmg (Hebrew)
B&H Photo's website can be browsed on the Sabbath but you can't order anything. The company is owned and operated by observant Orthodox Jewish members of the Satmar Hasidic community.
Any idea how did they survive the switch from digital cameras to everybody taking photos with their smartphones?
In the Netherlands there are plenty of websites which close on Sunday for religious reasons.
For example:
A well-known Catholic in Poland, he runs his own shop, which is also closed on Sundays.
B&H Photo Video is probably the most well known example, they won't accept an order on the sabbath.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=b%26h+sab...
But the site still functions to browse.
off topic but I wonder why client is the first query parameter in that URL. I guess there's some stuff on the search page that changes based on what you are browsing from? they already have the user agent data so I can't imagine it's for marketing data tracking needs
I'm using the main line firefox release on MacOS here, and yeah it does seem to do that... Clearly google already knows what browser I'm on from useragent as the most rudimentary ID and other browser fingerprinting measures as well.
(edit: one theory would be they're tracking how many URLs are copy/pasted and shared by firefox users to non-firefox users and then loaded by people with different browsers, there has to be some value to them in that data in the aggregate of millions of search page loads).
I figured leaving it into the copy and pasted URL is harmless and ultimately mozilla derives the bulk of its revenue from its search deal with google, so it's also a way of supporting continued firefox development in the most minuscule way.
It's their site and they can do whatever they like, but it's pretty silly. If you want to avoid screens, avoid screens. Don't make your addiction my problem
I'm reminded of the type of recovering alcoholic who impetuously accuses anybody who they know has consumed alcohol of being slaves to the sauce themselves.
"Trump is your president, don't make his problems to mine. If you vote for a shit president then keep him for yourselves and don't let him escape his sandbox."
Spot the five differences.
In India, I remember many government websites that allowed form submission only during office hours.
We would warmly welcome him in Germany
Window shopping is still allowed on Sunday in Germany.
With Internet, we live in an always-on culture.
It contrasts with times before, when we actually had to wait for a monthly magazine, and even if we wanted to watch a movie, it was aired (say) the next Tue 7PM.
While now we have all convenience, there is no anticipation - or rest.
Stuff like this will really break your visibility on google etc.
"shop" still works
The shop link is still “open”.
Love it. I started a fun side project this weekend to also reduce my screen time: turning articles I bookmark online into a personal printed magazine that I can then read offline [0]. I just printed the first personal edition that I will read on my flight next week, including a few articles I found on HN :)
Skeuomorpharaseeism
Related:
2025 What if your website had business hours? (2022)
There are websites in Japan that are only "open" during Japanese business hours.
[dead]