Our possessions have come alive, transforming ownership from a finished transaction into a permanent, demanding relationship. Modern devices—from smartwatches to TVs—exist in a state of permanent incompletion, constantly requiring updates, configurations, and subscriptions. This turns everyday screen time into unpaid tech-support labor and maintenance rather than leisure.
While features like Apple's Screen Time frame tech exhaustion as a personal failure of self-control, the author argues that your burnout is a completely rational response to a needy ecosystem. In contrast, a simple twelve-dollar Casio F-91W watch offers true luxury. Because it has remained functionally "finished" since 1989, it collects no data, requires no updates, and asks for absolutely nothing.
Worth the attention if you've got the time: https://www.terrygodier.com/the-last-quiet-thing
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30, @01:43AM (17 children)
the rent seeking crapware. I set my stuff up and it keeps running till it literally breaks. Actually it's yours because you keep buying the SaaS shit. Then more of it sells and I'm stuck cracking it. Meanwhile legitimate open product gets discontinued.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 30, @02:25AM (10 children)
This is the real problem: SaaS sells to 90%+ of the population, there are major market segments (like the US new car market) where you literally have no opt-outs choices.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by driverless on Wednesday September 30, @06:47AM (9 children)
That's a good point, do people buy ShitaaS products because they enjoy the shit or because there's not much other choice? I recently had to buy a dial microwave for an elderly family member and found one, exactly one, product in the entire country that wasn't some microprocessor-controlled programming nightmare to drive. There were a few that had a dial but they'd managed to make it modal and add all sorts of weirdness to its functionality, but only one that was just "turn the dial to this position to get x minutes heating".
It also happened to be one of the cheapest ones available because if it doesn't have the UI of the Apollo guidance computer then it can't be too expensive.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 30, @12:17PM (1 child)
> if it doesn't have the UI of the Apollo guidance computer then it can't be too expensive.
Oh, that's not the case at all... they charge whatever the market will pay.
Our 1999 truck came with an analog dashboard - it was the low-cost option compared to the 1999 digital dash package. It actually cost them more to produce, because behind those needles were servo actuators driven by the CAN bus.
Back in the 1985-ish days of touch-tone vs rotary dial telephones, touch-tone was FAR cheaper for the phone company to implement. The rotary switch gear was comparatively huge, mechanical, maintenance intensive. But, touch-tone was the new thing, so it was an upcharge over the old rotary dial service because of a combination of market perception and regulations. Later, when rotary was mostly phased out and legacy support handled in the newer digital switches, the local phone switch houses were huge empty buildings with a PC-switch sitting on a table doing the work of thousands of square feet of switch racks, tons and tons of electromechanical werks replaced by silicon switches. But they still charged rotary service at a lower rate.
The thing I hate the most about the modern digital everything market is that it is driving those last mechanical timer systems into severe enshittification. They make them as cheaply as possible, early failures, and there's zero market competition / incentive to do better. We could be making much better mechanical systems, more efficiently, and offering those for sale to people who absolutely would want them, and not just in retirement homes, but instead it's just put out there as the cheap garbage product - sort of a strawman to compare with the "better" up-market devices.
Recently, we replaced a 20 year old mechanical logic washing machine with a used top of the line digital - we bought used because the mechanical finally failed badly enough we needed a new one NOW and the local big-boxes don't stock any selection at all, so I went to the used store which, in addition to being less than half the price, allows ALL their inventory to go out the door cash and carry on the spot. This used digital wonder was about 5 years old when we got it - worked for 6 months then wouldn't power on - no response at the power switch. Luckily, internet wisdom helped me trace it to corrosion on an (uncoated from the factory) PCB - wisdom advised coating the board to prevent future issues, but I was in a hurry. Having cleaned it all up, I just put it back into service instead of going to a big coating process-production. 6 months later again, the corrosion had regrown across the same contacts, so that time I cleaned-and coated it, like the factory should have done in the first place, but the new PCB lasts just long enough in most cases without the $0.25 coating process that they don't get warranty claims, so why spend $0.25 to make an $800 retail appliance last 10 years longer? That's two kinds of bad business (which should be exposed and mandated explained to consumers.)
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30, @07:56PM
> ... But they still charged rotary service at a lower rate.
If memory serves, we had a non-Bell System push button phone with a switch for dial pulse output (or touch tone output). As a result, we weren't in any hurry to change our service to Touch-Tone "capable" and be charged more.
It did take a little longer to dial with the pulse output, unless most of the digits were 1's or 2's...
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday October 01, @03:58AM (4 children)
I have a dial microwave (1985 Panasonic) in my porch with a seized motor. Now I'm reconsidering whether I should throw it away....
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Informative) by driverless on Thursday October 01, @05:10AM (3 children)
It's probably easier to get a new one, all but the high-end models are now made by Midea no matter whose name is actually on them and they're decent enough quality. My previous one was some house brand made by Midea that I paid USD 30 for and that lasted 15 years, the HV diode died but it was cheaper/easier to get a new microwave than to source and muck around with the HV circuitry of a replacement diode. It was mainly the voltages involved that put me off, since they're all identical internally for the microwave side the parts are interchangeable, it's only the enclosure and control electronics that differ.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday October 01, @05:27AM (2 children)
Interesting. I've had four Panasonics. Three were excellent. The fourth, from about 5 years ago ... not so good, not made as well all around. Will it last as many years? who knows.
#3 was by far the best, super even cooking and fine control... logic board apparently took a dump, but I'm guessing it's just a capacitor, should I ever get around to taking it apart to look.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday October 01, @05:38AM (1 child)
Non-inverter Panasonics are Midea, so depending on how high-end you went one or more of the more recent ones may have been Mideas. They're built to a price so it depends on what you paid for it, e.g. brushed alu with bevelled edges vs. folded mushmetal with an enamel coating. The one that died after 15 years was the latter, but was still looking more or less new while my neighbour's inverter Panasonic, so one that was actually made by Panasonic, had the plastic coating lifting off the keypad after a couple of years.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday October 01, @06:17AM
Current and previous both Inverter. The two before that... basically the same model, one with dials, the other with buttons, at the time Panasonic's claim to fame was the inverter and they didn't distinguish with or without, so no idea.
Fairly sure the current design came from someone who never cooked. (I cook almost everything in the microwave... have even done souffles.) Can't see the numbers in anything less than perfect light. Steam detector kicks in too soon so you can't really boil stuff in it. Focus is in a weird spot, not where the previous three were. Beeper is annoyingly high-pitched. Exterior metal is not nearly as thick (I've used the old ones as stepladders after they died, this one you couldn't do that). Whole grade lower while claiming the same quality.
"Everything is smaller, more expensive, and not as good as it used to be."
-- Andy Rooney
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by suxen on Friday October 02, @11:11AM (1 child)
It was a slippery slope. People ignored me, called me paranoid and otherwise dismissed my concerns when I first started warning them about these issues 20 years. Ago. Most people I know still don't care. Even smart people who should know better.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Friday October 02, @11:17AM
It's a bit of a self-selecting user base, the people who are geeky enough to run HA know about the problem and, well, run HA, the people who aren't don't know about it but just see a cool toy with an app to control it.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30, @04:11AM
Thanks for the link, that guy and I would get along famously. My Casio watch is a little fancier, but equally "Done" https://www.ebay.com/itm/124136481778 [ebay.com] The advantage shows up when it's time to change the time or alarm-time--just type the new time into the keyboard. It's a simple calculator/stop watch too, but not programmable in any way. Batteries seem to last about 10 years on mine.
Other than a laptop, which does take some effort to keep updated, I've avoided all the other devices mentioned. Music? I'm lucky to have a great FM radio station within range, the radio has an on-off switch, volume control, and always stays on the same station.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ShovelOperator1 on Wednesday September 30, @07:07AM (4 children)
The problem is that it becomes impossible to get just a device, without these malicious add-ons.
I am looking for a PDA. Not an attention-stealing, surveillance device called smartphone, but a PDA. Can be a mobile computer. There were a simple smartphones made by some small company in early-mid 2010s which were like this (?RAM? or something like this - targeted at business generally), and were incompatible with everything else, but they were.
Currently, unproductive, touch-based devices are made to watch ads and to be constantly charged. Even if I find Linux or independent Android distribution for these, what I find is that creators of these systems are terrorized by hardware manufacturers by the mere thought of running insecure, spyware apps in virtual enclaves by default. It looks like someone is extorting a corporate spyware there.
I bought a mobile gaming console and put Linux on it. Currently it works. But there is another problem:
There is a Linux.
There is a KVM virtual machine on it.
There is a Windows emulation on it, fortunately 9x does not eat much resources.
There is a PDA software on it.
And there is a bridge between emulator and one file in Linux virtual filesystem to make it possible to wake up at specified time and make a simple alarm clock!
Because in the last decade, there was NO local PDA software! Everything has to be a remote spyware.
Slowly, it will not be possible to get a good TV without subscription, or a good computer without in-firmware ads. In-firmware ads already were here, as Phoenix BIOS (AFAIR it was 6.00PGN version) which could place links to mainboard manufacturer in Windows desktop, and manufacturer was forced to remove it by the user backlash. I suspect currently it will be welcomed quite warmly.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 30, @12:35PM (3 children)
ESP32, Raspberry Pi, and similar products are getting to be far more capable than 1999 PDAs ever were. For about what you used to spend on a PDA, now you can have a capacitive touchscreen device with and without whatever network functionality you want.
I like single-function devices, they tend to last/work forever. I've got an 8 year old audio annunciator - a Pi Zero with a 3W audio output hat connected to WiFi and an old computer external speaker. It is on its second generation of video motion detector partnership - the motion detector signals it over http interface and it makes appropriate sounds for the type of motion detected. It has a super simple http interface where you can manually trigger the sounds, or temporarily mute them - the motion detector side of things just triggers that same interface when it thinks it saw something interesting.
Just above that on the wall is a Pi Pico with a 1.5" waveshare color display. It shows the current temperature and a 12 hour forecast of the temperature and precipitation predicted to come. It gets its forecasts via WiFi and power from a AC-USB lump. The whole thing cost less than $30 in components and it has been serving that forecast for 6+ years (confession, the original weather service I used went non-free on their API, luckily, Claude was able to re-code the whole thing for me into a much nicer package using a more stable free API provider in about an hour... show me the consumer widget that allows you to completely re-code your firmware at will/need...)
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aafcac on Wednesday September 30, @05:06PM (2 children)
This seems like as good a place to put this as any. https://www.olleewatch.com/ [olleewatch.com] allows you to put a smarter bit of kit into certain existing Casio watches. It's not for everybody, but it is kind of a cool option for if you want a bit more than you had out of the stock watch, but without a bunch of extra features to keep you up all night.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 30, @05:36PM
That is pretty cool... if the display could go full dot-matrix without destroying the battery life I'd be more interested.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Wednesday September 30, @07:02PM
Neat, I'm wearing an A158W right now.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by SomeGuy on Wednesday September 30, @02:38AM (5 children)
Along with my proper desk phone, CRT OTA TV, Windows 95, and lack of other "smart" devices, I have been using these Casio watches forever.
Although they make replacement wristbands, I usually buy a new one when the plastic wristband eventually breaks (which, still, lasts many years). I've been worried for a while that someone like Apple might buy them out just to shut them down, like so many other sensible products over the years. I'm honestly surprised they are still out there, given how corrupt the market is.
I honestly have no idea why anyone would want a "smart watch" or anything much fancier unless they just want to pretend to be an uppity fuck. It's stupid, and there is not even a compelling artificial need (like mandatory two factor authentication requiring smartphones).
Quiet? Hell, yea. No tech here gets up in my face unexpectedly. When I want to be annoyed by something, I choose to open a WEB browser window. (And then there is this web site spewing endless stories about the latest stupid things idiots are doing with "AI"... Soy something or other :P ).
Yea, about time to go to sleep. And nothing is going to interrupt me until my LM8560 based 80s' digital alarm clock wakes me up. Bweeep bweeep bweeep bweeep.
Neener neener.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 30, @02:51AM
In 2004, I had developed a number of Palm Pilot apps, and they came out with a Palm Pilot compatible "smartwatch" - I got it to try the form factor - it was bulky, newer smartwatches have improved on that, but if anything their screens are smaller, and their battery life is still dismal, which is a very annoying aspect of the whole concept. I could use my apps directly on the small screen, but it was certainly easier just to carry a Palm Pilot and use them there. I could code a custom app to work better with the smaller screen, but... why? I wore it for a week out of stubbornness and never wore it again, it's probably in a box around here somewhere.
I look at the new smartwatches with their phone tie-ins, and still ask myself: why? Do you really want to squint at a little summary of a text that badly before your next phone pocket pull? Do you have so many notifications that you can't tell them apart by their tones? Is it anything beyond a rich-tech-nerd badge?
I never carried a beeper - all that is is a leash for other people to make you do things. Like 99% of the "smart stuff" in modern life, you do as much or more for it than it does for you.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 4, Touché) by cereal_burpist on Wednesday September 30, @04:27AM
Also, they're ugly and look like an ankle monitor. [theblaze.com]
I got that link from this story two years ago: Your Smart Watch is Poisoning You — and Your Children [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday September 30, @01:59PM
LOL tell me you're a southerner without saying you're a southerner. And there's nothing wrong with that LOL.
I live in the frozen north and my fitness tracker band thing (you would probably call it a smart watch) lives between my winter gloves and my winter coat hand cuff. It, and my wrist, are covered but its a "northerner thing" to pull your sleeve up and look at your watch when its -20F. I generally keep my phone in my jacket chest pocket, I suppose the RF radiation keeps my heart warm LOL.
I listen to a lot of audiobooks/podcasts and its pretty awesome for "tap pause then ask someone interrupting me to repeat themselves"
Another use there's broad eras of user interface design and technology trends and between the end of the social media era and the beginning of the humiliation ritual era of UI/UX design, there was a couple years, almost a decade, of the notification era where the more notifications your phone get the more connected and better you're supposed to feel. That era seems to be ending, I think I've blocked about 99% of the apps on my phone from spamming me notifications, but "back in the day" it was easier to look at the watch, disregard 99% of incoming notifications as app spam, then to unzip jacket, dig phone out of pocket, try not to drop it in the snow, unlock the phone, scroll scroll scroll, all to find out Google Plan wants me to spend "points" on mobile gaming shovelware, naaah thanks for interrupting me tho. A watch gets you out of that annoyance while still being able to see my incoming legacy voice phone calls, 95% of which are scam/spam/Indian recruiters, but at least 5% are legit phone calls I should take, or at least listen to the voicemail.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Wednesday September 30, @05:02PM
I got one recently and honestly the worst thing about it is that the display is off most of the time.
I got it because it allows me to have calendar reminders pop up on it, but it's also useful in terms of having a button to find my phone. It really doesn't bug me with a bunch of notifications the way that my phone does as I just turn off or don't enable most of them. And, it is somewhat helpful in that I can have it remind me to drink water on a customizable basis.
They're not for everybody, but compared with the nightmare that is modern smartphones, a cheap smartwatch doesn't really do enough to represent a major issue.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30, @11:56PM
It tracks my sleep and steps. Also my heart rate. The data goes to me since I use gadgetbridge. Casio can't do that.
Otherwise why have a watch at all, you are probably near a computer or have a phone.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VanessaE on Wednesday September 30, @04:21AM (2 children)
When Commodore was "rebooted" last year by Christian Simpson, there was a lot of very similar talk about how we're all getting pelted with notifications and everyone seems to be making ever-increasing demands of our time. They intend their C64U and phone to be something of a balm against that.
At first I thought "nah, it can really be THAT bad can it?" I guess it is after all.
(Sorry if this sounds like an ad. I'm just a long-time oldskool C64/128 geek 🙂 )
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday September 30, @02:10PM
I would tentatively agree with 99% of your post but would reinterpret what you observed, as they were trying to comment on existing trends to get attention.
The notification era of UI/UX is definitely over, but for a while it seemed the dominant phone UI paradigm was trying to do everything via infinite notifications per day, that was pretty annoying.
Now we're into the humiliation ritual era of UI/UX where all reasonable and practical UI/UX improvement requests from actual users or dogfooders get the "gnome hipster guy asking use case?".jpg as a "no" response whereas they lick the boots of any financialization scam from marketing because scared of being replaced by AI.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 02, @11:24PM
I just want to say a heart felt thank you for alerting me to the C64U! I might have to put it in #1 on my Christmas list!
> I'm just a long-time oldskool C64/128 geek 🙂
Here, here!
I’ve been playing my original C64 with my kids but it’s gone black and white so I need to go pull it apart and see what’s wrong.
The games were so original and interesting.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Kell on Wednesday September 30, @10:05AM (9 children)
I use a dumbphone; I drive a 2004 VYII Commodore; I wear an analog wrist watch; my TV is a dumb TV; my refrigerator is not connected to anything except electricity and water; my toaster toasts and that's it; "smart" devices and assistants are banned from my house. I don't have (and have never had) facebook, instagram, live journal, myspace, twitter, tik tok, linkedin or any such things. I use a non-chrome browser that blocks everything. I saw this coming and I opted out. I am laughing.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 5, Funny) by khallow on Wednesday September 30, @11:36AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 30, @12:25PM
I'd kind of like the fridge with the camera that shows what's inside - maybe on a display on the door, but even more interesting would be on-network so I could see what the fridge camera sees from my phone while I'm in the grocery - swipe to scroll and pinch to zoom... I will not be buying one of those, not only due to the price, but also due to all the other "features" like firmware pushes that spoil food.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 30, @12:23PM (5 children)
You connect your fridge to water? You're living fancy.
I (used to) avoid the water connection just to save complexity in the kitchen plumbing. My uncle got a new fridge with an icemaker and I discussed that aspect with him that afternoon before he hooked it up: two more compression fittings are two more potential leaks. The next morning he had water behind his bed. Traced the water to the bathroom, but couldn't find a leak in there... finally realized: it was the ice maker connections we had talked about the night before- one was dripping, just a little...
My wife is heavily addicted to ice. The in-freezer icemakers last about a year in our house, she keeps them running at full capacity, consumuing the ice as fast as they make it, and their plastic gearsets wear out.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by acid andy on Wednesday September 30, @03:27PM (4 children)
Sometimes, when I am reflecting on the tragedy of western consumerism, I will try to picture all the devices and non-recyclable plastic objects that a typical westerner with a disposable income needs to dispose of over their whole lifetime. I imagine all that junk lined up in a field and how much space and volume it takes up, even when crushed, and multiply that by several billion consumers. Plastic bits from washing machines, fridges, outdoor furniture, tents, bedding, vehicles and endless packaging; the list is almost endless. Then I sigh mournfully and go back to my own fairly destructive little existence.
"rancid randy has a dialogue with herself[...] Somebody help him!" -- Anonymous Coward.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 30, @04:09PM
> I sigh mournfully and go back to my own fairly destructive little existence.
Yeah, rage against the machine is inadequately rewarded. Our species is doomed.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 02, @06:24AM (2 children)
OTOH, a pile of junk is just not that tragic. Especially since we're probably a couple of decades from mining it for useful stuff.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday October 02, @09:43AM (1 child)
Useful or not there is just far, far too much of it. Ultimately our consumption is displacing other species and even has harmful side effects on health.
"rancid randy has a dialogue with herself[...] Somebody help him!" -- Anonymous Coward.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Friday October 02, @08:12PM
Some consumption is inevitable. For example, because we have 8+ billion people in the world, we end up with a third of the Earth's land surface devoted to growing food and grazing livestock. And several percent is set aside for human habitation and other activities. That's the real displacing of species.
No matter how much consumption we attack, we still need to eat and we still need to live somewhere. Landfills despite the volume of trash we generate, don't actually occupy that much land area. For example, over 2 billion metric tons of trash are generated each year globally. Suppose that is half the density of water (that is, suppose it is all poorly compacted trash), then that's roughly 4-5 km3. Putting it into landfills 10 meters thick would be a surface area of 400-500 km2. And in turn suppose we did this for a thousand years, that's 400-500k km2. That amount would be 0.1% of the land surface of Earth (which is ~500 million km2). So even under the most extreme conditions of waste generation, we're using an extremely small amount of real estate for landfills.
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Wednesday September 30, @07:41PM
Luddites unite! Woo!
Okay, I'll admit that you're a bigger Luddite than I am. I do have a smartphone, AMD Win10 PC, and I also have a Facebook account, mainly to keep up with family stuff. All three of those are nerfed to hell and back to get rid of as much nonsense as possible. I don't wear an analog watch (though I do have one); I usually wear a newer Casio A158W or an old Timex LCD watch on a cheap replacement band.
But like you, my appliances are all dumb. Refrigerator makes stuff cool or cold; big oven, toaster oven, and microwave heats up food; dishwasher washes dishes; clothes washer and dryer do just that. TVs are all dumb TVs. My lights are controlled by various switches on the walls. Oh, and I use Firefox with NoScript, uBlock Origin, PrivacyBadger, and "I still don't care about cookies". Keeps the nagging to a minimum.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 2) by DadaDoofy on Thursday October 01, @06:50PM
"In contrast, a simple twelve-dollar Casio F-91W watch offers true luxury. Because it has remained functionally "finished" since 1989, it collects no data, requires no updates, and asks for absolutely nothing."
A better example would have been a solar powered Seiko A258-5060. Mine still works after 42 years. Of course, mechanical self-winding watches have been functionally finished for much longer.
https://digital-watch.com/DWL/1work/seiko-a258-5060?utm_source=chatgpt.com [digital-watch.com]