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For those who don't want to use Twitter, I would also suggest replacing it with nothing.

Good point. My grandad used to call it the history as well!

Depends on the publication.

I read The Economist, which doesn't cover sports at all.

It's mostly 1-2 page long articles for each story, blocked into categories (UK, Europe, US, The Americas, Asia, China, Business, Finance, Tech, Culture at the end).

I think it's important to keep reading the news occasionally.

Personally, I, as a programmer, read the news in the same way as my grandad who was a farmer. I read a printed weekly publication (in my case The Economist) on Sunday morning. Outside of Sunday morning I don't read the news at all.

I prefer printed news to media-supported news, because I think the imagery (I acknowledge The Economist still has images) and presentation of news, especially on TV detracts from the message it's trying to convey a lot of the time. After reading some of Neil Postman's books (notably Amusing Ourselves to Death), I find it strange to watch televised news whereby one minute I'm watching footage of a disaster, then the next minute I'm seeing sports news updates or an advert. Just like normal learning, I think news demands longer form content for proper understanding.

Reading the news on a low frequency basis also gives time for news stories to properly develop. Breaking news can be filled with speculation and incorrect details, which even if you keep up with, you can miss later corrections or crucial details. Not to mention the stress involved in it. Chances are if some real breaking news happens, like a natural disaster or war, I'll hear somebody else tell me.

And if they simply want something tailored for themselves?

Something designed without content suggestions, ads, influence and constant un-necessary redesigns, for privacy and to retain their own data.

Good for you economically. Some people are unemployed and underpaid. In fact, most are. Half of your post just came across as you broadcasting your economic success.

This seems like an incredibly defensive take for vibe coding personal apps.

Replacing some subscription app like Any.do, Google Calendar, fitness/diet tracking or basically any other CRUD-centric app, needn't be insecure, and a semi-competent developer can easily host it, continue further development (with or without vibe coding) and secure it. There's huge benefit for software developers that do find themselves using many of these apps with active subscriptions to make their own, tailored for themselves, and cut down their spending.

Yes, when it comes to commercialising such software, more work needs to be done (mostly in support and marketing), but for personal use it's fine. The author explicitly states they don't trust vibe coding enough to turn these into products.

The writing is hardly on the wall for all these companies which make little todo list apps and calendars. The vast majority of people could get a LLM to produce an alternative but the lacking they have in basic software engineering would eventually be a hurdle to further development. Most people will continue spending $1.00/month here, and $2.99/month there. There's no reason why software engineers need to do that anymore, unless paying this gives them access to some sort of content repository (music, books) or actual advanced software.

That's understandable. I have quite minimal music taste so my setup worked for me. I only listen to music at home when I'm not doing anything else and it's mostly classical so there doesn't tend to be too much to add at any given time.

A minimal web client audio player with some basic database tables in the back for organising and searching does me fine.

Making your own software is a good way to escape enshittification and influence.

I switched from Spotify to buying MP3s and using my own audio client, because I'm fed up of a company telling me which music I should listen to every single time I open the app. It costs more, but I own the music and I escape the constant redesigns, price increases and influential behaviour.

Most apps are very simple and there isn't too much to learn, especially if you're building it to scale to a userbase of yourself. I can't see the need for a ton of CRUD apps which demand subscription fees personally. If you build them yourself, you get to keep your own data, build it out the way you want it, keep it that way, and use computers as a person using a tool as opposed to a customer buying a product.

I have never understood social media.

For me, talking face-to-face is the only real means of socialising. I can barely even see the appeal of having a proper conversation on a chat application (they're much more more ideal for arranging meetups, sharing information quickly and keeping up with people far away).

It's incredibly annoying that we're expected to shift real world social interaction into these apps and platforms. It annoys me when somebody I meet begins talking to me more on chat apps than they do in real life.

However much more than that, I cannot understand the concept of posting personal details, media, worldviews and opinions underneath your own name on some platform, in which anywhere from dozens of friends and family, to the whole world, can see it. Even large group chats seem unappealing. What is the appeal of this for anybody besides the people that run such platforms for engagement and advertising?

Why do people want to see others they do or don't know doing this? What's the point of it?

Why does anybody want or engage in systems of digital reputation (likes, kudos, karma)? Moreso why are these values, or the number of followers/digital friends in anyway important? We all know that these things can be openly bought. It pains me to imagine all the one line comments, and upvote/downvote with timestamps being stored on a server somewhere.

The wildest part is that the companies that provide these platforms are worth more than companies that actually produce meaningful products and services. These are platforms that could only succeed by being free* and then abusing existing users.

Hacker News is the only place online I post, and I only do so in a non-social discourse. I don't know anybody I've replied to or been replied to by on here, and nor do they know me.

People want different interfaces for the home screen of their device, obviously.

I want a black background, with a simple A-Z list of the apps I have on my phone, with some hidden. No icons, no transparency effects and animations.

I've never done Android app development. How simple or advanced are we talking to build something like this?

This sounds like my exact setup with Octopi. Just I have 4 scrollable home screens with the 4 most used apps as large white icons.

Sad news. I've been using Nova for years now, across multiple devices.

Thankfully my build is super minimalistic and another launcher was able to replicate it pretty quickly. Black wallpaper, white icon pack, list app drawer with a few folders, 4 scrollable home screens with large white icons for the most frequent apps (browser, Gemini, personal lifestyle logging app, Signal conversation with wife).

The idea that there might be ads (albeit on the free tier) is ridiculous, but then again that is the final frontier for adtech companies. I've often thought the Google stock launcher will likely soon have ads, just like Microsoft started trying to slip them in with Windows 10.

Wrist based sleep tracking is worse than finger.

Oura for measuring sleep. Garmin for tracking physical exercise. Oura always reflected the timings and my feeling much closer than Garmin (Enduro), which basically always told me I had bad sleep (started late after my last woken moments and ended an hour early).

My own thought, it's honestly best not to track sleep unless you feel you have an underlying issue. It causes more anxiety than it solves. If you're tired, go to bed earlier, adjust tech use and food consumption before bed.

Not sure why Garmin or any of the exercise tracking watches are being used for sleep tracking. They're infamously bad at it from my experience.

The rings (notably Oura) are much better. I used to wear both and they gave completely different results, with the Oura being far more accurate to how I feel and the timings of going to sleep and waking up. Garmin almost always reckoned I woke up an hour earlier than I did and ended the tracking there.

It's honestly best not to get too involved in tracking sleep. The analysis does more to ruin your mood and give you nocebo effect than it really gives useful information.

I will confess, I do still wear my Garmin to bed because I like the vibration alarm over anything audible.

> you are going to get well under a 50% success rate here. Accept that most people flake

This is true, but as long as the success rate is >= 1 other person, it's okay.

I started a running club for my apartment block (about 200 flats with maybe 300 residents). I posted flyers out once advertising it as a friendly social running club. Of the 300, the group has about 15 people, of which 5 are regulars (every other week at least), and just 2 of us are super regulars (multiple times per week). It's a terrible success rate, but those are 4/5 good friends.

At first it bothered me how flaky people were. Some people joined the group but have yet to show up in person. And some joined the group and are yet to even converse in the group chat, but hey, they'll come along when they're ready.