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? Why a screens but not e.g. electromagnetism?
I have young kids. There is A LOT of this sort of pressure and sentiment - that using a computer/tablet/phone is somehow inherently bad and harmful. My kids love watching TV but I am fortunate that they also love imaginative play with traditional toys (teddy 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 instead? I do not understand this rejection of hugely beneficial tools and technology that has made our lives so much easier.
>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.
That part is precisely the problem. "Just get help for your addiction" is not how anything works.
It's incredibly hard for an addict to stop using the brain rot stuff. A lot of very smart people make a lot of money making it as hard as possible.
Yep no one said it would be easy. It's hard for a smoker or drinker to get over their addiction too.
That's why you need help.
But you don't need to eliminate all forms of fermentation or combustion from your life to get over an alcohol or cigarette addiction. You don't need to eliminate all screens from your life to get over your tiktok addiction.
Why do you need to hammer that nail in every moment of downtime? If someone close to me pulled out a hammer to hammer in nails 5 hours a day with no visible beneficial result I would be worried that this person is pretending not to have an addiction
Why don’t you buy a TV and put it in your kids’ bedroom then? It might alert them before a natural disaster happens or something — it’s useful technology, after all.
I have never understood addiction either. My whole life I’ve been told that I am addicted to “computers” or video games, because I spent so much time on it. But frankly there wasn’t much better to do and it’s just a hobby, passion that now pays my bills…
Only until I started smoking cigarettes and later stopped I realised what addiction really means, and how hard it is to kick it.
1. Maybe because making life easier isn't always a good thing? That there are certain things which benefit from being difficult, or at least not as easy as possible. Especially for children.
2. There aren't billion-dollar corporations, staffed with teams of PhDs in psychology, whose sole purpose 24/7 is to get me to use a hammer more. That's a false analogy.
> It's not screens that are bad, it's what you do with them and how you use them.
Congrats on being a good parent, but there's a lot of people out there who put much less conscious effort into it than you apparently do.
Read some of the news URLs about "AI slop children's videos" for example, and try to imagine what happens when people give a 3 to 6 year old a tablet and unrestricted use of youtube to keep clicking on recommendations.
I'm not saying that having a day without screens or going completely no-screen is the best and absolute solution, but that it's a very real category of problem to grapple with and decide for yourself what's most appropriate.
Essentially what you’re saying is “if you’re addicted, why not choose to not be addicted?” and… yeah…
Personally my biggest complaint is not necessarily screen time in itself, it’s that the tech giants are dedicated to maximising your (and your children’s) watch time by showing a stream of addictive slop.
It’s a shame, there’s good content for kids on YouTube but the algorithm always biased towards addictive crap. And they’re cornering the market to the extent that other operators producing good kid-friendly content (like the BBC in the UK) get sidelined.
I think it's more the technology, not the substance.
Alcohol addiction is bad. But no one is saying we should have "bottle free days" or "try not to use a glass until you've been outside" or whatever - no one is saying "bottles and cups cause addiction! We should not allow children to use liquid containers until they are 16!" just because they could conceivably contain alcohol. That is obviously absurd. You are not addicted to the glass or bottle, you are addicted to the alcohol.
Yet we as a society are basically doing that for screens. Screens/bottles are not in themselves bad, but it's what you as an individual actively chose to put in it that leads to the problem. Don't use tiktok or whatever, but do use the screen.
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.
That was the reason I bought a lot of stuff at their competitor baby-dump.nl. Until BP bought BD, and instituted the same policy there...
It's their site, they can do what they want. And as long as there's competition I can even admire them for making a sacrifice for something they believe in.
This kind of stuff becomes a problem when it starts arguing that others must do this too. If someone argues that all shops must be closed because their religion forbids working on that day, then that's an issue. But as far as I know, the Baby Park people haven't done that. They made a personal moral choice and sacrifice. Good for them.
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.
I remember some people doing this maybe 15 years ago, I think these types of hipster-ish trends recycle every generation or so.
I don't see it as harmful, but it's not for me either. My personal stuff goes down when my DDNS script fails or I accidentally trip the breaker, that's enough.
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.
If you visit the B&H retail store in NYC they sell all kinds of stuff for basically everything that is more "pro" level which is beyond what you can achieve with a regular smartphone with its built in lenses. Particularly for video production. Highly worth the visit if you're ever in NYC and have never been to it.
Lighting, audio stuff, equipment cases, backpacks, tripods, battery packs, that sort of thing. It's also stuff in the category of "Accessories" that have much profit margin built into them, much like how a Trek or Specialized branded road bicycle store makes much more profit from selling lights, bottle cages, shoes, than the bicycle itself.
Additionally they sell tons of the accessories that can be used to turn a modern $1500 2160p60 video capable smartphone into something more useful for amateur/youtuber level videography, like smartphone gimbals, bluetooth lap mic/receiver setups, extra batteries, cases... Stuff like what the 'smallrig' phone cages do.
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.
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:
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.
> I’m trying to avoid screens at least one day out of the week, and this is my way of encouraging others to consider doing the same.
Sorry but I find this incredibly paternalistic.
What if I am avoiding screens one day out of the week—on Saturday? Heck, maybe I avoid screens Monday—Saturday and Sunday is my only screen day?
It's great that you're avoiding screens on Sunday! Really! Blocking pages for everyone else just makes the world a very slightly worse place for no benefit.
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."
Most non-restaurant stores are closed in Poland on Sundays. At first I found it a bit inconvenient, but as I've lived here longer (going on ten years) I really appreciate it. It's a forced "slow down" day that's society-wide. It also helps push back against the constant desire to inject money and capital into every aspect of life.
It would never be allowed in the US, but I do think a designated "don't buy stuff" day once a week would be a really good idea, as well.
Long before that, a known religious zealot used to close his online store on Sundays and put out a very in-character lecturing note if you tried to visit it anyway.
I try not to reply to snarky comments, but - it's not noticeably worse than other days, unless you want to go shopping in the biggest mall in the center of the city.
On Sundays, you can send packages via paczkomats (outdoor lockers) and convenience stores (Zabkas) but the post office, DHL, UPS, etc. offices are closed.
It's not been the case for probably more than 20 years, but I remember that in the past the official website of the Italian Postal Service [1] used to be closed out of office hours.
Japanese websites still do this. If you buy shinkansen tickets between 23:00-05:00 you get:
* JR central - you can buy, but not reserve seats, as the system actually registers your ticket at 5am
* Jr east - you cannot buy.
Some banks/government sites also simply don't want to work at night.
Very frustrating. To me it spells incompetence, but maybe there's some non-technical stakeholder who made a stupid rule once. For JR its probably some nightly accounting system - not 100% sure but I assume all the modern systems are just plugged on top of the ancient ones just like the airline industry does it.
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.
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.
Sunday is my day for boycotting the effects of religion on society, so I take a break from observing any form of worship or abstinence or supersition on Sunday, just like I do every other day of the week.
If this were really about screen time being bad for you, then why not eliminate or reduce your own screen time every day of the week? That's seven times as effective a solution.
And why go out of your way to eliminiate other people's screen time instead of just your own?
You don't have to turn your server off to keep yourself from opening your own web page. And that doesn't prevent you for working on it locally.
There is a client side solution for the problem: Just don't open your own web site, unless you don't have any self control, and it's really about forcing your beliefs on other people.
At least it's not as malicious as people who oppose same sex marriage, and aren't satisfied with simply not marrying some of the same sex themselves, so feel compelled to make it illegal 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 1/4 days a year, every year a lifetime, for everyone.
But it still seems to admit that you don't have much self control, and want to control other people.
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 :)
I first thought it was a neat idea, but the exception for his shop makes the closure look a little hypocritical.
"This site is closed on Sundays -- except the shop of course, the actual type of thing that is usually open or closed in the physical world, because when money comes into play, there is no pretending it wasn't just for show."
I have young kids. There is A LOT of this sort of pressure and sentiment - that using a computer/tablet/phone is somehow inherently bad and harmful. My kids love watching TV but I am fortunate that they also love imaginative play with traditional toys (teddy 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 instead? I do not understand this rejection of hugely beneficial tools and technology that has made our lives so much easier.
That part is precisely the problem. "Just get help for your addiction" is not how anything works.
It's incredibly hard for an addict to stop using the brain rot stuff. A lot of very smart people make a lot of money making it as hard as possible.
That's why you need help.
But you don't need to eliminate all forms of fermentation or combustion from your life to get over an alcohol or cigarette addiction. You don't need to eliminate all screens from your life to get over your tiktok addiction.
Only until I started smoking cigarettes and later stopped I realised what addiction really means, and how hard it is to kick it.
2. There aren't billion-dollar corporations, staffed with teams of PhDs in psychology, whose sole purpose 24/7 is to get me to use a hammer more. That's a false analogy.
Congrats on being a good parent, but there's a lot of people out there who put much less conscious effort into it than you apparently do.
Read some of the news URLs about "AI slop children's videos" for example, and try to imagine what happens when people give a 3 to 6 year old a tablet and unrestricted use of youtube to keep clicking on recommendations.
https://www.google.com/search?&q=ai+slop+children%27s+videos...
I'm not saying that having a day without screens or going completely no-screen is the best and absolute solution, but that it's a very real category of problem to grapple with and decide for yourself what's most appropriate.
Personally my biggest complaint is not necessarily screen time in itself, it’s that the tech giants are dedicated to maximising your (and your children’s) watch time by showing a stream of addictive slop.
It’s a shame, there’s good content for kids on YouTube but the algorithm always biased towards addictive crap. And they’re cornering the market to the extent that other operators producing good kid-friendly content (like the BBC in the UK) get sidelined.
Alcohol addiction is bad. But no one is saying we should have "bottle free days" or "try not to use a glass until you've been outside" or whatever - no one is saying "bottles and cups cause addiction! We should not allow children to use liquid containers until they are 16!" just because they could conceivably contain alcohol. That is obviously absurd. You are not addicted to the glass or bottle, you are addicted to the alcohol.
Yet we as a society are basically doing that for screens. Screens/bottles are not in themselves bad, but it's what you as an individual actively chose to put in it that leads to the problem. Don't use tiktok or whatever, but do use the screen.
https://www.nbb.be/nl/balanscentrale/raadplegen/consult
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
It's their site, they can do what they want. And as long as there's competition I can even admire them for making a sacrifice for something they believe in.
This kind of stuff becomes a problem when it starts arguing that others must do this too. If someone argues that all shops must be closed because their religion forbids working on that day, then that's an issue. But as far as I know, the Baby Park people haven't done that. They made a personal moral choice and sacrifice. Good for them.
I share few of their values but I quite appreciate this one.
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.
So you want people to read your blog at work because when they are off it's closed?
They laughed at Einstein, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
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.
I don't see it as harmful, but it's not for me either. My personal stuff goes down when my DDNS script fails or I accidentally trip the breaker, that's enough.
Lighting, audio stuff, equipment cases, backpacks, tripods, battery packs, that sort of thing. It's also stuff in the category of "Accessories" that have much profit margin built into them, much like how a Trek or Specialized branded road bicycle store makes much more profit from selling lights, bottle cages, shoes, than the bicycle itself.
Additionally they sell tons of the accessories that can be used to turn a modern $1500 2160p60 video capable smartphone into something more useful for amateur/youtuber level videography, like smartphone gimbals, bluetooth lap mic/receiver setups, extra batteries, cases... Stuff like what the 'smallrig' phone cages do.
https://www.smallrig.com/ca/list/Phone-Rig.html
B&H is much more than just still photo cameras.
Sundays last about 50 hours globally. From Kiritimati (UTC+14) to Baker Island and Howland Island (UTC-12).
I wish more sites would apply the 50 hours closing window, preferably 3.36 days a week.
For example:
https://www.babypark.nl
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=b%26h+sab...
But the site still functions to browse.
(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.
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.
Still makes me wonder how anyone gets anything done, OTOH it explains how door dash, uber, etc could happen there - other places had less demand...
https://cejrowski.com/sklep/
Sorry but I find this incredibly paternalistic.
What if I am avoiding screens one day out of the week—on Saturday? Heck, maybe I avoid screens Monday—Saturday and Sunday is my only screen day?
It's great that you're avoiding screens on Sunday! Really! Blocking pages for everyone else just makes the world a very slightly worse place for no benefit.
Spot the five differences.
It would never be allowed in the US, but I do think a designated "don't buy stuff" day once a week would be a really good idea, as well.
On Sundays, you can send packages via paczkomats (outdoor lockers) and convenience stores (Zabkas) but the post office, DHL, UPS, etc. offices are closed.
https://poste.it
* JR central - you can buy, but not reserve seats, as the system actually registers your ticket at 5am
* Jr east - you cannot buy.
Some banks/government sites also simply don't want to work at night.
Very frustrating. To me it spells incompetence, but maybe there's some non-technical stakeholder who made a stupid rule once. For JR its probably some nightly accounting system - not 100% sure but I assume all the modern systems are just plugged on top of the ancient ones just like the airline industry does it.
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.
If this were really about screen time being bad for you, then why not eliminate or reduce your own screen time every day of the week? That's seven times as effective a solution.
And why go out of your way to eliminiate other people's screen time instead of just your own?
You don't have to turn your server off to keep yourself from opening your own web page. And that doesn't prevent you for working on it locally.
There is a client side solution for the problem: Just don't open your own web site, unless you don't have any self control, and it's really about forcing your beliefs on other people.
At least it's not as malicious as people who oppose same sex marriage, and aren't satisfied with simply not marrying some of the same sex themselves, so feel compelled to make it illegal 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 1/4 days a year, every year a lifetime, for everyone.
But it still seems to admit that you don't have much self control, and want to control other people.
[0] https://www.unscroll.ch
"This site is closed on Sundays -- except the shop of course, the actual type of thing that is usually open or closed in the physical world, because when money comes into play, there is no pretending it wasn't just for show."
2025 What if your website had business hours? (2022)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43647598