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Comment by wintermutestwin | Hacker News Reader

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wintermutestwin

Do you use paper maps to figure out where you are going and stop at payphones to make calls?

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I do use paper maps as my phone doesn't support apps or maps.

They're surprisingly useful.

Payphones, nope. Still got a flip phone. Yep, can be used to track me, but I don't take it everywhere.

Also, your position seems to be something like, If you can't be perfectly private from every possible angle, any choice enhancing privacy imperfectly is silly. I don't agree with that.

>but I don't take it everywhere.

at least having the option of taking the battery out while still taking it with you just in case you do need it is a bonus

>Also, your position seems to be something like, If you can't be perfectly private from every possible angle, any choice enhancing privacy imperfectly is silly.

That wasn't my position. I'm sorry it was easy to assume it was. I was saying that it is very impractical to drive without a smartphone and that it is tracking you in a more ubiquitous way.

>I was saying that it is very impractical to drive without a smartphone

Man, I remember driving in the 80s, we just wandered around lost for two decades. I live in West Undershirt, PA now because I just happened to end up there when I went out for pizza. One time, around 1998, I went to visit a friend in Houston. All I had were some sketchy instructions given over email, and I ended up a warlord ruling over the stretch of I-45 between Juan's Tacos and the Sherwin-Williams.

>I was saying that it is very impractical to drive without a smartphone

Dude, I think you should really question this. I've been smartphone free for over a year. It's... easy. In fact, easier than having a smartphone in many ways!

So strange how quickly our society became psychologically chained to these blipping bleeping distracting infernal machines.

Out of curiosity, do you have to use another device for TOTP 2F?

I've sometimes considered going back to a flip phone as a daily driver. I've settled instead for treating the smartphone as a tool rather than a lifestyle. If I'm not using it for navigation, location gets turned off. I don't do discussion forums on it, general web surfing is right out, and anything from Facebook got ripped out when I bought it (with one thing that couldn't be removed getting disabled).

A side benefit is that I get 2-3 days' life out of my battery and still have about 30% left when I plug it in.

If you're trying to hide from the government, sure. But if you're trying to keep companies from sharing your data, keeping it limited to the phone does keep the same data in fewer hands.

>I was saying that it is very impractical to drive without a smartphone and that it is tracking you in a more ubiquitous way.

As someone who has stuck with a flip phone all along, its extremely practical. We had no trouble getting around before smartphones, and its still no trouble.

Not trying to be snarky, but if you use your brain to figure out where you are going (perhaps referring to paper or digital maps before leaving), you learn your route, understand the geography of your location, and don't create a permanent dependency on being connect to the internet.

As a consultant in the 90s, I had to go to hundreds of client locations all over the Bay Area. I had a Thomas map book for each county and had to waste much brain space and time figuring it all out. Going back seems insanely primitive.

Before iPhones, humans had a rather impressive ability to create a mental map of a city. Upon seeing or hearing an address, they could rapidly plan a path to the location with nothing more than their own mind!

This is missing the point, I think. The point is not to be disconnected entirely, it’s to have control over that connection. While driving, one can turn off their phone, run a fully open-source device, old-school GPS, or whatever. But cars don’t give much if any control over the software they’re running or their broader connectivity. They’re oft becoming highly-integrated proprietary devices.

Good point, but can't your phone's location still be tracked when powered off?

Exactly one phone on the market, the latest and greatest Apple phone, has this capability.

So, no. My flipphone can't be tracked when the battery is taken out.

This functionality can be disabled in Settings, though.

Maybe, but in the most paranoid case it’s a lot more practical and straightforward to put a small device in a faraday cage or remove the battery than doing so for the car being actively driven.

Maps were downloadable once, maps.me still is. No reason that can't continue, besides big brother having a vested interest in what you are doing.

Big Brother to me is still the gov't vs individual EvilCorps hoovering up data to make a buck. Both could still be "the man", but to me Big Brother is specific. Maybe I have the term wrong or has it become more encompassing?

There isn't much of a difference these days, from where I'm sitting. The government and the heads of bigcos are pretty much on the same teams.

This is just quite simply sad in how true it is.

Once out, public info:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine

EvilCorps are hoovering up a hell of lot more data than I voluntarily give them. I give no data voluntarily to FB, yet with all of their track bullshit they take it from me. I have no idea if a website is using their code or not, so by me browsing said website is not me giving them my permission. Same with Googs and their analytics.

Both given and generated data are allowed for the government to access. I use no-script, but simpler extensions are available.

I use options to stop stuff as well, but that's the exception to the rule for EvilCorps hoovering up unsuspecting data. Even with my attempts at blocking other people are submitting information about me as well (perhaps unknowingly on their part such is the greed of EvilCorp). Again, I did not provide that information voluntarily so it should also not fall under the 3rd party ruling

I've done this in real life!

I have too - back in the 80s-90s. I couldn't imagine going back to that. Did you do it in the post smartphone era?

1st time I drove across the US to see stuff was the summer of 1992. I put 10000 miles on the car zig-zagging across the country, up the west coast and to Alaska.

Can you drive from home to work without being hand held by technological pacifiers?

You drive in complete silence? Or were you just singling out only specific forms of technology with which to mock a stranger?

They were mocking someone for choosing to do without technology, it was just a snippy retort. Why aren't you jumping down their throat?

edit: Turns out I was wrong about the parent's intent. For what it's worth, I do actually drive in silence a lot. There is something about a vehicle in transit that temporarily relieves you of responsibilities outside of the drive, and it's a great time to reflect. I could reflect on this comment thread, for example. Two times in the past few months I've been wrong about someone's intent on HN and met them with a little too much spice than was fair, that's worth reflecting on.

I sometimes drive in complete silence. The friction between the tires and the asphalt is close to white noise. It contains a range of high and low frequencies that you can't easily filter out, something that I tried to deal with at a computer vision class project involving self-driving tech. Also it can be amazingly therapeutic.

I drive in silence. I don't understand why some people feel the need to _always_ be listening to something.

I do. Is this unusual?

This is unnecessarily rude. Implying that a person needs a pacifier like an infant is snarky.

> please don’t sneer

As the HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) say.

It was a counterpoint to his sneer, I felt like it was a productive re-contextualization of their narrow viewpoint. I am really surprised people seem to be missing the parent comments snark but not mine, it was really on the nose.

If you see someone sneering, then request them not to sneer. Link them to the HN guidelines. Counter-sneering ruins the discussion.

If you're not dang, isn't linking to the guidelines against the guidelines?

why would it be?

because it serves no real purpose except to make the person doing the referencing feel a bit smug

Does it say so in the guidelines?

I was sincerely not trying to be snarky. I'm sorry you took it that way. I am actually GenX, so I know all too well what it was like back in the days of paper maps and pay phones. I couldn't imagine going back as they seem barbaric now.

Ah, my sincerest apologies. I guess it was hard for me to see it through any other lens, I was very much expecting a technophile versus traditionalist discourse to break out in this thread and so I was primed to read your words just one way. I even re-read your comment after others were discussing mine to make sure I wasn't being an idiot and was still certain. I suppose I was being an idiot!

Sorry again, I shouldn't have been snarky in either case, I was just so darn ready to have that discussion.

Thanks for the apology ehnto. My OP should have been more clear in its intent.

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