Hacker News Reader

Comment by andrei_says_ | Hacker News Reader

I bought something called brick which lets me lock some apps with a Bluetooth app. I have to walk to a different room and touch my phone to the little cube magneted to my fridge in order to unlock them. Just this extra friction has halved my screen time. No phone in bed no phone while I’m working and no phone on weekends while I’m bored.

Instant improvement in mental clarity and quality of life.

View on HN

I've also been receiving ads for this and I gotten tell ya... Getting a testimonial from a HN'er on a random thread is a huge vote of confidence. I've been toying around with the idea of getting one.

For what it's worth, the product demands $50 for what is essentially a < $1.00 3D printed case and a < $1.00 NFC tag. You could probably (not endorsing it!) find the NFC code online and just dump it to a tag of your own.

I would go limb and suggest that, maybe, developing the app is the expensive part.

If you know how to do all of this, you probably make more than $100 per hour at your day job (maybe a lot more!).

In which case you can jump through all those hoops, or you can just go to work for 30 minutes and then buy it.

I think you’re way off - I don’t know people making that much, but I do know several people who are well capable of that, and have literally embedded NFC tags with their own data in 3D printed things they’ve made. They’re making <$100K (pre-tax)

making more than $100 per hour, post tax, puts you somewhere at $400k+ income per year. outside of FAANG this is nearly impossible. even within it it's not so easy lately.

I bought it because it did not require a subscription and because it sounded like a smallish business - told me I had to wait a few days for it to be 3D printed.

I love the simplicity of it, the fact that it’s driven by fulfilling a need and not by greed.

Not affiliated in any way. Wish I had given this to myself years ago.

Also wish I had come up with the idea myself.

My best ideas come in my bed

Ideally I have a kale phone to note them

Because it’s too easy to go to social after I noted down my idea

You do know paper exists, right? ;)

its hard to write in the dark

You do know bedside lamps exist, right?

Yeah, I've rarely seen a bedroom without them. Candles or a flashlight would work great too. This is a long solved problem.

Lightbulb after lightbulb going off in this thread :)

As the person who posted about the option to lock selected apps - notes and voice recorder can be easily excluded from that set.

My wife doesn’t quite appreciate that in the middle of the night

Welp, only one thing to do then! Time to go wife shopping.

Fascinating. I'm wondering how the app manages to control notification behaviour & gatekeeps other apps. Obviously the APIs to do it must be there, just surprised Apple (of all ...) let's a 3rd party app do that..

Neat idea

When disabled, the app icons are greyed out, similar to when screen time restrictions have kicked in.

All the replies under this comment sound like shameless advertising

I feel like we're getting closer to the moment where all high quality discussion will be locked behind invite only forums. (anyone can read, need an invite to write)

I can't really think of any other solution to the prevalence of bots as it gets easier and cheaper to write human seeming content

What's going to stop advertisers and propagandists from paying off those forum gatekeepers? Unless they're already wealthy or monks, they're going to be trivial to corrupt and the content will be even more effective!

you pay them in the only resource known to humanity to be worth more than money - petty forum power predicated on exclusivity.

As the person who wrote the original reply I agree, and can ensure you that I have no skin in promoting a product - my intention is to promote the outcome.

If someone makes this happen with custom rfid chip I can tape to my fridge I’ll be happy enough.

What keeps you from just leaving your phone unlocked? Does the unlock expire after a certain amount of time?

Nothing but the desire to sleep well

I've also been using this and I think it's a great product. It's exactly as you describe it, just some extra friction makes a huge difference. I've even bought some for friends

Link?

https://getbrick.app/

Took clicking shop now button to realise it's iPhone only.

Been seeing ads for a while, finally caved two weeks ago and bought one. I’ve been on vacation since it arrived but I’m honestly quite excited to get home tonight and set it up.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com