Kiki – Accountability monster for people who are easily distracted | Hacker News Reader

Kiki – Accountability monster for people who are easily distracted

kiki.computer

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>Is there any way to trick Kiki?

>Several users have tried. None have succeeded.

But then

>What browsers does Kiki support?

>KIKI supports Chrome and Safari. Other browsers can confuse it. Stick to those two.

Exactly my thought. Self-control ( a free app referenced above ) cut the access at the host file level. Superior.

I was using selfcontrol during my studies. It works by temporarily blocking certain domains on your hosts file. Happy to see it still exists, and free

https://selfcontrolapp.com/

My version of this is having custom ublock filter rules for my set of "timewaster" websites (HN included), I comment/uncomment them as needed.

Self control is great. I've been using it for a solid decade.

For $60/year, I'd expect a lot more from software that runs on my own computer with no additional services provided.

Its $29.88/year. It is $4.99 a month, which if you pay by the month would be $60, but if you're going for a year, I don't see why you wouldn't take the 50% discount

Five years ago, I paid a flat $45 fee for Cold Turkey, software which does the same thing on Windows and Mac which doesn't require I chip in for no additional work on the developer's part; It is completed software that runs on my own machine, just like Kiki.

Sure, diming $30/year is a 'better deal' than nickeling $5/month, but this is not the sort of 'deal' which this software warrants. This is not a service product, and pricing it like one is silly.

I think that being paid is part of the thrust. If you ignore Kiki which you have bought to ruthlessly force you to stay focused, you feel bad for squandering the money. Kiki is for people so desperate that they explicitly asked for a strict master and no escape hatch anywhere.

> Will KIKI judge me for my poor time management?

> Yes. That's part of why it works.

Sunk cost reasoning only goes so far. See all the people who buy gym memberships or things they promise they're surely going to use, before quickly forgetting about them in spite of the large upfront costs.

It's frustrating to me how often sales pitches try to obscure or dance around the nature of money in a fashion similar to your argument - thinking of so many alternate explanations for why something has a high pricetag or a recurring payment tied to it while profusely ignoring the "we want as much money as possible and we think this is the most you'll give us" reason. As if these businesses are our friends or something.

Maybe it's pure digital placebo. You paid for that so now you're revenge overachieve to make it worth it.

Right, just like a gym membership.

Damn, you didn’t need to burn him like that!

Too soon

maybe you should spend a few hours researching other anti-distraction solutions... doom scrolling, and asking ai, and yak shaving...

that's what I usually do. :)

https://getcoldturkey.com

Same functions, costs less than one year of Kiki for life, and multiplatform. No AI required.

For those unfamiliar, the name is based on the Kiki/Bouba effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect

This must be about Kiki and Jiji by Miyazaki. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiki%27s_Delivery_Service

The kind of people who are easily distracted like this are the kind of people that will be very unlikely to configure an application filter for each task. What would be immensely more useful would be a (local) AI that periodically looks at your screen, uses context clues to figure out what you're doing, and first uses social pressure to get you on track, and eventually just closes it if you keep getting distracted.

Putting the ones on the user to manage this is just adding one additional thing that requires executive function.

Please, put info that this is Apple-only in the FAQ. I got it after reading through the whole page and clicking "download app" on my Android phone.

Hmm. The only button on the screen is ([Apple Logo] Send me a download link). When you scroll it off screen it's replaced with ([Apple Logo] Try Kiki) and a collage of macOS screenshots.

They could certainly put it in the FAQ, which is below the ([Apple Logo] Get the App) button, I don't actually disagree with you, but it is somewhat of a funny complaint to me given the actual content of the page.

(logo doesn't render on my browser... So I wouldn't have guessed either.) (firefox/linux, but it really is a font problem, not a browser problem)

Hah, doesn't work on my PC either, I bet it pretty much only shows up on apple devices. And makes me glad I said I didn't disagree with OP!

The Apple logo character isn't a real symbol, it's just a space from the Unicode private-use area (the 'anything goes' area that's not codified and is reserved for niche local uses) that Apple decided would render as the Apple logo in iOS and macOS, probably to allow them to draw their logo as text. It's not something that should be used in browsers or anything that can render outside of Apple's ecosystem. It's not a great sign that something this front-and-center, immediately apparent on any non-Apple devices, wasn't tested by them on any other platforms.

I see a grey square on the download button, no Apple logo.

On Android there is a similar app called "Forest". I used it five or six years ago, not sure if it still exists now.

Why is this a subscription?

Because modern credit card networks and payments gateways have virtually zero friction now so subscriptions are a no-brainer for everything.

It takes the same amount of effort to setup a recurring subscription stack vs a one off payment.

That lack of friction also allows that subscription to do a recurring charge every month out of sight and even auto renew with an email that will be lost in the noise.

I might pay $5 to find out if your app is even useful. I will not pay $5 recurring monthly for an app I forgot existed until I notice it on a monthly credit card bill sometime in the future.

What I want is a one month subscription. I’ll sign up for recurring if I want to but it would require explicit action.

But nobody wants to offer that so they don’t get me at all. I assume there are others like me, perhaps even dozens of us.

That doesn't answer the question that was asked. The person above didn't ask about the workflow of negotiating recurring vs. singular payments with financial services. Some other 'mysterious' factor pushed this business to monetize their non-recurring service with a recurring payment. The question is if there is even a semblance of reasoning to make this a subscription (especially one with this kind of a pricetag), or if they made a purely local app once and just wanted to rent it out for more money.

I was implying it. Because recurring payments are such low friction today, there is very little to no incentive for creators to offer one-off options. For every 12 potential buyers who would scoff at the recurring payments, there is one who can cover 12 months worth of revenue.

> Used by smart, distractible, individuals at .....

the more I see that - the less I trust

I’ve always wondered 1) if those things are real and, if so, do they 2) ask for permission to include the logo.

Gives vibe coding vibes

> testimonials from real humans (probably)

(X) Doubt

Cool addiction blocker product. Also ties into a strange concept whereby something has value because you pay for it as opposed to the other way around. This idea probably generalises to any kind of self help app that people normally get for free and ignore. If you can provide enough polish to justify a luxury price tag people may invest!

Does it come with the little red fella sitting on your screen? If not then its a waste of money. If it does then its worth every cent.

Some day I want it explained to me why it's impossible to put controls on a computer. Computers follow symbolic mathematical rules, so, "you're only allowed to run this app for 30 minutes" seems like a really easy command to follow. But you cannot buy software that actually, reliably causes this to occur at any cost on any device.

It seems like there are three hard things in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and forbidding things.

If there was an easy way for productivity apps to do that, it would also be a good way for malware to do that. It could also still be tricked, for example, by changing the system date on your device.

I suppose a hypervisor-level monitor could prevent and revert that.

I bet that various niche paid software may have access controls like that.

It should not be very hard to write though, given that processes have predictable names, and executables have predictable signatures. Replacing the executable until the next time slot comes would additionally help.

Deploy a rootkit to make certain that the user cannot get rid of this software.

It might be easier and cheaper to have a dedicated device for that special thing, kept under a lock and key. Maybe the very insanity of such a setup would help reason overcome the addiction.

I mean, that's not at all the case.

As a trivial application of the spec, consider that there are time-limitted trials of software. Once it's run for 30m, it'll never run again without significant intervention.

If you're the kind of person that's willing to go out of your way to invalidate the control spec rather than just abide by your own time control rules, you've got a more significant problem than you're willing to admit.

We don't need software that prevents running for 31 minutes in every 24 hour period, we need humans who are both willing and able to manage their time.

I mean, can you imagine being the kind of person that blames a piece of software for one's inability to stop using said software. Like it's somehow tiktok or youtube or android or linux or who the fuck ever's fault that you can't stop doomscrolling or gaming or gambling or whatever.

As a matter of fact, every software already supports what you're asking for. Run a script that monitors focus time and kills after a certain period if you're really so unable to simply close the software based on your own paradigm. Leave the script running and have it issue kills for the entire duration of your specification. [use=focustime/24h; while use>30m/24h, kill proc.exe].

There are already existing implementations of this that, for instance, limit a user acct to a certain amount of time per period. Imagine a library that only allows 30m/account. I just got out of an environment that only allows accts to access for a maxiumum of 15m with one sign on with a 15m cooldown. If you used it for 3 minutes and signed out, you'd have to get back in line for 15m. If you demanded using it as much as possible you would use it for 15 and wait for 15.

…and off-by-one errors.

What if Kiki misunderstands you, and now you have to complete an impossible task before you can use your PC again?

Does the task description influence the blocking behavior? That wasn’t clear to me— it might be that you manually configure the allow/block list and the task description is just for the user.

I assume they use an AI to check if you work on the task or have completed it.

Otherwise, why would anyone fill in the task description? That's just extra work for zero benefit (surely you know what you were working on?)

> KIKI supports Chrome and Safari. Other browsers can confuse it. Stick to those two.

If I have to download a brand-new browser just to use this app, what's stopping me from switching back to Firefox to evade the blocks?

I made a web extension like this a while back. Called Prod, it’s a similar idea but in the browser. Feel free to use it it’s free and there are no plans to change it. Been around for years.

prodtodolist.com if you’re interested

This is a nice idea, but no firefox support and subscription model means this isn't getting used (by me, at least).

> Why isn't Kiki free?

> We need to eat. You need to finish things. That's capitalism, baby. Also, you value things you pay for (unlike those 17 free apps you downloaded and never opened).

Huh, I think I just found some new copy text for the SAAS I'm building!

That's my daughter's nickname. She is distraction personified.

Congrats on the character design and animations! Brought me a smile.

I'd prefer bouba

Focusme for windows has been around a long time.

can't open the site man

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