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It's a little strange that this needs to be said. The employees who don't like whatever is being produced are certainly welcome to find employment elsewhere. Non-competes are not enforceable in California.

The article mentions the dust-up around Chapelle's latest, but he's been offensive for much longer -- a similar issue was raised with the 2019 special Sticks and Stones. So why this culture addendum now?

The first thing I did is move my phone out of the bedroom. This helped break the habit of picking it up right away in the morning, and created some friction. I keep it on my desk on a charger.

The second thing I did was decide on a few things I had to do before picking up my phone for the first time in the morning. This like a game, where I started with one thing and then built up more, to see how many things I could get done before checking my messages. I started with taking a shower. Then I added walking the dog, then coffee, then breakfast... now I'm up to the point where my entire morning routine has to happen before I pick up my phone.

It's not easy. I'm not perfect at this, and there are days when I go back to bad habits. (In this context, I use "bad habits" to mean "habits that prevent me achieving the goals I set for myself). That's why I block certain websites still, for myself, to help from getting back into those habits.

> This device has no control over you that you don't allow it to have.

I wish this were true. Phones leak data about users, which companies use to make profiles about you to serve you advertisements. Even if you block advertisements, the profile is still there. Companies are coming up with new ways to use this data. You can read more about that here:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/19/opinion/locat...

https://archive.ph/se3nT

Here's a list I stole from Quora: https://www.quora.com/What-films-have-the-lowest-average-sho...

ASL 1.55 - Doomsday (2008) : 4052 shots over 105 minutes

ASL 1.72 - Transporter 3 (2008) : 3360 shots over 96 minutes

ASL 1.73 - Domino (2005) : 4046 shots over 116 minutes

ASL 1.83 - Quantum of Solace (2008) : 3198 shots over 98 minutes

ASL 1.84 - Crank: High Voltage (2009) : 2718 shots over 84 minutes

ASL 1.92 - Transporter 2 (2005) : 2524 shots over 81 minutes

ASL 2.01 - Band of Ninja (1967) : 3424 shots over 114 minutes

ASL 2.01 - Moulin Rouge! (2001) : 3594 shots over 120 minutes

ASL 2.03 - Gamer (2009) : 2502 shots over 84 minutes

ASL 2.03 - The 6th Day (2000) : 3418 shots over 116 minutes

ASL 2.08 - Hot Fuzz (2007) : 3304 shots over 115 minutes

ASL 2.10 - Dark City (1998) : 2982 shots over 104 minutes

ASL 2.15 - Armageddon (1998) : 4025 shots over 145 minutes

ASL 2.17 - The Transporter (2002) : 2420 shots over 87 minutes

ASL 2.17 - The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) : 2910 shots over 105 minutes

I think it's much shorter now, that article is almost 8 years old. With the ubiquity of digital cinema, I suspect the average shot length is 1.x seconds.

>I got rid of my smartphone

Teach me! How do you keep in touch with people on the go? This is the only thing that has stopped me from dumping my iPhone altogether. I sometimes leave home without it but I end up relying on others for coordination, etc -- which means I haven't liberated myself so much as fobbed off the responsibility to others.

I don't have social media (besides HN), so my main contact with people who aren't in my immediate vicinity is through sharing photos directly on iMessage and the odd article-inspired rant.

I found Newport's book to be so surface level for anyone with even a passing familiarity with the problem that it wasn't worth my time.

What really helped me was these two books:

(1) The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu (2) The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshanna Zuboff

and the nextdns.io installed on all my devices. I literally blocked Reddit, et al to break the cycle of "I just woke up so I'mm scroll until I'm fully awake" and then oops -- an hour went by.

The thing that ended up motivating me to change was reinforcing for myself the fact that I'm in this mess because very smart people have designed systems to exploit me. Fuck that. I'm in control of my attention.

>They don't even look if the drivers saw them, they all have a phone in hand.

And the driver's do too! It's insane. I live in a moderately-sized city (~1m people) and I've learned to keep my phone in my pocket or not bring it at all, and to definitely take out headphones when I cross the street. I've still been almost hit, many many times, and I'm not even jaywalking. I literally wait for the white walking person to show before I step off the curb.

The population growth of the United States will never flatline for any appreciable amount of time. In other words, we'll never run out of workers. This is for two reasons:

(1) We border a rapidly developing nation to the south (Mexico), with significant economic ties at that border.

(2) The United States is, hands down, the most effective society at integrating immigrants and allowing them to be productive. We can always, always import more workers, and people will always, always want to come here.

>GDP has to be at certain levels to support different types of economic activity. E.g. at some point, GDP might be low enough that new semiconductor research isn’t affordable (because all the workers are used up caring for the elderly for example).

The good news is, this won't happen in the US, at least not in the 21st century. So if you're an American, feel lucky.

Your quote might have been “fake” and intended to convince you that they offer fiber to your address when they actually don’t. I went through this with Comcast in San Jose. Requested the service, weeks of run arounds and “we lost your ticket I’ll make a new one” followed by increasingly ludicrous quotes starting at $500 and then going up to $20000(!). All when the map on their site showed a trunk in my neighborhood. Eventually I started playing along just for a laugh, until they finally fessed up and said they don’t offer fiber in my neighborhood at all.

Some sort of fraud? I dunno.

>That seems crazy to tell two people they have the right of way when their paths cross.

This is common in Austin, especially downtown. Green light for turning + Pedestrian has a walk sign. It's dangerous, and people get hit all the time.

>For example, if you are a cyclist who has to stop at a red ligh

Just to be clear, this law does not change the requirement for bicyclists to stop at red lights. Red lights become stop signs, stop signs become yield signs.

(1) Taxes. (2) Cost of housing. (3) A government that insists on intervening in every aspect of my life. (4) A culture of people who actively want the government to intervene on every aspect of their lives. (5) Traffic.

I can afford to live in California. I just don't want to. I spent 8 years in the Bay Area, love to visit, but ultimately I can have more freedom elsewhere.