I'm not a big fan of eating, so yes please? Even if I then want to indulge in something tasty every now and then, the option to just 'top up' without actually eating is hugely attractive.
On some level I agree, but I don't think most of my fellow humans would agree.
Either way, editing away the need for social connections from humans seems to be quite a long way from our current level of technology, so it's not really worth considering as something that can actually be done. There's a philosophical discussion worth having despite that though.
There are already robots, well I suppose LLM's and average person treats them like utter shit because we can (In a similar way to how the rich might treat average person sometimes* [not all and that's not really my point either] but yea)
My point is that even if you were a robot, if you had feelings. you wouldn't be spared. So are you asking the lack of feelings?
And even if that's the case then, there are people who had gone into accidents who lost their feelings/emotional part of the brain. They sucked at making decisions because I remember reading how the person binge watched shows instead of watching his son's football games, how he couldn't decide what is more important, buying a stapler or filing his taxes (I can be wrong about this one but something similar related to pencils) but my point is that he couldn't make good decisions. He couldn't really compare between two decisions.
Now look at robots, look at LLM's. They can't decide if a car is 50m away then should it be drove or should you walk. They are essentially just a corpus of human data congested into a servant while being nothing more than auto correct on steroids in its true form.
Humanity has its flaws. I absolutely agree. But I think that the reason we have good is also because humanity has flaws. Much of my morality stems from the fact that if I die and I am gonna die someday, that's for sure, then what's my footprint on the world no matter how tiny and questions like these. I suppose every human feels that way.
A robot has no purpose other than being spawned in to create something brittle like yet-another-crud-app.
Perhaps one can argue that humanity is the same seeing the horrors we unleash on each other and tbh we humans have just spawned here and we weren't asked by anyone to exist in our form or not.
But at some point, we do have free-will and freedom no matter how tiny might it seem in algorithms the size of mountains and we can exercise it to bring meaningful change maybe.
I'd rather be human and go watch my children's football game in future rather than be robot. Maybe the surrounding and family and the community as say even hackernews around us give some meaning as we bump into each other.
> Such is life without a ground truth to decide your priorities. There are hopefully other source of that than emotions.
Sadly, Even if you live a life based on some ground base of morals, those morals come from the inevitability of death personally as I said in previous comment. I am not hopeful about it and science isn't either seeing the experiments of those people that I mentioned.
> Neither do humans.If being a robot is shit, but being human is also shit, then then I can only really conclude that it's better to not be at all.
That is another point I touched (in the next paragraph). We humans are also just like random particles fwiw but I believe that no matter how small action we take , it can have consequences.
At some point tho, I sometimes hate the world too (how could you not) but not enough to not be at all. If anything I maybe hate myself if say I am not being productive or anything more than I hate the world, which has been quite a bit kind to me too and some people are bad too yeah. It's a mix of both.
So although I don't have quite the answer. I believe that at some point, we have to accept our own autonomy and act towards what we want whether in personal life or the changes we want in the world. Even if we don't use that freedom at times and the life cycle of day feels weird.
It's still nice knowing that we can have freedom maybe. But I think that everyone wings it in life at some point or another. Maybe some wing better than others but the only thing is probably keep trying at some point and happiness comes along the way too, I am not that sure if I am the right person to be the person talking about these stuff right now haha :) but these are just some opinions I hold.
I'm not sure these people like Windows as much as they like what it does for them, but they are willing to put in significant effort to remove the normal Windows roadblocks and annoyances, and thus are willing to hack and chop it to bits to get them closer to their end goals more quickly.
They're not like a car enthusiast who loves their MX5 out of its sheer beauty and feel, but rather they love their SUV because of it's big boot and because it gets them where they need to be, and thus are perfectly happy to tear out the old radio and uncomfortable seats.
The only difference is that car enthusiasts have many more options to choose from, while in OSes, if you're stuck with Windows, you're usually really stuck with it. Linux is certainly an option, but not one that is universally practical to apply.
The things that require more than a few taps to do aren't things that need to be done at a moment's notice. Those things can wait until I'm at my laptop.
Just Thursday, I left home at 6AM got in an uber, waited at the airport got on a plane for an hour and half , waited at another airport, got on another plane for four hours, uber to the Airbnb and while I was out to dinner that night, my wife and I were planning a trip we were taking during the summer.
Are you suggesting that o just queue everything up until I set my laptop up?
Again you realize you’re the odd one right with most activity these days taking place on mobile?
Is there anything you need to do during that time? Or are you looking to fill that time with whatever to keep you occupied and enjoy whatever?
If it's the former, you lead a very different life from me. There are very few things in my life that show up and require immediate action (or action within 24-ish hours for that matter. Most things can wait). If it's the latter, I try to fill that time with reading.
Again, are you so much in the HN bubble you don’t realize that most people don’t wait to get home to their laptop (if they even have a laptop) to get things done in 2026?
Is it really that hard to look at stats and realize that you might not be the normal one?
I'm sure they do it that way. I'm also not convinced there's any actual need to do it that way.
You also didn't answer my question. Nothing in your travel scenario there, if I were in your shoes, would need me to use my phone for more than a few taps per actual task, while the rest of my phone use would go to mindless browsing or reading. What specific tasks are you imagining popping up here that I would then queue to my laptop?
I'm not trying to say my way is superior. On the contrary, I'm asking what use cases you have that you are unable to solve. If you have a genuine need to send emails from your phone at a moment's notice, then I can't argue with that; if you can't wait to respond to the emails you receive, there's nothing else to really do about it. That's why I'm asking what needs you have. I'm trying to better understand your situation, trying to put myself in your shoes.
But if you have no desire to actually respond to my inquiry, I shall remain in the dark.
> Yes you will if you think most communication personally or even work related is happening via email…
The same principles apply to Slack, Teams or whatever else you may use. I don't do work outside of work hours, so what would I know. Email was just the example I thought of in the moment. Again, I'm asking you a question out of a desire to better understand your situation.
Personal correspondence doesn't take many taps to do. It's rarely more than 25 characters at a time in my experience.
> You know sending email via mobile has been popular since 2003 right?
'sending' and 'popular' are doing some pretty heavy lifting here. Reading, sure, I'll buy that. Sending? I'm not sure sending emails longer than two sentences from any device without a keyboard has ever been popular, for values of. It's probably more popular than ever given that touch keyboards make it reasonably possible, but James S. Casual isn't sending a lot of emails from his phone just through the sheer power of not sending many emails to begin with.
And 'popular' for that matter. Possible, sure, but how many people ever even had a mobile device that could send email before the iPhone came out?
I'm sure sarcasm and implying I'm stupid are great ways to convince your interlocutor, or the unseen masses for that matter.
I’m not implying you are stupid. I’m saying straight out that you’re feigning ignorance (ie not that you are ignorant) and you know how the world works in 2026.
Myself personally, I work remotely. I might be running errands during the day and still be monitoring Slack so I can be on a call at 6 or 7 at night with someone in another time zone.
I also travel for work - consulting - and travel personally during the work day and may work after I land. Even if not for work, do you wait to get to your computer to respond to text messages? Check HN?
Believe it or not, I'm not feigning ignorance. I just lead a very different life from you.
> Myself personally, I work remotely. I might be running errands during the day and still be monitoring Slack so I can be on a call at 6 or 7 at night with someone in another time zone.
> I also travel for work - consulting - and travel personally during the work day and may work after I land.
See, I would never do this. A.) I don't work remotely (not out of a desire not to, but it's just not viable with my current line of work), and B.) If I did, that work would be zoned off away from my personal life. If there's downtime, I can kill time by browsing whatever, but I wouldn't be out and about but also 'at work' at the same time. Work-time and personal time basically never mix in my life, and I'd like to keep it that way.
If you're 'at work' for 48 hours at a time, while travelling, then having to respond instantly at any given time makes a lot more sense, although I'd probably still want to defer those responses until I can get some downtime during any given travels to then type up my responses on an actual keyboard. I can however understand if that's not really viable in your life of work.
> do you wait to get to your computer to respond to text messages?
I've never(?) sent a text message longer than maybe 100 characters. Most are a fair bit shorter than that, and I don't send that many to begin with. Same goes for Discord, although confirming that is harder, since it's contaminated with messaged written with an actual keyboard.
> Check HN?
To read? Sure. I even read books on my phone. Respond to a comment? Not unless my response is really short.
You're being pretty defensive / aggressive about what some might call a phone addiction.
Most on HN know the data: healthier people tend to enforce boundaries with their devices. The average person is addicted, yes, but I'm not sure being "the odd one" in an era of actually decreasing literacy and numeracy and attention span is the insult that you seem to think.
I was ready to agree with you, as that was my belief. (I also agree it's a sign of a dangerous addition, but just like everyone in the 60s smoked, everyone today use phones)
Then I cam across this, showing about even split between laptop and phone
Yes I’m sure that using my phone for things that in the before times I would have used a desktop computer to do over a 2400 baud modem is a negative for my life. Those negatives are around social media
Yes, during our first night of our 45 day stay in another country and she got a text from someone she is meeting on the first leg of our trip during our summer 45 day domestic trip asking could we come 3 days earlier. We were looking at our calendar, our Hyatt points, flights etc. while enjoying live music and planning our next get away.
I’m sure you would have thought we should have waited to take out my laptop when we got back home.
It wouldn't be so bad if both options were available. By all means, have your giant pro max or whatever if you want, but that shouldn't be the only reasonable option.
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