Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric

blog.danpetrolito.xyz

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 276 posts

Re: I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric

#181

Post by jrmg »

godot wrote: post #150
donatj wrote: post #20

Mildly reminds me how being online on AIM or ICQ was an actual invitation to chat. I had so many interesting conversations with people I barely knew. There's no source of that signal that someone is open to chitchat these days, and it's in my opinion kind of killed what was once great about online communication.

Would anyone still use a desktop-only (no mobile) messenger where you have to run/turn on intentionally (not always-on like most mobile-first messengers nowadays), lists online/offline friends the way AIM/ICQ did, and you can only send messages with online friends? I get that most leisure computing has moved off of desktop to mobile in modern days, but there's definitely enough of us nerds who're on a computer a lot…

I think it probably is less. I’d hang out on my laptop in the evenings and mornings (like, while watching TV or reading news when eating breakfast) in a way I don’t now. I use my iPad or phone now.

I do wonder, though, if there’s a gap for a messenger app that runs only while in the foreground in your phone [edit: or tablet or computer!] - or maybe until you next lock the screen, so you can ‘be online’ only while reading, playing a game, or doomscrolling.

Re: I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric

#182

Post by sneak »

rockostrich wrote: post #167
sneak wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that Discord isn’t e2ee and logs all chats in plaintext for all time, including all DMs. This makes it a nonstarter for me; friends don’t serve as honey in the surveillance trap for communication with their friends. Nothing that builds up an ever-growing surveillance database on private conversations between friends can be in the running for “best”.

We're all aware of this and we have multiple people working in the defense industry with high clearances in the server. If something needs to be shared that can't be made public then it doesn't go in Discord. This covers about 99.9% of our correspondences.

The cognitive overhead of remembering where I can talk about what with which people seems exhausting. I deleted all chat apps except Signal from my phone.

Signal really should support bots.

> can't be made public then it doesn't go in Discord. This covers about 99.9%

Sometimes I forget that my friend groups are nothing like most peoples’ friend groups.

Re: I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric

#183

Post by gausswho »

pests wrote: post #169
gausswho wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like many who lived through this inversion I can absolutely relate. I've culled my notifications substantially and my life is better for it. But I miss that feeling of firing up AIM and seeking out someone to chat with. Or someone spotting my arrival and immediately saying hi. I realized yesterday that I don't use phones like others do. I want to be in airplane mode whenever my phone is locked. Not Do Not Disturb mod…

> firing up AIM and seeking out someone to chat with. Or someone spotting my arrival and immediately saying hi The best was when that hi came from the person you had steady started typing to

yes! before typing indicators.

Re: I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric

#184

Post by heeton »

DrillShopper wrote: post #42
thedanbob wrote: post #24

> I also had this idea to turn this into an IoT device that has 5 RGB lights and sits on your desk. It would light up when each friend you have delegated joins your Discord voice channel and you could customize the colour for each friend. If I get some traction I might turn it into a real product, so email me at my email address in my about page if that seems something you'd like. Hah, I'm also building something lik…

My partner is disabled, and my home office is far enough from the bedroom/her work desk that I sometimes can't hear her when she could use, wants, or needs help. These very different priorities make messaging me difficult for her sometimes, not to mention that I can't know what the urgency is if she messages me over SMS/Signal/etc. As a result, we were looking into a very similar system where we each have an LED sign…

I’ve built a few things like this using Nerves / Elixir on a pi. It’s got a really nice dev experience through to useful deployment and over-the-air updates.

I highly recommend it to anyone building little functional prototypes of this sort.

Re: I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric

#185

Post by abdullahkhalids »

worldsayshi wrote: post #133
udev4096 wrote: post #110

Going from signal to discord is crazy. How can you be OK with knowing that your personal voice chats are being monitored, recorded and sold to the next highest bidder? How can it be so easy to choose convenience over that? Or is it that we have essentially given up and wanna actively take a part in mass surveillance?

Is there some reasonable way to self host a (secure) voice chat channel?

Just create a second group in signal with your friends called "group X: call only". Then everyone mutes the group (which I think mutes calls as well). Then whenever someone wants to join the "voice chat" they can just initiate a call. If someone else sees and joins, so be it.

Re: I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric

#186

Post by BeetleB »

gausswho wrote: post #170
BeetleB wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I realized yesterday that I don't use phones like others do. I want to be in airplane mode whenever my phone is locked. Not Do Not Disturb mode. I want my modem off. I don't want any phone calls, ever. I'll get to your messages when my flow state has subsided. You're not alone. Here's how I solved it: Last year I really wanted a new smartphone just for the better camera. My existing phone from 2018 was still workin…

I have been considering this. I even came up with a name: Good Phone, Bad Phone. Your experience is instructive, thank you. Other than the additional cost, I think it has lots of upside. I daily drive a Pixel on GrapheneOS and most of what I install is from F-Droid repos. I'm wondering if I should just de-SIM that one to make it 'Good Phone' and my 'Bad Phone' should just be a Light Phone or maybe something more feat…

I should also add: I don't install apps like Signal/Whatsapp on the SIMless phone. No one should be able to call me on it. Period.

I do have a mail app on it, and it checks mail only when I tell it to (i.e. not running in the background giving me email notifications).

At home, I keep the phone with the SIM in one room. I can use the SIMless phone around the house and not worry about pings.

Re: I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric

#187

Post by MattJ100 »

udev4096 wrote: post #177
derkades wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mumble!

Mumble is awesome but definitely difficult to properly configure. Especially the TLS certs for any reverse proxy won't work directly, there's a hacky way to make it work which I don't fully trust

I work on a project in this space, and the endless insistence of people that they have to run clearly non-web things through reverse proxies always amazes me :)

Not everything is a web app, and it's trivial these days to obtain certificates, even without a proxy (certbot, etc.).

Of course I understand that if you host a lot of web apps, having all web requests routed through a universal proxy is nice for various reasons. But platforms like Discord and such are complex beasts and use more technologies than HTTP(S).

Re: I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric

#188

Post by mystifyingpoi »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #176
DrillShopper wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My partner is disabled, and my home office is far enough from the bedroom/her work desk that I sometimes can't hear her when she could use, wants, or needs help. These very different priorities make messaging me difficult for her sometimes, not to mention that I can't know what the urgency is if she messages me over SMS/Signal/etc. As a result, we were looking into a very similar system where we each have an LED sign…

Or just get a $5 radio doorbell. You know, when it's 'urgent, right now' you don't want to learn what you are too late because for whatever reason internet/wireless/cellular wasn't working.

This ^ anything else is just wanting to play with tech instead of solving the problem immediately. Which is fine, sure, but that radio doorbell (or better, 3 different ones for different priority levels, since it seems important) will fix the issue right now.

Re: I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric

#189

Post by Pilottwave »

sgarland wrote: post #70
DrillShopper wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My partner is disabled, and my home office is far enough from the bedroom/her work desk that I sometimes can't hear her when she could use, wants, or needs help. These very different priorities make messaging me difficult for her sometimes, not to mention that I can't know what the urgency is if she messages me over SMS/Signal/etc. As a result, we were looking into a very similar system where we each have an LED sign…

That’s a great idea! I remember on an Android phone - maybe Galaxy Nexus, or the original Pixel - you could blink an LED with different colors for different app notifications. I had blue, yellow, red, and green for various apps, and so without ever having the screen turn on or the device make sounds, I could tell if I should bother to check. To me, not having any sensory disabilities, that’s a lower cognitive load th…

It is so useful, for me a must have on every phone. on Android the app aodNotify is what I've been using to recreate it.

Re: I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric

#190

Post by viccis »

sneak wrote: post #182
rockostrich wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're all aware of this and we have multiple people working in the defense industry with high clearances in the server. If something needs to be shared that can't be made public then it doesn't go in Discord. This covers about 99.9% of our correspondences.

The cognitive overhead of remembering where I can talk about what with which people seems exhausting. I deleted all chat apps except Signal from my phone. Signal really should support bots. > can't be made public then it doesn't go in Discord. This covers about 99.9% Sometimes I forget that my friend groups are nothing like most peoples’ friend groups.

>The cognitive overhead of remembering where I can talk about what with which people seems exhausting

This is just part of life of having a clearance. If it's not Discord, then it's the happy hour where you have to worry about people getting a few too many beers deep and saying something stupid, and then others have an obligation to report it.

Have some prudence about what to say in what settings is a life skill in general.

Post reply on HN