Buy an electroshock "stun gun". Get some magnet wire. Make a coil. Hook the ends of the coil to the output of the electroshock device (scrape away the insulation enamel and solder it in place.) Ideally you'd heat-shrink those connections (slip the heat shrink around the coil wire before soldering, slide it into place, shrink it) and cable lace/tie to keep the coil formed nicely.
No idea on exactly that one, but basically all you need is a magnetron from any discarded microwave oven, a horn made from some beer can(s), some LV power for the magnetron heater and an electroshocker as HV pulse power supply.
And some presense of mind to not point the horn at any EM-reflective surfaces.
The „Emergency Override“ (press two buttons for 10 sec) reminds me of the iOS „Screen Time exceeded“ message. Took me like two days to develop the habit of instantly hitting the „no limit for today“ button every single time.
Sleep for Android (a popular sleep tracker/analyzer) allows you to "pay in" a small amount of money, like $5-15 per user choice via in-app purchases, that is lost as a donation to the developers if the set goal wasn't reached and refunded otherwise.
I thought that was a pretty clever way to go about it, I know people do a lot for $5!
I'm a simpler man, I keep hitting "15 more minutes" in an infinite loop. I'm also able to snooze my alarm for hours when I know I have to attend to something important, but not THAT important.
Some years ago, I was at a coffee shop with free wifi, which had become fairly common, but it had a captive portal that required a login, which was an innovation at the time. I apparently looked pretty nerdy, and the fellow at the next table asked if I could help him figure out his login problem, since the folks at the counter were at a loss.
Turns out, he was running a piece of web-monitoring software, which wouldn't let him access the login page because it couldn't get permission from its server, because it couldn't reach the server, because he hadn't gotten past the login page. Pretty straightforward little Catch-22.
We turned off his wifi for a moment and I ended up MAC-spoofing his device to complete the login on his behalf, and all was well.
Once he confirmed he was online successfully, I asked more about this monitoring software. Was it installed by his employer? No, turns out this was a religious thing, to avoid "temptation". Monitoring and approval was apparently done by another user of the software -- pairs of peers would agree to keep an eye on each other's browsing habits, the logic being that even just a little more visibility and accountability is all it takes to keep oneself on the straight-and-narrow.
What a fascinating little market I never knew existed!
I’ve had this for several years. It works. The lack of override is a HUGE plus.
From my understanding, if I really want to override I can email the company and ask for help, but that hasn’t happened in the 4-5 years I’ve had it.
The main uses I found for it are sticking my phone in there during pomodoros, and sticking cash in there on weekends that I can’t afford to spend.
One idea I’ve had that I haven’t implemented is putting a password on my computer or phone that someone else generates for me. For example, I might have my wife scribble a bunch of nonsense letters on a piece of paper, have her input that password on the device, then I would throw the piece of paper into the lockbox.
There actually is no override whatsoever. If you email them, they tell you how to break the plastic base without accidentally destroying the lid (since the bases are cheap to order replacements). Props to them for sticking to that mission statement.
I've used this since 1.5 years for sweets (basically daily...). So I take out a few sweets and lock it for a few hours, so that I don't have to fear that I overeat. It works really well and I'm really happy about it. Also, I didn't have to change the batteries once (well, you put in 4 AA batteries but still nice that it's no energy sink).
Seems like a text-based password (and not a button) would solve this problem. Just make it a string of random characters, write it on a piece of paper, then keep the paper inside the box.
I had the same experience. When given the option to override, the whole experience is ruined for me.
I’ve often thought of a lock out for investing. “I’ll buy this stock, and I’m not allowed to sell it for 5 years”. A hack is to invest in early stage startups, where you’ll often not have an option of selling early. Anything listed on a stock market is the opposite.
From what I can tell, it’s possible with scripting Bitcoin, to not allow a transaction for X years, but no one seems to offer this in an easy to use way
The most interesting self-control advice I got was to do the opposite. (And I tried it and similarly inspired things, with variations, on some stuff I need a bit of willpower).
Basically, if you want to stop doing something, force yourself to constantly do it – with a deadline. Can’t stop scrolling? Force yourself to only scroll social media for an hour. If you want to quit fast-food, force yourself to only eat fast-food every day for two weeks. If you want to stop doing something, force yourself to overdo it until you just can’t do it anymore. It works even to start doing things: if you struggle, e.g., to work on personal projects, (and you actually like them and sporadically do them), force yourself to not even touch anything like them for a few weeks, and you’ll be super eager. Forced vacations are also inspiring as hell.
Art students get a similar advice: “Every painter has a thousand bad paintings inside of them – get them out of yourself as soon as possible”. Whatever it is you crave and want to stop – just have at it, stuff yourself like a pig and you will look to make an actual change.
It's provocative but for me personally I think it's terrible advice. Out of everything I've read about breaking habits I've yet to see this recommended.
Aliexpress is just a treasure trove for ordering so many different kind of useful and often useless novelty items.
Unfortunately my country has now forever banned it and now I have to pay anywhere from 10 to 20 times for these same chinese items on Amazon and other sites (which I believe are still shipped through china but through a proxy country just so the shipping label doesn't say china).
AliExpress helped me cut my addiction to buying random crap off them, by banning any account that used a VPN and putting you permanently behind a captcha trap even if you later turn the VPN off. I guess I should thank them but I do miss those 2am purchases of lighty uppy stuff I don’t need.
India, over security concerns and maybe to teach China a lesson over recent border disputes (1).
I am not in favor or against it personally since I don't understand economics or politics, but god do i miss ordering random stuff from this website for few bucks.
The original lock is absolutely puny so I decided to learn more about padlocks to find a suitable replacement. As far as I can tell the short of it is that almost all of these locks are trivially unlocked without having to use brute force:
- All mainstream combination locks are trivially decoded with a modicum of knowledge. You can teach yourself to do it in 5 minutes with a youtube video. It's annoying because not having to carry a key is definitely nice, but in terms of anti-theft measures you might as well put a "plz don't steal" post-it on your bag.
- Many small padlocks use a spring loaded mechanism to lock the shackle (similar to the one in this post). Mostly for convenience as far as I can tell, since it means that you can lock it without having to use the key. It turn that means that most of these locks can be bumped (like in this post) or shimed.
- Many (but not all) of these lock have a very poorly designed core that often allows bypassing the pins entirely (you insert a lockpick all the way through the keyway and you can trigger the unlocking mechanism at the back without having to actually pick anything). Even if that's not an option the vast majority of small padlocks out there are not hugely pick-resistant.
Basically a semi-competent locksmith will be able to get them open in less than a minute. And of course at this size you don't even need any skill if destructive entry is an option, you can break them open with two wrenches.
My conclusion is that these small locks are really about keeping honest people honest and preventing opportunistic theft, but if you want to go beyond that you'll have to take a big leap in size and cost.
I never thought that a luggage lock is a great theft deterrent.
It's useful that your luggage can't just be opened up quickly and on the sly. For example when you check a suitcase in by baggage handlers [1]
Same goes for hotel room safes. I would certainly not store anything very valuable in there. But to lock away a couple hundred euros, some equipment and your cards, which you don't need to carry on your person it's good enough.
Certainly much better than just having your valuables lying around openly.
[1] Sure, a baggage handler with a set of TSA master keys can open it very quickly and possibly discreetly. Who has ever thought about anything which can go wrong with that implementation?
> Same goes for hotel room safes. I would certainly not store anything very valuable in there. But to lock away a couple hundred euros, some equipment and your cards, which you don't need to carry on your person it's good enough.
For stuff like that I usually just try and find a good hiding spot.
The hotel safes are trivial to open (most don't even bother changing the factory master password...) and that's the first place anyone is going to look for stuff to steal.
It's kinda like if the hotel room had an open wicker basket with a sign saying "STORE VALUABLES HERE"--you'd probably keep them literally anywhere _but_ there.
From what I've seen on youtube, pretty much every lock you see on a day to day basis is trivially bypassed. Unless you buy a fancy lock (and even then there is probably a way around it if you work hard enough), they act as a deterrent but if someone wants to break in or steal something they can whether it is a padlock or a door lock.
But a normal lock you can open any time you want when you realize that you have made a mistake. This is a notable difference in a lot of circumstances because humans often make poor decisions, so the ability to correct them is important.
These were a thing back in the 70's. Except it was mechanical instead of "self developed chip."
The 70's version probably worked better because with the incessant ticking off the timer, you'd put it in the garage or a shed or somewhere else inconvenient.
Wait till you see their ads. Start with a generic tag line like 'From house to home' or 'Everything for beautiful women'. Then put any random thing under it. Like 10 different vendors of the same box of 500 screws I just bought.
Another time I bought an antistatic rubber mat for electronics. Ali express ads have only 1 reaction for the keyword rubber, so for 6 months I got ads for all kinds of rubber ... things.. for, you know ... hobbies...
I've never heard anybody say they like these kinds of threads before. Maybe it's better on mobile, but Twitter makes it very difficult to browse on desktop.
Can we just have a sticky on every foone post on HN to tell people to stop complaining about it being a Twitter thread? Maybe then Foone himself [wouldn't hate being featured on Hacker News so much][0]. Not to mention he has a perfectly good reason to use Twitter threads (which he explains over and over): he has ADHD and it's a way to cope with it.
I don't really see how typing into Twitter's UI is any different than typing into a Notepad file. Just type the thought and hit <enter>. Any editing beyond that might be appreciated but isn't required.
For me they show up like that as well. But I still find that the format gives a weird stuttering to the conversation and adds so much "chrome" noise around the actual content.
In general I don't click twitter links on HN because I find the format painful for anything but short content. However I do make an exception for Foone as they have a lot of interesting stuff.
I would've assumed that's the one universally reviled thing in the world (awkward stuttery twitter threads, as opposed to just an article/blog), but my assumptions are challenged again (always a good thing :).
They got ADHD [0 and following tweets] and say that tweeting works for them but composing a blog post kills their concentration. So it is either Twitter or nothing at all. In that case I definitely prefer Twitter because Foone's stuff is always very interesting [1].
New startup idea: make something like Medium, where people can live-edit their blog posts one sentence at a time, and people can watch the process and write comments.
Judge not lest ye be judged; I have come to understand this to say that the practice of judgement – the perception of people and the world through the lens of judgement, the production of judgemental thoughts – it can turn on a person so that we will then tend to assume that we are being judged. And that it matters.
Conversely, we can also produce the correct statement that we are witnessing twitter being used as a long form blogging format.
I can also produce a judgement of myself: Maybe I’m seeing your comment through the lens of misunderstanding. And maybe I am just yet another person who thinks this is a conversation and that around it a society may be witnessed.
Rather like the object presented which is presented along with the sequence of letters “lock”. It opens up and we see its inner nature: Not a lock.
Yes. Foone tweet storms can be irritating to read but if you come in on the middle of one it can be fun to read it and keep refreshing until Foone posts another tweet.
I feel like most of the best Twitter users use long form threads. I've only just started following these kind of accounts but the information they add to the platform has been incredible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtNkUjQAHqY