1x73: DEET Ox

Jono Bacon, Jeremy Garcia, Bryan Lunduke, and Stuart Langridge bring you Bad Voltage, in which Kinder Eggs make a surprising appearance, no time off is taken from the internet, and:

  • 00:02:12 It's becoming trendy, and possibly useful, to "digital detox": to take some time away from social media or the internet or the constant barrage of information in our modern age. But is it actually a good idea or just the hip thing to do? How do you manage the data flow, and do we need to hide from it now and again?
  • 00:23:55 A while back, Elon Musk proposed Hyperloop, a next-generation super-fast transportation system involving a long tube and metal canisters which you sit in and get flung along the tube at hundreds of miles an hour. Since then, a number of organisations have taken up the challenge and are working towards building such a thing. Can it work? If the technology works, what about the politics and the economics? Will we soon be able to travel between cities in a few minutes? We be the judges.

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@bryanlunduke your offline Wikipedia HHGTTG might be https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=itkach.aard2, I think; give it a shot!

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Hey now! That does look cool. Iā€™m going to take that for a spin.

About Hyperloop. There as been talks in Finland/Sweden about Hyperloop-connection between Helsinki and Stockholm. (And Finnish city of Turku in between.) Currently travelling from Helsinki to Turku by train takes about 2 hours. And from Turku to Stockholm by ferry around 11 hours. Hyperloop is said to take 28 minutes.

So far everything is just talks and speculations. I live in Turku and that would give about 15 minutes connection to two capital cities. That would certainly be a economic boost for my home town.

And cost about $28, according to the Fortune article. That seems like a really good deal if you live in Turku! How often do you think youā€™d use it?

Currently trip with train from Turku to Helsinki costs 20 euros ($22) and takes two hours. That 12 minutes (marked in the map of the article) is less than it takes for me to walk from home to the city centre of Turku. So, currently I visit Helsinki few times a year and Stockholm not even yearly, but with that kind of connection visits would be much more often. Helsinki and Stockholm both have lots of more theme parks, museums etc. than Turku.

For workers that would be much more userful. Turku would practically become a suburban for two nordic capitals and pendeling on both directions would be possible. Meaning more jobs and taxpayers for Turku.

Additionally the third capital, Tallinn, is just across the gulf from Helsinki.

One of the things we brought up in the discussion is that Hyperloopā€™s speed doesnā€™t help much if the Hyperport (or whatever itā€™s called; the end station) is five miles outside the city like airports are. Do you know what the plan is there? Itā€™s certainly nice ot be able to get to Helsinki in 12 minutes, but if youā€™ve then got to spend another hour on some crappy metro train to actually get to the bit of Helsinki you want, it hasnā€™t helped all that much?

I donā€™t think there are that detaild plans yet.

But true, Helsinki-Vantaa airport used to be about 30 minute bustrip away from railway station. Now they have metro train, which I believe is faster. Btw. Helsink (with surroundings)i is the only city in Finland that has metro at all.

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I donā€™t know why but @bryanlundukeā€™s voice gives me the creeps this episode

I fixed that for you.

I rather like all-new Calm Measured @bryanlunduke myself :slight_smile:

You have no idea how much you will come to regret this statement. :slight_smile:

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ is relevant to the Hyperloop discussion.

I should note that trains are cheap in France but not necessarily elsewhere. London to Scarborough, here in the UK, is about the same distance (190 miles), and a train takes three hours (between the US and French times) and costs a princely Ā£110, four times as much as France and three times as much as the US.

Long time listener, first time ā€˜callerā€™ :sunglasses:
I find the detox topic very interesting and it seems there is a trend now to get back to dumb phone (just look at the 300eur punkt one). Hereā€™s my opinion on it.

Lately Iā€™ve been experimenting with a bit of daily detox on my iPhone.
Instead of using like a general purpose device, Iā€™ve limited it to a communication device: phone, text and messengers (whatsapp, fb messenger,Skype, etc). I donā€™t message a lot and when I do mostly with my wife. No email configured as I use computer for that.
The only other thing I do with it is to listen to podcasts.
Also to impose these limits to myself, Iā€™ve used the ā€˜restrictionsā€™ under iOS to block a bunch of apps that are installed like Safari,News.

Apart from the above, Iā€™ve disabled most notifications for most of the messaging apps above, like they only show a badge count.

Also now at the end of the day Iā€™ve enable some accessibility features like: turn off color, invert colours. This is to mark the end of the day for me and to make it less attractive to pick it up to check something.

Would love to hear if someones elses does similar things :slight_smile:

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Thatā€™s interesting. Deliberately make your phone less visually appealing, to break the link between pleasure of using a nice thing and being on the internet. The aesthetic usability effect in reverse. Thatā€™s very clever!

About the digital detox segment,

I donā€™t know if you have heard of those designers who explain why we spend so much time looking at our phone, and who advocate for a change in the industry.

I think thatā€™s something that could be an argument for using xmpp or some linux distros, since those projects donā€™t have any incentive to capture user attention. If those projects evolve in this way.

I secretly hope than one day elementary OS build an messaging app that makes me spend less time on my computer. (They had some mockup of messaging app on their deviantart page back in 2012).

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I like the concept, but it seems to be a lot of rhetoric about how we must do this, and not a lot of actual examples of how to do it or which apps do it well or whether it helps to make your app do it when Facebook doesnā€™t. Can you explain how you think it should work?

I mostly thinking about what I have see here :

The main idea is to add a focus mode, where you donā€™t recieve message while your doing something except if the person who is talking to you click the ā€œitā€™s really urgentā€ button.

It would also remove the ā€œjohn has seen your messageā€ in instant messaging where you feel like ā€œcrap, he knows that I have read it and didnā€™t replyā€.

My biggest problem is that I have to launch a browser for almost everything, and once itā€™s open I just wander accross the internet without realising it.
I regulary want to anwser an email, and end up browsing 2h without even going to my webmail.

doesnā€™tā€¦ everyone press the button because their thing is obviously really important?

I donā€™t think so.

There is a difference between important and urgent. Most of the messages or mail that I receive donā€™t need an answer in the minute. If the app just show you a ā€œItazu is in focus mode at the moment. He will receive your message in 30 minutesā€. I think most of the time people would just be fine.

The goal is to propose something in between being totally disconnected, where people fear of missing something important. And always being connected where you are distracted by notification every 3 minutes.