7 ms·

Phone.wtf

44 points by gwbas1c 3y ago

maltalex 3y ago
> No. Nothing is an urgency. Except some things are.
- uoaei 3y ago
  If they're that urgent, your process is poorly designed.
  - r0b1n 3y ago
    Life is poorly designed. Kid had an accident, gotta go to the hospital? Of course that call is urgent. Even at work, there are things that really are urgent. But those shouldn't occur often, otherwise you would be right, poorly designed process.
    - uoaei 3y ago
      So you call the ambulance...?
      - r0b1n 3y ago
        What do you mean? Yes, of course the ambulance might take the kid to the hospital. And then I'll follow the ambulance in my car to be there for my kid in the hospital. Or the kid has already been brought to the hospital. In any case, as a parent, I need to get that urgent call informing me about it, and I need to be there asap.
  - bbarn 3y ago
    Next time my wife calls me when she's crashed her bicycle and needs picking up I'll remind her to schedule it better.
    - uoaei 3y ago
      If she needs medical attention, she should call an ambulance. If she doesn't, it's not urgent. If she has somewhere to be and didn't plan for a flat or other mechanical failure (as a result of a crash or something else), that process (schedule) was poorly designed.
      - jmye 3y ago
        This is a shockingly asocial response. I may not need an ambulance, but I may appreciate a ride home. I may get a flat and be unable to fix it, ten miles from home. I may go for a run and need a ride after I tweak my knee. My kid may get norovirus at school and need to be picked up and taken to the doctor. Trying to treat your life like a Jira ticket is slightly absurd. Pretending other people did something wrong because they don’t is ridiculous.
        uoaei 3y ago
        Appreciating something doesn't make it urgent. Tweaking a knee requires somewhere to sit -- again, not urgent, because the ground is always an option. Kid got sick, unless they need medical attention beyond what the school nurse can provide, they can sit for a couple hours and be fine while they eat some snacks and re-up on OTC meds. Honestly it seems like you're really stretching the meaning of "urgent" for online brownie points. People responding here really are trying to redefine "urgent" as a matter of personal preference or inconvenience. These blatant attempts are frankly shameful for a discussion community of this caliber. What makes things urgent is loss of life or limb or some other kind of serious trauma. Words mean things! It's perfectly fine to want things and to be a little sad when bad things happen, but bad feelings do not urgency make.
        maltalex 3y ago
        Urgent means something that requires immediate attention. It doesn't have to be a full blown emergency. Neither family members nor friends have to be at an immediate risk of losing a limb before asking you for immediate attention.
  - happytoexplain 3y ago
    I'm not usually on the "HN users can't think outside of tech" train, but holy crap.
    - uoaei 3y ago
      Nothing like a little pigeon-holing to justify quick and dirty judgments, eh?
- unstatusthequo 3y ago
  But when everything is urgent, nothing is.
  - lucb1e 3y ago
    It's also not like I message my boss before walking to his office, that doesn't make every time someone walks in equally urgent. Sometimes it'll be me asking about lunch, sometimes it'll be the firefighters. I agree a priority button would be nice when calling someone, to be able to differentiate, but how often do you get interrupted by a phone call during something that you didn't want to be interrupted? For me it's never so uninterruptable that declining the call was an issue; I decline calls maybe twice per year (on a total of maybe a dozen unexpected incoming calls altogether). I'd prefer if it's okay to just pick up a phone and see if someone is reachable.
  - yreg 3y ago
    That's an entirely different statement.
amriksohata 3y ago
I turn off all notifications except SMS and phone calls and mute all whatsapp contacts and groups except for my direct family. I have a zero inbox policy on my email and everything in my calendar must be marked complete for the day otherwise it moves along.
0xffff2 3y ago
Is this a really problem? It's vanishingly rare in my experience to here a phone ring these days. Rude people intentionally playing music or other media without headphones is a much larger but still rare phenomenon.
- ams92 3y ago
  > Is this a really problem? No it is not for a normal well adjusted person.
  - LoganDark 3y ago
    This comment comes off as claiming that neurodivergence is a bad thing.
    - cooper_ganglia 3y ago
      This comment comes off as claiming that being neurodivergent and being well-adjusted are incompatible ideas.
      - LoganDark 3y ago
        Absolutely not. I was referring to the use of "normal". Not "well adjusted".
- cfeduke 3y ago
  I practice this - DND, no interruptions, etc. - all of the time, with only my wife able to get through via a direct phone call for an emergency. However, when my friends gather for gaming every Friday night at our club - they do not practice this. It is non-stop interruption, chimes from phones, and very long sounds for a text message. I don't know if its a problem but awareness can't hurt.
  - jeanofthedead 3y ago
    Have everyone set their phone in a big bowl by the door!
lucb1e 3y ago
That's funny, in my family we have a policy of always calling twice because you often miss it by a second. This rule prevents that the callee tries to call back and you get this mismatch "number busy" (how have we still not figured out how to connect two people that are literally calling each other?). Works great for us. Please, call me twice! The decline button I use for when I can't talk right now but heard you. If you then call again, I will assume something happened. I like being reachable for those that have my number. So far, nobody has abused it I receive a phone call unexpectedly maybe once a month, so it's unlikely that anyone is bothered by a buzzing phone for 1-2x 25 seconds. I don't need it to be on "do not dare disturb me" all the time...
black_puppydog 3y ago
I agree about 99% with this (I do have some numbers on a very short list that will absolutely raise as much noise as possible) but I think things like "silent notifications" and "vibra by default" will go against some people's KPIs. So there's nothing we can do about it since we all know KPIs are the only truth (TM)
dzikimarian 3y ago
> The ideal solution should be a mandate to ban all loud phone sounds in public. Loud breathing is still ok? Really weird hill to die on.
- mastazi 3y ago
  Is it really that weird? I mean we use to have stores selling ringtones 10-15 years ago and Crazy Frog was climbing the charts [1]. Things have changed, and at least where I leave, most phones around me are permanently kept on vibration mode. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Frog
  - mattl 3y ago
    You can still buy ringtones from iTunes in 2023
- lucb1e 3y ago
  I wouldn't mind if people would just use headphones for the music they want to listen to rather than putting it on loud for all the neighbors to hear, so I kind of agree with the general "be conscious of others". But, yeah, conversations at a normal tone in a bus or train should be perfectly fine, including the ten seconds of ringing which that includes... it's those that are trying to talk directly to the communication mast, or people bringing loudspeakers to public places to play their music, that I find bothersome.
predictabl3 3y ago
Oh I looove this. I did this right after I quit Twitter. My mental health is streets ahead of where it used to be. Plus it's so much nicer to plan a call and do it over a reliable internet calling platform instead of the "phone". If I had kids, maybe the "nothing is urgent" would be different, but I also know modern parents can't fathom the fact that I was never reachable during school, ever, and that was perfectly normal and fine. Android let's you customize DND as well, so I don't even see new or existing notifications unless I swipe down. This means if I get my phone out to look something up, I'm not going to get distracted for 5 minutes. Modern phones are a plague. Dates, parents, siblings, coworkers everyone seems to be oblivious to how often they will just drop out of a conversation midsentence because their phone buzzed or beeped. I just stop talking until they're done now, which inevitably makes them uncomfortable. Sorry, it's rude AF and I get tired of repeating myself.
rolodato 3y ago
One disgusting trend I see with many phone apps is notification spam with no fine-grained option to disable them without potentially disabling transactional notifications. Ride-sharing and delivery apps are particularly annoying for this. I remember the time when phone OSes did not have notification categories but it’s not a useful feature if app developers don’t implement them.
- tomrod 3y ago
  Looking at you, Uber, and my once-a-month ride somehow equating to 10 UberEats notices per day. Marketers -- you're on notice.
  - mattl 3y ago
    Uninstall Uber Eats until you need it again but yes this sucks.
    - tomrod 3y ago
      I don't have Uber Eats app or use the service, but if I could use the marketing cash they offer as currency I'd have a nice chunk of the office rent paid each month.
  - TheHappyOddish 3y ago
    I disabled notifications for Uber years ago for ths, the first time I got a marketing push. It's your phone, and they can tell if you've disabled push. Tell them you're not ok with it.
    - tomrod 3y ago
      I use the notifications for the once-a-month reserved ride I have to take. Else this would be the solution.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
holmesworcester 3y ago
I support most of this, but the one thing I definitely want my phone to ring for is if I have a scheduled meeting on Zoom or some such. Missing those meetings or being more than a few minutes late always feels terrible, and it's so easy to do when I'm heads-down working on something. I would vehemently oppose a ban on public ringing for this reason--and also because it's needlessly authoritarian! If people want to ring at a similar volume to a person speaking or a baby crying, let them ring.
- frizlab 3y ago
  On Mac I use this https://inyourface.app/ https://inyourface.app/
squeegee_scream 3y ago
I'm 100% onboard with the notifications thing. My phone only makes noise for phone calls, reminders, and calendar events. All other notifications are silent. In addition to that, I only have a couple of apps that display number of unread messages. A few times I've had to give advice to a friend or coworker about managing their notifications because they were drive to distraction by them. It's mind boggling to me that people don't figure this out on their own.
Unfrozen0688 3y ago
Oneplus phones have a nice hardware switch to set it on ring, vibrate or silent quickly, it is very nice! https://community.oneplus.com/thread/1155070 https://community.oneplus.com/thread/1155070
- TheHappyOddish 3y ago
  As has every iPhone ever ;).
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
guyzero 3y ago
I admire the dedication to single-page sites.
- Minor49er 3y ago
  I don't know. An entire dedicated domain and GitHub project just for a paragraph and a couple of lists seems excessive. I'm surprised that the author didn't just post this on his blog [1] [1] https://brajeshwar.com/blog/ https://brajeshwar.com/blog/
paxys 3y ago
Some people live their entire lives just looking for the next thing to get outraged about. What situation are you in where phone ringing is that much of a problem? Maybe work on extracting yourself from it rather than build a whole website asking the entire world to change in your favor?
- edfletcher_t137 3y ago
  Not to mention many of us live like this already without needing to proselytize it. Just Do It.
  - lucb1e 3y ago
    > To attempt to convert someone to one's own religious faith. About 175 occurrences per billion words at its peak in 2000, according to wolframalpha.
    - edfletcher_t137 3y ago
      Haha wow, thank you for this: I had no idea! It's a good word, deserves more exposure than that :)
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  What situation are you in where you need to have a loud phone in public places? Unless you're an emergency physician or something, I can't actually think of one. Also: you're grossly mistaken if you think the whole world annoys other people with their phones.
1-6 3y ago
I've downloaded Universal Android Debloater and it changed how I used my phones. If you have some extra phones lying around, convert them to single-purpose devices for yourself or your kids.
donatj 3y ago
> No. Nothing is an urgency. False. There needs to be a break through "this is actually an emergency" way to get through silent mode. My wife keeps her phone silent at all times and on two separate occasions I have had actual emergencies and been unable to reach her. (A car crash where my car was totaled and a separate medical emergency) It's actually infuriating.
- rob 3y ago
  On iPhone, there's an "Emergency Bypass" toggle for each contact which I think would solve this.
- mongol 3y ago
  I think I have seen a setting like that on my phone, but now I can't find it. Two calls in a row should break through, I think. At least for numbers in my phonebook
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- lucb1e 3y ago
  Similar for my partner, though it was never a real emergency but rather things like asking what I should bring for dinner (they're particular about food): things that are useful for them as well as for me. I always had to wait for them to randomly look at their phone, which could be any time because nothing ever made any buzz or noise. (Conversely, they did call me a few times during what were actual emergencies for them, such as a car crash.) We had a conversation and they configured their phone differently ~3 years ago. I asked them just now (look, OP, I talked to someone synchronously!) and they say it's "fine" - me: "just fine?" - them: "no it's good actually" and they'd set it up again if they had to re-make the choice. I am conscious of when I invoke the power, as with everyone, but still call somewhat regularly, so their positive rating is a good sign I suppose. Have you brought this up with your partner? Either way, yeah, this sort of thing is something you talk about only after you identify there is a problem. Ideally we'd have good defaults, and while I disagree with OP on their proposal for new defaults, their opinion is clearly borne from frustration. Perhaps phones should, when a contact calls you once while on silent, create a silent notification that asks "Allow <contact> to ring phone when calling twice within one minute?" with as buttons [No] [Buzz] and [Ring]
beauHD 3y ago
I've turned my phone into a pull medium instead of a push medium (they're called 'push notifications' for a reason). Notifications jolt you out of whatever you're doing. I'm not in Vegas playing slot machines either. Those little red dot 'badges' are what gamblers enjoy, and I'm not some addict. I've turned them all off in iOS. Look for 'badges' in settings and turn them all off, including push notifications, for your own sanity.
bbarn 3y ago
This starts off with "I chose..." and ends with "there should be a mandate" It's very easy for people who wear pants to live a life where their phone is never switched off of vibrate mode and lives in their pocket. They will never need a noisy phone, and this is how I life my life. My wife has pockets on about 10% of her clothes, and so typically her phone is in a purse, or on the table next to her. She will not notice it vibrating, thus, she uses the convenient for her feature where it audibly rings. My mother is the same way, but she uses hers so infrequently it simply sits plugged into a charger and works like an old landline. She also uses the ring feature. Your own issues with noise (which I share many of, by the way) do not entitle you or I to request "mandates" that affect others negatively. The world's a big place and you have to learn to share it with other people.
- 3np 3y ago
  Phone ringing is already banned in some places, like public transport in some countries. I guess OPs argument is to expand this to more public areas and that your wife wouldn't pick up phone calls there in the first place. If she wants to notice her text notifications when e.g. on the train or in the mall, she'd have to pick the phone out of her bag.
  - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
    > Phone ringing is already banned in some places, like public transport in some countries. That seems insane. What countries? Conversations I get, but ringing?
    - lucb1e 3y ago
      I can imagine it being against the rules, such as in a silent compartment on Dutch/German trains (which is imo nearly the same as law because it's a subsidised public service), and perhaps some religious state has it codified that churches are not to be disturbed or whatever, but that doesn't mean it gets enforced if you're clearly flustered, sorry, and decline the call immediately and it doesn't keep happening to the same person. So even if you get an answer to "where in the world", I'd like to add "but does that get actively enforced at all?"
lucb1e 3y ago
If you pay for a phone number every month, those whom you gave the number can call you. Surprise!
- gwbas1c 3y ago
  It's a bit more complicated then that: Some very inconsiderate people buy and sell phone numbers; who then call you to sell you things that you do not want. Often, you get repeated calls for these things. (I get many calls from people who "want to make me aware of solar panels," who seem to know where I live, but can't take the time to look at a satellite picture of my roof to see that it's covered in panels.) (At least, this is a problem in the US. I don't know about your country.) Furthermore, it's hard to go about life without a phone number. Interacting with various businesses and other organizations often requires a phone number. I think the bigger problem is that some people just think they have the right to interrupt anyone at any time for any reason. It just doesn't scale, especially when it's easier and easier to make someone's phone ding for whatever trivial reason someone comes up with.
nperez 3y ago
There are a few good points here but the author doesn't help their case by suggesting that ringing phones should be illegal. That's ridiculous on multiple levels. I prefer to have my phone on silent, and I often leave my home without my phone if I don't have any on-call commitments or whatever. I don't like being constantly connected, but that's a small problem for me to work through and not anyone else.
binarymax 3y ago
I’ve had my phone this way for years. The only exceptions are people in my favorites, which is only my immediate family in case of emergency. It’s quite relaxing, to be in control of when I do specific tasks like check notifications and call people back. If you find yourself overwhelmed I recommend trying this out.
mongol 3y ago
A mix of personal and public policies. I don't care which calls this person answers, personally I have stopped answering unknown numbers except if I expect a call. But out in public, I don't have much of a problem if a phone rings with a ringtone, if it is not annoyingly loud. Sometimes you put your phone somewhere else than in your pocket, and I think it is good if it rings so I can hear it from a distance. The problem I see that spam calls goes directly to phone. I would like them never to even reach my phone. Like a spam filter on a server, rather than on the client. I would want more control over this.
troupe 3y ago
If every one does this and sets their phones to DND, I'm not sure it will work to just call people back when you see they called. No one is ever going to be able to answer the phone unless they are sitting there staring at it.
PrivateButts 3y ago
This has been a constant bit of friction between my wife and I. To me, the norms are: - Unscheduled calls are if it's an emergency or something that you need an answer to right now - Calling twice in a row is an emergency - SMS if it's important but not urgent - Discord chat if it's just casual messaging or pics This is how my family and everyone else I know communicate, but my wife. My wife will call me repeatedly to tell me that they just got out of work and are going to the store. It really doesn't help that the bluetooth in their car is trash too, so answering the call is rewards you with feedback hell. It gets me in the habit of not dropping everything to answer their calls if it's around when they get out of work, which has bitten us twice when they couldn't get a hold of me for a bit when they had car trouble and needed a rescue. To me, personal calls operate on a reputation system since you don't know what they will be about until you're already answering them. If you burn that rep on calls that don't matter, all someone will think the next time they see you on caller id is that it can wait.
- dmonitor 3y ago
  > Discord chat if it's just casual messaging or pics It's interesting to me that discord has become a "default" for you. For my social group, discord is only used for people I only have an online presence with. If I want to do something IRL, I send an SMS or something.
  - PrivateButts 3y ago
    It's because it's on every device we use. Works in the browser so I don't have to install a client as well. Just was the chat tool we both used heavily at the time, and now it's got inertia.
  - lucb1e 3y ago
    Surprises me too. For decades, we had incremental improvements where more and more privacy and encryption was added to chat apps (e.g.: WhatsApp used to send messages in plain text, then added encryption to the server, then end to end encryption), and then Discord came along with none of that and all the gamers felt a need to use it. Eh? I was a gamer until just before Discord appeared but what ever happened to things like Mumble and Signal
glitcher 3y ago
This is clearly missing mention of their lawn, and instructions to get off of said lawn =)
deergomoo 3y ago
I think there’s a lot of generational mismatch around this stuff, which I guess is to be expected when a sizeable portion of the people alive today grew up with nothing but a landline. The biggest things I struggle with in my family is the older folks not seeing SMS as asynchronous communication. Just because I’ve had time to send a text, it doesn’t mean I’m free for a call, and it doesn’t mean that I’m going to be able to hold an ongoing conversation right this second. At the risk of sounding misanthropic, I struggle with phone calls in general and find them to be a terrible distraction; not just for me but also for whoever I happen to be with at the time, as a shared activity means we both have to stop what we’re doing. Sure I could just ignore the call, but at this point there are several members of my family who are at the age where an unprompted phone call could well be bad news. Then when I turns out to be for idle chit-chat in the middle of my work day I just end up feeling both irritated and guilty for feeling irritated.
exrfggdgg 3y ago
Just silence your phone and get on with your life.
macNchz 3y ago
There's a big generational gap here, I think, between people who did and did not come of age during a time where telemarketing was a nascent industry and–when then the phone rang–you had no idea who it was, and they couldn't leave a message. Missing an important call in a situation where the person calling couldn't leave a message, and couldn't necessarily be reached if they were heading out, was a much bigger deal! I'm 35 and grew up with answering machines, then email, texts, cell phones, and voicemail soon after. Phone calls have always sort of bugged me. My parents did not, and for them the phone ringing has always been kind of an urgent matter. Letting it ring, even in the middle of something, and despite the fact they'll get a message and be able to deal with it easily later, clearly bothers them.
aylmao 3y ago
Personally, I find calls less "distracting" than texts or emails. Information gets exchanged much more quickly and naturally with voice, it gets done, and you can move on. With text/email things accumulate and ultimately "high-priority" things mix up with low priority messages in your inbox. For me distraction isn't so much about _when_ my phone requires my attention. It's about how long I ultimately end up thinking about my phone, which invariably is more time I opt to "poll" for notifications, as opposed to get a phone call "pushed" on me.
go_prodev 3y ago
I rarely get calls, so when I do, I usually don't notice it ringing in my pocket. I'd prefer a phone that zapped me.
- jeanofthedead 3y ago
  This is why I love my Apple Watch. Haptic vibrations are really handy!
- lucb1e 3y ago
  That actually sounds like a really funny feature that would make the brand be mentioned in headlines worldwide. I hope someone at a phone company in Mumbai also has this idea and makes it as an add-on to your USB-C port or something so we can all have this :D
PrimeMcFly 3y ago
I kind of do something similar, but rather than have the phone in DND mode, I use an app to block and send all calls to voicemail by default. I can turn it off if accepting a call, else, I'll call back if and when I feel like it. Another useful feature for me is an app to customize the LED lights, so I can assign different colors and blink rates for different apps and different types of notifications. These two things really make me feel like I'm in full control, and make my phone experience infinitely better.
tenebrisalietum 3y ago
It would be cool if, for people you select and obviously trust well (the type that you typically need to pick up a call from) they could record 3 seconds of audio and that would be the "ringtone." This feature would have to be completely 100% opt-in. It would be cooler and better if this was reliably transcribed to text and displayed with the ringing screen.

Phone.wtf

44 points by gwbas1c 3y ago

maltalex 3y ago

> No. Nothing is an urgency. Except some things are.

uoaei 3y ago
If they're that urgent, your process is poorly designed.
- r0b1n 3y ago
  Life is poorly designed. Kid had an accident, gotta go to the hospital? Of course that call is urgent. Even at work, there are things that really are urgent. But those shouldn't occur often, otherwise you would be right, poorly designed process.
  - uoaei 3y ago
    So you call the ambulance...?
    - r0b1n 3y ago
      What do you mean? Yes, of course the ambulance might take the kid to the hospital. And then I'll follow the ambulance in my car to be there for my kid in the hospital. Or the kid has already been brought to the hospital. In any case, as a parent, I need to get that urgent call informing me about it, and I need to be there asap.
- bbarn 3y ago
  Next time my wife calls me when she's crashed her bicycle and needs picking up I'll remind her to schedule it better.
  - uoaei 3y ago
    If she needs medical attention, she should call an ambulance. If she doesn't, it's not urgent. If she has somewhere to be and didn't plan for a flat or other mechanical failure (as a result of a crash or something else), that process (schedule) was poorly designed.
    - jmye 3y ago
      This is a shockingly asocial response. I may not need an ambulance, but I may appreciate a ride home. I may get a flat and be unable to fix it, ten miles from home. I may go for a run and need a ride after I tweak my knee. My kid may get norovirus at school and need to be picked up and taken to the doctor. Trying to treat your life like a Jira ticket is slightly absurd. Pretending other people did something wrong because they don’t is ridiculous.
      - uoaei 3y ago
        Appreciating something doesn't make it urgent. Tweaking a knee requires somewhere to sit -- again, not urgent, because the ground is always an option. Kid got sick, unless they need medical attention beyond what the school nurse can provide, they can sit for a couple hours and be fine while they eat some snacks and re-up on OTC meds. Honestly it seems like you're really stretching the meaning of "urgent" for online brownie points. People responding here really are trying to redefine "urgent" as a matter of personal preference or inconvenience. These blatant attempts are frankly shameful for a discussion community of this caliber. What makes things urgent is loss of life or limb or some other kind of serious trauma. Words mean things! It's perfectly fine to want things and to be a little sad when bad things happen, but bad feelings do not urgency make.
        maltalex 3y ago
        Urgent means something that requires immediate attention. It doesn't have to be a full blown emergency. Neither family members nor friends have to be at an immediate risk of losing a limb before asking you for immediate attention.
- happytoexplain 3y ago
  I'm not usually on the "HN users can't think outside of tech" train, but holy crap.
  - uoaei 3y ago
    Nothing like a little pigeon-holing to justify quick and dirty judgments, eh?
unstatusthequo 3y ago
But when everything is urgent, nothing is.
- lucb1e 3y ago
  It's also not like I message my boss before walking to his office, that doesn't make every time someone walks in equally urgent. Sometimes it'll be me asking about lunch, sometimes it'll be the firefighters. I agree a priority button would be nice when calling someone, to be able to differentiate, but how often do you get interrupted by a phone call during something that you didn't want to be interrupted? For me it's never so uninterruptable that declining the call was an issue; I decline calls maybe twice per year (on a total of maybe a dozen unexpected incoming calls altogether). I'd prefer if it's okay to just pick up a phone and see if someone is reachable.
- yreg 3y ago
  That's an entirely different statement.

amriksohata 3y ago

I turn off all notifications except SMS and phone calls and mute all whatsapp contacts and groups except for my direct family. I have a zero inbox policy on my email and everything in my calendar must be marked complete for the day otherwise it moves along.

0xffff2 3y ago

Is this a really problem? It's vanishingly rare in my experience to here a phone ring these days. Rude people intentionally playing music or other media without headphones is a much larger but still rare phenomenon.

ams92 3y ago
> Is this a really problem? No it is not for a normal well adjusted person.
- LoganDark 3y ago
  This comment comes off as claiming that neurodivergence is a bad thing.
  - cooper_ganglia 3y ago
    This comment comes off as claiming that being neurodivergent and being well-adjusted are incompatible ideas.
    - LoganDark 3y ago
      Absolutely not. I was referring to the use of "normal". Not "well adjusted".
cfeduke 3y ago
I practice this - DND, no interruptions, etc. - all of the time, with only my wife able to get through via a direct phone call for an emergency. However, when my friends gather for gaming every Friday night at our club - they do not practice this. It is non-stop interruption, chimes from phones, and very long sounds for a text message. I don't know if its a problem but awareness can't hurt.
- jeanofthedead 3y ago
  Have everyone set their phone in a big bowl by the door!

lucb1e 3y ago

That's funny, in my family we have a policy of always calling twice because you often miss it by a second. This rule prevents that the callee tries to call back and you get this mismatch "number busy" (how have we still not figured out how to connect two people that are literally calling each other?). Works great for us. Please, call me twice! The decline button I use for when I can't talk right now but heard you. If you then call again, I will assume something happened. I like being reachable for those that have my number. So far, nobody has abused it I receive a phone call unexpectedly maybe once a month, so it's unlikely that anyone is bothered by a buzzing phone for 1-2x 25 seconds. I don't need it to be on "do not dare disturb me" all the time...

black_puppydog 3y ago

I agree about 99% with this (I do have some numbers on a very short list that will absolutely raise as much noise as possible) but I think things like "silent notifications" and "vibra by default" will go against some people's KPIs. So there's nothing we can do about it since we all know KPIs are the only truth (TM)

dzikimarian 3y ago

> The ideal solution should be a mandate to ban all loud phone sounds in public. Loud breathing is still ok? Really weird hill to die on.

mastazi 3y ago
Is it really that weird? I mean we use to have stores selling ringtones 10-15 years ago and Crazy Frog was climbing the charts [1]. Things have changed, and at least where I leave, most phones around me are permanently kept on vibration mode. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Frog
- mattl 3y ago
  You can still buy ringtones from iTunes in 2023
lucb1e 3y ago
I wouldn't mind if people would just use headphones for the music they want to listen to rather than putting it on loud for all the neighbors to hear, so I kind of agree with the general "be conscious of others". But, yeah, conversations at a normal tone in a bus or train should be perfectly fine, including the ten seconds of ringing which that includes... it's those that are trying to talk directly to the communication mast, or people bringing loudspeakers to public places to play their music, that I find bothersome.

predictabl3 3y ago

Oh I looove this. I did this right after I quit Twitter. My mental health is streets ahead of where it used to be. Plus it's so much nicer to plan a call and do it over a reliable internet calling platform instead of the "phone". If I had kids, maybe the "nothing is urgent" would be different, but I also know modern parents can't fathom the fact that I was never reachable during school, ever, and that was perfectly normal and fine. Android let's you customize DND as well, so I don't even see new or existing notifications unless I swipe down. This means if I get my phone out to look something up, I'm not going to get distracted for 5 minutes. Modern phones are a plague. Dates, parents, siblings, coworkers everyone seems to be oblivious to how often they will just drop out of a conversation midsentence because their phone buzzed or beeped. I just stop talking until they're done now, which inevitably makes them uncomfortable. Sorry, it's rude AF and I get tired of repeating myself.

rolodato 3y ago

One disgusting trend I see with many phone apps is notification spam with no fine-grained option to disable them without potentially disabling transactional notifications. Ride-sharing and delivery apps are particularly annoying for this. I remember the time when phone OSes did not have notification categories but it’s not a useful feature if app developers don’t implement them.

tomrod 3y ago
Looking at you, Uber, and my once-a-month ride somehow equating to 10 UberEats notices per day. Marketers -- you're on notice.
- mattl 3y ago
  Uninstall Uber Eats until you need it again but yes this sucks.
  - tomrod 3y ago
    I don't have Uber Eats app or use the service, but if I could use the marketing cash they offer as currency I'd have a nice chunk of the office rent paid each month.
- TheHappyOddish 3y ago
  I disabled notifications for Uber years ago for ths, the first time I got a marketing push. It's your phone, and they can tell if you've disabled push. Tell them you're not ok with it.
  - tomrod 3y ago
    I use the notifications for the once-a-month reserved ride I have to take. Else this would be the solution.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

holmesworcester 3y ago

I support most of this, but the one thing I definitely want my phone to ring for is if I have a scheduled meeting on Zoom or some such. Missing those meetings or being more than a few minutes late always feels terrible, and it's so easy to do when I'm heads-down working on something. I would vehemently oppose a ban on public ringing for this reason--and also because it's needlessly authoritarian! If people want to ring at a similar volume to a person speaking or a baby crying, let them ring.

frizlab 3y ago
On Mac I use this https://inyourface.app/ https://inyourface.app/

squeegee_scream 3y ago

I'm 100% onboard with the notifications thing. My phone only makes noise for phone calls, reminders, and calendar events. All other notifications are silent. In addition to that, I only have a couple of apps that display number of unread messages. A few times I've had to give advice to a friend or coworker about managing their notifications because they were drive to distraction by them. It's mind boggling to me that people don't figure this out on their own.

Unfrozen0688 3y ago

Oneplus phones have a nice hardware switch to set it on ring, vibrate or silent quickly, it is very nice! https://community.oneplus.com/thread/1155070 https://community.oneplus.com/thread/1155070

TheHappyOddish 3y ago
As has every iPhone ever ;).

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

guyzero 3y ago

I admire the dedication to single-page sites.

Minor49er 3y ago
I don't know. An entire dedicated domain and GitHub project just for a paragraph and a couple of lists seems excessive. I'm surprised that the author didn't just post this on his blog [1] [1] https://brajeshwar.com/blog/ https://brajeshwar.com/blog/

paxys 3y ago

Some people live their entire lives just looking for the next thing to get outraged about. What situation are you in where phone ringing is that much of a problem? Maybe work on extracting yourself from it rather than build a whole website asking the entire world to change in your favor?

edfletcher_t137 3y ago
Not to mention many of us live like this already without needing to proselytize it. Just Do It.
- lucb1e 3y ago
  > To attempt to convert someone to one's own religious faith. About 175 occurrences per billion words at its peak in 2000, according to wolframalpha.
  - edfletcher_t137 3y ago
    Haha wow, thank you for this: I had no idea! It's a good word, deserves more exposure than that :)
Turing_Machine 3y ago
What situation are you in where you need to have a loud phone in public places? Unless you're an emergency physician or something, I can't actually think of one. Also: you're grossly mistaken if you think the whole world annoys other people with their phones.

1-6 3y ago

I've downloaded Universal Android Debloater and it changed how I used my phones. If you have some extra phones lying around, convert them to single-purpose devices for yourself or your kids.

donatj 3y ago

> No. Nothing is an urgency. False. There needs to be a break through "this is actually an emergency" way to get through silent mode. My wife keeps her phone silent at all times and on two separate occasions I have had actual emergencies and been unable to reach her. (A car crash where my car was totaled and a separate medical emergency) It's actually infuriating.

rob 3y ago
On iPhone, there's an "Emergency Bypass" toggle for each contact which I think would solve this.
mongol 3y ago
I think I have seen a setting like that on my phone, but now I can't find it. Two calls in a row should break through, I think. At least for numbers in my phonebook
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
lucb1e 3y ago
Similar for my partner, though it was never a real emergency but rather things like asking what I should bring for dinner (they're particular about food): things that are useful for them as well as for me. I always had to wait for them to randomly look at their phone, which could be any time because nothing ever made any buzz or noise. (Conversely, they did call me a few times during what were actual emergencies for them, such as a car crash.) We had a conversation and they configured their phone differently ~3 years ago. I asked them just now (look, OP, I talked to someone synchronously!) and they say it's "fine" - me: "just fine?" - them: "no it's good actually" and they'd set it up again if they had to re-make the choice. I am conscious of when I invoke the power, as with everyone, but still call somewhat regularly, so their positive rating is a good sign I suppose. Have you brought this up with your partner? Either way, yeah, this sort of thing is something you talk about only after you identify there is a problem. Ideally we'd have good defaults, and while I disagree with OP on their proposal for new defaults, their opinion is clearly borne from frustration. Perhaps phones should, when a contact calls you once while on silent, create a silent notification that asks "Allow <contact> to ring phone when calling twice within one minute?" with as buttons [No] [Buzz] and [Ring]

beauHD 3y ago

I've turned my phone into a pull medium instead of a push medium (they're called 'push notifications' for a reason). Notifications jolt you out of whatever you're doing. I'm not in Vegas playing slot machines either. Those little red dot 'badges' are what gamblers enjoy, and I'm not some addict. I've turned them all off in iOS. Look for 'badges' in settings and turn them all off, including push notifications, for your own sanity.

bbarn 3y ago

This starts off with "I chose..." and ends with "there should be a mandate" It's very easy for people who wear pants to live a life where their phone is never switched off of vibrate mode and lives in their pocket. They will never need a noisy phone, and this is how I life my life. My wife has pockets on about 10% of her clothes, and so typically her phone is in a purse, or on the table next to her. She will not notice it vibrating, thus, she uses the convenient for her feature where it audibly rings. My mother is the same way, but she uses hers so infrequently it simply sits plugged into a charger and works like an old landline. She also uses the ring feature. Your own issues with noise (which I share many of, by the way) do not entitle you or I to request "mandates" that affect others negatively. The world's a big place and you have to learn to share it with other people.

3np 3y ago
Phone ringing is already banned in some places, like public transport in some countries. I guess OPs argument is to expand this to more public areas and that your wife wouldn't pick up phone calls there in the first place. If she wants to notice her text notifications when e.g. on the train or in the mall, she'd have to pick the phone out of her bag.
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  > Phone ringing is already banned in some places, like public transport in some countries. That seems insane. What countries? Conversations I get, but ringing?
  - lucb1e 3y ago
    I can imagine it being against the rules, such as in a silent compartment on Dutch/German trains (which is imo nearly the same as law because it's a subsidised public service), and perhaps some religious state has it codified that churches are not to be disturbed or whatever, but that doesn't mean it gets enforced if you're clearly flustered, sorry, and decline the call immediately and it doesn't keep happening to the same person. So even if you get an answer to "where in the world", I'd like to add "but does that get actively enforced at all?"

lucb1e 3y ago

If you pay for a phone number every month, those whom you gave the number can call you. Surprise!

gwbas1c 3y ago
It's a bit more complicated then that: Some very inconsiderate people buy and sell phone numbers; who then call you to sell you things that you do not want. Often, you get repeated calls for these things. (I get many calls from people who "want to make me aware of solar panels," who seem to know where I live, but can't take the time to look at a satellite picture of my roof to see that it's covered in panels.) (At least, this is a problem in the US. I don't know about your country.) Furthermore, it's hard to go about life without a phone number. Interacting with various businesses and other organizations often requires a phone number. I think the bigger problem is that some people just think they have the right to interrupt anyone at any time for any reason. It just doesn't scale, especially when it's easier and easier to make someone's phone ding for whatever trivial reason someone comes up with.

nperez 3y ago

There are a few good points here but the author doesn't help their case by suggesting that ringing phones should be illegal. That's ridiculous on multiple levels. I prefer to have my phone on silent, and I often leave my home without my phone if I don't have any on-call commitments or whatever. I don't like being constantly connected, but that's a small problem for me to work through and not anyone else.

binarymax 3y ago

I’ve had my phone this way for years. The only exceptions are people in my favorites, which is only my immediate family in case of emergency. It’s quite relaxing, to be in control of when I do specific tasks like check notifications and call people back. If you find yourself overwhelmed I recommend trying this out.

mongol 3y ago

A mix of personal and public policies. I don't care which calls this person answers, personally I have stopped answering unknown numbers except if I expect a call. But out in public, I don't have much of a problem if a phone rings with a ringtone, if it is not annoyingly loud. Sometimes you put your phone somewhere else than in your pocket, and I think it is good if it rings so I can hear it from a distance. The problem I see that spam calls goes directly to phone. I would like them never to even reach my phone. Like a spam filter on a server, rather than on the client. I would want more control over this.

troupe 3y ago

If every one does this and sets their phones to DND, I'm not sure it will work to just call people back when you see they called. No one is ever going to be able to answer the phone unless they are sitting there staring at it.

PrivateButts 3y ago

This has been a constant bit of friction between my wife and I. To me, the norms are: - Unscheduled calls are if it's an emergency or something that you need an answer to right now - Calling twice in a row is an emergency - SMS if it's important but not urgent - Discord chat if it's just casual messaging or pics This is how my family and everyone else I know communicate, but my wife. My wife will call me repeatedly to tell me that they just got out of work and are going to the store. It really doesn't help that the bluetooth in their car is trash too, so answering the call is rewards you with feedback hell. It gets me in the habit of not dropping everything to answer their calls if it's around when they get out of work, which has bitten us twice when they couldn't get a hold of me for a bit when they had car trouble and needed a rescue. To me, personal calls operate on a reputation system since you don't know what they will be about until you're already answering them. If you burn that rep on calls that don't matter, all someone will think the next time they see you on caller id is that it can wait.

dmonitor 3y ago
> Discord chat if it's just casual messaging or pics It's interesting to me that discord has become a "default" for you. For my social group, discord is only used for people I only have an online presence with. If I want to do something IRL, I send an SMS or something.
- PrivateButts 3y ago
  It's because it's on every device we use. Works in the browser so I don't have to install a client as well. Just was the chat tool we both used heavily at the time, and now it's got inertia.
- lucb1e 3y ago
  Surprises me too. For decades, we had incremental improvements where more and more privacy and encryption was added to chat apps (e.g.: WhatsApp used to send messages in plain text, then added encryption to the server, then end to end encryption), and then Discord came along with none of that and all the gamers felt a need to use it. Eh? I was a gamer until just before Discord appeared but what ever happened to things like Mumble and Signal

glitcher 3y ago

This is clearly missing mention of their lawn, and instructions to get off of said lawn =)

deergomoo 3y ago

I think there’s a lot of generational mismatch around this stuff, which I guess is to be expected when a sizeable portion of the people alive today grew up with nothing but a landline. The biggest things I struggle with in my family is the older folks not seeing SMS as asynchronous communication. Just because I’ve had time to send a text, it doesn’t mean I’m free for a call, and it doesn’t mean that I’m going to be able to hold an ongoing conversation right this second. At the risk of sounding misanthropic, I struggle with phone calls in general and find them to be a terrible distraction; not just for me but also for whoever I happen to be with at the time, as a shared activity means we both have to stop what we’re doing. Sure I could just ignore the call, but at this point there are several members of my family who are at the age where an unprompted phone call could well be bad news. Then when I turns out to be for idle chit-chat in the middle of my work day I just end up feeling both irritated and guilty for feeling irritated.

exrfggdgg 3y ago

Just silence your phone and get on with your life.

macNchz 3y ago

There's a big generational gap here, I think, between people who did and did not come of age during a time where telemarketing was a nascent industry and–when then the phone rang–you had no idea who it was, and they couldn't leave a message. Missing an important call in a situation where the person calling couldn't leave a message, and couldn't necessarily be reached if they were heading out, was a much bigger deal! I'm 35 and grew up with answering machines, then email, texts, cell phones, and voicemail soon after. Phone calls have always sort of bugged me. My parents did not, and for them the phone ringing has always been kind of an urgent matter. Letting it ring, even in the middle of something, and despite the fact they'll get a message and be able to deal with it easily later, clearly bothers them.

aylmao 3y ago

Personally, I find calls less "distracting" than texts or emails. Information gets exchanged much more quickly and naturally with voice, it gets done, and you can move on. With text/email things accumulate and ultimately "high-priority" things mix up with low priority messages in your inbox. For me distraction isn't so much about _when_ my phone requires my attention. It's about how long I ultimately end up thinking about my phone, which invariably is more time I opt to "poll" for notifications, as opposed to get a phone call "pushed" on me.

go_prodev 3y ago

I rarely get calls, so when I do, I usually don't notice it ringing in my pocket. I'd prefer a phone that zapped me.

jeanofthedead 3y ago
This is why I love my Apple Watch. Haptic vibrations are really handy!
lucb1e 3y ago
That actually sounds like a really funny feature that would make the brand be mentioned in headlines worldwide. I hope someone at a phone company in Mumbai also has this idea and makes it as an add-on to your USB-C port or something so we can all have this :D

PrimeMcFly 3y ago

I kind of do something similar, but rather than have the phone in DND mode, I use an app to block and send all calls to voicemail by default. I can turn it off if accepting a call, else, I'll call back if and when I feel like it. Another useful feature for me is an app to customize the LED lights, so I can assign different colors and blink rates for different apps and different types of notifications. These two things really make me feel like I'm in full control, and make my phone experience infinitely better.

tenebrisalietum 3y ago

It would be cool if, for people you select and obviously trust well (the type that you typically need to pick up a call from) they could record 3 seconds of audio and that would be the "ringtone." This feature would have to be completely 100% opt-in. It would be cooler and better if this was reliably transcribed to text and displayed with the ringing screen.