i have never once even been tempted by "smart home devices": cloud, locally hosted, or anything. I have a nest thermostat because it came with the apartment; it's never been online. I don't believe in security/doorbell cameras. Lights are properly turned on and off with a wall switch. Locks are opened with physical bits of carved metal. Car controls have buttons and dials. No home appliance should ever have a network connection.
My background is in distributed systems/HPC, and it seems to be a common personal interest by people in that area to set up 'smart' homes. Just like you, I never had any interest in that. To the contrary, I often heard my colleagues complain about their setup breaking and not being able to turn on the lights in their house, etc. It feels to me more like a novelty rather than a solution to a real problem.
Regarding locks: The 'Lockpicking Lawyer' on YouTube regularly demonstrates how insecure many smart locks are. It's also, in my eyes, a solution looking for a problem.
What I love doing is tinkering with my home network. I installed fiber in my house and set up a 10 GbE home network, as I bottlenecked my 1 GbE network with my NAS. But this is infrastructure, not smart junk that ages like milk.
A friend recently bought a home and discovered the shower has been fitted with smart controls. I genuinely don't understand the use case - surely you are physically present in the bathroom and it is easier to use the "dumb" controls in any situation?
Needless to say, they do not use an app to turn on the shower.
My hobbies are all outside. Hiking, cycling, skiing, sitting on a bench in the park. I get enough time in front of a screen, so when I get long uninterrupted blocks of time, I like to spend it in the fresh air.
Still take notes with pen and paper, partially out of habit, partially because I think it does help me retain stuff better compared to typed notes (or, god-forbid, AI generated meeting summaries)
I have zero smart appliances, my car itself has no Internet connectivity. I don’t subscribe to many services. My only social media is here and Mastodon and a LinkedIn profile I check once a quarter.
I don’t use heavily customized software. I write my own minimal software.
how did you manage to get a car without connectivity? is it vintage?
(in case this isn't shared context: most cars do have cell connections these days, it's just it's for the manufacturer's purposes not yours. stuff like optional up-sell features, and data collection. some of these connections have been found to allow remote exploits. alas.)
well, mine is about 15 years old, it has bluetooth (for music and calling) but nothing more complicated. So you don't have to go all the way to vintage, just be cheap.
(Of course it's also a diesel without adblue so bad for environment. I compensate by biking to work ..)
Once you've tried a Pentel Graph Gear 1000 0.9mm, it's hard to use anything else for sketches, designs, notes, etc. They're so popular that when the plastic part of the barrel eventually breaks, you can buy a custom machined aluminum replacement on ebay (or Ali etc.) for only twice the cost of the original pencil.
I've used that (0.6 not 0.9 though) with a B lead for basically all of high school and university! It's fun writing stuff with this pencil, and it's easy to fix a jam during an exam…
what makes it better than the competition? i’ve always found mechanical pencils uncomfortable to use but maybe its a skill issue or i haven’t found the right one
My todo list is a daily written thing. I carry a group of pens and even a pencil with me every day. My home is only smart if it's truly privacy preserving -- my smoke detectors are not even networked.
why call it minimalism? when you buy traditional quality (the sort that lasts) you actually buy back your time from the otherwise inevitable replacement churn (chose, buy, set up, get used with).
I grew up in an age where blackboards were the common way teachers taught us; whiteboards didn't exist yet except in the fancy upper class schools.
I'm never sure if it's just nostalgia or what, but I always preferred the blackboard.
So, with that said: I'm curious what you mean that a blackboard is more useful than a whiteboard.
From my current understanding, whiteboards can be magnetic which technically adds a utility that blackboards don't have... meaning technically whiteboards are more useful than blackboards. But I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
I don't bother with smart-devices, besides my phone that seems to be a requirement. For example TVs, smarthome stuff, any appliances.. No thanks. Keep them boring.
I am using more pen and paper to write down things. As much as i like e-ink, there just is not an e-ink device i could use in way i'd like, its all proprietary (i know about the pine64 tablet but it costs arm and leg).
I am not minimalist yet but likely going down that path.
I don't think those two things are at odds. Loving tech doesn't mean that you have to blindly accept modern tech, or whatever's currently trendy. Just like having a job in tech doesn't necessarily mean blindly chasing latest trends.
Similarly, more – or a more elaborate – technology isn't always the solution. I listened to an interview about digital voting a while ago, and the phrase "paper [voting] is also a technology" stuck with me. I think about it often.
I run my life with pen and paper, organised with the Bullet Journal approach. Nothing else has worked for me - iPad with Pencil, Samsung Tab with S-Pen, org-mode, workflowy, kanban, etc.
I have a dumb home with dumb appliances. Nothing's online - car, TV, washing machine, dishwasher. Most of my car's functions operable through physical buttons. I feel a disproportionate amount of disgust towards machines being compulsorily sold as "smart". My first requirement to purchase a household appliance is that it does not have a IoT or smart "capability".
I once cancelled a motorcycle purchase out of spite because the dealership just wasn't ready to sell me its non-smart variant, despite them assuring me a day before that they would be able to supply one to me, because the smart variant cost ~$100 more than the "dumb" variant.
Lobste.rs and mastodon form my online presence. However, since the LLM debate and slop has left not much room for other topics, I've been slowly retreating from these forums too.
I used to have a smart sports watch of a popular brand which I've used to track my sports activities. The privacy concerns made me give it away and I've replaced it with nothing. I am not a professional athlete that needs in-depth information of my performance. Exercising often, eating moderately, avoding alcohol and sleeping well is what I need to live a good life, I don't need an app trying to hook me up into some stupid gamification tricks whilst selling my information to whoever wants it.
I define minimalism more as "only what I need/what gets the job done" and thus self-hosting something is completely fine if it fits the problem better. Yet I wouldn't call myself any sort of minimalist, more like a lazy pragmatist. Having to change something that's been working for a supposed more minimalist thing? Eh, too much work :)
I don't particularly like buying gadgets, so this is usually not a problem. If my latest phone hadn't forced me, I would have never bought bluetooth headphones that I can forget to charge.
That said, the only smart thing I own are 2 shelly plugs that I use to measure power consumption, no idea in which year I last "switched" something with them. And I hate the software in new cars and want my old one back (even if I have to add an external dashboard gps navigation device).
And I hate taking notes on paper, and I'd have to take pen&paper with me everywhere - so digital searchable notes it is.
I think any tech minimalism I have mostly stems from an inherent aversion to buying new stuff; having to commit to the cost and maintenance of new gadgets, and lately also noticing the inevitable enshittification of newer products, while used/old stuff tends to have a longer total lifetime (cf. Lindy effect). I buy the oldest used phone I can that's still getting security updates. I do have an old smart heater that I was gifted, and it's useful for turning on the heat one day before I get home from vacation – it has no camera or microphone so I'm fine with that. I was gifted a Kindle, but I keep it disconnected so it doesn't delete stuff I put on it, and I mostly read physical books anyway; I like writing underlining or writing margin notes in books I buy from a local new / used book store, though often I'll just get stuff from the library too.
I've used Emacs org-mode for over 20 years so although I find bullet journaling interesting and probably better, I'm too lazy to switch. I don't use any cloud sync stuff, but put SyncThing on all my devices – it's quite set-and-forget and isn't dependent on a SaaS but also feels more like a "desktop app" than self-hosting since there's no central server required.
My car is from before they started adding modems to cars because I really don't care about cars and would rather bike when I can. My bike is not smart. An e-bike might be nice so I could use the car even less, but I can't fit one inside the house so it would probably catch fire or something if I left it outside. I used to self-host one of those music apps but my server hardware broke and I can't be bothered to fix it. But after all the noise the kids make I'd rather open a window and listen to the birds, so that's my age and laziness rather than any intentional attempt at minimalism. I live in an old house with a physical lock – it works, so why change it?
As to the second part, maintaining my love for tech, I do still enjoy the act of programming, and I like seeing how people appreciate that I can solve problems for them. I just happen to do it using an old, much-repaired Thinkpad because the reviews say that the newer ones have problems and I've already fixed the problems on the machine I have. So I guess I'm not so much guided by minimalism as inertia :-)
An e-bike might be nice so I could use the car even less, but I can't fit one inside the house so it would probably catch fire or something if I left it outside.
it’s common for them to have removable batteries you can take with you. i have one of these that completely eliminates my car needs: https://www.achielle.be/_/elong-achielle/
Digital solutions are only good if they are more reliable than the non-smart solution. That is the only determining factor. E.g if it is something like a hand-written list/calendar, that is easy to lose, so my digital calendar and notes are more reliable so I use them. Digital smart-home appliances tend to be less reliable. My light switches don't break and I can't lose them, so I'm fine using them instead of installing smart switches.
My TV gets used as a dumb screen, I have a mini PC running Kodi attached as I can control it myself
I use a dumbphone, mostly because I don't trust Apple or Google and alternatives are not really usable yet. Unfortunately, nowadays it's harder and harder to escape apps. My wife has an iPhone, so I end up using hers more than I really want to :(
I log my workouts in a paper notebook, no app or online thing needed (although I have to upload videos for my coach, as I work out from home)
Like others have said, I see negative value in "smart home" solutions, so we have nothing of the sort. Except for a smart energy meter, mostly because we bought a home that already had one, and it is becoming somewhat mandatory nowadays
On vacations, my laptop stays at home so I can be fully present and enjoy the moment.
I have weird principles which dictate what tech I will or won't use. Which makes me look like a tech minimalist but more accurately I just refuse to give up control for convenience.
I like cool pens/pencils but my handwriting is poor when I try to write at anything resembling not a snail's pace. I'm somewhat confident this is not entirely just down to practice.
First of thanks for raising this question, I love the thread and conversation around this. I wouldn't call myself a technical minimalist or nomad. Yes, I made a living from spending days and nights in front of this illuminated box to make it do magic tricks (more or less). I'm now in my late 20s and a century in doing this full time. I'm appreciative of the time I'm spending and not spending in the "digital world". Off work, for me it's just more fun to disconnect and live myself out differently; eg. I love the time I get to spend time with friends in person, cooking food from scratch -- cause my kitchen is my sandbox, riding the bike like some punk or picking up a new skill like playing the bass guitar. I have a physical diary -- to page out random thoughts every other day. My daily personal tech consists of a phone; that I use for clock, cal, maps, im and music. I never managed to make anything else stick -- I just don't need or want more.
I ditched the smart watches (needs daily charging, barrage of notifications on my wrist pulling my attention, useless (to me) fitness tracking, unintuitive to use, $600)
I replaced it with a casio digital watch (10 year battery life, tells the time and date, has a stop
watch and timer, leaves me alone, $50)
I think there might be a bias here in Lobsters regarding Smart Home and IoT things because it seems all the comments mostly reject it (me included) but when I go to some open source conferences in my country there's a lot of people who are very much into it! And I think it's people without a CS background most of the time, but something like physics, other engineering fields, just tech enthusiasts,...
I think a lot of people think more critically of their own field than in others. There's even a saying in Spanish that could be applied here: "en casa del herrero, cuchillo de palo", "in the house of the blacksmith, the knives are made of wood". I've seen this with a friend that after studying CS he went to aerospace engineering who told me: "if you think software is made of hacks, you haven't seen a airplane"
I own a 3D printer but the allure of physically manipulating an artefact into existence using an array of sharp metal things beats the prospect of staring at CAD any day.
I also take handwritten notes (although, admittedly, on an e-ink display... does that count?). I do pretty much nothing technical (in the digital tech sense) on my weekends - I go outside with the family, do some work around the house, etc. I try to be very careful with my attention and have deleted most social apps that I've used in the past; that really helped "unfry" my brain and getting me out of some of the tech-induced anxiety and churn.
grym | 10 hours ago
i have never once even been tempted by "smart home devices": cloud, locally hosted, or anything. I have a nest thermostat because it came with the apartment; it's never been online. I don't believe in security/doorbell cameras. Lights are properly turned on and off with a wall switch. Locks are opened with physical bits of carved metal. Car controls have buttons and dials. No home appliance should ever have a network connection.
FRIGN | 3 hours ago
My background is in distributed systems/HPC, and it seems to be a common personal interest by people in that area to set up 'smart' homes. Just like you, I never had any interest in that. To the contrary, I often heard my colleagues complain about their setup breaking and not being able to turn on the lights in their house, etc. It feels to me more like a novelty rather than a solution to a real problem.
Regarding locks: The 'Lockpicking Lawyer' on YouTube regularly demonstrates how insecure many smart locks are. It's also, in my eyes, a solution looking for a problem.
What I love doing is tinkering with my home network. I installed fiber in my house and set up a 10 GbE home network, as I bottlenecked my 1 GbE network with my NAS. But this is infrastructure, not smart junk that ages like milk.
owent | 4 hours ago
A friend recently bought a home and discovered the shower has been fitted with smart controls. I genuinely don't understand the use case - surely you are physically present in the bathroom and it is easier to use the "dumb" controls in any situation?
Needless to say, they do not use an app to turn on the shower.
jez | 8 hours ago
My hobbies are all outside. Hiking, cycling, skiing, sitting on a bench in the park. I get enough time in front of a screen, so when I get long uninterrupted blocks of time, I like to spend it in the fresh air.
ketchupfriend | 10 hours ago
Still take notes with pen and paper, partially out of habit, partially because I think it does help me retain stuff better compared to typed notes (or, god-forbid, AI generated meeting summaries)
carlana | 9 hours ago
Same. Also buying fancy pens is fun.
objectif_lune | 2 hours ago
100% on this one. Buying a nice pen or pens, and paper, seems to incentivize me to write more and more often.
lorddimwit | 9 hours ago
I have zero smart appliances, my car itself has no Internet connectivity. I don’t subscribe to many services. My only social media is here and Mastodon and a LinkedIn profile I check once a quarter.
I don’t use heavily customized software. I write my own minimal software.
I play board games more than video games.
[OP] oceanhaiyang | 8 hours ago
What sort of software have you written for yourself?
lorddimwit | 8 hours ago
Text editors, compilers, scripting languages. There’s a certain joy to it.
Irene | 4 hours ago
how did you manage to get a car without connectivity? is it vintage?
(in case this isn't shared context: most cars do have cell connections these days, it's just it's for the manufacturer's purposes not yours. stuff like optional up-sell features, and data collection. some of these connections have been found to allow remote exploits. alas.)
Sanity | 2 hours ago
well, mine is about 15 years old, it has bluetooth (for music and calling) but nothing more complicated. So you don't have to go all the way to vintage, just be cheap.
(Of course it's also a diesel without adblue so bad for environment. I compensate by biking to work ..)
eta | 2 hours ago
in Europe, all cars (since 2018) are actually legally required have modems because of eCall!
cpurdy | 8 hours ago
Once you've tried a Pentel Graph Gear 1000 0.9mm, it's hard to use anything else for sketches, designs, notes, etc. They're so popular that when the plastic part of the barrel eventually breaks, you can buy a custom machined aluminum replacement on ebay (or Ali etc.) for only twice the cost of the original pencil.
spenc | 5 hours ago
Ooo I’m a die hard Pentel Twist Erase 0.9
edit: a Graph Gear is in the mail, you better be right ;)
kiyurica | 5 hours ago
I've used that (0.6 not 0.9 though) with a B lead for basically all of high school and university! It's fun writing stuff with this pencil, and it's easy to fix a jam during an exam…
intarga | 2 hours ago
what makes it better than the competition? i’ve always found mechanical pencils uncomfortable to use but maybe its a skill issue or i haven’t found the right one
Vaelatern | 9 hours ago
My todo list is a daily written thing. I carry a group of pens and even a pencil with me every day. My home is only smart if it's truly privacy preserving -- my smoke detectors are not even networked.
carlomonte | 6 hours ago
why call it minimalism? when you buy traditional quality (the sort that lasts) you actually buy back your time from the otherwise inevitable replacement churn (chose, buy, set up, get used with).
mccd | 5 hours ago
gspr | 5 hours ago
Pen and paper. And blackboard (when possible, whiteboard when necessary).
fbegyn | 4 hours ago
I’m sad blackboards are disappearing, I find them incredibly useful, more than a whiteboard
dijit | 2 hours ago
I grew up in an age where blackboards were the common way teachers taught us; whiteboards didn't exist yet except in the fancy upper class schools.
I'm never sure if it's just nostalgia or what, but I always preferred the blackboard.
So, with that said: I'm curious what you mean that a blackboard is more useful than a whiteboard.
From my current understanding, whiteboards can be magnetic which technically adds a utility that blackboards don't have... meaning technically whiteboards are more useful than blackboards. But I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
adavis | an hour ago
FYI you can get magnetic blackboards, all the ones in my 90s primary school were magnetic.
Aks | 3 hours ago
I don't bother with smart-devices, besides my phone that seems to be a requirement. For example TVs, smarthome stuff, any appliances.. No thanks. Keep them boring.
I am using more pen and paper to write down things. As much as i like e-ink, there just is not an e-ink device i could use in way i'd like, its all proprietary (i know about the pine64 tablet but it costs arm and leg).
I am not minimalist yet but likely going down that path.
tadzik | 2 hours ago
I don't think those two things are at odds. Loving tech doesn't mean that you have to blindly accept modern tech, or whatever's currently trendy. Just like having a job in tech doesn't necessarily mean blindly chasing latest trends.
Similarly, more – or a more elaborate – technology isn't always the solution. I listened to an interview about digital voting a while ago, and the phrase "paper [voting] is also a technology" stuck with me. I think about it often.
bhoot | 5 hours ago
I run my life with pen and paper, organised with the Bullet Journal approach. Nothing else has worked for me - iPad with Pencil, Samsung Tab with S-Pen, org-mode, workflowy, kanban, etc.
I have a dumb home with dumb appliances. Nothing's online - car, TV, washing machine, dishwasher. Most of my car's functions operable through physical buttons. I feel a disproportionate amount of disgust towards machines being compulsorily sold as "smart". My first requirement to purchase a household appliance is that it does not have a IoT or smart "capability".
I once cancelled a motorcycle purchase out of spite because the dealership just wasn't ready to sell me its non-smart variant, despite them assuring me a day before that they would be able to supply one to me, because the smart variant cost ~$100 more than the "dumb" variant.
Lobste.rs and mastodon form my online presence. However, since the LLM debate and slop has left not much room for other topics, I've been slowly retreating from these forums too.
jrgtt | 4 hours ago
I used to have a smart sports watch of a popular brand which I've used to track my sports activities. The privacy concerns made me give it away and I've replaced it with nothing. I am not a professional athlete that needs in-depth information of my performance. Exercising often, eating moderately, avoding alcohol and sleeping well is what I need to live a good life, I don't need an app trying to hook me up into some stupid gamification tricks whilst selling my information to whoever wants it.
wink | 2 hours ago
I define minimalism more as "only what I need/what gets the job done" and thus self-hosting something is completely fine if it fits the problem better. Yet I wouldn't call myself any sort of minimalist, more like a lazy pragmatist. Having to change something that's been working for a supposed more minimalist thing? Eh, too much work :)
I don't particularly like buying gadgets, so this is usually not a problem. If my latest phone hadn't forced me, I would have never bought bluetooth headphones that I can forget to charge.
That said, the only smart thing I own are 2 shelly plugs that I use to measure power consumption, no idea in which year I last "switched" something with them. And I hate the software in new cars and want my old one back (even if I have to add an external dashboard gps navigation device).
And I hate taking notes on paper, and I'd have to take pen&paper with me everywhere - so digital searchable notes it is.
Sanity | 2 hours ago
I think any tech minimalism I have mostly stems from an inherent aversion to buying new stuff; having to commit to the cost and maintenance of new gadgets, and lately also noticing the inevitable enshittification of newer products, while used/old stuff tends to have a longer total lifetime (cf. Lindy effect). I buy the oldest used phone I can that's still getting security updates. I do have an old smart heater that I was gifted, and it's useful for turning on the heat one day before I get home from vacation – it has no camera or microphone so I'm fine with that. I was gifted a Kindle, but I keep it disconnected so it doesn't delete stuff I put on it, and I mostly read physical books anyway; I like writing underlining or writing margin notes in books I buy from a local new / used book store, though often I'll just get stuff from the library too.
I've used Emacs org-mode for over 20 years so although I find bullet journaling interesting and probably better, I'm too lazy to switch. I don't use any cloud sync stuff, but put SyncThing on all my devices – it's quite set-and-forget and isn't dependent on a SaaS but also feels more like a "desktop app" than self-hosting since there's no central server required.
My car is from before they started adding modems to cars because I really don't care about cars and would rather bike when I can. My bike is not smart. An e-bike might be nice so I could use the car even less, but I can't fit one inside the house so it would probably catch fire or something if I left it outside. I used to self-host one of those music apps but my server hardware broke and I can't be bothered to fix it. But after all the noise the kids make I'd rather open a window and listen to the birds, so that's my age and laziness rather than any intentional attempt at minimalism. I live in an old house with a physical lock – it works, so why change it?
As to the second part, maintaining my love for tech, I do still enjoy the act of programming, and I like seeing how people appreciate that I can solve problems for them. I just happen to do it using an old, much-repaired Thinkpad because the reviews say that the newer ones have problems and I've already fixed the problems on the machine I have. So I guess I'm not so much guided by minimalism as inertia :-)
intarga | an hour ago
it’s common for them to have removable batteries you can take with you. i have one of these that completely eliminates my car needs: https://www.achielle.be/_/elong-achielle/
zipy124 | 2 hours ago
Digital solutions are only good if they are more reliable than the non-smart solution. That is the only determining factor. E.g if it is something like a hand-written list/calendar, that is easy to lose, so my digital calendar and notes are more reliable so I use them. Digital smart-home appliances tend to be less reliable. My light switches don't break and I can't lose them, so I'm fine using them instead of installing smart switches.
sjamaan | 2 hours ago
atk | an hour ago
I have weird principles which dictate what tech I will or won't use. Which makes me look like a tech minimalist but more accurately I just refuse to give up control for convenience.
I like cool pens/pencils but my handwriting is poor when I try to write at anything resembling not a snail's pace. I'm somewhat confident this is not entirely just down to practice.
xinau | an hour ago
First of thanks for raising this question, I love the thread and conversation around this. I wouldn't call myself a technical minimalist or nomad. Yes, I made a living from spending days and nights in front of this illuminated box to make it do magic tricks (more or less). I'm now in my late 20s and a century in doing this full time. I'm appreciative of the time I'm spending and not spending in the "digital world". Off work, for me it's just more fun to disconnect and live myself out differently; eg. I love the time I get to spend time with friends in person, cooking food from scratch -- cause my kitchen is my sandbox, riding the bike like some punk or picking up a new skill like playing the bass guitar. I have a physical diary -- to page out random thoughts every other day. My daily personal tech consists of a phone; that I use for clock, cal, maps, im and music. I never managed to make anything else stick -- I just don't need or want more.
ironick | 47 minutes ago
I ditched the smart watches (needs daily charging, barrage of notifications on my wrist pulling my attention, useless (to me) fitness tracking, unintuitive to use, $600)
I replaced it with a casio digital watch (10 year battery life, tells the time and date, has a stop watch and timer, leaves me alone, $50)
aarroyoc | 19 minutes ago
I think there might be a bias here in Lobsters regarding Smart Home and IoT things because it seems all the comments mostly reject it (me included) but when I go to some open source conferences in my country there's a lot of people who are very much into it! And I think it's people without a CS background most of the time, but something like physics, other engineering fields, just tech enthusiasts,...
I think a lot of people think more critically of their own field than in others. There's even a saying in Spanish that could be applied here: "en casa del herrero, cuchillo de palo", "in the house of the blacksmith, the knives are made of wood". I've seen this with a friend that after studying CS he went to aerospace engineering who told me: "if you think software is made of hacks, you haven't seen a airplane"
thombles | 3 hours ago
tentacloids | 3 hours ago
I own a 3D printer but the allure of physically manipulating an artefact into existence using an array of sharp metal things beats the prospect of staring at CAD any day.
hgrsd | 2 hours ago
I also take handwritten notes (although, admittedly, on an e-ink display... does that count?). I do pretty much nothing technical (in the digital tech sense) on my weekends - I go outside with the family, do some work around the house, etc. I try to be very careful with my attention and have deleted most social apps that I've used in the past; that really helped "unfry" my brain and getting me out of some of the tech-induced anxiety and churn.