Lessons by subject

Technology lessons learned through experience

AI, software, security, gadgets, and digital life. These are honest accounts of what happened, what changed, and what the writer knows now.

Latest technology stories

HNDSYT Original4w ago

Technology

My Mother Learned to Use Video Calls

At first, my mother refused.“I can hear you. Why do I need to see your face?”“Because I live far away.”“You lived far away last year too.”Then one day, my sister showed her how to use video calls.After that, she called constantly.Sometimes she held the phone too close to her face.Sometimes I could only see the ceiling.Once, she called me from inside a supermarket.“Can you see this?”“No.”She turned the phone around. I saw a row of vegetables.“Which one should I buy?”“I don’t know. You’re the one cooking.”She ignored me and continued showing things.For months, I complained that she called at the wrong time.Then she stopped calling for a few days.I became worried.When I finally reached her, she said, “I thought you were busy.”“I’m busy, but you can call.”“You always say you are in a meeting.”“I’ll call back.”“You forget.”She was right.Now, when her name appears, I answer if I can.Sometimes the camera is pointing at her forehead.Sometimes she shows me food.Sometimes we have nothing to say.But I stay on the call.

#technology

The takeaway

I treated my mother's awkward calls as interruptions until I realised they were one of the ways she was maintaining a relationship across distance.

HNDSYT Original4w ago

Technology

The Smart Speaker Heard Everything

I bought a smart speaker because I wanted simple things.Set a timer. Play music. Add milk to the shopping list.One evening my wife and I talked about buying a television. The next day I started seeing television adverts on my phone.I blamed the speaker.My wife said, “Your phone knows everything anyway.”That didn't make me feel better.I went through the settings and realised I had turned on several features without really reading what they did. I had clicked through the setup because I wanted to use the thing.I changed the permissions.I kept the speaker.The lesson was not that technology is evil. It was that I had been treating convenience as permission.Now when an app asks for the microphone, contacts or location, I stop for a minute.Sometimes I still allow it.But now I know why.

#technology

The takeaway

Convenience is not the same thing as understanding what a device is allowed to access.

HNDSYT OriginalJul 22, 2026

Technology

A year of checking the news at 11pm left me with panic attacks I didn't connect to my phone

I was playing in a covers band at the time, nothing serious, pub gigs every other weekend, and most nights I'd come home and just kind of decompress in bed. Around 11pm I'd pick up the phone and start scrolling. News apps, social media, whatever thread was catching fire that week. I told myself it was just staying informed. It felt like the normal end of a day, the same way brushing your teeth is the normal end of a day. Thirty minutes maybe. Sometimes forty five. The glow of the screen in a dark room, the duvet pulled up, nothing dramatic about any of it. Work was stressful that year too, genuinely stressful, so when I started feeling more anxious generally I just assumed that was the explanation. It made sense. I wasn't sleeping brilliantly but I'd had bad patches before. I'd wake up at 3am sometimes with this tightness in my chest and a kind of low buzzing feeling that I couldn't name. I thought I was just run down. I kept meaning to eat better, exercise more, all the usual stuff you tell yourself. I didn't once look at the phone on the nightstand and think, that. That thing right there.

Portland, OR, USAWhen it happened: 25-34#screen-time #mental-health

The takeaway

The thing I came away with, and I'm still not sure I fully believe it, is that the content mattered less than the timing. It wasn't that the news was especially bad that year, I mean it was, but it's always something. It was more that taking it in right before sleep, every single night, sort of stacks up in a way that's completely invisible until it isn't. Each individual night felt like nothing. Thirty minutes of scrolling. Unremarkable. But it was thirty minutes of cortisol or whatever the body does with that kind of information, right before the part where you're supposed to let everything settle. I kept thinking about how I'd never have played something dissonant and unresolved right before bed and expected to sleep well. But that's basically what I was doing every night for a year. I don't know. Maybe that's too neat an explanation. Maybe the work stress really was most of it and the phone was just. I go back and forth on this honestly.

HNDSYT OriginalJul 20, 2026

Technology

I doomscrolled myself into anxiety every night

I work nights. Have done about four years now. You come home when everyone else is starting their day, the light through the curtains is the wrong kind of light, the street is too loud, your body just has absolutely no clue. I used to make tea, sit on the edge of the bed sometimes still in my uniform, and scroll. Twitter, news sites, whatever the algorithm decided I needed. It felt like decompressing, like I had missed something and needed to catch up. The thing is the news at 7am after a shift is the same news it always is. Mostly bad. Mostly things you cannot touch. I kept reading it anyway. There was always some new thing.

Toronto, CanadaWhen it happened: 50-59#social-media #mental-health

The takeaway

I put the phone in the kitchen overnight now. That is the entire change, nothing dramatic, no app, no sleep coach, just the phone on the kitchen counter instead of the pillow. The chest thing mostly went. I still get it occasionally, usually when I have slipped back into old habits a few nights running. I think I knew technically that what I was filling my head with right before sleep was just sitting there while I tried to rest. I just didn't believe it applied to me specifically. That is probably a nurse thing, or maybe just a person thing.

HNDSYT OriginalJul 20, 2026

Technology

I did not enable two-factor authentication until I got hacked

Every time I made a new account for something, the setup page would ask if I wanted to enable two-factor. I always clicked past it. It felt like extra steps for something that was probably never going to happen to me. I was using the same password for a few things, a combination of a pet name and a number I'd had since I was about fourteen, and I knew that was probably bad but it was fine, it had always been fine. I got a notification once that someone had tried to log into my Google account from somewhere in Eastern Europe. I checked it, thought about changing my password, then got distracted by something and didn't.

London, UKWhen it happened: 50-59#security #privacy

The takeaway

Two-factor would have stopped it, probably. Or at least made it harder. That part is genuinely simple. The bit I keep thinking about is that I knew it was a good idea and I just didn't bother, and I'm not sure I have a satisfying reason for that.

HNDSYT OriginalJul 20, 2026

Technology

I never backed anything up until I lost it all

I had been freelancing for maybe three years when it happened. Mostly branding stuff, some web work, the kind of contracts that come and go and leave you with a folder full of source files you tell yourself you will organise properly one day. The laptop was getting slow and the fan had started making a noise I did not like, a sort of intermittent clicking. I Googled it once, saw something about a failing drive, closed the tab. There was a deadline. There was always a deadline. I remember the week it died I had been working late on a pitch deck, the kind of job where you save constantly because you are paranoid about losing an hour of work. Not paranoid enough, clearly.

London, UKWhen it happened: 20-29#data #security

The takeaway

Hardware dies. I knew that in a vague way, the way you know cigarettes are bad. Knowing it and accounting for it are different things. I have automatic backups running now, two places, and it took me about twenty minutes to set up. I am still not sure the four years of lost files actually changed anything about how I work. I think I just got unlucky and then got scared.

HNDSYT OriginalJul 20, 2026

Technology

I let my digital clutter grow into chaos

It started with screenshots. Then downloads folders nested inside other downloads folders. Then browser tabs I kept open because closing them felt like losing something, even if I hadn't looked at them in four months. My desktop was a grid of icons I couldn't read without squinting. I told myself it was organised chaos, which is a thing people say when they don't want to fix something.

Glasgow, UKWhen it happened: 30-39#data #habits

The takeaway

I'm not sure what the actual lesson is here. I know chaos scales. I know that. I just don't know if fixing it earlier would have changed anything that mattered.

HNDSYT OriginalJul 19, 2026

Technology

I measured my life against everyone's filtered feeds

I work in a warehouse, early shifts, and I'd get home around half three in the afternoon with nothing much to do before tea. I'd sit on the sofa and just scroll. Everyone from school seemed to be buying houses, going on holidays, getting promoted. One lad I used to know was posting pictures from Thailand. A girl from my old street had this kitchen that looked like it belonged in a magazine. I wasn't miserable exactly. I just kept feeling like I was somehow behind, like I'd missed a turning and everyone else had found the right road without telling me. The weird thing is none of it looked fake to me at the time. It just looked like their lives.

Glasgow, UKWhen it happened: 60+#social-media #mental-health

The takeaway

The feed isn't a lie exactly but it's not the whole thing either. It's the bit people chose to show on a good day with decent lighting. I knew that already, I think most people do, but knowing it and actually believing it are different.

HNDSYT OriginalJul 19, 2026

Technology

I gave apps every permission they asked for

I was building the company in my late thirties, always tired, always in a hurry to get to the next thing. Every app install came with a prompt and I just tapped through it. Contacts, location, microphone, camera. Allow allow allow. It felt like paying a small toll to get on the road. The phone was warm in my hand most of the day. I remember sitting in a car park outside a supplier meeting, running through installs on a new handset, just tapping. Grey sky. Cold coffee from a service station still in the cupholder. Not one second of thought given to any of it.

Bristol, UKWhen it happened: 20-29#privacy #security

The takeaway

I still do not know exactly what was done with any of it. That is the honest answer. I feel fine about most of it and then occasionally I don't. What I did take from it is that the permission request is not a formality. It is the actual thing. The app asking for your contacts when it has no reason to want them is not a quirk of the install process. It is the point.