Developer Builds 4MB iOS App Blocker to Counter Doomscrolling and Dark Patterns

·29 views

A software engineer and founder built Scroll Brake, a lightweight iOS app blocker, after finding popular Screen Time alternatives like Opal and OneSec relied on aggressive subscription prompts and unnecessary permissions. The app weighs just 4MB, uses no third-party tracking SDKs, and stores all data locally on-device with no remote servers or user accounts. Instead of outright banning social media, Scroll Brake introduces cognitive friction by requiring users to solve a quick math puzzle before extending app time, disrupting the autopilot behavior behind doomscrolling. The developer deliberately avoided reward animations after puzzle completion, arguing that dopamine feedback for unlocking social media would be counterproductive. Scroll Brake was built under the principle of minimal, privacy-respecting software that solves a focused problem without bloat or manipulation.

Read the full story at DEV Community

This is an AI-generated summary. ShortSingh links to the original source for the complete article.

Discussion (0)

HN Asks: Has AI Produced Anything Truly New on Its Own?

A Hacker News user asks the community to name something genuinely new that an AI system has accomplished entirely by itself. The poster notes that after two years of AI development, they have not yet encountered such an example. In their view, apparent discoveries usually depend on a human identifying the novel element. Alternatively, the models appear to be merely combining existing data from separate sources that had never been connected. The post drew 4 points and 7 comments at the time it was captured.

0 comments Read more at Hacker News

ProgrammingHacker News ·

U.S. Producer Prices Climb 6.5% Annually in October, Highest Since late 2022

U.S. producer prices rose 6.5% year over year in October, the fastest pace since November 2022. That reading came in slightly below analysts' expectations of 6.6% and up from 6.3% in the prior period. On a monthly basis, producer prices increased 0.3%, short of the anticipated 0.4% gain. September's monthly figure was also revised upward, from 1.3% to 1.4%.

0 comments Read more at Hacker News

ProgrammingHacker News ·

Haskell community publishes a technical vision for its ecosystem

A technical vision document for the Haskell ecosystem has been posted on the Haskell Discourse forum. The post was shared on Hacker News, where it gathered 4 points and no comments at the time of capture. The source material provided contains only the links and engagement metrics, so the specific proposals in the vision are not described here. Readers are directed to the Discourse thread for the full content and any community discussion.

0 comments Read more at Hacker News

ProgrammingDEV Community ·

Connector design should expose partial failures so agents can tell empty results from errors

A connector returning an empty array can signal several different outcomes, including a successful query with no matches, a request that failed before reaching the service, a partially loaded result, or unparseable data. The article argues these should be distinguished, since an agent cannot safely decide its next step if all of them appear as an empty list. It proposes returning results as structured reports that state the status (complete, empty, partial, retryable error, or action required), the source, the fetch time, and any continuation cursor or warnings. Continuation cursors should be saved only after a page is accepted, so an interrupted pagination can resume rather than presenting an incomplete list as complete. For write operations, the author recommends idempotency keys and recording whether an operation was confirmed, since a timeout after a write leaves the outcome ambiguous.

0 comments Read more at DEV Community