Tech my dad banned in our house when I was a kid

I agree. But this was for his kids when they were kids living at his house. If he want's to maintain the no consoles rule at his house later on, meh whatever. That's his business.

Edit: Also, what makes it reasonable to enforce this while his kids were young was that he actively encouraged learning about PC's, not just consumption through a different "Magic Box".

"Modding" is like, whatever.

I grew up programming PCs in the 80s and 90s but when I look back on it, I didn't really tinker much inside the boxes even though I have mistakenly thought that I did.

Dad installed a Sound Blaster Pro I purchased in like 5th grade after I went to bed so that I wouldn't screw up his work PC.

Past that, I don't think I even upgraded RAM or a hard drive until I was in my 20s, mostly because they were just too expensive.

Had an NES, though. I turned out fine.

But I would have hated my dad if he was like, "no NES for you!" while shoving a screwdriver at me.

- amazon alexa anything

- any smart speaker that uses persistent voice recognition (ok google etc)

- things like thermostats, security systems/cameras (ring doorbells, etc) that require a functioning WAN connection and cloud based services. anything you would find here: https://twitter.com/internetofshit?lang=en

- smart lightbulbs and other "internet of things" devices that require a connection to a cloud based service, anything of this category that I can't completely admin and control on my LAN.

- internet of things consumer devices that require the use of a manufacturer-proprietary android or ios app to set up and configure on the home wifi.

- consumer electronics devices that for some unknown reason require a proprietary shaped connector/charging cable. if it doesn't charge from microusb or usb-c I'm very unlikely to buy it. in an era when even my road bicycle front and rear lights charge from standard microusb this should be obvious.

- things that are obviously designed to be throwaway with no way to ever economically replace the battery. such as apple airpods. anything that's given a 1/10 or 2/10 repairability score by ifixit, such as the microsoft surface notebook/tablet that is entirely glued together. https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/AirPods+2+Teardown/121471

- cloud managed wifi APs and routers

- wifi mesh extenders and other things that create a CSMA half duplex RF hell, for network reliability and performance reasons. If I need an additional AP somewhere I can give it a 1000BaseT 802.3af/at wired connection back to the home core switch.

- Any ISP-provided all-in-one cablemodem/router/wifi device that I can't fully control. I have a DOCSIS3 modem that is a dumb layer 2 bridge with no routing or wifi functions, and my own router that I control.

- any of the microsoft cloud-managed login accounts for windows 10 PCs

- any consumer electronics/appliance device that has embedded android in it unlikely to receive operating system/updates after 2 or 3 years. For example fridges with a giant android tablet built into their door. Not going to spend $2000 on a fridge that might have a 10-15 year service lifespan but the operating system on the tablet will be woefully out of date and risky to put on the Internet after 5 years. This also means no "internet of things" washing machines or similar. Just a couple of weeks ago I saw fridges for sale with Android 7 on them.

- apple icloud

- zoom, due to its many prior egregious security vulnerabilities and the location of 80%+ of its developers

- anything else that is legally obligated to be backdoored by the ministry of state security (wechat, alipay, tiktok, etc)