Tech my dad banned in our house when I was a kid • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by klyrs » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 4:15 PM UTC

nicklaf wrote: post #239

Tcepsa wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a shitpost and/or copypasta, right? Maybe it's intended as a "Ha, look at the ridiculous sorts of FUD that folks posted about this stuff back in the day" but its tone is earnest enough--even with tons of obvious flags like the ones I mention below--that I'd encourage you to seriously consider adding a disclaimer of some kind. Some of the "tells": The whole thing has a "Chick Tract" vibe to it (personal, relat…

It's a troll! An infamous Slashdot/Usenet one at that, which in the day raised the hackles of many a * nix folk: Adequacy first gained widespread Internet notoriety after the December 2, 2001 publication of a story entitled "Is Your Son a Computer Hacker?" The story was engineered to raise the hackles of as wide a swath of the Internet geek community as possible; it lampooned such topics as the Linux operating system…

Shitposting / copypasta made Slashdot suck. Let's strive to follow the site guidelines which are geared at making HN better than Slashdot ever was.

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

#252

Post by leetcrew » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 4:53 PM UTC

seventhtiger wrote: post #217

endgame wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consoles are consumption devices. PCs are creation devices.

Nintendo games with 4+ player multiplayer is actually a great time with family and friends. In general I think Nintendo makes social games that are intended for the living room, which is harder to find on the other consoles, and almost impossible on PC. I say this as someone who mainly plays on PC and has LAN parties at home. Consoles can be social devices. PCs can be isolating devices.

maybe it's because I never had a console as a kid, but I just don't really see the appeal of multiplayer splitscreen games. if I'm going to budget a block of time and travel to be in the same physical location with people, I mostly just want to talk with them. if we're mostly going to be playing video games, I could just stay home and have the full screen area. overall, it strikes me as a relic of the times when internet multiplayer was much less reliable.

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

#253

Post by acituan » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

boneitis wrote: post #230

acituan wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're over 10 years of age you should know what your limits are. Propositionally knowing things is very different than being able to make the right decisions when the moment comes. A 10 year old neither has the fully developed prefrontal cortex of a 25 old nor the required self knowledge. They are not even in puberty and half of their emotions, desires, drives wouldn't have come online yet. They will depend an…

> there are legitimate instances where shame is deserved Can you elaborate?

Legitimate shame is a pro-social emotion against breaking purity codes. For a child this could be around cleanliness (“don’t defecate on anywhere other than allowed places”, “don’t fart while eating”), boundaries (“don’t show your genitals to others”, “don’t touch other people’s genitals”, “don’t spit on other people”) but also more complex social interactions (“don’t steal other people’s stuff”, “don’t punch your friends”, “don’t dominate the playground, let others play”). Note that although shame circuitry is involved in all, it is not in the form we are most familiar with, which is heavy handed ostracism and total abandonment, but as minimal as necessary, because shame is a very powerful emotion as is.

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

#254

Post by wayneftw » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

noman-land wrote: post #56

wayneftw wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you don't see tradesmen getting all pissy about people buying DeWalt power drills. Tribalism is everywhere. Dodge vs Chevy vs Ford is one that certain tradesmen might be inclined to take part in. Certainly even tool brands like DeWalt vs Makita. I don't see a problem with it. This is like complaining that people have opinions and that they might argue about them. It's 100% human nature. Arguing against it is like a…

It's not about having opinions, it's about spending energy arguing about them. Everyone has opinions, but they're not going to go to war about ice cream flavors, nor should they. It's worth going to war with people who think keeping slaves is okay. It's not worth going to war over which brand of phone people use. Overzealous tribalism can lead to otherizing and dehumanizing and all sorts of terrible things. Let's sav…

You're comparing the civil war to people texting each other on social media.

Nobody has ever gone to actual war over personal opinions about cars, phones or computers.

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

#255

Post by znpy » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

klyrs wrote: post #17

In the late 90s, my dad was really mad about me experimenting with Linux on my personal computer which I built from parts bought with money earned at a summer job. It was kinda hilarious. He has zero involvement with microsoft, very little knowledge of computers, and tended to be mildly anti-establishment... and since it was 100% my computer, it had zero impact on his life. It really felt like a "my role is to crack…

Ha, kinda the same here.

I'm literally living off the stuff I've learnt by scavenging hardware off the local computer store's trash can and building PCs to run GNU/Linux on them.

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

#256

Post by banmeagaindan2 » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 6:06 PM UTC

jasoneckert wrote: post #148

When I was growing up, my parents adhered to Douglas Adams' rules of technology (and I think many still do today): 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after…

I was set with a modifier of -50. On some days -150.

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

#257

Post by mixmastamyk » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 6:06 PM UTC

bradlys wrote: post #214

mixmastamyk wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kid has Linux, every programming lang available, Minecraft, ebooks, wikipedia, educational websites, etc. We live a block from the library. No shortage of quality learning materials basically. Perhaps ya'll've misread the list. It's a preference for quality over quantity.

> Kid has Linux, every programming lang available, Minecraft, ebooks, wikipedia, educational websites, etc. We live a block from the library. No shortage of quality learning materials basically. Perhaps ya'll've misread the list. Yes - because every kid wants to program purely for the fun of it. There's never an end goal in mind - they just learn functional programming for the fun of it! They all enjoy finding ways t…

What's your point? The programming languages reference was due to comments above that tech folks wouldn't have become who they are without the ability to program.

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

#258

Post by mixmastamyk » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 6:15 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #229

imesh wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No disagreement from me. Without gaming on Windows systems I would may never gotten involved in programming in the first place. I'm currently watching what looked like my nephews Roblox/Minecraft addiction turn into some real amazing content creation utilizing youtube as a very real learning source.

> Without gaming on Windows systems I would may never gotten involved in programming in the first place. I'm just the opposite. My first computer was a Commodore VIC-20 -- with no games! As far as I was concerned, all it could do was BASIC. It did come with a helpful instruction guide to teach you the rudiments of programming. I got later systems and games for them later on, but my experience with the VIC-20 put this…

Me too. Here's a blast from the past I recently came across:

https://archive.org/details/Personal_Computing_On_The_VIC-20...

Personally I had the most fun with the sentence generator, but I did find a game somewhere. Something like Missile Command. Had to type it in from a magazine I believe. It never worked quite right however. Had a few obvious bugs which I corrected, and a few I wasn't able to.

The manual is amazing from today's perspective. On the first few pages it has cartoons and teaches you how to use the shift key and such rudimentary things. A dozen pages later you are learning how to PEEK and POKE memory locations. It assumed you were intelligent. I miss that.

Recently I've read there was assembly language book and modem addon, that I never knew existed, a shame really.

I think I'll submit it.

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

#259

Post by CyberRabbi » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 6:21 PM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #177

CyberRabbi wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. Telling your kids they are free to do whatever they want online without having to consult you and promoting “sex positivity” to them Is not the same as monitoring their roblox or YouTube usage, and giving them a stark warning. Very bad strawman. Pedophiles online are a real danger and there is no way family members pose a likelier or more severe threat than online pedophiles. Saying otherwise is either ignorant…

> Pedophiles online are a real danger and there is no way family members pose a likelier or more severe threat than online pedophiles. Sorry to spoil your day, but we live in a pretty terrible world: https://www.rainn.org/statistics/children-and-teens 34% family, 59% familiar people, 7% strangers.

...Yes because most normal parents protect their kids from strangers, of the remaining kids who are victims it will be by their family. Is that seriously your rationale for claiming family members are more dangerous?

Show me the breakdown of offenders of children whose parents allow them to run free online.

Also the world is great

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

#260

Post by tjr225 » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 6:47 PM UTC

3131s wrote: post #194

tjr225 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t seriously compare the internet of even 10 years ago to the internet of today. You can go to reddit right now and find a video of some right wing whacko shooting someone to death on the front page. That content was available then, sure. It wasn’t blasted right at you though.

Rotten.com? Ogrish? I was around ten when I saw these and the first thing I encountered was a video of a man's head exploding on contact with a helicopter blade, and then I scrolled down and saw a prostitute that had been chopped up and placed in a suitcase. The world is a remarkably vile place and the internet is just a reflection of it.

My point is that you actively had to seek that stuff out. Now you find it on all of the normalized channels; twitter, reddit, facebook, etc.