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Retro-Tech Parenting

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Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#101

Post by TimTheTinker »

nkrisc wrote: post #78
TimTheTinker wrote: post #18

Some of the things my wife and I have provided for our kids: - lots of bookcases with probably >1500 books (including lots of kids/picture books) - what we've collected over the years - a family laptop (2012 MacBook Pro) with no internet connection, pre-loaded with Pages, Sheets, Affinity Photo/Designer, a few small games, and some coding tools (Python, Ruby, VSCode, Scratch, etc.). - Lego Spike and Spike Prime robot…

> an old-school landline phone connected to a VoIP box, served by UniFi Talk ($10/month). That sounds interesting, going to look into it. My son is old enough to be home alone but I don’t want to get him a cell phone yet, but I don’t want to leave him alone without a phone in case of an emergency. Traditional home phone plans from the usual telecoms are way more expensive than I thought they’d be. What should I be lo…

> What should I be looking for with regards to a VoIP box?

I just bought the one from Ubiquiti. No fuss, works out of the box: https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/managed-voip/products/ut..., though you do need a separate piece of hardware on which to run the UniFi talk app. For me, that was my UniFi gateway (UXG-Max) - I have a lot of UniFi equipment.

There are others that could work - you can look up UniFi Talk supported devices.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#102

Post by AkshayGenius »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #18

Some of the things my wife and I have provided for our kids: - lots of bookcases with probably >1500 books (including lots of kids/picture books) - what we've collected over the years - a family laptop (2012 MacBook Pro) with no internet connection, pre-loaded with Pages, Sheets, Affinity Photo/Designer, a few small games, and some coding tools (Python, Ruby, VSCode, Scratch, etc.). - Lego Spike and Spike Prime robot…

This sounds very interesting and very much in-line with what I’ve been musing as a soon-to-be father.

One question that comes to my mind is do your kids compare their experiences to their friends? If their friends have access to a laptop with internet, or a music subscription service with all the music constantly available (a la Spotify), do they not compare and ask you why their experiences must be so limited? Why do their friends get to be on iMessage and they just have a landline phone number.

These are the kinds of questions that worry me about how much the kids can truly buy in to this. But maybe I’m overthinking this.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#103

Post by HelloUsername »

bitwize wrote: post #72
jdhawk wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for Yoto, our kids (5-7) have abused them for years. The Make Your Own cards let me create full length audiobooks, playlists, etc.. super stuff

The concept is super cute, and it'd be nice if there were content actually on the cards. But it's 2026 and the rightsholders would never actually allow that. As soon as Yoto's servers go dark, there goes any content not already cached on your machine. (And maybe the stuff that is, due to licensing arrangements.) Fuck that shit so hard. If I had kids, they're getting a cassette player. Bonus: it'll double as data stor…

There are unofficial ways:

https://github.com/earchibald/yoto-smart-stream

https://github.com/cdnninja/yoto_api

https://github.com/tmcinerney/yoto-mcp

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#104

Post by [deleted] »

AkshayGenius wrote: post #102
TimTheTinker wrote: post #18

Some of the things my wife and I have provided for our kids: - lots of bookcases with probably >1500 books (including lots of kids/picture books) - what we've collected over the years - a family laptop (2012 MacBook Pro) with no internet connection, pre-loaded with Pages, Sheets, Affinity Photo/Designer, a few small games, and some coding tools (Python, Ruby, VSCode, Scratch, etc.). - Lego Spike and Spike Prime robot…

This sounds very interesting and very much in-line with what I’ve been musing as a soon-to-be father. One question that comes to my mind is do your kids compare their experiences to their friends? If their friends have access to a laptop with internet, or a music subscription service with all the music constantly available (a la Spotify), do they not compare and ask you why their experiences must be so limited? Why d…

[deleted]

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#105

Post by foobarian »

picofarad wrote: post #70
alnwlsn wrote: post #66

It's a different category, but I can't tell you how much learning programming in BASIC and learning hardware on Z80 got me to understand how computers actually work. BASIC is just plain approachable - turn on the computer and it's there. Also I had the paper manuals manuals that came with the computer and all the old BASIC books that my school library never threw away to learn from. When you're young enough that "ins…

I'm not a new Hacker News user. I just had surgery and I don't feel like getting up and looking up my password. I've always heard that learning ANSI BASIC or any basic, Q basic, Microsoft basic, any of them, first; usually leads to a lifetime of bad programming habits. So of course I learned basic first, but then I was like, oh, I'll just learn Fortran, and then C++, and then I got completely lost and never found my…

I'm sure you turned out just fine and don't use goto in Python ;)

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#106

Post by cma5 »

I think, YouTube is a double edged sword. There is so much interesting and inspiring content on there but it's tainted by 95% slop. What I'm doing for myself is having an adblock, blocking shorts and redirecting the homepage to subscriptions. This is of course no child protection but at least it helps me to not kill too much time.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#107

Post by j45 »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #18

Some of the things my wife and I have provided for our kids: - lots of bookcases with probably >1500 books (including lots of kids/picture books) - what we've collected over the years - a family laptop (2012 MacBook Pro) with no internet connection, pre-loaded with Pages, Sheets, Affinity Photo/Designer, a few small games, and some coding tools (Python, Ruby, VSCode, Scratch, etc.). - Lego Spike and Spike Prime robot…

Emulators are a great idea. Makes me want to 3D Print a mac classic, then put a tablet in it running an emulator with the touchscreen disabled.

Touchscreens can quickly be disracting, finding ways around that are important.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#108

Post by j45 »

AkshayGenius wrote: post #102
TimTheTinker wrote: post #18

Some of the things my wife and I have provided for our kids: - lots of bookcases with probably >1500 books (including lots of kids/picture books) - what we've collected over the years - a family laptop (2012 MacBook Pro) with no internet connection, pre-loaded with Pages, Sheets, Affinity Photo/Designer, a few small games, and some coding tools (Python, Ruby, VSCode, Scratch, etc.). - Lego Spike and Spike Prime robot…

This sounds very interesting and very much in-line with what I’ve been musing as a soon-to-be father. One question that comes to my mind is do your kids compare their experiences to their friends? If their friends have access to a laptop with internet, or a music subscription service with all the music constantly available (a la Spotify), do they not compare and ask you why their experiences must be so limited? Why d…

It can be important to tell kids early that comparisons don't matter, that everyone's diffferent, and that's ok, and every family's different and that's ok.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#109

Post by cma5 »

nameless912 wrote: post #81

I was just talking about this with my partner the other day. We have an amazing retro games shop/arcade not far from our house, so I think for probably my kiddo's 5th birthday I'm going to take him to buy a Gameboy Advance SP and a couple of games He's already shown interest in video games and I think this is a great way to introduce him without overwhelming him. I'm sure the whole package will be We aren't a fully s…

Used DS + R4 / M3 Card also does the job and you can use it as a walkman too

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#110

Post by lukan »

smokel wrote: post #22
themanmaran wrote: post #19

As someone who grew up in the 90's, I think seeing the live progression of tech was really helpful for my own understanding. For instance we saw: - CDs moving to Mp3s moving to the ipod and finally streaming - Games moving from 8bit to early 3d graphics to where they are today - Family computer moving to laptops and eventually to ipads - Landlines to early cell phones to the iphone today All of these experiences help…

Most kids that grew up during the timeline you described had no interest in computer architecture. The small minority that did care is probably the same size now. The other 99% who were into yoyo-ing back then are now into TikTok, that's all.

I would argue yoyo is way more healthy than TikTok.
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