More and more people are against giving kids internet access. Allow me to go against the grain:

If your child is neurodivergent, or LGBTQ+, or any other form of misfit, then denying them internet access is tantamount to condemning them to social isolation. It wasn’t until I got unrestricted internet access, circa 17 years of age, that I realised that actually, no, I wasn’t a fucking alien, there were hundreds of thousands of people just like me, but I didn’t know because I was stuck in this shitty small town with shitty small town people. So I spent seventeen years thinking there was something fundamentally wrong with me when in reality there was something wrong with the environment around me.

I would have had a much happier early life if I’d gotten internet earlier. Wouldn’t have spent 90% of my teens being suicidal.

more relatable than I wish it was.

If for no other reason, then in the name of your own bank account.

Brüh

That was a thing?

[sicko voice] Yes. HA HA HA. YES

Excessive edginess

It’s important to differentiate it from like. Having extreme opinions. There are plenty of adults with extreme opinions and they are a whole other conversation. – But only people under a certain age (not strictly kid, mind, though most people have shaken this off by their mid 20s) have a penchant to arrive at extreme opinions specifically because they are “edgy” and “cool”.

This tends to also come with a particularly needless hostile attitude, where they very quickly and easily start with the verbal abuse.

Chaperon hats.

Oh oh oh oh oh oh!
JOUSTING!

We can do it with motorcycles this time instead of horses!

OH ALSO

Private Military contractors should begin to dress like crosses between clowns and noble-knights again.

(hours later addendum) Bowing as a form of social greeting. We REALLY missed a beat when we didn’t bring this back when COVID made people afraid of getting too close to each other.

See, I thought it might have been my tablets being cheap things.

But messing around with that borrowed iPad (possibly a Pro, the person who lent me it was filthy rich and likes premium stuff) made me go “… This is like, a high quality laptop but worse in every way?”

The screen was drop-dead gorgeous, and it was clearly a powerful (if locked down, cuz Apple) device – but it felt like everything I tried to do on the device was in some major way a compromise to accomodate for a less-than-ideal form factor.

In my case it’s more that I get car/airsick very easily – So when I’m out and about, I won’t be watching media on a portable screen. At most listening to music or an audio-book.

And if I’m in like. A hotel. Most of them (at least here in my country) have SmartTVs that will accept broadcasting from my phone. :P

As for note-taking, I can see the appeal but refer to my comment about typing in a Tablet being uniquely awful.

Compussy

Tablets. I’ve owned 2 so far, plus fucked around with a third, fancier one that was borrowed from someone else (in case you care: a very old Samsung one, a Xiaomi model from the late 2010s, and a new-ish Apple iPad for the borrowed one).

They suck as smartphone replacements because they are too big.

They lack button inputs, so they suck as gaming devices or as computer replacements.

You can browse the web… But if you decide to type anything, the large size plus the touchscreen keyboard make for an awkward experience (in ways that it’s not on a smaller phone)

They have lit screens, so they suck as eReaders.

They’re sorta okay as like, personal screens for watching movies or whatever, but like, at that point just use a television??

They can make sorta good drawing tablets, the ones that are pen-compatible I mean… Because I mean, yeah. But the lack of a keyboard is a bummer with how I learned to draw with my other hand on Ctrl+Z, though that’s more a muscle memory issue than anything.

In general, every tablet I used felt like a less-good verion of a dozen other devices, yanno?

The Internet Archive. Technically founded in '96, but didn’t come into its own until the mid aughts. It is an awe-inspiring thing that corporate greed has been trying to take from us.

That they’re a condescending and unpleasant person.

Thanks for that open letter. Very useful list of apps to never install :)

Winter but I live in Brazil, so winter just means it’s not a temperature that euros would call deadly like it normally is

Seems we had a similar idea –

Sega Genesis/Mega Drive (850 MiB):

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:2dc7abc164fa953f4ebe5be196305ebeffea0b42&dn=%5BBitsearch.to%5D%20%5BSEGA%20MDG%5D%20-%20Sega%20Mega%20Drive%20Genesis%20GoodGen%20V3.22&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.bitsearch.to%3A1337%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.torrent.eu.org%3A451%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2F9.rarbg.com%3A2920%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker2.dler.com%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.moeking.me%3A6969%2Fannounce

Super NES (2,03 GiB):

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:035bb648afa13f5624477fcf06ecc9d991375779&dn=%5BBitsearch.to%5D%20%5BSNES%5D%20-%20GoodSNES%20v3.27&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.bitsearch.to%3A1337%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fwww.torrent.eu.org%3A451%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.torrent.eu.org%3A451%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.moeking.me%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.dler.com%3A6969%2Fannounce

GameBoy+GBC (570 MiB):

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:ff91115fb9c487121785af6b06dc5c7184ced0f1&dn=%5BBitsearch.to%5D%20%5BGB-GBC%5D%20GoodGBx%20v3.15b&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.bitsearch.to%3A1337%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fwww.torrent.eu.org%3A451%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.breizh.pm%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.torrent.eu.org%3A451%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2F9.rarbg.com%3A2920%2Fannounce

Sega Master System (91,7 MiB):

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:55cf2fe9d744e94f2adfc513d9c84e2ad8299557&dn=%5BBitsearch.to%5D%20%5BSMS%5D%20GoodSMS%20v3.24&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.bitsearch.to%3A1337%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fwww.torrent.eu.org%3A451%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.breizh.pm%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.opentrackr.org%3A1337%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.torrent.eu.org%3A451%2Fannounce

Currently seeding all these.

First OS: DOS 4.something on dad’s PCXT clone.

First Linux: Kurumin Linux

Is history repeating? Didn’t this happen like 2 years ago?

Yes

You can expect them to drop at maybe one more good product, as going public is what companies do when they want to raise a lot of funds for some project

But after THAT, when it turns out that the new product is just… Making money instead of making ALL the money, the investors will take over and from then on it’s fucked.

But yeah RPi has alternatives now. No need to tie yourself to them when they DO sink.