There is zero chance I would approach a kid on their own that isn't mine. Because there is a very non-zero chance that someone would accuse me of that. If it gets to charges, even if I do successfully defend myself, then my name is mud and it costs me a ton.
I'd call security too. Not my monkey, not my circus.
Yes. In my "other life" I work in fire and EMS, and in uniform regularly have parents stop us and point us out to their kids - "If you're ever hurt or in trouble, you can ALWAYS go to these people, they're safe.", or the look of absolute trust when someone thrusts their sick child at you, hoping for you to make it better. And that, somewhat unsurprisingly, sometimes include seeing that child in undress.
Take off my uniform.
My partner spent several years in childcare, both at centers and as a nanny. We're out in public and she sees a crying child? She goes to it, talks to it, hugs it perhaps, reassures.
Me? Not a chance. For better or worse, societal conditioning is that that is something I as a male /do/ /not/ /do/. Because it's nefarious that I'd even want to.
Having a child with technology addiction, the struggle is real. It was my first experience dealing with real addiction. My son wanted to watch YouTube videos all night long. It's easy to say "don't do that"; it's harder to make it actually happen. He was 7.
We'd take devices and lock them up, but in the middle of the night while we were asleep he'd find a way. He'd plan it out during the day. He'd borrow his friends' school Chromebook, hide it in his room, download videos for offline viewing, and then wake up at 1:00 AM and binge watch.
We set up security cameras and would punish him when we caught him, but it didn't matter, because all he wanted was to watch videos, and no punishment mattered. He was going to watch them anyway. We locked devices in a safe, and during the day he'd figure out how to pull up security video and get an idea of the combination, and try every one close to that until he got in.
We considered locking him in his room at night, but rejected it because of safety and bathroom issues. Eventually we had to set up alarms around the house that would wake us up every time he got up. It took years of our sleep and mental health suffering, but we eventually broke him of it. Or he grew out of it. Who knows.
Technology is ubiquitous today. The schools require it. Society demands it. It's like if every house had a heroin dispenser. How would you prevent a junkie from getting their fix?
I understand you were acting in good faith, but are you sure these antics didn't contribute to it?
I remember instances in my own childhood where my parents would e.g. turn off the wifi router when they were angry at me, and I'd instead figure out how to hack the neighbor's and use that. The dopamine hit from that was crazy, and I didn't even end up using it for much. It was more about showing them I could, and they had no control over me.
I suspect the things you described above might've contributed to the thrill of it. I find it hard to imagine downloading videos in advance being very similar to how the recommendations algorithm keeps you going (I imagine only longform videos would be practical). I can't know how "bad" the situation was, but installing cameras and alarms crosses several boundaries in trust and respect, that I can't imagine being good for a growing child, coming from their own parents...
At the end of the day, you can only help an addict that wants to be helped...
We blocked YouTube, and when we did our kids were suddenly alive again. They had friends, went outside, did activities, played.
We also blocked TikTok and lots of other stuff before they discovered it, thankfully.
We do allow Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Apple TV, and those seem to be okay. They'll watch a movie or a TV show from time to time, which is fine, and they'll get bored and do something else.
But YouTube... they are dead to the world. Forever. It's unbelievable.
The stuff they'd watch on YouTube too... it's like they gravitated straight to the dumbest most vapid thing on the platform. Stuff like the worst low-quality gamer livestream videos, AI slop, videos of people unboxing products, "jump scare" cut-up cartoons that make no sense. Found one of them once watching hours of a six hour long video of someone running over things with a truck: old laptops, old phones, toys. Crunch, repeat, crunch, repeat, with some kind of loud repeating banging music playing. That's all it was. Millions of views.
It's sad because there's a huge amount of great content on YouTube. But that's not what's addictive, and if you follow the recommendation algorithm it will send you to the trash every time. The only way to find good content is to ignore recommendations and search it.
Glad I banned TikTok before they discovered it. I know one parent who had to get that one away from their kid after the kid was already hooked and the kid was screaming, hunger striking, refusing to sleep, stuff similar to what you describe.
I'm in the same boat as you (American, no degree), and I mostly agree (though I think that a debate around the value of college itself should be had, because I think there are too many cases where it isn't as high as people think it is).
1. The way I handled this was to insinuate on the resume that I had a degree. I went to a university for a couple years (before flunking out) and before that I did a couple summer classes at an extension program. Those add up to four years, and I point out that I studied computer science (which is true). If they don't outright ask that's not my problem. And if they do then I explain that something personal came up, and not completing it is one of my biggest regrets in life, but at this point I don't see how a degree would help my career blah blah blah.
This has only actually affected me once, and it's for a role I'm starting this week. The net effect is that my software engineering title can't have "Engineer" in it because I don't have an "Engineering degree".
3. A degree doesn't resolve that. I interview people every week for a role at my MAGMA company, most of whom have degrees, and most of whom act like they have impostor syndrome. Practice it. Do interviews for companies you don't expect to join just for the interview practice in a low-stakes setting. You'll get over it.
"The net effect is that my software engineering title can't have "Engineer" in it"
Where is this? There are plenty of people in Software Engineering (with Engineer as their title) without engineering degrees (or college degrees at all), even at large companies like Facebook/Google etc.
Without being super cagey, let's just say I understand their rationale, and it's not entirely un-legit. I found the role via a Hacker News "Who's Hiring" post. My title is going to be "IT Consultant", and it will have zero impact on my compensation. I don't really have a problem with it.
This is the rule in Canada, at least. I wouldn’t be able to call myself an Engineer here with my CS degree, despite having had several such roles in the US.
You wouldn't be able to be call yourself and engineer even if you had an engineering degree.
You need the professional accreditation. Which you can incidentally get without having done an engineering degree, but it requires passing a lot of exams.
That sounds like some weird company/person specific thing.
have heard this come up with respect to professional engineering certifications in some states. But I believe those don't even exist in the US for software at this point--and even in some states where there are supposedly restrictions on using the term, those seem to be pretty widely ignored.
It's a weird company-specific thing. I think part of it is that the company does a significant amount of traditional engineering under the same contracts.
It’s about the political pecking order at a company.
If you’re working at a law firm, non-attorneys are often a lesser stratum of human. Likewise, engineers in some engineering company will see IT people as pretenders to the engineering throne.
Some people gain joy in finding creative ways to be assholes. It’s just how humans are wired.
And certainly at least Big Law (at least up to the point where you become a real rainmaker--which you probably won't make without the other things) has a lot of fixation on schools, law review, and clerkships.
In most other Anglo countries you can get engineer in your title as a developer (and it is beneficial as it tends to be higher compensated than programmer or developer titles in my experience).
I want to always be able to do the next thing without worrying about getting to a point in my life where I'll need money to survive that I can't earn.
How do I do that?
Right now the next thing is to build neat stuff in my garage wood shop. One of the next things is going to be traveling in comfort. After that the next thing might be learning to fly a plane. But some day I'm going to be in a nursing home, and I don't want to suffer or be a burden on my family. The only real answer I see that gives me that kind of freedom (freedom from worrying) is to earn money now.
The billion dollar question is unnecessarily short-sighted and hedonistic. It advocates that you sell your future self short by doing what your present self wants. We are ever-changing bags of meat, and what you want in 10 years is almost certainly not going to be what you want now.
> On merchants who netted ginger, cinnamon and rhubarb from the Nile. In medieval price lists, a pound of ginger sold for the price of a sheep; a pound of saffron, the price of a horse.
A modern horse costs $3000 - $8000. Saffron at the grocery store costs $5 - $20 per gram, but you can get it for wholesale at $1000 - $5000 per pound.
So saffron is about the same affordability now, even though it's more common.
Both. AI code review is built-in, but there's always a second human in the loop.
I'm concerned that there are people pushing on the code generation front, the code reviewing front, and the laziness front. Eventually they're going to all meet in the middle, and there will be a significant number of engineers who are using AI to write and review the code, rubber stamp it, and push it into prod, with disasterous results.
I used the Microsoft Surface Duo, and the experience was terrible. I carry a Pixel 10 Fold, and 90% of the time I use it closed. But when I want to watch a video, or I want to show someone something. The bezel very much ruins that experience. And the Duo went even further by having hidden pixels, which made some UIs completely unusable.
That said, I hardly think that foldable is the peak. I'd prefer a rollable phone that I can expand the screen on, with maybe an edge display.
And the price is the real kicker. For the vast majority of the Android population, a phone at a price point about $1000 is just a non-starter.
Not a fix for the battery, but if you're on Android, enable developer settings and change your animations to 0.5x speed (there are three settings to change). Every OS animation will take half as long. It makes an aging phone feel much snappier.
There used to be a jailbreak app for iphone to increase animation speed, it was soooo nice, it felt like you were actually using the phone instead of the phone using you. Anything out there for iPhone right now? Edit: cowabunga on iOS 17 (broken in iOS 18+) https://cowabun.ga/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpPE85Jogjw&t=17s
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