Because we are the product…

Oh yeah, they can get around it, but not without me knowing about it. If I find out, they lose the devices, simple as that.

You are right that parents who aren’t technical will have a hard time, but it’s not insurmountable. No devices in the bedrooms, ever. No downloading apps without permission ever. Google the app and give a yes or no.

When it came to it, wifi off at night and she got the basic Nokia phone. It’s a constant battle, sure but one we must win.

Also reminded her that no matter what, if she’s on our network, I will know what she’s up to. Instilling a healthy sense of fear is good. Router logs do not lie.

I highly recommend Qustudio. It works on phone and PC, and allows you to customise exactly what is monitored or blocked so you can keep an eye on things in an age appropriate way.

We started monitoring after we found out our 12 year old daughter was catfishing a 19 year old boy. He had no idea and after we explained that she could literally ruin his life, and made her tell him her age he noped out of there. (Wisely.)

At first we had it set to monitor everything, report all searches, all app downloads, block porn, etc.

Yes she was able to get around certain features, like when she was young we had the phone locked past midnight… But it logs when it’s in use, so we then had a talk the next day and took away the phone or PC if needed.

As she got older we removed the block on all websites, and stopped monitoring any messages. We kept the software on to let us know when she was using her devices because she would often be up until 3am on her phone on a school night and we would then have a conversation about it.

We removed it when she was 17 or 18.

I unfortunately am a victim of this. My Sense was great. Then a forced update pushed despite never allowing the Fitbit app to update. Now the battery life is horrible and I am of course encouraged to buy a new one and move my Fitbit information to Google.

Wait, this is going to be a Funcom game?? Oh man, Funcom has made some of our favourite games! We adored Anarchy Online, and The Secret World is still one of the mmo’s I would recommend to anyone who wants to try a really unique modern mmo with an amazing story.

Unfortunately when they were developing TSW and Age of Conan, someone made the call to go all in on AOC which was just… not unique in a space saturated with that kind of WoW clone.

TSW ended up not having the cashflow (devs) it needed to release updates and expansions and it fell into disfavour once the player base reached end game. Which is really sad, because even as a “dead” game the story and gameplay are so good.

I really hope they have retained the devs that worked on TSW and have enough cash to push everything into this game. Make it unique like TSW and AO were, push a couple expansions, and there will be players.

What an odd take.

10 years for the children to be able to fend for themselves? Assuming you are married before the first pregnancy, then have a full term birth at 40 weeks, then wait 12 months before the second birth that would put the first child around … 8 when this hypothetical “ideal” marriage dissolved, and subsequent children even younger.

Which wouldn’t make sense at all from an evolutionary standpoint, finding another man to step in as a father is not easy, so much so that there were laws around the care of widows in most societies.

The average marriage duration is only 7 years? Seems its nearly double that here in Australia. I also have two 18 year olds living at home who say they desperately want independence but also don’t want to get a job or do dishes, and have the sexual maturity of a potato.

I don’t think we are “meant to” have any particular relationship type or length, humans are far too diverse for that.

Edit: Some interesting replies, notably both touch on the concept of “it takes a village” which I agree is something we have sadly lost in most of Western society. I however do not think it is a stand in for long term family units. Instead I think a “village” type of setup takes the pressure off parents and allows for a stronger partnership. The countries with longest marriages are all either countries with multi-generational housing as the norm, or with higher incomes per capita.

Love is not a thing that happens to you, love is an action. Love is a conscious decision, made every day. Love is work.

I once read some research done on marriages and love and what predictors there are for a marriage failing.

https://www.gottman.com/blog/turn-toward-instead-of-away/

Yup. I hope they make it through this.

I agree, losing it would feel like losing the library of Alexandria. We do need more doing this!

Well, I think the self driving taxis across the us apparently need human interaction every 6 minutes on average… So are they self driving? I don’t know.

We can’t use our phones and drive, but someone can have a screen and drive 6 cars at the same time…

Wow, I left the US ten years ago, I had no idea it had got this bad. You need a VPN to browse porn? :(

Whats the game? :)

Yup. When we went to buy a TV I knew this was happening because the smart TVs with wifi and extra hardware and software were cheaper than the dumb TVs. Nothing is free, I knew they had to be doing this shit.

Odd, I don’t recall private lobbies being a thing, and a quick google shows lots of people asking for them and a few “workarounds”. Perhaps they are a recent addition or a console thing?

I bought Red Dead Redemption for myself and three friends, super excited about the game, the lore. I had never spent that much money on a game.

We all played through the single player tutorial, and finally into the open world. We meet up and begin exploring and trying to complete quests when suddenly one of us just … drops dead.

Then another is hit by a meteor and caught on fire?

I am thrown up into the sky.

An alien ship?! Appears and messes with us for a while. I try begging in pub chat for the hacker to please leave us so we can play, which seems to goad them further. This continued for an hour.

A quick look around the internet told us that this was par for the course for RDR and GTA and Rockstar couldn’t/wouldn’t do anything about it.

We ended up refunding all the games through steam. Sad times.

Awww cute

Sad

It definitely is, but these recent years have seen more and more unfinished games pushed to the finish line with game breaking bugs and missing content, all while charging AAA prices.

Capitalism is what it is, a metric for “success” cannot just mean you are profitable, you must be more profitable each year. Thus the enshitification of everything continues.

It is becoming difficult to “pay more for quality” as the quality of every publicly traded brand is the first thing that suffers when they are pushed to make more profits each year.

Good! Delay it til 2030! I am tired of unfinished games being released leaving angry gamers to abuse the devs who put their heart and soul into it. The only ones who win are the studios.

I missed the discussion on voting the other day it seems, but for what it’s worth, I like the voting system. In real life discussions happen in open air, and don’t hang there in posterity for people to stumble upon after. When we come to a consensus in conversation it is then left at that and we move on.

When online, these discussions stay as they are, and I think voting gives a way of people to come to a consensus, to leave a mark upon the conversation such that the people who come behind understand how everyone felt about it.

This is helpful I think, because it does not hide the down votes on nasty comments or ideas that hurt others.

One of the most interesting and horrible things about the internet is that every village has a “crazy Bob” but because they were the minority the good of the people outnumbered their outlandish or hateful ideas.

Now they can and do find each other online, forming a vocal and damaging minority. Without the majority able to show their dislike, human nature means more will fall in line with them and their ideals.