sojsurf (u/sojsurf) - Readit News

sojsurf commented on Parental controls aren't for parents beasthacker.com/til/paren... · Posted by u/beasthacker

crusty · a month ago

How big are your feet? Because the shoe horn you just used to squeeze your barely veiled disdain for parentting "choices" that aren't like yours into this thread about user-adversarial parental settings by major game system manufacturers was massive.

sojsurf · a month ago

This thread was a follow-up to squibonpig's comment about the parental responsibility and the value of giving young people access to things that are dangerous when it's done with proper guidance. I agree with him, with the caveat that "the internet" is dangerous more like a city at night than a gun.

sojsurf commented on Parental controls aren't for parents beasthacker.com/til/paren... · Posted by u/beasthacker

BeetleB · a month ago

> For my kids, guns are absolutely not in the toy category. They are tools, used for hunting and protection, and access to these tools comes with guard rails and significant responsibility.

The same is true for cars. Are you also against toy cars?

> By the time they graduated, many of these guys had real skills they could support their family with. In our rush to protect kids, this kind of work is no longer taught in classes or available as summer work for young people. We have made it increasingly hard for young people to "grow up"!

This is a totally different issue from access to games. Why couple the two? Are you implying one cannot be taught those skills if they have access to games?

sojsurf · a month ago

> Are you implying one cannot be taught those skills if they have access to games?

Nah, I think games can be very valuable, especially communal, in-person games. I don't mind access to games at all... I think I look at the various forces around children and teens today, and it feels like we've taken away a lot of the things that were very valuable for development because they might be dangerous, and replaced them with replicas that are safe but lack some of the value and experience that came with the dangerous thing.

As an example, hunting games are safer than hunting, but hunting games do not teach you to be patient and still for hours, they do not teach gun safety, they do not teach you to stick it out when things get cold and uncomfortable. They do not teach you how to do something useful with the animal after you shot it, and there is no real cost to being sloppy and injuring but not killing an animal that is now suffering in the woods.

I'm sure you've heard people talk about the "infantilization" of young adults. What factors do you see behind this? How would you suggest we teach young people how to do hard things?

sojsurf commented on Parental controls aren't for parents beasthacker.com/til/paren... · Posted by u/beasthacker

BeetleB · a month ago

Sure, but do you understand that it's perfectly reasonable to be able to buy a toy gun and not have to explain gun safety to them?

Or would you recommend that all toy guns have the ability to be dangerous and all parents should train them because of the prevalence of guns in society?

sojsurf · a month ago

A few thoughts:

- Perhaps we have different ideas of the appropriate age to wean kids off of toys and teach them to use real (and sometimes dangerous) things. Today's discussion is about guns, but the same could be said for boats, motorcycles, woodworking equipment, etc. I would like my children to be well rounded and well equipped when they become adults. However, I acknowledge that this may not be normal anymore: Many families seem to be content with their teenagers playing games all day long (ironically, games with guns!)

- It sounds like you have the gun in a "toy" category. For my kids, guns are absolutely not in the toy category. They are tools, used for hunting and protection, and access to these tools comes with guard rails and significant responsibility. I would rather my kids never get used to guns as toys.

- This is bigger than just personal decisions: In my state, teenagers used to be allowed to work on construction sites in the summers. By the time they graduated, many of these guys had real skills they could support their family with. In our rush to protect kids, this kind of work is no longer taught in classes or available as summer work for young people. We have made it increasingly hard for young people to "grow up"!

sojsurf commented on Parental controls aren't for parents beasthacker.com/til/paren... · Posted by u/beasthacker

mothballed · a month ago

It's the parents obligation to educate their child.

It's the child's obligation to use that education wisely.

There were no trackers on cars when I started driving at 15 so my parents drove with me for a few months and after that I was on my own. There were no gun laws against kids having guns when I was 7 so my dad showed me how to use one safely and after that I was set loose upon the countryside armed on my own. There were no ridiculous negligent standards/laws on the book when I was young about it being wrong for a kid to spend all day going up/down a creek so my dad showed me what all the venomous snakes looked like and how to use a compass and after that I was on my own.

I find disagreement with this new standard on parents. No, it's not the parents obligation to keep their child from ever making a horrible mistake. It's their obligation to educate them well and then set them loose with very few safeguards so they can actually slowly learn to be an adult. I am very much for showing kids how to use the internet responsibly, but I'm not of the opinion that parental controls are particularly desirable beyond an initial learning period.

sojsurf · a month ago

Well written, and I agree with you on everything you wrote.

That said, "the internet" is a large place, and I think parents would find more clarity thinking of it the way they think of a physical place. In my mind, letting my son loose on the internet is not like letting him run around the woods unsupervised (which he does). It is more like dropping him off in a large city every night.

As you said, guidance is imperative, and in the real world we would not give only verbal guidance. We would, if we lived in the city, walk our kid to the library, the museum, the coffee shop, the park. We would talk about what parts of town to avoid. We would talk about what "free" means and about not trusting strangers and not just going into any door.

That last part is tricky. On the internet, every link is a door into a neighborhood, and there are a lot of neighborhoods even adults are not well prepared for.

sojsurf commented on Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws theverge.com/news/823750/... · Posted by u/ksec

hdgvhicv · 3 months ago

What were they doing with user data?

sojsurf · 3 months ago

Probably using off-the-shelf analytics because rolling your own analytics takes time away from solving the central problems your users are paying you for. No one is _using_ the data. It's often not even really PII except that GDPR's net is incredibly broad.

I have not seen GDPR reduce the amount of data people track. It's just resulted in piles of cash being burned on lawyers' advice to make sure the company has as little GDPR-related liability as possible. Subprocessor agreements, updated Terms and Conditions, etc.

Some good has come out of it, such as less backup retention, and some basic data breach plans, but a lot of it is theater.

sojsurf commented on What we talk about when we talk about sideloading f-droid.org/2025/10/28/si... · Posted by u/rom1v

Y_Y · 3 months ago

> I completely back Apple's right to control what runs on the OS they developed.

Praytell, what right is this?

sojsurf · 3 months ago

hah, thanks. It's a bit more nuanced than that. Let me try again.

I completely support Apple's right to publish software that makes it difficult for unapproved software to run on it.

Similarly, I support your right to try running something else on it.

Just like my neighbor has the right to publish a browser that makes it difficult to run extensions in it, and I have the right to use a different browser.

Some people would like the phone OS to be regulated like a public utility. I do not support that, and if we _had_ to have it that way, it would be important to have the same standards for everyone and regulate _all_ phone OSes equally. I don't like the thought of what that would do to the chances of any "open" offering.

sojsurf commented on What we talk about when we talk about sideloading f-droid.org/2025/10/28/si... · Posted by u/rom1v

secstate · 3 months ago

While I wont argue about it feeling like a conspiracy theory, I will argue that pretty much no one knows sideloading as a term with regards to what i-drive meant by it.

And the fact that `adb sideload` is where the concept originated does nothing to dispel the way the term is frequently used in a derogatory fashion these days. It's wielded as a bogey man to make people afraid of unsigned applications. Despite the fact that many perfectly signed applications are full of malware and dark patterns.

Also, FFS, this is hacker news. Why on Earth would be arguing in favor of Google locking down how I can install software on my device.

sojsurf · 3 months ago

I bought an iphone knowing that Apple has a review process and that I'm limited to apps sold in their store. Similarly, when I had an Android device I knew what I was getting in to.

I appreciate the fairly high level of review that apps get and I completely back Apple's right to control what runs on the OS they developed. Similarly, if _you_ want to run an OS you got from XDA on your Android device and install random stuff, I'll be the last person to stop you.

Hacker news readers are part of the small circle of people who have probably developed a decent intuition for whether software we download is clean or not. Most folks I know do not have this intuition, and many will not bat an eyelash when their new app asks for access to their contacts, etc. Sideload should absolutely continue to be a term that discourages the average person from doing it.

sojsurf commented on Calculating legally compliant rent late fees across U.S. states RentLateFee.com... · Posted by u/hrgdevBuilds

eadmund · 4 months ago

Everybody wants to charge as much as he can. Workers do the same: we all want to charge as much for our labour as possible. Unions do the same thing too.

Everyone also wants to pay as little as he can, too.

Fortunately, as long as there are many buyers and many sellers, the market tends to find efficient prices. When there is a monopoly or a monopsony, though, prices get out of wack.

sojsurf · 4 months ago

One thing I've noticed is that our current economic model, which builds in constant inflation, forces buyers and sellers to have this conversation non-stop. Why are prices higher? Because our costs are higher. Or because everyone else is charging more. Didn't you just raise prices recently? Yes...

If you don't increase your prices with inflation, your business will not be sustainable in the long term.

sojsurf commented on Ireland is making basic income for artists program permanent artnews.com/art-news/news... · Posted by u/rbanffy

dbspin · 4 months ago

> Housing benefits must be spent on housing.

It is almost impossible to receive housing benefit in Ireland. Legally all landlords must accept it, practically few to none in major cities do.

> The pricing of housing is defined by supply and demand.

About 20% of Irish homes are bought by investment funds, another huge (difficult to specify) percentage are bought to rent by small to medium sized landlords. The Irish state Land Development Agency build around 3.5k homes per year, meanwhile Davies estimate the state needs around 93k new homes per year. Investing in any kind of investment fund or ETFs is taxed at 41% under the exit tax in Ireland. In addition, the “deemed disposal” rule means investments are taxed as though sold every eight years, even if they haven't been.

These are all artificial extreme pressures on housing in Ireland specifically, that mean that this is not a simple 'supply and demand' problem. It's a supply and demand of people who need housing vs entities who require profit - and have concomitant class affiliations and monies to spend on political influence problem.

sojsurf · 4 months ago

93,000 new homes per year?

That's an impressive figure: The second largest city/settlement in Ireland, Belfast, has a population of about 350,000. If these new homes house three people each (a family with one child), it means that Ireland is growing at a speed of almost a new Belfast per year.

Is the economy growing at a similar speed to support eight or nine more Belfasts in the next 10 years?

sojsurf commented on Ireland is making basic income for artists program permanent artnews.com/art-news/news... · Posted by u/rbanffy

ta1243 · 4 months ago

The UBI I support comes from a land value tax. Basically every citizen has an equal share of the land of the country, and rents it out to people who want to use it. If you use more than your fair share you pay in, if you use less you get paid.

sojsurf · 4 months ago

Interesting idea. What are your thoughts on the following questions:

- Who decides who gets the valuable land (high rent value) and who gets the land no one wants to use?

- What happens when the population changes due to birth/death/immigration? Do you rebalance every 10 years? Can children inherit their parents' land?

- If we rebalance regularly, how do we protect people who built a business on land they had been renting but which is no longer available?