unknownuserunknownlocation

This. Kids are often a reflection of their surroundings.

Case in point: a teenager, call him Carl, that I’ve taken under my wing a bit in our Organization expressed worries to me a while ago about one of his classmates, call him Mark, joining, because Mark would apparently bully him. I promised to keep an eye on it. I got to know Mark a bit better, and he seemed to give off this downed vibe, but despite keeping an eye open, he never seemed to be nasty to Carl. About a month ago, I was at an event where Mark and his mother were there. His mother berated him, calling him stupid over and over, and even made him confirm that she was right. This answered so, so many questions. Poor kid. I’ve also taken him under my wing a bit in the meantime, at least as far as I can. I think things have improved between the two.

Just so she can kill dogs at 30 000 feet…

Railway safety. On airplanes there will sometimes be people who clap when the plane lands safely. In modern cars we have a number of safety features that are pretty hard to ignore. But with trains everyone is (rightfully) focused on punctuality. Only in the rare event of a crash or similar so most people even begin to think about the safety aspect.

Well, I’m pretty sure that shit doesn’t just work anymore.

Til what that sound is called

Exactly what is the sound that’s being muted here?

That’s… What you have trains for. If you have proper public transit, that need is covered. Oh, and you can get shit done while you’re on the train. Or sleep. Or relax.

Should we be able to? Absofuckinglutely.

Unfortunately, it’s another casualty of the looks of the device OS being part of the brand. Essentially: if you chose a font that countered the brand look Google (or even more so Apple) is striving to maintain, you would decrease the value of their brand. So they don’t let you. Remember the first iPhones? You couldn’t set a wallpaper. The background was black. Period. It would have been perfectly possible to allow a user to set a wallpaper. But when the wallpaper was black, anyone seeing the iPhone’s home screen could immediately recognize it as an iPhone. It took four fucking iPhone generations until you could change the wallpaper. Not being able to change the font is that concept, but on not quite as many steroids.

Is it stupid? Absolutely. Unfortunately, it’s probably not going to change any time soon, because it seems this branding works for those companies, users be damned.

God, I hope Linux phones get more usable, and fast.

I think of an entirely different song:

Youtube

Invidious

First off: if, then he wouldn’t be a pedophile but a hebephile. Small, but important difference.

Second: there are the laws. If you’re breaking laws, it could quickly become a problem (obviously).

But finally, what you were actually getting to: it really depends. There are plenty of age cases that are unacceptable no matter what (e.g. if he were 25 instead of 19, for instance). People mature differently. I’ve met people who were 16 where you could think they were 20, and vice-versa. If one is much more mature than the other, than you have a power imbalance, and that’s the problem. And that can happen with two people of the same age, as well (although it’s less likely).

So, no, 16 and 19 isn’t necessarily wrong, per se. The question is: is the relationship in question problematic?

For a moment I thought you meant “pro-fox” as “pro-fox news”

Of course electricity comes out of a VGA port, but it’s only a signal, I wouldn’t assume that it’s anywhere near enough to charge a phone.

In Germany you’re also responsible for the safety of your passengers. If you get pulled over and someone in your car is not wearing a seat belt, you will get fined. You’re driving a multi-ton death machine, you’re responsible for taking care of the people in it.

Also, someone not being buckled can be a danger for other people as well. Depending on the accident an unbuckled Person can become a projectile and severely injure or kill others.

WTF am I even looking at?

I submitted a song that I couldn’t find the name of a long time ago in hopes that someone could ID it. About 15 years later, someone replied with the name of the song. It definitely brightened my day to have a nice surprise like that.

1. Learn different programming paradigms and approaches. Learn Java or C# to learn object-oriented programming. Learn Haskell to understand functional programming. Learn C to understand low-level programming. Learn C++ to see the wealth of opportunities a programming language can offer. Learn Assembly to understand what happens when your code gets compiled and how computers work on a very basic level. Learn Rust to learn about memory- and thread safety. You don’t have to be an expert in all of these, but a basic understanding can be really helpful (for instance, the C++ code I wrote significantly improved after learning Haskell and functional programming, even though I will probably never write an actual program in Haskell).
2. Learn about programming practices. Learn about test driven development. Learn about fuzzing. Learn about penetration testing. Essentially make sure you’re not only learning the actual programming itself, but everything the comes (or should come) with it.
3. Most importantly: practice, practice, practice. Find an open source project that you like and improve something. Fix a bug. Add a requested feature. Learn how to work with others on programming tasks. Ideally you have an open source project that you use and would like to see a bug fixed or a feature implemented - talk with the devs, make a PR, and don’t get frustrated if they criticize your code - learn from it (but also accept that some devs are self-centered or don’t want help - in that case, choose another project or fork the project).

Not all that surprised. I’ve prevented people from having panic attacks by intensely massaging the palm of their hand. They usually wonder WTF I’m doing - but seriously, it works.