I think it's easier for kids to get hold of a phone at a younger age and become accustomed to it, and don't realise the jank / frustration it introduces when doing certain tasks.
I become unreasonably frustrated when having to search for things on the phone. Buying stuff online is a 'big screen task' not because of the security aspect, but because of needing to compare multiple products, which involve jumping between tabs. I can do that via shift/ctrl-tab, clicking, alt-tab etc - basically a single click. On the phone it's at least 3, and a genuinely grating experience saying nothing of having to copy and paste text for searching.
That said I've come across people that don't know basic copy and paste shortcuts / basic PC literacy, so for those I can see how the phone would feel no less efficient.
I think as kids get older, and their tasks require more digital complexity to complete, they'll slowly migrate towards laptops and larger screen devices (maybe including tablets, maybe not). Basic surfing etc is fine, but there is no way I want to be using even a spreadsheet on a phone - it's a miserable experience - saying nothing of something with genuine complexity like Blender.
If you can fly people around the moon, then landing people on the moon is a more reasonable next step.
I agree that it may not be entirely logical, but keeping public and funding opinion positive & invested _is_ important.
edit: I thought RocketLab flew their elecron rocket around the moon a few years ago? So it's definitely doable... so again I think it's about the optics.
Wildly disagree with that. I think the overwhelming majority of people want simple, peaceful existence, and that the 'lack of meaning' can be solved through deeper shared community goals and aspirations.
More prominent figures like Trump, Putin or al-Assad don't wage war out of boredom, but out of ego, or visions of a glorious future that only they can impart (which I guess is still ego).
I also think that the various regional conflicts in Africa are in no way driven by the fact that the various political groups are just sitting there with nothing to do.
That said, I do think that a 'common enemy' provides a great deal of focus to communities, as we're wired for it... but the definition of community (who is 'us') is largely malleable and entirely flexible. But it's only one way of providing that meaning.
I also think conflict is largely glorified through American media, which is aggressively pushed on a lot of the English speaking world. The videos of the SF soldiers talking about killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan, and how cool it was with no remorse for the taking of life in a conflict that none of the local population asked for. Of the people I've talked to that have been through armed conflict (specifically Angola, and Serbia), and so strongly against conflict that the reactions are almost scary.
So no, I don't think conflicts are started or sustained out of a sense of boredom.
When one communities deeply shared goals and aspirations conflict with another's (or subgroups) is when you get war and violence. The eras of relative peace is when you have one empire imposing its will.
So I'm not super well versed with Roblox, but I'd assumed it was aimed at a younger audience?
So wouldn't the above numbers indicate that you have a growing younger gamer population (e.g. in Roblox), and an older one in Steam? And that it would be reasonable to think that many of the current Roblox gamers would transition across to games in platforms like steam, but they cater to a different need or desire in the coming decades?
Or does Roblox have everything that games offer on Steam already? Can I get my Sekiro experience there, or Star Sector, or Civ, or Witcher?
There's no denying that Roblox is immensely popular, but maybe it's OK if Steam has more niche stuff in the long run? There's still big money to be made, especially for small developers.
And also aren't we comparing overall platforms to individual game performance? To compare _all_ of roblox against a single game (BF6) doesn't seem right, no? Shouldn't we be comparing the most popular Roblox experience instead (whatever that may be)?
It can be. And it also places strain on the people around you too if the kid isn't settled and easy to travel with.
Not the kids fault, but last time I travelled, there was a couple travelling with a child that was crying, hysterically the entire trip. This was a 20 hour trip all up, from NZ to SA, crossing NZ to AU then to SA, and they were with us all the way. The kid was going for the entire thing - I watched the parents take turns to look after her, standing near the toilets. I feel sorry for them having to deal with that, and for the girl being that upset (presumably sore ears? dunno), but that would not have been fun for the people around them either.
I was always super wary of travelling with ours in case that happened. We were lucky that they just slept through all the flights, but it could have easily gone the other way. I would have felt pretty stink subjecting the surrounding 40+ people to a very upset child.
Definitely hard to say. I get being angry and frustrated, and circumstances surrounding being a parent might not help at all. For instance my wife and I have no family to help out. It's just us. It's hard, but we do what we can.
I'm beyond fortunate that she's fully into being a mother, calm, patient but knows where the boundaries are. And that's reflected into our kid. He's so incredibly easy to parent, it's insane.
I look at his friends - all good kids. Boisterous, outgoing, a bit wild and uncontrollable, but fundamentally good kids. They fight with their siblings, and they're learning how to navigate the world.
And then I go shopping. We live in lower socio-econimic area, and it's genuinely just saddening to see what goes on. The number of parents that are actively, in public, swearing out their kids and just having the kids stand there quietly shrinking away is heartbreaking.
I don't know what's going on in the parent's lives, and I know being a parent is immensely difficut, and none of us are equipped from the outset to really become one... but yelling at your kid for being a f*ck in the middle of a shopping center? I fail to see how any of that is OK because of 'circumstances'. At some point you have to grow up and be an adult. You put this kid here. You need to take responsibility. It doesn't mean it's easy, but if you can't self reflect enough to know that's not OK, then you're a big part of the reason the kid is how they are.
Yeah... I was thinking about what I wrote above, I came to the conclusion that actually there is a limit. Because some people are awful parents, and that is reflected in how damaged some people are. I guess I could see the woman in the museum was trying, and had just had enough. But hey she was in a museum with her kids trying to do something positive with them.
Very cool. Reminds me of stumbleupon, which I lost many hours to back in the day.
Curated discovery is one of biggest gripes with modern platforms like youtube - discovering something truly new and outside of your normal interests is really difficult, and the same goes for the web. If you have a topic you want to explore it's fine, but finding random things you'd never have thought of yourself is much harder.
I've thought of a service that scans new websites and GitHub repos and looks for things that don't look like anything else (using something like hdbscan for outlier detection), and creates a feed for people to follow.
I wouldn't say it's not really a bad thing, I think it's a very good thing. There are many people now making incredibly niche products that have very good lives - making more than enough money for themselves doing interesting work engaging with customers that are passionate about their field.
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