Recently my daughter (third grade) has started learning to type at school. It's a Montessori program, so it's a pretty low tech environment overall, which I mention because I don't necessarily expect them to have a nuanced view of technology issues.

One of the typing programs they use is nitrotype.com, which adds a competitive gameplay element. However, it also has mechanism to friend another player. Friends can only communicate with stock phrases, so there's not too much "Internet leakage" beyond being able to choose a username.

I set it up for my daughter on her Linux Chromebook (I whitelist things I want her to have and everything else is blocked at DNS). Seeing her interact with it the first time, I realized that she spends as much time "adding friends" as doing the typing.

On its face, this activity is pretty harmless. But I am worried about the patterns it might be creating for her. I'm worried about her uncritically engaging with the dopamine hit of getting a new friend. Or how it shapes her idea of how many friends she has or where idea of her self worth comes from. Or what she thinks friends are.

So after that long preamble, here are some questions:

• How would you explain "friends" in this context?
• Would you distinguish them from other kinds of friends, either real or virtual?
• Would you attach a moral component to the activity? E.g. that it is good/bad or helpful/harmful
• How would you frame it to the teacher? Not so much in terms of whether or not they should do it in the classroom, but what kinds of conversations should they be having about the friends experience?
• If I'm asking the wrong questions, what questions should I be asking instead?

I'm really interested in seeing the perspectives people have on this. My own ideas are a bit murky, but I will put them down as a comment.

Next week, I will be closing on my first ever home (hello Michigan tilderinos!). One of the projects I want to tackle and work on after I move in is setting up a smart home ecosystem that is sustainable long-term. I saw the open-source Home Assistant but I think I need to do more research on it and find compatible products. For now, my wishlist of projects are:

• Controllable lighting from my phone or computer
• Carbon Monoxide/Natural Gas detection
• Water leak and usage monitoring
• Thermostat

Are there any other use cases that you use home automation for? If you use Home Assistant (or used it in the past), what are some things I should consider? Any products that you bought in the past and regret now?

I've been doing a postdoc in molecular biology in academia for a little while now, and getting ready to take next step. I'm looking into industry careers, but it's difficult to know what they entail since we don't often get exposed to them.

If you or someone you know works in biotech, I'd love to hear about it.

How did you get into it? What do you enjoy or not enjoy? Where do you see the industry heading? What are some of the positions like?

I'm a few years out of college and just landed my first "career" job last fall as an operations manager at a non-tech company. I enjoy the work and am learning a lot, but the work/life balance leaves a bit to be desired with very limited PTO days. My girlfriend and I want to move to the Denver area about a year from now and I want to try to get a job in the tech industry doing operations or project management.

Have any of you been in my position before? What kind of jobs can someone with about 2 years of operations management experience find to get them on the project manager track at a tech company?

Where do you go for decent reviews? Context-i was looking for a site to find good popcorn, and all the results on google for as far as i cared to scroll were fluff (pun intended).

Here’s what i use:

Rtings for stereo.

Wirecutter for appliances.

Reddit for everything else.

And my results are quite mixed, and involve a lot of scrolling.

Where do yall go?

Hi,
I think I have mentioned it here a few times, but I (used to) spend A LOT of time on my phone. I’ve tried to reduce it in the past with more or less success, and recently without any university work (I finished all exams half a year ago) and varying amounts of work as a freelancer, it crept up to 6+ hours of screen time per day. (this is excluding watching stuff to fall asleep, which I want to reduce but I am taking one step at a time) - So it’s a lot.

I tried a lot of stuff, reducing the hours, by setting limits for apps, turning off notifications, but that just leads to me extending the time by entering the password myself, or checking my phone more often because I am curious about whether someone texted.
So last week Wednesday some stuff changed. I took my first long bike ride in a long time, and that day I felt really good, I still had 5 h screen on time that day though. The next day I turned off notifications for Whatsapp, but I left the indicator next to the app on, so I could see that I have messages quickly, I also decided to just force myself to wait a bit until replying to people. Also my girlfriend is the only one that knows my screentime passcode now, so I can't sneakily extend my app time

That Thursday my screentime was 3h 16 minutes. I was hooked, I wanted to keep my time as low as possible. Since that Thursday, I have not hit the 4h screen on time once. Yesterday I was at 3h 59 min... it was an exhausting day though (Spending 1.5h at the waiting room at the doc) and I wouldn’t have blamed myself, but I still didn’t want to hit the 4h mark. Last Thursday my daily rhythm has changed quite a bit. I got Ring Fit Adventure this week, and I have done sports 4 times this week, I started to pick up playing guitar (literally got one yesterday) and ukulele again, and I just try to find stuff to do that does not involve my phone. I also played Persona 5 Royal on my ps5, I know it’s screen time but I feel less bad about it because I don’t take my PS everywhere with me, and these were the first days I have taken off in a long time… Next, I am trying to maybe work through my books that are on my backlog, finally finishing some more again. (my girlfriend gave me the book "South Sea Vagabonde, and I am meaning to read it, and I am also listening to the Audiobook "The Shallows")
One change just caused so many good changes. I am stoked and looking forward to how low I can bring my average, I know 4h per day is still a lot for most people. I am aiming at sub 3h next ( I had that once this week).

This scene from Bojack has been my mantra since then: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2_Mn-qRKjA

It really does get easier, too. Today I went biking and I managed to go much longer without breaks and I feel way less exhausted.

I just wanted to share my experience somewhere, maybe someone else is on the same path and this helps.