She’s apparently made it her life’s work to abuse the vulnerability of both bio and foster parents by leveraging her “knowledge” in a way that favors kids being permanently separated from their bio family. There are certainly circumstances that warrant that kind of separation, but she and that lawyer’s office seem to be leading a campaign of child separation. That’s pure evil.

An ad-free web is definitely a pipe dream. But a targeted ad-free web should be a simple option available to users. I’d guess that the majority of the public doesn’t care too much about being tracked, and may even appreciate having their relevant interests targeted so that they see an ad that is more interesting to them. The problem is that, for those of us who don’t want to be targeted, there is no simple way to disable that. Companies have baked their ad targeting directly into the functionality of their platforms so it’s incredibly difficult to avoid targeted ads if you still want to use the most popular sites. I think this is the reality that is unacceptable.

Every browser should have a simple toggle to enable targeted ads and it should be every site should respect this. I’m not super educated on Google’s Topics solution, but maybe the step away from cookies could theoretically support that kind of reality. I don’t think Google is going to lead the charge on that kind of change, but we certainly need to get away from cookies somehow.

Do you know if that means that the FDA could just backup and do the approval process again and conclude that it does not need to follow the pathway of a dangerous drug? If it aligned with other drugs that way, then legal arguments might be moot?

Honestly, this story doesn’t need to be covered as an opinion piece. The facts that we know at this point are damning enough. There are plenty of articles that cover it better: https://www.npr.org/2023/08/14/1193676139/newspaper-marion-county-kansas-police-raid-first-amendment

The paper didn’t initially publish anything. They were following-up on tips and doing some very basic journalism. They opted not to publish some inflammatory stuff because they were worried they were being used in a domestic dispute. The paper only published a story to defend themselves after they were accused of a bunch of stuff by the restaurant owner. Then the raid happened.

I hope everyone involved in authorizing/executing the raid gets absolutely brutalized by the legal system. They shouldn’t hold the positions they have because they’re clearly not qualified and the paper deserves significant compensation. The founder of the paper died the day after the raid; she was 98 and it’s very likely that the trauma of being raided by the police contributed to her death.

Yep, I wish I could disable voicemail, but there are important ones that come through from time to time that I don’t want to worry about missing. Not every profession has comfortably transitioned to texting/email and I can’t force them to.

That seems pretty reasonable.

But also, insurance companies have way too much power here. They serve a valuable need, but the company made 15 years of 100% pure profit by ducking out at the first inkling there was of risk. There needs to be a lot more regulation around insurers of all types to help protect consumers.

They claim to be anti-abortion. In reality, many of their policies lead to increasing abortions: defunding education, defunding birth control, etc.

Nissan Leaf and Chevy Bolt are those vehicles and they don’t appear to be any heavier than their ICE counterparts. This article is just fear-mongering about EVs. Tire degradation may be a serious concern, but it’s not actually unique to EVs and this article isn’t really setting itself up to be taken seriously.

Does Chrome Remote Desktop work on Chromebooks?

It doesn’t work for unattended access. I have to coordinate with my dad so that he can open the site and send me an access code, which doesn’t sound that hard, but definitely never goes smoothly. It’s a very Google move for a service they provide on a device they built to not have full functionality.

Annoyingly, unattended access isn’t an option on a Chromebook for Chrome Remote Desktop. It requires the user (my dad) opening the site, selecting the option for sharing a screen, then texting me the code. It doesn’t seem overly complex, but it never goes smoothly.

My mom’s Windows laptop is great since I can just login at any point to fix something as long as she leaves it on.

For some reason, I hadn’t even considered the use of Blokada or similar solution, even though I’m familiar with them and AdGuard-home locally. I’m definitely going to get a VPN or DNS based adblocker in place for them, that should help out a bit.

RSS is also a really good idea, but I’ll admit that I’m a complete newb on that front. I have it on my list to explore RSS options for myself, so maybe I’ll consider my dad’s needs when I’m doing some digging, too.

I also pre-opened every app on their device to get the tutorial pop-ups completed so they wouldn’t have to deal with them.

This is a very good point and I often forget to do it for all apps.

she can take notes

Oh lordy, that woman will absolutely take notes. :)

Appreciate the suggestions, your approach does sound like a generally good way to keep it simple.

side note: One thing I noticed they really hated across all devices (and frankly, I hate it too) are pop-ups. Not pop-up ads because I blocked those for them, but app or system pop-ups. If they open an app and they get hit with 15 unskippable tutorial pop-ups, they will just hit the lock button and walk away. They will come back later, wake the device up, see they still have to go through with the tutorial, and then call me and ask how it “broke”. I highly suggest configuring devices to minimize this as much as possible. It makes them feel like they are losing control over the device and makes them panic or get frustrated, and honestly I can’t blame them. It’s horrible ux design.

Do you have any tips for this? This is an issue that plagues all their devices. Not just tutorials, but warnings and update messages, too. From a security perspective, app updates are important, but they always seem to bring some new info pop-up, whether on a phone or a laptop. My parents don’t get frustrated and walk away, but they definitely never read the pop-ups.

I swear I responded to this before, but this is a great idea! I don’t see any immediate options at their local branch, but I’ll do some more searching.

I’m pretty fortunate in that my family doesn’t harbor unreal expectations, though I could see how that might happen. They ask me for help, but it’s always based on my availability and they just live with a situation until I get around to fixing it. I’ve set boundaries before, and they respect them. I want to get my mom a smartphone because she loves taking pictures and carries an old Canon camera everywhere. It’d be a steep learning curve for her to pickup a smartphone now, but I’d like to set some guardrails around the experience so it’s, 1) not too intimidating for her, 2) not too burdensome for me to support, and 3) gives her a better option for an activity she enjoys.

They made a musical out of it so I’m sure it sold just fine. The pointless disparaging based on no facts isn’t very useful to this topic.

That is such an awful experience. I also have a dog with a pretty strong prey drive. Every once in a while a neighbor’s cat will crawl along the top of our fence and he goes nuts. If he ever caught the cat, I’m sure it would be the end of it. I would feel so guilty because the cat doesn’t deserve that, but what else can I do? I have a strong fence around my yard and my dog is never off leash anywhere else. We’ve trained him well enough that he’s totally chill with our own indoor cat, but outside cats are a completely different story.

Letting your pet roam around wouldn’t be acceptable if it were a dog, why is a cat okay?

I live in a blue state I love and my immediate family lives in a red state. I’ve seriously considered moving to be closer to them even though it would be a bit of a downgrade, geographically. However, I’m not going to move somewhere that my wife won’t be able to make her own decisions about medical care. We’re not sure whether we’re going to have kids yet, but there is no way we’d do it in that red state. And even if we decide not to go the kid route, things don’t always happen as predicted and I want her to be able to get all necessary medical care without having to drive to a different state.

I’d be okay with being blue in a sea of red, but not at the expense of my family’s health and safety.

undefined_one> It’s the same principle.

It’s really not. The system is broken and student loans are extortionate. Borrowers were promised something that was not delivered.

I paid for my loans, too, but I don’t think the next generation should suffer because we bought into a broken system. It’s been shown that student loan forgiveness will have a hugely positive impact on the economy. I’d much rather we make decisions that benefit society as a whole versus holding on some misplaced idea that it’s more important we punish a group for believing the lies they were told.

Also, “most entitled generation ever” is such bullshit, pure and simple. Wage gap, American Dream© being a lie, housing crisis, etc., etc. This generation was led to believe they had a future, but they just can’t afford it.>