> There you go again, thinking about yourself. Your impulse wasn't to say, "am I doing this to my kids?" or "how will I act differently?" It was to wonder about your own nature.
Something similar happened to Sega's Shining Force for iOS. I paid $1.99 for it around 2013 or 2014 and it was great. Shining Force is one of my favorite games for the Sega Genesis and it's perfect for on the go mobile since it's a turn based strategy game. I hadn't played it in a couple of years and got an itch about a month ago so I loaded it up with much anticipation. Turns out sometime last year (or late 2017?) Sega had updated it to include ads and in the process wiped all saved games for all users. Now there is a premium upgrade to remove ads which, from what I can gather from the reviews, doesn't actually remove all of the ads, just some of them. Oh and you can't play without an Internet connection now since all save games are stored off device on Sega's servers. I don't ever leave reviews for apps, but I was so angry I had to vent somewhere. This kind of shit is absolutely unacceptable garbage and everyone involved in the process that led up to it happening should be ashamed. At least I'm not out $30 though. Yikes.
> I don't remember the Buddha being big on conversation.
He did seem to nod silently a lot, but I'm not so sure if he was against conversation per se. Rather, he wasn't big on conversation that served no good purpose.
> "There are these ten topics of [proper] conversation. Which ten? Talk on modesty, on contentment, on seclusion, on non-entanglement, on arousing persistence, on virtue, on concentration, on discernment, on release, and on the knowledge & vision of release. These are the ten topics of conversation. If you were to engage repeatedly in these ten topics of conversation, you would outshine even the sun & moon, so mighty, so powerful — to say nothing of the wanderers of other sects." - AN 10.69
It makes sense to me: when measuring stuff like you would in a lab use metric, when measuring stuff like you would in a kitchen use imperial. I think it only seems weird because we rarely do both in the same sentence.
> So you are admitting you are bad about making decisions about people? Luckily you have something empirical because you are no good at judging someone.
This is almost entirely the point of take home assignments. In fact, this is almost word for word what my response would be to anyone who doesn't like take home assignments!
> Thanks for admitting that, the first step is accepting you are no good at evaluating people.
Step two is admitting that, in general, evaluating people using non-empirical means is an enterprise fraught with peril.
A bit of ambiguity about certain things is an important lubricant for almost all non-romantic relationships. My family has a good idea of my salary (as pointed out elsewhere: they can see my house and my car) but I keep the specific number to myself. They're left with just a vague notion rather than anything they could do math with. It's much the same as how they only have a vague notion about what I do in the bathroom. They can use their imagination if they'd like and infer it from various things. But I shut the door so the obvious isn't rendered so plain to see as to become a topic of awkward (and sometimes destructive) conversation.
> I have no interest in using an app that by default broadcasts my transactions to everyone
This is such an astounding deal breaker for me. I'm honestly more than a little surprised it's even legal. It just sounds like one of those things that wouldn't be because of course it's a bad idea and everyone agreed on that like 100 years ago or something.
> It was so well-known that it allegedly factored into the plans of military legends such as Genghis Khan. Today, however, it’s been almost entirely forgotten—many locals living within a few miles of it don’t even know of its existence.
Huh? Those are all careers that require a high level of cooperation with people you might not like, a general understanding of civics and pro-social behavior, and a stick-to-it attitude. What's more, those careers, in my limited experience, tend to attract people who actually believe in civility, reasonableness, and agreeableness rather than people who would merely say they do.
The subreddit is good too. Some people feel it's a bit too right leaning. I tend to agree. But it's nice to not have the other side shouted down at every chance in at least one forum I actually care to visit. The moderators don't always get it right, but I really do get the impression they care about discussion quality.
I think this is the one thing about technology I'm old fashioned about (I roll my eyes hard when people say stuff like "You should delete your Facebook account, you'll be better off."). If I'm eating food with someone else the phone goes away. The only exception is if in the course of conversation an easily googleable question is asked and both the other person/people and I are actually interested in the answer instead of just guessing. But after that the phone goes right back in my pocket. It's not a hard rule, but it's one I do make a conscious effort to follow.
I've noticed that others are a lot less likely to pull out their phones and stare while at the table if I don't do it myself. There's just something kinda sad to me when I see couples at a niceish restaurant and neither person is talking and both are looking at Facebook or Twitter and there's still food on their plates. I know you can't extrapolate that to a person's entire relationship, but it just seems kinda... unfortunate I guess.
I know this counts as an accessory that bridges two devices rather than a complete device in its own right but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Game_Boy. The Switch, as neat as it is, isn't without precedent.