randlet

Yes I've played/beaten Contra. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree because to me it looks like shooting a lot of people with guns.

Agreed. These videos are horrible and kids (mine included) love them for some reason.

I had a similarly negative view about your article and "passed judgment on you" for making the choices you made for your kid. In particular I have a very negative view about e.g. 6 year olds using guns to kill enemies in video games. If the article was about what I would consider to be more constructive video games I probably wouldn't have given it a second thought (eh I probably would still judge but not so negatively!). Did you ever worry about a game like Contra having a negative effect on Eliot? Thanks for chiming in :)

I am not "anti-gun". I don't own guns but I did grow up in rural Canada and had plenty of exposure to guns, hunting, and have enjoyed skeet and target shooting myself etc. Guns are a tool which can be useful. It's the violence and normalization of it that I'm opposed to.

"You implied that cartoonish violence like Contra will have substantially negative psychological effects on children."

I do believe they have negative effects on children but I don't believe that extends to school shootings.

Are you sure it was a lack of video games and movies that let you to have trouble forming relationships? My anecdote is that even though I had virtually no video games (except at friends houses) or television until highschool I was still able to form (and maintain for 30+ years) friendships with my peers who had very different rules than I did, and had a full social life all through school (I do consider myself a strong introvert and have had social anxiety issues in past, but I would never point at lack of TV/games growing up as a root cause).

Like you said, neither one of us has hard data, only anecdotal stories with different outcomes for similar "media" parenting strategies.

Even if there is no negative consequence on an individual child relative to their peer group, I still believe (can't support with evidence obviously) that exposing children to violence in video games and movies is a net societal negative that I don't intend to contribute to.

edit: Just wanted to say I appreciate your perspective as it's one I hadn't even considered before and gave me some food for thought.

"None of them grew up to be school shooters."

Please don't put implications in my post that aren't there. I'm not aware of research that suggests video games are or are not a factor in school shootings and similar events.

Letting a kid play a game about killing people with machine guns at age 6 is crazy to me. I was also shut out of social situations like seeing movies and playing video games at a young age and I imagine my children will be to. It hurt at the time sure, but life ain't always about getting what you want or doing what everyone else is.

I was mouth agape through the whole article. Call me old fashioned too, but I don't want my 5 year old killing things with swords when their grasp on what is real and imaginary is so blurry. It blows my mind that most of the kids in my daughter's junior kindergarten class have seen Star Wars movies, Spiderman, and other violent movies.

I'm not against a 4 or 5 year old using a tablet for a limited account of time for interactive educational 'games' but guns and swords is well over the line.

Edit: Contra at age 6!

Fairly irrelevant but I've only ever heard boats referred to in feminine terms and he called his yacht a "he". Is this more common than I've been led to believe?

I am totally with you. I recently did an unscientific "apple tasting" experiment. While Honey Crisp are a good apple, they are just sweet and crisp but with no complexity or character. I deemed Granny Smith and Pink Ladies to be heads and shoulders above the rest with Honey Crisp a distant third.

"Mackintosh (remember them? usually for pie)."

No "k" in Macintosh, but this is a weird statement to me. Macs are very popular in Canada and virtually every grocery store that I've been in carries them (in Ontario anyways). They can be really excellent fresh off the tree but are generally a fair to middling apple in my opinion.

That's awesome! I'm too much of a chicken to take mine apart... I couldn't stomach the replacement cost if I bungled something up.

I feel like I comment this on every hearing impairment thread on HN, but for me invisible hearing aids are an anti feature. I prefer to wear behind the ear models as they provide a visual clue to people that I'm hearing impaired and they are more understanding about having to repeat themselves. (I started wearing them in my early 30s and I admit I was pretty self conscious about them to start with, but quickly got over it.)

Also kids notice them sometimes and are usually not shy about blurting out 'hey what's in your ears?!?' which can lead to teachable moments :)

I think the author is in the UK where I believe cash bars at weddings are more socially acceptable.

I've been to a few weddings here in Canada with cash bars. Some people really frown on it, but it's not a big deal to me. Some people just can't afford it.

Yeah, $100 an hour for contract COBOL expertise sounds very low, but maybe I underestimate the number of COBOL people still around.

Same scenario for me. FWIW I switched to using http://www.ighome.com/ which more or less replaces the functionality (not affiliated in any way, just a user).

Do people think this is OK generally? There are some products I would really like to know the price of but pretending to be a customer to gain competitive information seems ethically questionable.

I guess after today I should amend my original comment to specify that the door must have a lock too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5A1wg5FA-g

I guess I'm not sure what your argument is then. Yes childcare can be tough to find and it can be very expensive depending on where you live, but if you're saying its okay to hold a full time remote job and care for your child at the same time, I guess we will have to agree to disagree. I dont' think that would be fair to your child or your employer.

Sorry but I don't believe you can look after your kid all day and work from home at the same time. It's not a matter of privilege, it's a matter of practicality. If you have a full time job, you need childcare whether you work in your home or out of it. I don't think that's particularly controversial.

edit: If it lends any weight to my opinion, I guess I could also point out I work from home and that that despite your assumption I've been the only parent for two children <= 5 years old for the last 9 weeks.

Yes, sorry I should have mentioned that. You need to track your weight along with counting calories and make adjustments to your caloric intake based on the weight you are gaining/losing. You don't need to be within 2% accuracy (frankly that's not feasible anyways) just consistent.

"screaming their head off on the other side of the home office door"

Whoever is looking after the child should not be allowing them to sit outside the office door and scream! If you're home alone with a kid, you shouldn't be taking conference calls (except under emergency situations e.g. sick kid + critical call).

Spend a couple of weeks/months preparing your own food and weighing everything. Use an app like MyFitnessPal to record and count your calories. It doesn't take very long to develop an intuition that's "good enough" about how many calories a deli sandwich contains.

I've been doing this for a couple years now (only coffee/water before 12pm and no food after 7-8pm). It's a very effective method of calorie restriction for me.

Only eating before 1pm would be absolute torture for me!

I think you misunderstand. There is obviously another caregiver looking after them. I can't have a 24 hour open door policy with my kids while I'm working from home, just the same as anyone who works in an office.

Sorry, I thought it would be obvious that there was another adult looking after the kids. It's not really possible to work from home and look after kids at the same time obviously. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on whether they understand/can follow simple instructions. It's never been a problem with my kids.

They're with their caregiver. If you're looking after kids yourself you're not working from home.

I agree they make some noise, but having them in your lap during a conference call is over the line imo. If you have kids in the house then you need an office with a door. I've worked from home for 3 years now with 2 kids aged 0-5 and they understand that when the door is closed, Dad is at work and they don't come in.

I love email. My only problem with email is that it's too difficult to reliably run your own server with a Gmail quality interface. I have Fastmail for email on my own domain and it is quite nice but the more experience I get the less I want companies involved in being the gatekeepers to my critical and personal information.

"If you're a young male, doctors don't want anything to do with you. I usually Google things"

I'm sorry you had a bad experience, but as a young man who had recent health issues this wasn't my experience at all.

Alcoholic drinks taste great (some), but the important bit is alcohol makes you feel really good. Temporarily.

It also helps people who struggle with small talk, or interacting with others in general, to relax and loosen up.