Why are linux options light on the tablet front? It should work the same as on a laptop

Right. But in this particular case it doesn’t make sense. If microbial life were found on, say, Mars then that would be a discovery by NASA, which is a civilian agency. As far as I’m aware you don’t need a security clearance to work at a civilian agency.

On the other hand if the US  found some unknown craft flying in their sky that would immediately become a military matter and so be classified by default

Yeah. If they classify microbial life because it conflicts with religious dogma then you’d expect them to classify any scientific finding that conflicts with religious dogma, which doesn’t seem to be the case.

Why would they classify that information if its just microbial? The motivation for classification is clear if the aliens are flying around in UFOs (so they can reverse engineer their tech without adversaries of the US finding out) but there is no realistic motivation for why they might classify microbial life

i.e. a “dumb phone”

I agree that if you can get enough parents onboard with the no cell phone rule then it’s not a problem. But there’s a bit of a coordination problem there so that might not be achievable in all circumstances

Are there alternative network infrastructures that could avoid some of these issues?

Yeah no one here is qualified to give OP a diagnosis. And even if a psychiatrist was on here they couldn’t provide a diagnosis without meeting OP

I’m relatively young so I can attest to the fact that, even when I was in high-school, not having a phone would put you at a social disadvantage. Thats how kids kept in touch out of school hours and coordinated social events. It’s not ideal but thats how things work now.

Yes. But it will be interesting to see if anyone else is implicated once they examine Andrew’s online accounts

This sounds like a much better strategy than the Australian model of simply scanning your face and using AI to guess your age

Assuming he hasn’t destroyed the evidence, this could potentially lead to more arrests once police search his laptop and read his texts messages and emails.

Thats a unique idea

I should have been more clear. I mean banning advertising in general would not be realistic, so a ban on targeted advertising is a more realistic alternative

Fair point. I’m sure if there was a social media ban the fediverse would be a low priority. That said I still don’t see how it would be financially unviable because like I mentioned earlier most instances already have an application process

That seems like it would be very difficult to enforce

The ban target advertising would definitely be a more realistic solution than banning advertisements in general (which some people are advocating for here). I really am not a fan of ads and would love if they were banned, but I understand that it’s not politically realistic due to what a large role they play in our economy.

You don’t need to ban literally any website that could be classified as social media to have the desired effect. You just need to ban the big ones: TikTok, Instagram etc. Because these are the sites that are creating the most harm (through addiction, body image issues, etc.). There are diminishing returns blocking anything beyond that. Kids aren’t getting addicted to gardening forums or developing anorexia because they spent too much time on tech support IRC channels.

This is a unique idea. I think if we were to have a publically funded curation effort it would need to maintain some structural independence from whatever government was in power, to prevent any potential for abuse. It would be like government funded news agencies, like the BBC or the CBC. These organizations are funded by their respective governments funds but the government can’t tell them what to publish unless It’s violating some law or something (e.g. by doxxing someone). Similarly: the government could fund these block lists but have no say in what websites eventually land on it.

Ideally the process would be as transparent as possible too, but that might have some drawbacks. By explaining in depth why they blocked a website they might be inadvertently drawing attention to that website, which is not always a good thing.

I don’t know the answer to this but just looking at them they don’t look binocular. Even if they are not binocular though they still have a 360 degree visual range and no blind spots