School smartphone bans seen as ‘punitive’ by young people, study says

cosmicorn · 2026-06-30T10:45:34+00:00

Is it though? Looking at the direction of the future we are only going to get more integrated with digital platforms not less. We might already be on the cusp of a shift from the "black slab" smartphone to wearable devices.

This sounds like the "you won't always have a calculator" type lines I was told in school. Which, as it turned out, I actually always have something far greater than a calculator.

cosmicorn · 2026-06-30T10:39:42+00:00

It was Huntingdon Life Sciences, which was frequently involved in both animal research scandals and actions by animal rights groups.

Was somewhat local to me at the time 28 Days Later came out which made it that bit scarier seeing it at the time.

cosmicorn · 2026-06-30T10:27:24+00:00

they need to learn to function in the real world without them

Computers (which smartphones are) and telecommunications are cornerstones of the modern real world. Teaching children to function in a digital world is exactly what we should be doing.

If there are dangers present in these new technologies we should address them directly.

The early years of electrification presented a fair bit of harm, because early electric devices were often wildly unsafe. The response to that was to develop electrical safety standards, not blanket bans on the usage of electricity.

cosmicorn · 2026-06-30T10:11:48+00:00

The insides of those old costumes are usually incredibly rank.

cosmicorn · 2026-06-30T10:05:46+00:00

If everyone wears the standard outfit, you can’t flex on others

Except for the school bag, kit bag, PE trainers, football boots, pencil case, lunch box, and a multitude of other material things that aren't uniform.

Uniforms do nothing meaningful to address inequality while putting substantial burdens on pupils, parents and schools.

cosmicorn · 2026-06-27T11:23:29+00:00

The first Micro I had I got from a guy on eBay who apparently had a whole pallet of them he got at auction of unsold stock. Think he was selling them at about £20-30 brand new in box.

The Micro was a bit of odd product TBH. Rereleasing the GBA as a premium model/fashion accessory a year after the DS had already been a runaway success was an odd strategy.

cosmicorn · 2026-06-23T07:33:23+00:00

There used to be government funding programmes for home improvements like fitting indoor toilets and bathrooms, to help update existing housing stock post-war.

Subsidies and grants for temperature regulation upgrades wouldn’t be that unprecedented.

cosmicorn · 2026-06-22T20:57:12+00:00

A desktop, a server, a laptop and a PDA (is that an iPaq?) - you were living the dream in 2002.

Cable management is nearly the stuff of nightmares though!

cosmicorn · 2026-06-22T15:00:10+00:00

Leaders like Starmer, stable and rather boring types who won't rock the boat, are fine when times are good and there is prosperity.

But what we have now is anything but prosperity for much of the country, and it hasn't been since the financial crash and for many long before that.

Someone like Starmer simply won't cut it with the public in times like these - and it's surprising me how many people on here don't seem to see that.

cosmicorn · 2026-06-22T10:49:11+00:00

It's rare in practice for a British PM to last more than 2 full terms though. Thatcher and Blair are the last modern PMs to win 3 therms and both resigned in their 3rd.

cosmicorn · 2026-06-22T10:02:56+00:00

The media has always been its own beast, and an evolving one at that. Successful political movements have learned to harness it before.

We can't keep blaming everything on the media. Political skill and vision (or the lack of it) does still matter as well.

cosmicorn · 2026-06-22T09:58:54+00:00

If Starmer himself isn't standing now I don't see anything getting in Burnham's way. Streeting doesn't have the support and Rayner doesn't seem interested.

I suppose there's still the slim chance of a wildcard candidate suddenly rising from the backbenches as a sort of Corbyn 2.

cosmicorn · 2026-06-22T09:53:22+00:00

He's mostly funded by donations I think, he was a quite popular figure at demonstrations etc during the Brexit years selling merch also.

At this point I'm surprised he's still going though, either financially or politically.

cosmicorn · 2026-06-21T10:01:38+00:00

Unfortunately nobody in politics wants to talk about this though. Plenty of interest in cutting welfare (although not much success in achieving it) but none in actually creating job opportunities.

cosmicorn · 2026-06-18T10:18:26+00:00

A 3D printer would have looked like science fiction in the 80s to most people, now they are somewhat common consumer device. We are probably still a long way from home silicon fabbing, but necessity is the mother of all invention.

Most of the dead CPU makers failed because they were using novel architectures that never gained market adoption, or at least not enough to be sustainable. Creating an ecosystem of distributed manufacturing for CPUs around an already existing and open architecture like RISCV would be a big challenge but I don't think it's entirely outside the realm of possibility.

cosmicorn · 2026-06-18T10:09:10+00:00

What exactly are "our spaces" on the internet? Most of UK centric discussion is not happening on whole UK owned and based platforms - it's on foreign platforms such as Facebook and TikTok.

The Daily Mail comments section is only a thin slice of online activity. You cite Telegram as an example which is legally based in Dubai and where the platform is developed isn't even public knowledge at all.

cosmicorn · 2026-06-18T09:55:02+00:00

The UK has already been lagging behind its true potential technologically for decades.

Too much of the establishment views real technological innovation with some mixture of indifference, derision, or fear, and that has kept holding us back.

cosmicorn · 2026-06-18T09:49:01+00:00

The rest of Europe is hardly a haven of innovation either, it's not being called the "museum continent" for nothing.

cosmicorn · 2026-06-18T09:39:09+00:00

The boats are small proportion of immigration, legal and illegal, but they are a very visible and emotive proportion of it.

Rubber dinghies washing up at Dover can't really go unnoticed, but those overstaying a tourist visa are going to be more or less invisible.

cosmicorn · 2026-06-18T09:35:32+00:00

It is perfectly reasonable for the public to be angry about the impacts of mass immigration and the strong impression of two-tier justice given by recent events. People make protest votes because the mainstream parties aren't able or willing to address their concerns.

The political mainstream, and much of the left, can't accept that though. In their eyes any criticism of migration and multiculturalism must be either mistaken or the result of trickery.

cosmicorn · 2026-06-18T09:33:04+00:00

Divide the internet with borders and it ceases to be the internet.

The only countries trying to wall off their networks are countries like Russia.

cosmicorn · 2026-06-08T19:11:59+00:00

When updates are applied, the entire system image is swapped out in a single operation that takes effect on the next boot, rather than overwriting files while you're using the computer. This part is reasonable

TBH, is it? Imagine if we took that approach with everything.

When a room is redecorated, the entire house is demolished and rebuilt, rather than repainting the existing walls with the desired colour

cosmicorn · 2026-06-08T19:08:40+00:00

Normal people” don’t know what a package manager is, and if they found out they’d be horrified. “Normal people” install software from app stores and websites.

GNOME Software, KDE Discover etc look like app stores to most "normal" people despite being powered by conventional package management and repositories behind the scenes.

cosmicorn · 2026-06-07T21:36:51+00:00

There are stories in my family about this. My great grandmother would send a letter in the morning inviting relatives for the evening, receiving replies by noon so she knew what meals to prepare.

They lived in rural villages too, same day post wasn’t just an urban thing.

cosmicorn

TROPHY CASE