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Show HN: Encourage children to use the net more 4 learning with Pihole 5beta

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32 points by Iwillgetby · 32 comments

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IwillgetbyOP

Pleasant surprise to see my post on the front page. I don't mention this in the original reddit post but the nodejs code comes from our 2016-2018 failed startup that at one point was invited to be on the TV show shark tank.

_-___________-_

Can we edit the '4' in the title to 'for'? This isn't a teenager's chatroom and it took me a minute to successfully parse the sentence as a result of it.

  • IwillgetbyOP

    OP here. I am not able to from my view. It took several tries to squeeze my title into the 80 characters.

    • _-___________-_

      Ah, I didn't realise the character limit. You're forgiven :)

    • smichel17

      4->for

      with -> w/

      Anyone have opinions on whether that's a more readable abbreviation?

      • inanutshellus

        Not a fair comparison. In common parlance, there are no other uses for "w/" than "with". Certainly "4" usually means 4.

        (Edit: Turns out that if 80 is the limit, "for" would've fit. Hah.

            $ len "Show HN: Encourage children to use the net more for learning with Pihole 5beta"
    Length of 'Show HN: Encourage children to use the net more for learning with Pihole 5beta' is 78
        ... I also would've left out "more" because... am I really wanting to encourage my kids to be on the net more than they are already?! ...

        Perhaps something like "Show HN: Shape your kids online time with PiHole 5Beta"... but anyway cool project. It does shape things like Khan Academy as punishment / work, though. Like... If you only give your kids broccoli, they'll like broccoli. If you give them candy, then say "you can only have more candy after you eat 5 bites of broccoli", they'll f'ing hate broccoli and covet candy as their new god. But the real world is messy like that, eh? :-D )

      • _-___________-_

        For me, it is. I spend most of my day staring at code and I think that's caused me to have a strong cognitive switch between numbers and letters, at least with spaces around them.

skissane

The Windows 10 laptop my son uses keeps on changing its Wifi MAC address, which in turn makes the DHCP server give it a new IP. It’s annoying. (I tried some registry changes I found on some website but didn’t work.)

Doing this kind of thing requires the child to have a consistent IP. (I tried a static IP, it causes problems if he ever takes the laptop out of our house.)

(Thinking about a scheduled task which reports its IP to the home server, so at least I know what it is all the time...)

jedieaston

well, until they figure out how to set a local DNS server.

  • IwillgetbyOP

    As someone said in the reddit post.. If my daughter figures out how to install a kali vm and then gets a reverse metasploit shell on the server, I would be so proud I would probably cry.

    Key though is corporate infosec is similar to home infosec. If the user has local admin access, then the user can change any configuration.

  • billyzs

    If they did that, then hopefully they learnt a thing or two about networking :)

    But I do wonder if bandwidth limiting certain types of applications would be more effective, like reverse qos. There was a post a week or so ago on HN about adding delay to websites that sucks away productivity.

    edit: I went and did that on my home router (a ubnt ER-X) and was pleasantly surprised by how granular its DPI and QoS categorizes applications (by protocols, by domain, IM, social network, P2P). It even allows you to make your own categories of apps that are (ab)used often, and rate limit access to them on a range of local IP. I'm hoping that this would be more subtle than an outright block, and the not so instant gratification lead to voluntary reduction of mindless consumption.

    • rgovostes

      I would definitely set that up for some time waster sites for myself, especially if I could borrow OP's idea to adjust the delay based on progress towards other goals. In my experience, Apple's Screen Time limit is just too easy to ignore, but on the other hand I'd be worried that mucking with DNS would disrupt me when I really need to get something done urgently.

    • travbrack

      Sorry for the pedantry but traffic shaping (slowing down a class of traffic on purpose) is a standard qos technique

  • rgoulter

    "His youthful curiosity is no match for my technical brilliance" https://dilbert.com/strip/1996-01-24

  • tbyehl

    A decent router can prevent that from being effective.

dod9er

Nice idea, does anyone have an idea what german-language learning sites have a point-system ?

wiz21c

I don't like it. That's showing kids that automated surveillance is acceptable.

Now, I'm sure they will not find that very funny, so that may be an opportunity to teach them what automated surveillance is about...

  • IwillgetbyOP

    I respect your viewpoint. I look at it more as a modern form of "you can go outside to play when your homework is done". Parenting is really hard in March 2020. Many of us are working at home and our children are glued to their ipads watching who knows what on youtube. Many parents can't be 100% present during work hours.

  • nkrisc

    I don't think it's so bad. This is not the same as omniscient surveillance by the state or intrusive monitoring by ad networks. I think it's perfectly fine if you explain precisely to your child how they're being monitored, and why. There need not be anything surreptitious or nefarious about it.

  • jacquesm

    If I would let my kids decide what's for dinner every day we'd eat pancakes 7 days per week with candy for desert.

    • wiz21c

      Good you take that example. that's exactly the kind of stuff my son brings on and on and on. And each time, I (not my computer, spend some times explaining that he has to expand his tastes bits by bits, that if he doesn't do it it'll become more and more difficult, etc. That's a bit exhausting a times but it pays (we're looking at an ROI on a scale of ten years here :-) ).

      But that little discussion we have reminds him that I'm the parent and that I do that for n good reasons. He also has a space to disagree and sometimes I just cook what he loves and take care of doing it exactly how he wants it.

      A computer is 10000 light years away from that, AFAIC...

    • ta999999171

      Funny, that's what your government thinks about you!

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