Yeah, there was a recent NYT article about the ongoing phone ban/pouch discussion and one parent reported having a shared Google Doc for emergency communication with their kid to work around the lack of a cell phone. The nature of such emergencies was not discussed, but I cynically suspect it was along the lines of "do you want mac n cheese or nuggets for dinner?"
Consider how many people are clingy and/or just have questionable judgement about boundaries with their friends, family, and acquaintances in general, usually with a healthy dose of neuroticism thrown in for good measure.
Consider that lots of these people have kids, and when they do, they tend to have a very friend-like relationship with them. Like, they aren't just magically better at this stuff when it's their kid.
These situations are a source of a great deal of this behavior, and the "I can't contact my kid-friend!" anxiety.
From my teacher spouse's perspective, a lot of it seems to be the monetary value of smartphones. Some kids are coming to school with the latest and greatest $1000+ smartphone, so if the teacher drops it, scuffs it, misplaces it, etc, the parents are coming after the teacher about an item with real value. Teachers don't want any part of that battle so confiscation is now off the table.
Previously, the confiscation was the teacher's policy.
"I dunno Mom, at the start of 4th hour I put my iPhone in the basket Mrs. Wormwood makes everyone drop their phones in, and when I got it back after class the screen had this big crack in it. It wasn't because I dropped it in 3rd hour in Mr. Lockjaw's PE class while walking and checking Instagram, nuh uh. Can you get me the iPhone 17 Pro Max instead of the iPhone 17e this time?"
And then at conferences (or worse, at the PTA meeting or school board meeting) Mrs. Wormwood is going to hear from Mom how she broke Johnny's phone and cost them $1100.
Now it's state law. It's not Mrs. Wormwood's decision to confiscate phones from students, preventing little Johnny from texting Mama when there's a lockdown, it's the law and her hands are tied.
I'm not sure what law you're referring to. The linked article discusses the implementation of an executive order in Oregon that mostly bans use of cell phones during school time.
Some schools may do things differently, but it seems like the one highlighted in the article allows the kids to keep phone in their backpacks: "Rather than use pouches or lockers, students are allowed to keep their phones safely stored in their backpacks"
As sort of a tangent, am I the only one who has had bad experiences doing what the woman in the press release is doing? Ya know, touching the laptop while it's connected to external devices via Thunderbolt and/or USB-C.
Sure, most of the time the cable seems secure enough to maintain connection when I accidentally nudge the laptop. But every once in a while, when I slightly shift the laptop here or there, flicker and everything goes batshit. The monitor loses connection, so maybe (depending on config) the laptop screen changes resolution and then eventually reconnects and flickers and changes back. Or the network drops out (if I'm connected to Ethernet over Thunderbolt). Or a program freaks out because the drive it was using disappeared. Or the laptop really freaks out and kernel panics.
Like I said, it doesn't happen a ton, but it's happened a handful of times over the years, just enough that now I always use an external mouse and keyboard with a docked laptop to avoid such nonsense.
> around 40% of users in the West use ad-blockers at least some of the time
And doubtless many of them use intentionally use TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, etc, where "influencers" subtly (or not-so subtly) advertise to them in the native format of the platform.
Some of my neighbors have some rather colorful Wifi SSIDs. I've seen some silly ones like "FBI SURVEILLANCE" as well as at least one crudely expressing their opinion of the current US President. Probably won't be long now before we see someone get fired because their boss saw the name of their home Wifi network.
My go-to SSID will always be "Robert'); DROP TABLE Students;--". For all others I just use a ship name from The Culture universe[0] like "Of Course I Still Love You" or "Just Read the Instructions".
I (and presumably the commenter you're responding to) initially read "all of my Mac and iOS apps" as "all of the Mac and iOS apps I use" instead of "all of the Mac and iOS apps I've written".
Did you and the other replier stop reading my comment after the first sentence? Because the second and following sentences make very clear—e.g., "distribute"—that I was talking about apps developed and sold by me.
Fred Lambert was an early Tesla evangelist - he constantly wrote stories praising Tesla and Elon for years. He had some interactions with Elon on Twitter, got invited to Tesla events, referred enough people to earn free Tesla cars, etc.
If we assume the best (per HN guidelines): Up to about 2018 Tesla was the market-leading EV company, and the whole thesis of Electrek is that EVs are the future. So, of course they covered Tesla frequently and in a generally positive light.
Since then, the facts have changed. Elon's become increasingly erratic, and has been making increasingly unhinged claims about Tesla's current and future products. At the same time, Tesla's offerings are far behind domestic standards, which are even further behind international competition. Also, many people have died due to obvious Tesla design flaws (like the door handles, and false advertising around FSD).
Journalistic integrity explains the difference in coverage over the years. Coverage from any fact-based outlet would have a similar shift in sentiment.
> I really like some of the health features on Apple Watch. But I won't buy it because I don't want it to be my watch, and I don't want to pair my Apple account with it. I just want the health features and nothing else.
I agree with a lot of what you said, but isn't it wild to think that such a limited device would likely be more expensive than the do-everything Apple Watch that includes the health features among a myriad of others? Selling perhaps in the thousands instead of the zillions, the development costs would be amortized over such a small user base it would be an incredibly niche product. It often falls to us techies to figure out if we can hack an acceptable solution out of the affordable mainstream product.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/style/yondr-pouch-school-...
reply