@alina I remember hearing a friend complain about how locked down their computer was, and I offered to make them a little Linux system on a USB setup.

Just, it was the most natural feeling thing in the world when finding a peer struggling with something.

@alina the rules are there because of the wireshark and ip tools lobby :-P

/s

@alina @cstross I very clearly tell the children under my care that any network I manage will block malware and other security threats, egregious ads and privacy risks, along with blocks for hate sites, gore, and stuff that’s likely to lead to nightmares.

Three have gone through that to be young adults, with another three that are still covered under that umbrella (most aren’t my children). They’ve all understood it, and they’ve been thankful when they’ve been able to warn their friends when a dodgy mod or similar has done the rounds, leading to their parents asking me about network/device protection that’s more likely to be effective.

@alina A bit tangential, but reminds me of an old Polish novel for teenagers called "A way to trick Alcibiades".

The plot goes like this: teenagers in a school don't want to study so they develop ways to distract teachers. A history teacher nicknamed Alcibiades is particularly tough but you can distract him with historical trivia.

The plot twist is he's using this method to trick them into learning history by learning trivia to "distract" him. They end up winning a prize for excellence.

@alina
Tbh, I would set up these systems at home just to teach my kid about the tools people can use and how to circumvent these restrictions.

There's a lot of learning to be had and this might be one of the most effective ways to do it, not because someone else tells you to do it, just out of personal interest and the reward at the end.

@alina we never restricted what our kids did, just told them we could watch what they were doing and since their dad did IT security they believed us. They always understood it was a privilege and not a right though.

We never bothered to check, but the one time the youngest's friend tried to look at porn they came running to tell us.

Trust your kids will be good people and you'll probably be right.

@alina

Adults hate it when people treat them like inferiors, make rules without explaining why, and don't respect their autonomy or intelligence.

Then we do all those things to kids and wonder why it blows up in our face.

And how do we expect kids to have their own sense of right and wrong and fairness as adults if their childhood standard is "Obey authority figures without question."?

@alina yup. My dad kept unplugging my Ethernet cable so I convinced my mom to get me a WiFi card because Bluetooth. Used that to connect when it seemed like I was doing homework because he didn't know how to disable wifi and didn't want to cut off access for my mom's iBook.

... This gives me an idea for a great interview question

@alina

Flip-side: it sounds like they both encouraged you - likely unwittingly - to develop some very useful skills. Skills you likely would not have developed were you not in that position.

I got my son (and myself!) gameboy+pokemon before he could read - knowing full well he wanted to play *so bad*, but reading was necessary to play - and that motivated him to learn to read very early. A fine investment.