I wouldn't be surprised if Meta turned WhatsApp into a TikTok clone just to get around the restrictions. They know that banning WhatsApp for teenagers in Europe is almost impossible. I look at my kids, all their sports clubs and other extracurricular activities are organized through WhatsApp. I already had to block Youtube on their devices. I was alright with them watching a couple of long-form youtube videos every day, but now if I unblock Youtube all they do is watch Shorts, with no way to disable it.
"YouTube has introduced enhanced parental controls allowing parents to manage or block YouTube Shorts for teen accounts. Parents can set daily time limits for Shorts ranging from zero to two hours, configure custom bedtimes, and set "take a break" reminders" (AI summary)
Because the devices involved are mobiles? What else would you use.
Almost all end–user devices are mobiles. When everyone had a desktop you made a desktop app. When everyone has a mobile you use a mobile app. When everyone has brain implants you'll make a brain implant app.
That's if you want to reach the most people. If you want to reach the much smaller community of people who oppose the current thing, you'll make a different type of app.
>Wait, you're saying that using Signal or Telegram is compromising privacy?
How come after all these years even people here still don't know telegram by default has no end to end encryption at all making it worse than facebooks WhatsApp? At this point it deserves to be called telegram distortion field.
The second a ban is announced everyone would just migrate to the next thing. That's the nice part of social media and communication apps, they're easy to migrate off of.
As long as they're groups for real life things. The football club can announce they're now on Signal. A pure digital group like "C++ programming discord" can't do this.
> extracurricular activities are organized through WhatsApp. I already had to block Youtube on their devices. I was alright with them watching a couple of long-form youtube videos every day, but now if I unblock Youtube all they do is watch Shorts, with no way to disable it.
If you want to block Shorts. I recommend you to try out revanced which gives you youtube without any ads and a lot of other customizations.
To be honest, I find it funny that paid youtube customers might shift to revanced which is technically piracy jsut to remove shorts.
I was this close to rooting the phones but she had just bought a new phone.
But if pricing wasn't the concern for me (which right now it is but I don't think for many HN users it might be), here's what I suggest.
Go buy a phone which can be easily rooted and also use an somewhat secure os (just short of graphene)
Patch revanced (I have even made a nix flake or some nix file [i don't use nix that much but I was curious and ended up using LLMs to generate the file] whose purpose was to take android file and patch it when I was in nix, but I don't have it with me right nwo as I may haev lost it)
Have in the options the short block option.
Newpipe is great as well but it doesn't really allow having comment support.
Also given that HN is a very techie and well hacking with software community. If anyone's interested to take an challenge within Java/Kotlin (Unfortunately, they scare me) then I have got an idea for you guys:
"But the option of turning shorts back on can still be toggled. I wish if anybody whose an expert in java/kotlin can take a look at how revanced works and maybe how to have a revanced patch which can block shorts by default (additionally with ads preferably too with the download option patch as well & the sponsorblock) while atleast in the revanced specific settings option blocking just the option/toggle switch to turn shorts back on."
Also I am a teenager. I would consider the fact that I am on this website partially because of a loop of youtubers that I started following [ Fireship the goat before he turned VC -> Primagen the legend -> Theo t3 (I do feel like he's not the best guy following but he covered so much about YC that I ended up opening news.ycombinator.com and reading it and not watching him read it and ended up making account)
oh yeah before Fireship, I used to follow Code with harry when I was around ~13 yo. I learnt python from him many years ago before it was introduced to us in school so much so that I ended up picking the finance subject out of curiosity and I enjoyed both finance and tech.
One of the funniest stories from this whole is when Code with harry loved one of my comments on youtube loooong time ago and I was around 14 or osmething and then my mum saw it and she didn't know what loving a comment in YT mean and she got suspicious about it and questioned me and then I had to describe hearting a comment to her xD.
Oh yeah. I started learning about python itself around this time because one of my cousins whom I deeply respect who works in aerospace but back when in his university started mentioning how he worked on a ~2-3k loc and he mentioned python and I was like hmm what's python.
I don't know if a parent is interested to hear this but I feel like teenagers really replicate those they admire. A lot of my traits first started just being around that cousin & he actually taught me about assets/liabilities when I was in 5th grade and taught me chess which both became very obsessive points for me later down the life (My joy when I finally ended up beating him at chess fair and square)
I don't think that I do that well academically per se though, it really just depends on my mood so :/ yeah but I really ended up butchering some prestigious college's paper real hard and still tensed about it but honestly as a teen, I don't even know why I am typing this but my point is that your kid would have a personality and just nudge him in the right manners & let him think for himself to think that he reached at a particular conclusion. I do feel like that's generally how I approached and I was the youngest of my whole entire family tree so that made me more mature but I do feel like it came at a trade off of wishing to grow up fast asap when I was a child and now wishing to go back too seeing say not being able to cope up with massive study efforts or competition but that's another matter I guess.
Though parenting is definitely really really hard, kudos to every parent out there.
I'm a bit glad that it's no longer Facebook groups. But WhatsApp is also disappointing. I have to keep an account on my 'throwaway' phone for junk apps just to communicate with those groups and clubs. And usually WhatsApp is the only way with them.
I had that it was a cool concept but it kinda sucked. It would have been great for doing stuff over SSH but not much else as the hardware was lacking at the time
Anecdotally I noticed a big uptick in pro-Trump content in Europe recently. Was flooded with anti-Jack Smith clips in the last couple of days, for example. Also seeing a lot of anti-immigration, far-right content.
Flutter is undergoing a major refactor where they're decoupling Material and Cupertino into separate packages. This is the reason why they're not implementing those new conventions right away. The way you've framed it is pretty disingenuous.
It really isn't. Did you see their latest time estimate (https://youtu.be/W4olXg91iX8?t=538)? Late 2026 just to get the widget sets broken out into separate packages? And only then can they start considering modernizing them and trying to mimic the latest UI?
Flutter can't even get animations to look and feel right for iOS 18 and below (read through this thread and every other HN/Reddit thread that mentions Flutter vs. native components). Do you really think they'll ever get Liquid Glass looking and feeling convincing, let alone performing acceptably?
Read over the 100+ comments in the GH issue I posted. You see actual Flutter contributors — not people who merely vibe-coded a Potemkin L.G. demo and declared victory — saying that it is effectively impossible.
Early in my career, I worked for a subcontractor to Boeing Commericial Airplanes. I've worked in Silicon Valley ever since. As a swag, the % of budget spent on verification/validation for flight-critical software was 5x versus my later jobs.
Early in the job, we watched a video about some plane that navigated into a mountain in New Zealand. That got my attention.
On the other hand, the software development practices were slow to modernize in many cases e.g. FORTRAN 66 (but eventually with a preprocessor).
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