Pre-ordering physical goods is fine, especially if you expect a price hike and supply limitations after launch. I wouldn’t, but I can see how it would make sense.

It’s the digital goods that make no goddamn sense to buy before they’re out. They’re not limited in supply, and their return window is often too small.

Inflation of food prices is very noticeable. Still manageable, though.

Taxes are getting higher.

Lots of services can’t be paid for due to sanctions. Some payments are possible, but for a premium.

Roscomnadzor still pisses everybody off. They’re slowing down YouTube to an unusable rate. They claim it’s Google’s hardware degrading (It’s not). Then there’s Discord being blocked, and now they seemingly want to target Steam for some unknown reason (the reason is VKontacte needs more money).

More insane legislature is being talked about.

The lingering threat of being drafted or randomly killed by a drone isn’t gone, which is emotionally draining.

People want peace. Yet, put responsibility on incumbent. (Think: “We had no say in it, they started it, they’ll finish it”)

Opposition? What opposition? Everybody’s either jailed or were forced to leave the country. They’ll literally lock up a single father up if he dares to show disagreement with their “special military operation.” And the kid? Who cares? They don’t matter to our very just and absolutely not corrupt courts. (Sry, still fuming about that story. Hope the judge and the principal will rot in hell)

That’s about it. Source: me, also russian news media and official legislature sources

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Mind you, there are two types of under screen fingerprint sensors: optical and ultrasonic.

Optical blasts the finger with light and forms a 2d scan. It’s pretty slow and arguably worse than conventional (capacitive) scanner on the back of the phone.

Ultrasonic, however, because it uses sound waves, maps a 3d scan. It is significantly faster than conventional scanner, and it also doesn’t care about your fingers being wet.

Ultrasonic sensor only requires a quick tap to unlock the phone. It’s actually really convenient to use, I like those. I’d take the capacitive sensor over optical one, though.

In my experience, the longer you type, the faster you get at typing.

That’s like getting into the rhythm. If you do it a little and then stop, then you never become proficient as you never got into that flow.

Try learning a guitar by pulling a few strings a day. Try learning to read in a different language by reading a few letters each time. Try running by taking a few steps.

Doesn’t it sound ridiculous?

Have you ever tried learning a different language? You don’t become proficient by reading one sentence, then stopping and then another one. You do it by struggling through many, and the more you do it, the faster you learn.

Note, I’m not writing this because “boohoo, bad parenting.” It’s the first essay, who cares. (although her being 13 does make me raise a brow. I’d expect it with a 7 y.o., but 13? w/e, you do you). I just think you have a misunderstanding in how learning core-level skills work. Continuous repetition is the key.

Another glaring example is how toddlers learn languages. In a span of a couple of years, they are capable of learning a language to native level with absolutely no prior knowledge, just by listening and trying to repeat the sounds day in and day out. Just think about it.

Recently, I’ve been watching a bunch of “an Android user switched to iPhone” and “an iPhone user switched to Android” type of videos.

From what I can tell, iOS is, in fact, harder to adapt to, compared to Android.

Even tech-savvy guys like Marques outright say that “unlike Android, it’s very easy to forget how to use iPhones” (not an exact quote, but similar meaning).

There are a couple ways in which its useful to me.

First is when I just want a windows-esque interface with lots of floating windows. Especially for Office apps, because they also start looking more like their Windows counterparts. Through tablet itself it may not see that much use, but when connected to an external monitor it’s really nice.

And second is when you want to separate your daily routine with work. Because Dex is visually very different you can use it as a sort of “focus mode”, which works great for me personally.

Although whenever I need to do something more demanding than Excel I tend to just remote to my home PC.

I should also mention that I am studying at a uni, so unless I need to work away from home specifically and if it’s not related to studying then Dex doesn’t get used much and I just stick to conventional means of consuming media.

But I do know people who straight up replaced their PCs with that thing, depends on your use-case scenario.

My Samsung tabled does that. Same with their phones, it’s called Dex.

You can even use the phone as a trackpad.

Pretty neat feature, I agree.

“fact-checking” was a bit of a crude way of putting it on my part. I’m not native, so there could’ve misused it.

(Went a bit overboard with a wall of text again, but of well)

Although it wasn’t without the fact-checking in it’s normal sense. Take “English as a foreign language”, for example. One teacher will say the word is pronounced one way, the other will say its different. Who’s right? Let’s check Cambridge dictionary. Although it isn’t always teacher’s fault as a professional. Sometimes you just forget things no matter how well you know them.

The other part that I may have failed to convey is looking information up, be it a math formulae, a word, some sort of rule, name or a date.

It’s way quicker than going through your books and is actually not a bad way to remember something. You either have a tab left off or you’re seeing it when using the search, which makes you remember that you did look that up a while back. It’s very minor, but because you’re still being reminded about it from time to time, the information sticks. Essentially you’re doing unintentional passive memorisation.

That’s why I think that maybe not in primary, but definetly in secondary and high school banning technology is not the way to go about it. If the student uses it for entertainment during class, they won’t suddenly start studying if you prohibit them from usining it. You’re essentially solving a non-issue, because the majority of students aren’t even using phones during classes (Well, maybe to cheat on tests, but that’s hurting the quality of assessment and not education itself).

Banning phones is easy, but it’s also the least impactful thing you could to to “improve” educational system. It would be of more sognificance you were to reduce classes to 8 pupils, lessen teacher’s paperwork, introduce new active teaching practices, reward students for persuing their endevours and so on. But that’s difficult, banning phones is easy and brings you more polical approval.

I would still disagree about phone usage.

Even when in school, phone helped me quite a bit with education. Having a way to do a quick fact-check is invaluable.

Now as I’m finishing getting my degree such devices became an inseparable part of the process.

Yes, you may not always listen to what’s being said whilst using them, but lets be frank, you wouldn’t be listening to those parts either way.

School education in a lot of places is fundamentally flawed. It’s extremely difficult to learn when you’re expected to absorb information just by listening and writing.

I’d agree with OPs sentiment here, off-topic smartphone usage isn’t the cause for worse education, but instead is a result of poor engagement in the first place. Should people be more engaged in the topic then suddenly smartphones start being used as a studying tool and not for entertainment. There are many ways of achieving that, but that’s a whole different story.