You do know pretty much all mapping apps allow you to cache local content, and work perfectly well offline ? GMaps does, HERE does, Tom-Tom does...

Well, for online stuff you... need to be online.
Aside from that, my phones and tablets work perfectly well in airplane mode, and have SD cards full of media and eMMCs full of apps & games to keep me entertained.
I'll get off your lawns now, utterly unconvinced.

Yep. Old computers were so much better: you could type on them w/o a keyboard, see stuff on them w/o an external monitor, and.... post on slashdot w/o an Internet ! Clearly today's computers are full of new dependencies (whatever that means)

(takes out his autonomous, self-contained smartphone)

what where you saying about new stuff having more dependencies ?

Here, have some extra caps on me:

AZERTYUIOPQSDFGHJKLMWXCVBN

You're welcome.

Get a Nexus, or a Motorola.

kthxbye

G+'s homepage was a disgrace for the longest time, filled with.. hangouts logs ? And not just at launch, this went on for months, and I gave up.

They could have populated it with my RSS feeds + Google Now stuff, but they cut Reader, and Now isn't that good for me.

Is education about information, or about skills (in the subjects, but also meta-skill at learning in a classroom and by oneself, plus handling deadlines/difficulties/failure/criticism/success...) + socialization w/ peers, teachers, admins, gurlz,... ?

Actually, I read an article on The Economist a long time ago saying just the contrary: freelance cab drivers quit working earlier when they make a lot of money. Easiest explanation is that they set out to make a certain amount of $$, and stop once that goal is reached, regardless of whether it'll take them 3-4x longer to make the same amount the next day.

and by "post", I meant "phone".

That's one of my purchase criteria. Samsung used to have it, now Huawei does. I use it several times a week, and a lot when on trips w/spotty data.

buy a handful of hard drives, encrypt them, do rotating backups on them of everything irreplaceable (that includes photos and documents) at reasonable intervals (monthly or quarterly or whenever you do something momentous such as taxes, for individuals), and make sure at least one of those drives is never physically at your home - your parents', your job, your bank, your SO's, your gym...

Backups are 1- offline, 2- offsite, 3- tested, 4- multiple. Miss just one of those 4, and you don't have a backup.

I think you're both right and wrong. Clearly, a safe tool, especially a tool made safe to the point of being unusable, is not a panacea. Yet kids with motorbikes have a lot more fatal accidents than kids with cars.

The sad truth is you need both: tools with no bugs and safe-by default, and programmers who know how to use them. I agree that if I have to choose, the safe programmer is more important... but show me a project where you can guarantee all devs will be of the "safe" kind (let alone, be that one lone mythological safe dev) for the actual life of the app ?

Compared to the need for killing people on a regular basis ? Not so much.

Actually, they don't care that much if it's someone innocent either.