extension
Re:What's Happening to Students?
on Tuesday March 25, 2025 @08:11PM (#43477481)
> kids have no ability to be bored whatsoever
Funny how intolerance for boredom is framed as the problem, rather than the boredom itself.
> incarcerated students really want to learn
They also really want to see the sky. It's good that students in general don't behave as if they are incarcerated.
> children under the age of two are already spending more than an hour per day on screens
Most two-year-olds can fit an hour of Cocomelon into their busy schedule. Kids, like adults, are going to burn a few hours every day vegging out. Before the phone screen, it was the TV screen, which was worse.
> And they have a level of apathy that I’ve never seen before in my whole career. Punishments don’t work because they don’t care about them. They don’t care about grades. They don’t care about college.
Perhaps students increasingly feel that the things above obstruct and delay their future, rather than prepare them for it. Perhaps we should consider how to make school more relevant and engaging to them, rather than how to impoverish their lives outside of school.
Re:Algorithmic decision making and the cost of fairness (2017)
on Thursday January 25, 2018 @06:36AM (#16230203)
I think detention before trial is always unfair in principle, but likely unavoidable in practice. I would like to see the issue acknowledged and taken more seriously, but it's a tricky problem and I have no easy solutions to offer. Practical mitigations may be the best we can do, which I'll grant may be expensive, non-trivial to implement, and allow more criminals to roam free. Here are some vague ideas off the cuff:
* Base decisions only on things that would be relevant in a trial, like evidence and criminal history.
* Nobody should be detained just because they haven't paid bail money. If we decide that someone can be released, it should be immediate and unconditional. The court should charge no more than they can immediately collect.
* Make detention as pleasant and convenient as possible for the accused. We should have facilities specifically for this purpose that are more like hotels than prisons, at least in principle.
* Eliminate any trial delays that aren't strictly necessary, i.e. due to congestion or beurocracy.
If a serial killer is caught in the act, there would presumably be enough evidence available at the bail hearing to justify detention.
Re:Algorithmic decision making and the cost of fairness (2017)
on Thursday January 25, 2018 @03:18AM (#16229545)
Imprisoning people without trial, for predicted future crimes, is what's unfair. Letting an algorithm make the prediction instead of a judge only punctuates the injustice.
What is a "fair" criteria to base this decision on? Is it fair to throw someone in jail because they are young, or they got layed off, or they don't have friends or family? How is any of that better than jailing them for their skin color?
These are exactly the things that justice is supposed to be blind to.
I'm rooting for the algorithms here, simply because they make the inherent injustice of pre-trial detention harder to ignore. We can convince ourselves that this injustice is somehow corrected by the presumed wisdom and compassion of a human judge. But by formalizing the logic, we have to acknowledge that we are literally throwing people in jail for plainly unfair reasons.
Re:Where do our flaky tests come from?
on Thursday April 20, 2017 @07:49AM (#14155811)
It is, but I think the OC was suggesting that the old code can be kept around and used for automated regression meta-testing, which is an interesting idea.
Re:One reason I dread Google doc shares
on Saturday May 24, 2014 @05:01PM (#7794405)
Would be cool if it could detect which users had access to the document and switch to the most recently used of those to open the link. Not sure if that can be done securely though.
Re:Is Python The New Basic? ("Python For Kids")
on Saturday December 01, 2012 @09:23PM (#4859841)
No standard library, nor even a standard class/object model. Lua is more of a language engine than a complete language. In that capacity, it is quite a success.
Re:Twitter survives election after Ruby-to-JVM move
on Thursday November 08, 2012 @02:55AM (#4756856)
Java probably outperforms JRuby primarily because the JVM was designed and tuned to run Java.
But in any case, if Twitter's architecture is truly scalable then any intrinsic slowness of the language shouldn't be a big problem, because they can just toss more hardware in to compensate. What is a problem is a buggy VM that leaks memory. To run thousands of instances in a heavily instrumented way, the VM must be stable and predictable.
Re:This Website Only Open During Business Hours
on Tuesday August 21, 2012 @02:35AM (#4411425)
Some guesses:
1) Their backend crashes constantly during normal use, so they have to shut it down when nobody is around to babysit.
2) The form submits directly to some poor soul's email, who then has to copy it onto a piece of paper and drop it in a folder. To manage the workload, the form is simply disabled when this person is not around.
3) The job of "web server" has not been mechanized in this particular office, in order to preserve the charm that only comes from a web site lovingly typed in real-time by a hard-working civil servant.
Re:How YouTube lets content companies "claim" NASA Mars videos
on Wednesday August 08, 2012 @09:25PM (#4359034)
It's YouTube's responsibility to implement a system that doesn't defraud people. The users getting ripped off have no direct relationship with the other users who are abusing the system, and no way to hold them accountable.
Re:How YouTube lets content companies "claim" NASA Mars videos
on Wednesday August 08, 2012 @09:19PM (#4359014)
YouTube has become a Kafkaesque nightmare, at least for regular users. They recently opened up monetization to everyone, but if you actually try to use it, half your videos will go "under review" and you will be asked to provide proof that you own all the content. They won't tell you specifically what you have to provide, and nobody I know has managed to figure it out or get a video out of this state. Of course, there is no way to contact anyone or get any more information.
Apparently, "full partners" can actually get real customer service and avoid these problems, but you need to get on the order of 1000 views/day before they offer you that, which most people never achieve.
I will absolutely never do business with that company.
Re:On Apple's new ads
on Tuesday July 31, 2012 @05:10AM (#4316357)
For comparison: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oAB83Z1ydE
Re:New Chrome feature frees Web apps from the browser
on Monday July 23, 2012 @10:07AM (#4281007)
the standards body was forced to adopt h.264
The WHATWG did not adopt h.264 as a standard, nor any other codec.
Re:Kentucky teen faces charge for naming attackers in tweets
on Sunday July 22, 2012 @12:27AM (#4276450)
So, if you want to cover up something bad you've done, just make sure you get charged with a crime, and the court will protect you? Strange system.
Re:Bringing Craigslist Back
on Monday July 09, 2012 @02:55PM (#4219770)
Yes, many people see it this way, while many see it as black and white in the other direction: CL doesn't own the content on their site (this is a fact) and thus has no say in how others use it (debatable).
Mix black and white together, and you get... gray!
Re:Bringing Craigslist Back
on Monday July 09, 2012 @01:39PM (#4219292)
Not a lawyer, but I would be really surprised if that sort of copyright shenanigans held up against any legal challenge. I don't think you can sneak copyrighted stuff into non-copyrightable stuff in order to protect it.
Re:A skeptic faces possible charges for debunking Mumbai’s miracle statue
on Sunday July 08, 2012 @03:43PM (#4215446)
According to his website, the police came to arrest him a few days ago, and if he hadn't been out at the time, he would be in jail now. So, this has gone beyond "possible charges". The church is dead serious about charging this man with the crime of letting them know that they were drinking sewage.
Re:Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (July 2012)
on Sunday July 01, 2012 @11:56AM (#4185108)
SEEKING WORK - Toronto or remote
13 years as a working programmer, 10 more as a kid hacker. Lots of web, some mobile, a little game dev, many platforms and languages. Also make music, comedy, stay fit, long walks on the beach, etc.
Re:Siri is old tech now - check out Google's solution
on Sunday July 01, 2012 @07:59AM (#4184504)
When we figure out how to do that, we won't want to call it AI anymore either. AI is human mental tasks that we haven't figured out how they work yet.
Re:Mobile is Where the Growth Is
on Sunday July 01, 2012 @07:39AM (#4184462)
As with the web, it's not the shoehorned apps that are leading the charge on mobile. It's the totally new kinds of apps that didn't make sense until this platform came along.
Re:Privacy Lawyers Sell Out Facebook Users for $10 Million
on Friday June 22, 2012 @08:03PM (#4149559)
Whether it's right or wrong is exactly the issue under discussion.
Re:Privacy Lawyers Sell Out Facebook Users for $10 Million
on Friday June 22, 2012 @02:32PM (#4148058)
Since they are not told, in any reasonably accessible way, what is going to happen when they click "like", they have grounds to complain about anything that does.
Re:Cyberweapon Warning From Eugene Kaspersky
on Monday June 04, 2012 @05:46AM (#4063265)
From what we've seen, these cyberweapons take a long time to work their way behind enemy lines and must evolve as they do so. If it's hidden in a shoe then it's not really a useful cyberweapon.
Re:Underscores are stupid
on Tuesday May 15, 2012 @12:18PM (#3977259)
Try binding shift-space to underscore. You'll start to feel much better about it.
Re:What time is it?
on Tuesday May 01, 2012 @07:19AM (#3913794)
So is this a clever split frame trick or did they actually spend an entire day doing that?
EDIT: Actually, the lighting would be really difficult if it was a trick so I'm going to say it's real.
Re:Twitter Introduces Innovators Patent Agreement
on Thursday April 19, 2012 @01:50AM (#3861597)
But what's the point of the "no consideration" bit? What's the point of two parties agreeing that they won't make a new deal later, when they can anyway?
Re:Cookie-tracking deadline: Sites pressed to meet deadline
on Wednesday April 18, 2012 @10:20AM (#3858034)
Sites are allowed to use cookies for certain internal purposes without consent, and that is probably one of them.
Re:Twitter Introduces Innovators Patent Agreement
on Tuesday April 17, 2012 @02:18PM (#3854141)
As long as the inventor holds the patent, what stops them from making a new agreement with the assignee that allows non-defensive litigation?
Re:YC Facelift: Flutter
on Saturday April 14, 2012 @12:44PM (#3841300)
Maybe it's just me, but when I see a product that claims to do something seemingly impossible without explaining how it works, I tend to be highly suspicious that it doesn't, and I feel a little bit patronized. I think the main description should at least give a hint.
I see "webcam" mentioned in the testimonials now, but I would make it more prominent.
Re:'9223372036854775807' == '9223372036854775808'
on Thursday April 12, 2012 @12:03PM (#3832926)
If == is supposed to be a numeric comparison and you are supposed to use strcmp for strings then why does == (sometimes) work on strings? Make it always coerce to a number, or die trying. Overloading it as numeric or string compare depending on what the string looks like is ridiculous.
And BTW, things that work in most cases, but not all cases, are exactly where bugs come from.