kepler1

I think there's conflating of problems here (at for the moment let's talk about primary school K-12 rather than university level).

There is a fundamental problem with a good percentage of public schools right now, where the previous expectations of child behavior, learning ability, and classroom teaching outcome has been broken. And instead of coming up with ways to fix that, lots of people are trying to patch the holes at the output side.

Unfortunately, public schools have to serve everyone, including:

-- kids who have learning disabilities, which seems to be disturbingly an increasing fraction of the population, which costs lots and lots of extra money to pay for

-- kids who don't behave properly in school, which is a degradation of the expectations and frankly, reflection of the standards of families at home

-- "phone-it-in"ism of unfortunately a large enough portion of public school teachers, who are a combination of not the best trained, and honestly, not allowed to enforce discipline any more due to "equity" and liability rules that govern this now.

And instead of being able to fix these problems, concerned people try to look at the easier thing to "fix" which is to rig the outcome to "look right". Until it blatantly and obviously fails. And disserves a generation of kids in the meantime with their hypothesis about how it was going to work.

That's why you have dumbing down of entrance standards, as well as avoiding standardized tests (whether for the claimed reason of being "inequitable" or the worse lazy reason of "it's so stressful for the kids").

In the meantime, those with the means take their kids out of public school because no parent wants to conduct the experiment on their own kid.

And you then watch as our society generally falls behind other countries that are not yet so rich that they can afford to have kids failing and still somehow end up somewhat ok in life.

This actually a legit question under the surface.

The problem, in my opinion, is that MZ/CC/AA-D, are feeling that they have to be releasing models of some flavor every month to stay competitive.

And when you have the rest of the company planning to throw you a on-stage party to announce whatever next model, and the venue and guests are paid for, you're gonna have the show whether the content is good or not.

Llama program right now is "we must go faster." But without a clear product direction or niche that they're trying to build towards. Very little is said no to. Just be the best at everything. And they started from behind, how can you think you're gonna catch up to 1-2 year head start, just with more people? The line they want to believe is "the best LLM, not just the best OSS LLM".

Because of the constant pressure to release something every month (nearly, but not a huge exaggeration), and the product direction coming from MZ himself, the team is not really great at anything. There is a huge apparatus of people working on it, yet half of it or more, I believe, is baggage required because of what Meta is.

I guess we'll see how long this can be maintained.

it's a joke

This is pretty much the first half of the article (until the archive.is link starts working):

"Google is eliminating its goal of hiring more employees from historically underrepresented groups and reviewing some diversity, equity and inclusion programs, joining other tech giants rethinking their approach to DEI.

In an email to employees Wednesday, Google said it would no longer set hiring targets to improve representation in its workforce.

In 2020, amid calls for racial justice following the police killing of George Floyd, Google set a target of increasing by 30% the proportion of “leadership representation of underrepresented groups” by 2025.

Parent company Alphabet’s GOOGL -7.69%decrease; red down pointing triangle annual report released Wednesday omitted a sentence stating the company was “committed to making diversity, equity, and inclusion part of everything we do and to growing a workforce that is representative of the users we serve.” The sentence was in its reports from 2021 through 2024.

Google also said it was reviewing recent court decisions and executive orders by President Trump aimed at curbing DEI in the government and federal contractors. The company is “evaluating changes to our programs required to comply,” the email said...

“We’ll continue to invest in states across the U.S.—and in many countries globally—but in the future we will no longer have aspirational goals,” the email said... "

James Damore must be rolling in his grave

Since you seem relatively open minded and objective about it let me ask you this:

How much did you get paid for doing all those consulting gigs on DEI topics?

Just to point out, even as you highlight the hollowness of the trend passing through, you were a part of the industry it created and a beneficiary of people's sudden interest in the symbolism of it even if it achieved little. Tons of people who could justify some kind of vague contribution/expertise were glad to make money off of the political need to pursue this, and be seen doing it.

It sounds like you were one of the more respectable contributors. Others were hangers-on, making money or careers off people's fear of being accused of not toeing the new party line, regardless of how hollow it was. VPs/deans/executive directors of diversity and inclusion at whatever institutions they could sell their services to.

Whether it was good or not at its core, some people had a vested interest in it continuing. It happens equally with every new trend that is hard to set real goals against. (or achievable ones, until it's found out to be empty).

Made out of manilla file folders is approximately correct for the state of Air India's fleet right now.

Here in California (and generally in the US, as well as other places where the cost of enforcing laws seems to be growing too costly/unpalatable), we seem increasingly interested in documenting and retroactively following up the aftermath of crimes. Rather than preventing them when / before they're happening. I'm surprised the police even care to watch video afterwards.

(aside from the serious crime stuff like in the article)

A company wants to enforce its copyright, etc., fine. That's their right to do so. Although I beg to differ with our copyright laws.

No, what I find objectionable about the NYT games team, such as their spelling bee puzzle, is that they selectively deem certain words not valid responses. Not curse words or words with no redeeming value, but words that are perceived to be derogatory against disadvantaged groups or "offensive". It's like an extension of the hyper sensitive liberal newsroom.

Fine, it's a private organization and their choice. But it reflects in my mind a hijacking of the language by people oversensitized to the point of ridiculousness.

I guess if a core part of your belief system is that an unexplainable deity speaks through only certain people who you need to trust without good reason to, small problems like this sometimes happen! Oh well, acceptable losses, right?

Well, what about the value of making clear to people that in case they fall over that edge and start using drugs, they will be punished? Police being able to arrest people and caution them, rather than being told to actively ignore it?

In order to stop them from tempted to try it or go further, and prevent more people from joining that group? Or the people who deal drugs? Which decriminalization basically removed any check function on?

The treatment / rehab / injection / addict housing programs (and more) that are required when you decide that having people use drugs isn't something that they believe they will be punished for anymore and no longer exercise some measure of self-caution to avoid falling into. The near-hospital-like facilities and salaries of people you have to pay for to replace that self- or state-policing, and now have to clean up after those who have been given free license to use drugs, and get them back on some productive life track.

As GP was alluding to, all the things that require spending $ on, which people aren't apparently willing to spend after the symbol of voting for decriminalization. Which, if they're a mandatory part of decriminalization, but people never end up paying for, mean that decriminalization isn't actually a viable policy.

I commented a few times here over the years criticizing decriminalization as it came up as an option, against loud / vociferous people saying, how can you continue to embrace criminal penalties that clearly aren't working. As if it were crazy to believe that people need laws to obey.

I said that you can make all the rational step-wise choices in the world, and find yourself led down a path to oblivion, where you've made drug use not a crime, and find yourself in a drug-problem-overwhelmed city.

Lo and behold, we find years later, people awaken to the fact that decriminalization might not work, and countless people having left the city because of it, and probably more importantly, tons of people falling victim to the scourge of drugs.

Sometimes, as unkind as it sounds and expensive as it is, you need to enforce some harsh laws and have people understand that you won't tolerate certain behaviors, lest your society fall apart.

If decriminalization relies on a whole raft of practically infeasible (or very expensive) associated programs to make it work, is it really a viable strategy?

Serious, and almost inevitably danger / criminal- and life-destroying behavior inducing drugs.

Two (?) some years ago a review story about Oregon's decriminalization policy was here on HN and I said that I didn't think it was a good idea, and was kind of shouted down by people saying, "this is the only rational choice, to do what works and stop penalizing people which costs a lot and doesn't change their behavior".

Well, you can make stepwise rational choices all the way down into oblivion and watching your cities and states fall apart. It may be kind and more rational, but you've removed disincentives to use drugs and find yourselves in a society where you've attracted and created the conditions for this behavior to continue.

No matter what your policy stance on the potential solutions, it is not good to be having a society where people are using serious drugs without penalty.

Oh well, lesson learned, especially for people who thought they were liberal. Unfortunately at great expense and pain.

Regardless of the issue here, I just want to say that I'm glad we put up such high standards for allowing people with skills into this country.

Because if we didn't, we'd have random people just crossing the border at will and living in the country with no repercussions whatsoever.

Constant puzzle to me:

Video is just made up of single sequential still images. Why are the color issues / tuning of videos like 100x more complicated and involve so many more tools than those of still images?

At this point I would've imagined Apple would have a moon detection feature and just replace it with a stock image cutout when detected in the field of view.

Can you say a bit more what you think was the factor?

-- more control of depth of field?

-- faster shutter speeds?

-- less chromatic aberrations?

It doesn't intuitively feel like sharpness should be a factor -- even cheap kit lenses usually get that right.

At what point do you realize that you've become one of those collectors of weird railroad information that isn't really useful but somehow interesting to know? And how do you realize it soon enough to catch yourself before you bore your friends with it?

I think if the proper question is asked, you get the right answer. The issue is whether people understand what is the proper question.

The proper question is, "would you rather live near solar panels and wind turbines, or coal power plants?". Because someone is going to have to live near either.

The wrong question is if you merely ask, "do you want to live near a wind turbine?" Of course no one does.

It's like asking a toddler, "do you want to eat the broccoli or the peas?" Then they choose the right answer.

I'm really glad our kids will have high esteem about their inability to do algebra when it comes time to try to re-onshore our semiconductor design and manufacturing capabilities.

Why should the contract have to dictate that, when it's the production that would have to pay/suffer if they shortsightedly understaffed something? The writers have sick days and time off protections already. Seems to me this is about guaranteeing employment. If having more than one body in the writer's room is needed, let the production decide that or live with the consequences.

# of Episodes, Minimum # of writers in writers’ room

---------------------------------

6 or fewer, 3

7-12, 5

13+, 6

Minimum number of writers? Ok, go ahead and tell me that union labor isn't about padding payrolls.

I will posit a simple and maybe frivolous reason --

"Mutton" just doesn't sound like an appealing name for a meat. There's something offputting about the sound of it. Or maybe it has just become so, given that it's associated in all our experience with "old" animal meat. Although, by that logic, maybe "haggis" also just has a branding problem.

Interesting paper, but it only talks about the benefits of cables, not the cost of operating (which was the question above).

Apple chooses not to do that, to be able to give a controlled experience, to be able to review apps and screen them, and to, yes, benefit from the pricing power that allows them.

They don't have to allow more competition in their own store. There are other stores you can sell apps through.