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180679760
comment
bysevenfactorial
uary 28, 2026 @02:16PM
(#65954934)
Attached to: Tim Berners-Lee Wants Us To Take Back the Internet
The problem is not that top level domain names were pounced on my charlatans. The problem is that most people have no interest in learning the basic things they need to know to be a self sovereign internet user. I'm thinking specifically of running a mail server and a website. Because of this slight amount of friction, rather than billions of cool quirky web pages we have facebook, gmail, etc. The thing that breaks the internet is that a dearth of self sovereign users leaves a space for companies to frictionlessly knit people together. Then network effects yield a winner take all scenario.
There is *some* hope in the fact that vibe coding now lets everyone make simple sites and solve basically any technical issue.
180601316
comment
bysevenfactorial
y 16, 2026 @12:25PM
(#65929454)
Attached to: Code.org: Use AI In an Interview Without Our OK and You're Dead To Us
I'm a CS professor. The problem with AI is that allowing it and disallowing it both lead to awkward outcomes.
Suppose you allow it. Then what are you going to ask students to do? Implement bubblesort? No. That would be pointless -- AI trivially generates all boilerplate code. Of course Chegg long ago broke the oldest and best coding assignments, which consisted of implementing classic algorithms from pseudocode. Still, all traditional undergrad assignments are out the window.
What *can* you ask students to implement? Realistically, they should be able to do just about anything. The order to "Recreate Facebook" is a valid 2 day HW assignment. But that's so broad that it's ungradable. And the students' ability to do the task means very little about their inherent ability.
So, suppose you *don't* allow the use of AI. Then almost everyone will use AI anyway. Now you're not a professor, you're a detective, and everyone in your course is a suspected criminal. If students are smart AI work is easily disguised. Then who are you giving A's to? Cheaters. Solution: Give everyone an A. Educational value for most students, who need to be threatened and cajoled to do work: Zero.
Does that mean I'm saying that AI makes everyone a genius and you can't tell the difference anyway? No. The pinch happens when you get out on the bleeding edge and try to do something truly novel. But that is not how instruction of any kind traditionally works. Things at the bleeding edge are incomprehensible to students. Asking students in CS 101 to blaze a new trail is a stupid assignment.
Conclusion: Things are very broken and many students are in trouble. The only thing you can really do to educate the typical person (who requires cajoling and threats) is to lock them in a Faraday cage for four years (and they would probably still cheat). On the other hand, for the *very* rare individual who is self motivated and just wants to learn, it is a golden age.
I suppose we should really be teaching students how to use AI to educate themselves.
180502851
comment
bysevenfactorial
y 02, 2026 @12:15PM
(#65897185)
Attached to: Iran Offers To Sell Advanced Weapons Systems For Crypto
Prediction: This will provoke a military response from the US within days
Caveat: The strikes will be featured in the media as being in response to civil unrest not control of the world financial system.
180322277
comment
bysevenfactorial
er 07, 2025 @10:21AM
(#65841311)
Attached to: Many Privileged Students at US Universities are Getting Extra Time on Tests After 'Disability' Diagnoses
This is what happens when planning is done on the basis of perceived pain rather than incentive structures.
Real disabled people should have real accommodations. There should be non-trivial negative consequences for assholes filing spurious claims. Otherwise it's a race to the bottom, and everyone eventually has to capitulate and fake a condition. Or the most moral hold out, and become the most severely punished by the system.
180050044
comment
bysevenfactorial
ber 11, 2025 @03:12PM
(#65788524)
Attached to: The iPad Pro at 10: a Decade of Unrealized Potential
I agree with this 100%. A few years ago I used a grant to get a powerful ipad pro, thinking I could use it for work on the commute. Nope. Turns out it's just a boob tube. Was totally useless to me.
178458900
comment
bysevenfactorial
24, 2025 @03:56PM
(#65543238)
Attached to: 'Boiling Frog' Effect Makes People Oblivious To Threat of Climate Crisis, Shows Study
I teach math to unprepared college students at an inner city university. I would never show a college freshman a temperature plot with time on the x axis and expect them to understand it. Incoming freshmen have something like a traditional 4th grade mathematical background. And these are college students.
There may be cognitive biases that explain why the ice/no ice imagery works better. But another factor is that anything mathematical that doesn't make sense to a fourth grader doesn't make sense to a vast swath of the population.
177828833
comment
bysevenfactorial
28, 2025 @06:45AM
(#65410057)
Attached to: 'Some Signs of AI Model Collapse Begin To Reveal Themselves'
Hmm it used to send him to official sites without advertisements, but now it's sending him to 3rd party knock on sites, probably with lots of ad services. I wonder what's happening. Must be model collapse.
177395255
comment
bysevenfactorial
08, 2025 @07:56PM
(#65362825)
Attached to: Senate Passes 'Cruel' Republican Plan To Block Wi-Fi Hotspots For Schoolkids
Losing access to the garbage on the web is the best thing that can happen to kids, provided they have books.
I only wish there were a way to eliminate access to the internet for more children.
The digital divide has now completely reversed -- the more internet access a child has, the bigger the detriment.
176612013
comment
bysevenfactorial
04, 2025 @09:10AM
(#65209821)
Attached to: US To Halt Offensive Cyber Operations Against Russia
I wonder, in a counterfactual universe, how far the American public and political system would tolerate Trump's genuflections before Putin. If he lie down on television and let Putin walk across his body, would Lindsay Graham soon be telling us that this was appropriate behavior, while Tucker Carlson nods on approvingly? Or would they not? What if Putin spit on his face while he had to keep smiling? Smacked down to the ground after which he has to crawl to Putin's shoes? At what point would the population cross some kind of threshold by which everyone agrees Trump's behavior is unacceptable? I hope this remains a theoretical question, but it seems like we are headed toward a breaking point about as fast as we can go.
176542021
comment
bysevenfactorial
ary 25, 2025 @09:50AM
(#65193915)
Attached to: Chegg To Initiate Business Review Amid AI-Shift in Education Tech
Students using Chegg used to be the bane of my life as a CS prof circa 2018-2021. My assignments were immediately posted there and "solved" often with kooky solutions that many students would hand in as if they were the first people to discover the cheating site. It galls me to see Chegg described as a site that "helps with homework." The way forward in CS education is very unclear to me, but Chegg is not something that should be mourned in any way.
176260825
comment
bysevenfactorial
uary 15, 2025 @09:44AM
(#65168609)
Attached to: Brake Pad Dust Can Be More Toxic Than Exhaust Emissions, Study Says
This has the ring of EV FUD. The reasoning is that heavier EVs will make more brake dust and thus be environmentally less sound than fossil fuel cars. Libtards: owned.
But I have an EV and use one pedal driving. The car is slowed when your foot moves away from the accelerator by electromagnetic resistance that recharges the battery. This will bring the car to a complete stop. I literally never touch the brake.
So therefore shouldn't the headline be: EVs Doublegood, stop CO2 and brake dust?
176121905
comment
bysevenfactorial
ary 04, 2025 @11:03AM
(#65140959)
Attached to: Senator Hawley Proposes Jail Time For People Who Download DeepSeek
He does realize that downloading the model means that China gets no visibility into its use, right?
Furthermore exploiting something they are giving away for free does not put a single dollar into the hands of the CCP.
This seems like a very confused idea.
Prohibiting the API and the web app makes total sense though.
176121893
comment
bysevenfactorial
ary 04, 2025 @11:01AM
(#65140957)
Attached to: Bonobos Can Tell When They Know Something You Don't
"This shows that they can actually take action when they realize that somebody has a different perspective from their own," says Krupenye
Uh, no it doesn't. It shows that they can learn to point faster when the window is closed.
175662401
comment
bysevenfactorial
er 13, 2024 @01:34PM
(#65011181)
Attached to: Texas House Introduces Bill To Establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve
We need to differentiate between what is likely to happen and what we want to happen here.
Establishing a US bitcoin reserve is crazy, dumb, irresponsible and corrupt. But it is not unlikely. It is more probable than not. The president elect has already said that he is going to do it. Bitcoin is a plank of the Republican party and they control all branches of government. Key members of the administration and congress will buy bitcoin (many or most already have) and then use their authority to create the reserve. Then they will make multiples of their investment. See the logic? You might find that disgusting and rightly so, but don't call it improbable.
174508269
comment
bysevenfactorial
5, 2024 @05:58PM
(#64628063)
Attached to: Gemini AI Platform Accused of Scanning Google Drive Files Without User Permission
I hope he can keep his socks on when he finds out why he gets to use gmail for free.
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