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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Parents, schools, employers, and governments, already use content controls to restrict users from accessing undesirable sites and services on the internet.

    Searching the terms “content blocking” or “parental controls” will get you lists of apps and services doing just that.

    Parents already have the capability. This law doesn’t provide any additional capability for parents to parent their kids. This law seeks, instead, to remove the power and responsibility of parenting from the parents, and assign it to pornographers. They want the operators of adult websites around the world to be the ones determining whether or not to provide content to their kids.


    What this law actually does is provide a means for a website to determine whether an adult or a child is trying to access their content, and to use that information to decide what content to provide. The thinking is that a respectable services like Netflix will be able to decide to provide only age-appropriate content, blocking kids from adult content.

    However, that also means that services like “KidGroomer dot com” will be able to provide different content to adults than it does to children. To an adult, they can portray themselves as a site that provides information on how to protect kids from grooming. But when a kid visits, this law lets the site know it is a kid. The site can now show them kid-targeted content, like how to get in contact with the nearest candy-giving stranger.

    Perhaps we don’t actually want a website to be able to determine whether there is a kid on the other side of the screen.



  • All we can say from the given scenario is that the student has not demonstrated mastery of the subject material.

    It could be that the teacher fucked up, and tested improperly. I’ve seen tests that didn’t reflect the subject matter; the teacher failed.

    It could be that Mom or Dad were the ones completing the student’s assignments for them all year. The student never actually learned anything; the student failed.

    If every student had the same experience, I’d be happy to point fingers at the teacher. But when virtually all her students pass, and this one “workaholic” kid can’t, that’s not on the teacher. That’s on the kid.

    (Apparent) hard work is not evidence of mastery.


  • The UK uses single phase to the house. This is provided via one 240v hot and a neutral. Their final distribution transformer bonds one side of the output coil to ground and use it as a neutral, which makes the other side of the coil 240v relative to that ground.

    The US uses split phase to the house. This is 240v provided via two opposing 120v hots and a common neutral. Their final distribution transformer is almost identical to the UK version: end to end, they have a 240v output. The difference is that instead of bonding one end of the output coil to ground and using it as a neutral for the other end, they instead bond the center of the output coil to ground and use that as a common neutral for both ends.






  • Assignments are not evidence of learning. Assignments are pressure for students to learn. They are motivation to spend time acquiring knowledge and practicing skills expected to be acquired from the class.

    For students who master this knowledge and skill without that pressure, assignments are distractions from further study. They force the student to expend time and energy on previously-mastered material, rather than allowing them to focus on unmastered subjects or additional classes.

    If I were building a grading rubric, I would say that the test score at the end of each unit is the minimum score recorded for any assignment in that unit. My tests would be killers: I would target 80% raw scores, but final test scores would be on a curve, with the median score being recorded as an “A”.

    Score a 100% raw score on a unit test, and every assignment for that unit is raised to 100%. The student has demonstrated complete mastery of the subject matter; any grade less than 100% does not reflect their true capability.

    Score an 80% raw score on the unit test, and every assignment for that unit is at least an 80%. A 95% assignment stays a 95%, but a 45% assignment is counted as 80%. Missing assignments are counted as 80%, not 0%.

    I would go further: the raw score on the final exam replaces every lower grade in the grade book. You ace that indomitable horror of a final exam, you ace the class, regardless of how much effort you put in.


  • The purpose of a class is to instill a specific set of knowledge and skills.

    The purpose of an assignment is to provide the student with sufficient pressure to study the expected knowledge, and practice the expected skills. The assignment is the pressure to learn; it is not evidence of learning.

    To the student who has achieved mastery of that knowledge and skillset prior to completing the class, an assignment has no valid purpose. For such a student, the assignment is busywork, and serves only to distract the student from further study.

    If your grading style does not allow for a student to demonstrate mastery and refuse busywork assignments, your grading is a problem.

    A student with test scores equal or better than the class average does not deserve to fail your class for having refused assignments.

    A student who ritualistically completes all of their homework assignments with excellent marks, but is entirely unable to pass a test on the subject matter, is a student who has failed your class.


  • There is a difference between providing the capability, and requiring that capability.

    Under this law, something as simple as sharing a Google Drive could make you an “app store” and potentially liable for penalties.

    These laws are specifically designed to be broadly interpreted. We have no idea just how widely the nets will be cast, either tomorrow, or 10 years from now. It is prudent to assume the absolute worst case.