Alterslash

the unofficial Slashdot digest
 

Contents

  1. How Will AI Change the Field of Mathematics?
  2. Rush Rescue Mission for NASA’s $500M Space Telescope Fails
  3. Flock is Secretly Building a Powerful New Prompt-Based AI Tool for Police
  4. Low Emission Zone Led To Better Lung Size, Function Among London Children
  5. Moderna-Merck Vaccine Cuts Recurrence And Spread of Melanoma, Raises New Treatment Hope
  6. Is AI Really to Blame for High Unemployment Among Recent Graduates? What Economists Say
  7. Firefox Announces Free VPN and ‘Startpage’ Search Engine Rolling Out to Android, iOS - Plus GeForce NOW Support
  8. New York Dethrones San Francisco Bay Area As Largest Tech Talent Market
  9. Over 1 Million People Have Clicked LinkedIn’s AI Slop Button
  10. ‘Off the Charts’ El Nino Is Already the Strongest Since Records Began
  11. China Joins Europe In Scrapping Windows For Linux
  12. Township Fights Nuclear Weapons Data Center By Passing a Moratorium on Electrical Infrastructure
  13. Apple Cuts Jobs In Siri, Vision Pro Immersive Video and Gaming Teams
  14. American Who Wiped His Phone With ‘Duress’ Password During Border Search Gets Felony Charges
  15. AI Boosted Homework Scores, Then Exam Scores Dropped

Alterslash picks up to the best 5 comments from each of the day’s Slashdot stories, and presents them on a single page for easy reading.

How Will AI Change the Field of Mathematics?

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
“AI went from being very terrible to seemingly genuinely quite good at a professional level in a very short space of time…” says the Verge’s AI reporter. But AI systems “are still truly, truly terrible at some areas of math… even the days of the week.”
If you look at academic math papers, a lot of the time you won’t see numbers… So they’re still terrible, but they’re now also very good at this other part. As to why, at some point you reach a critical mass of what these systems can do. We saw it with writing, we’ve seen it with programming. They’re very good at forging connections between different areas, applying old methods in new ways, those kinds of things. It appears that the newer models they’re training have apparently reached that level where it clicks, and now it can do math…

There are areas now where it seems to be producing work that is on par with good mathematicians, alongside other parts where yeah, it can’t count. All caught up in that is whether it’s going to rewrite employment structures or funding structures… One would hope [math researchers] would branch out into all of these new exciting areas or pose new questions. But AI won’t do that, and that’s the concern. And then that would leave the field quite sterile, and it will have all of these things that have been done, and maybe nothing left to pursue… [A] lot are scared that it’s closing off the field. So by definition, those breakthroughs that lead to something surprising and new that you can say, “Oh, this works here,” may not be happening anymore…

There were some bleak responses from graduate students I saw in essays posted online. Where’s their place in this as future researchers? Do they have a place in this? Is it as glorified AI proof checkers? That will be quite an unsatisfying career, I imagine. Or maybe not, I don’t know. We will see. I think anything used properly will be a net boon.
They also had an interesting response when asked if AI democratizes access to high-level mathematical proofs:
A lot of the mathematicians I spoke to were almost quite weary of this, actually. They love the idea, in theory, of democratizing access. They’re also quite fed up with AI-generated or -assisted papers that are flooding every publication imaginable, as well as the pre-print servers that they use in these fields. Some of those I spoke to said things like, “Oh, I got three emails this week alone with people being like, ‘Hey, is this legit?’" Because they thought they’d solved something with ChatGPT or with Claude, and they also don’t have the mathematical skills to check whether they’ve actually solved something.

On the flip side, there are parts where they said, “Well, we’ve got a talented undergrad who’s done something that a talented undergrad would probably have never managed, and here they are doing grad-level work and they’ve produced a paper that is legit.” And in the bigger scheme of things, a few I spoke to said, “Well yeah, a lot of these are in the ivory tower. Having access to this kind of thing globally could really boost access to the kind of things here.” On the flip side, the cost. These things cost a lot to run.

Rush Rescue Mission for NASA’s $500M Space Telescope Fails

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
Remember that rush rescue mission for NASA’s $500M space telescope? It failed, reports CNN, and the LINK satellite won’t be able to boost the telescope’s orbit. NASA says its decades-old Swift telescope will now continue losing altitude, until it reaches Earth’s atmosphere later this year and burns up.

CNN reports:
Just weeks after LINK lifted off on July 3, it started to spin out of control. [Satellite designer] Katalyst was able to regain control of the satellite, but the company acknowledged that the issue cost it time, which would delay LINK’s rendezvous with Swift by about a month. However, that postponement — at least initially — did not seem to be a deterrent to the mission. Now, NASA and Katalyst have announced that LINK’s mission will not capture and boost Swift to a higher orbit “due to ongoing attitude control issues,” according to statements Wednesday.

“NASA should be willing to move quickly and take smart risks when the potential return is worth it, and that is exactly what we did with this mission,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a statement. “This is not the outcome we were working toward, but it does not change why this mission was worth attempting. The team moved with extraordinary speed to give Swift a chance to carry out more science while advancing capabilities America will need for satellite servicing in the future....”

The mission team is forging ahead with its plan for LINK to rendezvous with Swift — but as a demonstration rather than a rescue. “We are going to learn everything we can from LINK’s rendezvous attempt and put those lessons to work on the missions that follow,” Isaacman said… Swift wasn’t designed to be serviced in space, which means that insights from the demonstration could be used for future missions… “We have already learned a tremendous amount,” [said Ghonhee Lee, CEO of Katalyst Space Technologies], “and now our job is to turn those lessons into something durable — building a repeatable playbook to inform future rendezvous and proximity operations and satellite servicing.”

This is really sad

By 93 Escort Wagon • Score: 5, Funny Thread

Pity us Americans. Apparently two telescope rescue missions have failed just during the past few days.

Flock is Secretly Building a Powerful New Prompt-Based AI Tool for Police

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
Slashdot reader fjo3 shared this article from Wired:
[Flock] has told the public for years that its technology “cannot recognize, identify, or track individuals.” It has now built a system that does both, an artificial intelligence tool for police that can identify drivers and track vehicles by their patterns of movement alone, WIRED has learned… Because the system also reaches police case files, 911 dispatch logs, and commercial identity records, those plates can be turned into names, home addresses, and relatives. It can search for people in an area drawn on a map based on nothing more than a physical description…

The code describes 45 tools at the AI’s disposal, giving it access to plate scans and camera metadata, arrest records, case files, dispatch logs, ballistics results, and commercial databases that contain Social Security numbers, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, relatives and associates. Flock says it is testing the product with a small group of law enforcement partners and describes it as still in development, with capabilities that may not reflect what it eventually sells. It arrives as the company faces bipartisan political pressure, a growing record of officers caught misusing its platform, and a wave of vandalism that has left cameras sawed off and lenses painted over in cities across the country…

An officer no longer needs a plate, a name, or a crime to begin: They supply a place, a stretch of time, and a pattern of behavior, and the system is designed to hand back the people who fit… One prompt Flock preloaded into the system reads: “Find me witnesses based on vehicles most seen in [neighborhood] during [last 14 days] during [daily timeframe] *(will not include whitelisted vehicles).” An officer would fill in the blanks and submit it. The output is a list of plates, which other tools in the product then convert into names and home addresses. Another prompt instructs the system to list everyone arrested more than twice in two years for “any offense,” exempting only narcotics arrests, and then says to map where those people live, retrieve the calls for service at their homes, and “do a workup on the top three individuals.” The prompt begins with everyone in the area who has an arrest record and ends with dossiers on three of them, chosen by the software. A “workup,” in Flock’s terminology, is a one-command background check. It starts with a name and a date of birth and returns what the department’s records and commercial data hold: vehicles, prior listings as a suspect, and, on a second screen, relatives, phone numbers, and online accounts.
Wired shares this reaction from a law professor at George Washington University.

“It is clear Flock has aspirations far beyond ALPRs to become a digital platform for policing,”

“Policing” Is Doing a Lof of Heavy Lifting Here

By ewhac • Score: 3 Thread

“It is clear Flock has aspirations far beyond ALPRs to become a digital platform for policing," [emphasis mine]

They misspelled, “Orwellian suveillance and harrassment.”

Law enforcement officers are already abusing Flock’s existing capabilities for stalking. This will not improve matters one iota.

Low Emission Zone Led To Better Lung Size, Function Among London Children

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shared this report from the Guardian:
Children’s lungs grew bigger and stronger after the most polluting vehicles were restricted from entering London, a study has found. Examinations of London schoolchildren before and after the introduction of the city’s ultra-low emission zone found a restoration of lung capacity that had been stunted by exposure to pollution… “Traffic pollution in cities damages children’s health and development,” said Chris Griffiths, a professor of primary care at the University of Oxford and Queen Mary University of London, and the study’s joint senior author. “We provide the strongest evidence yet on how these harms can be prevented. Ambitious clean-air zones should be considered a priority for cities globally with traffic-related air pollution.”

Air pollution from traffic has stunted the development of children’s lungs in London for decades. Previous research found that by the age of eight or nine, children from the most polluted areas had 5-10% less lung capacity than their peers elsewhere. That impairment, which scientists said was the result of exposure to nitrogen dioxide, put them at increased risk as adults of developing respiratory diseases, such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cardiovascular and metabolic disease, and premature death.

Blank

By kellin • Score: 3 Thread

From the department of no shit, Sherlock.

High Aspirations

By algaeman • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
If only we had some sort of technology that would allow us to replace oil burning vehicles with a cleaner alternative.

You have every reason to …

By Anne Thwacks • Score: 3 Thread
—— suspect this to be entirely dishonest proaganda.

1) They are comparing pre-lockdown levels of traffic- when “working from home” was almost zero, with post-lockdown — many people continue to work from home, assuming they still have a job. There are massively fewer cars on the road than there were. Less pollution is a good thing, but fewer jobs? not so much. (I am retired).

2) They viciously forced people to sell older cars prematurely rather than allow them to be replaced at the normally time (I never replaced my car, as I could not afford one having only got scrap value for the old one - of course I resent this and feel bloody minded towards thee whole thing. i am not alone). Fewer cars - more poverty.

3) Electric cars because petrol is very, very expensive. We pay about £1.80 per LITRE! (Not Australian pounds - Slashdot still cant get this right!)

4) Global warming means less pollution from household boilers - no firm data on this.

Moral: the research finds what they were paid to find. (A good researcher usually finds more research is needed if he wants to keep his job).

Better Lung Size?!

By 93 Escort Wagon • Score: 4, Funny Thread

This is woke nonsense. These people should be happy with the lungs they’ve got. What’s next, outlawing cars and mandating bicycles? Free healthcare for all?

Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?

Re:You have every reason to …

By JoshuaZ • Score: 4, Informative Thread

Regarding 1. In fact, post-pandemic traffici levels are as high as they were before the pandemic. In fact, traffic levels were already close to normal by October of 2020 in London, while the pandemic was still going on, in part due to people being less willing to take public transit. See https://www.london.gov.uk/who-we-are/what-london-assembly-does/questions-mayor/find-an-answer/changes-london-road-traffic-march-2020. and https://fleetworld.co.uk/uk-road-traffic-back-at-pre-covid-levels/. World-wide, we’ve seen pretty similar trends. https://inrix.com/blog/2023-global-traffic-scorecard/.

Re 2 and 3: Aside from that being highly exaggerated at what happened, it also isn’t relevant to evaluating this study or making this study become “dishonest propaganda.” If your claims are accurate, then they would be reasons to see there as being tradeoffs. But it wouldn’t be a problem with this study or this study’s claim. I’m not even sure what point you are trying to make with point 4. Are you claiming that the reduction in lung issues is due to less use of boilers due to climate change? While climate change is having an impact, it isn’t remotely large enough yes to have had that big an impact on heating that way. It isn’t what is going on here.

Moderna-Merck Vaccine Cuts Recurrence And Spread of Melanoma, Raises New Treatment Hope

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
Reuters reports “a major success in a new field of cancer treatment this week, as Moderna and Merck announced a personalized mRNA cancer vaccine “reduced the risk of recurrence and spread of melanoma in a late-stage trial”. The vaccine was tested with Merck’s widely used immunotherapy drug Keytruda:
Thousands of patients who have undergone surgery to remove high-risk melanoma tumors could benefit as soon as next year if regulators approve the vaccine, Moderna President Stephen Hoge said in an interview. This is the first positive late-stage trial result for an mRNA cancer vaccine, which trains a patient’s immune system to fight tumors by targeting specific mutations in those cells, and the first such study to show that adding a treatment to Keytruda worked better than that therapy alone… Interim results of the ongoing study, released on Wednesday, found the treatment, Intismeran, met both its primary target of reducing cancer recurrence and its secondary goal of preventing tumors from spreading to other parts of the body, compared with Keytruda alone. When the vaccine is injected into a patient, the patient’s cells produce copies of mutations for the immune system to recognize and destroy… Merck said the companies are already in talks with regulators about the treatment.
“Merck, Moderna and other companies are testing similar approaches against lung, breast and pancreatic cancers,” the article points out. It adds that Karen Knudsen, CEO of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, “said the Moderna results could signal a new era for treating solid-tumor cancers.”

More from CNN:
The trial result is “a monumental leap forward,” validating mRNA technology as a cancer treatment, said Dr. Julie Gralow, chief medical officer of the American Society of Clinical Oncology…

Roche and BioNTech, whose mRNA technology was used in the Pfizer COVID vaccines, are testing a similar treatment called autogene cevumeran in mid-stage studies in colon and pancreatic cancer patients who have undergone surgery. Results of the colon cancer trial are expected in 2027, with pancreatic trial results to follow in 2031. “We should be hearing results from multiple studies over the next few years and there’s every reason to hope now, with this news, that many of them will be positive,” said Dr. Robert Vonderheide, director of Penn Medicine’s Abramson Cancer Center and president-elect of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Good Dupe

By SlashbotAgent • Score: 3 Thread

This is great news and thus worth repeating.

I’m afraid to ask what the price of the vaccine might be. But, that vaccination is even possible is a gigantic step in the right direction.

Re: As a pure-blood MAGA person

By sixminuteabs • Score: 5, Funny Thread
I encourage all red states to ban this vaccine

This isn’t the path to final cure

By backslashdot • Score: 3 Thread

Not every tumor has strong neo-antigen presentation and many use complex immune evasion strategies that may be hard to defeat, therefore treatment evasion is still possible. https://www.cell.com/cancer-ce… Also notice they aren’t using it as a treatment during cancer. You have to be mostly cancer free for it to work — and even then it’s not 100%.

The issue is that it will always be tough to identify a cell as cancerous from the outside. To do it reliably, you have to do it from INSIDE the cell. Unfortunately getting things into cells is not trivial.

The path to a final cure (an agent that can be easily transported into every type of cell, determine if it’s within a cancer cell, and destroy it) will be something like the following: https://www.nature.com/article… (explanatory article about it: https://www.nature.com/article… )

There are numerous problems to solve with the “final cure” path though. I can list about a bunch .. but the good news is that for each one, there are about 2 or 3 possible ways it can be solved — I think. We’re probably about a decade or two out (consider the papers on neo-antigen vaccines started coming out in the 1990s, first proof-of-concept in early 2000s, and a “holy smokes, this thing really works” paper around 2017 I think). And note the neo-antigen therapy is still not approved.

Is AI Really to Blame for High Unemployment Among Recent Graduates? What Economists Say

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
47% of recent graduates say AI has already impacted hiring in their field, according to an April survey from ZipRecruiter.

“But is AI really the problem, or is it more complicated?” asks NPR. “Here’s what economists have to say.”
According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the unemployment rate for recent graduates — which it defines as 22-to-27-year-olds with a new bachelor’s degree or higher — was 5.7% as of June, more than the rate for all workers, which stands at 4.1%… Stanford University economist Erik Brynjolfsson says AI is impacting the labor market for entry-level roles. “AI is not the whole story, but it’s part of the story and the evidence is building,” he says. Using payroll data, Brynjolfsson and his co-authors found that since late 2022 — when large language models like ChatGPT started popping up — early-career workers ages 22 to 25 in AI-exposed roles, like software developers and marketing managers, have experienced a 16% relative employment decline. In comparison, employment rates for older workers in AI-exposed fields and for all workers in jobs that aren’t easily automated — like home health aides, physical therapists and construction workers — remained stable or have grown over that same time period… [Though he also says often when companies pull back on hiring, they cut junior roles first.]

Harvard University economist David Deming isn’t convinced that AI is to blame for the challenging early-career job market. “If you look very carefully at the timing, it looks like the decline in junior hiring actually started a bit like six months before ChatGPT was released. And so what that tells me is it’s something else,” Deming says. “I think it’s more like remote work.” A recent analysis from the New York Fed found that companies are less likely to hire recent college grads into roles that can be done remotely. As remote jobs increased following the COVID-19 pandemic, so did unemployment among younger college grads, the New York Fed found. The analysis also found that AI didn’t explain the rise in unemployment among younger workers and that remote work was more of a driving force… Employers hiring for remote jobs may be less likely to choose an entry-level candidate because it’s harder to train them from afar… [And with remote positions, there’s many more senior candidates to choose from.]

And here’s another thing to consider: University of Chicago economist Anders Humlum says if AI were replacing entry-level jobs, you’d expect to see companies that rely heavily on AI to hire fewer workers. But that’s not what the data shows. Humlum points to a study done by the financial accounting firm Ramp and the workforce research company Revelio Labs. The study examined AI spending and employee head count across more than 21,000 U.S. firms, from early 2021 to early 2026. It found that at companies making the largest AI investments, entry-level head count grew by 12% over the two years following AI adoption.

Yes, and…

By TheMiddleRoad • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
No economic situation is the result of one factor. Rarely is anything the result of one factor. Is AI having massive impacts on hiring? Absolutely. “Impacts” is a plural word. The economy is also struggling under Trump’s immense mismanagement, with the rich getting richer and everyone else more likely to be getting fucked. The tariffs have increased inflation and driven a knife into the economy’s gut worldwide. Is AI replacing jobs? Certainly. Is there need for people? Certainly. Are young people a pain in the ass to hire, train, and keep? Absolutely. Are they worse now than they were, say, 20 or 40 years ago? I don’t rightly know. Every generation complains about the next and then shits all over them.

Many companies hold back hiring

By Tablizer • Score: 3 Thread

…because they merely expect AI to replace existing tasks. Whether it actually does is more nuanced. For example, many employees pressured to use AI say it makes their tasks harder by creating AI slop that needs cleaning up. They have to deal with mistakes that wouldn’t be in a human draft or in existing time-tested templates. If and how fast employees will get better models or learn to prompt better is unknown.

It’s essentially management’s gamble. Those in the C-suite often don’t spot or are slow to understand front-line patterns, as nobody likes delivering lackluster news to higher-ups. They’ll typically hear, “There are a few learning curve hiccups, as expected, but we’re making progress” even if the productivity ship is taking on a little water.

Comparing to past history

By larryjoe • Score: 3 Thread

“According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the unemployment rate for recent graduates — which it defines as 22-to-27-year-olds with a new bachelor’s degree or higher — was 5.7% as of June, more than the rate for all workers, which stands at 4.1%"

The unemployment rate may be 5.7% for recent graduates, but the underemployment rate is 42.0%. That counts people who are working at a job that doesn’t require their college degree. The unemployment rate was as low as 3.9% in May 2022, when the underemployment rate was 40.7%. That means that the full-employment rate has been quite steady over the last few years. There has been very little change in job finding probabilities for a single individual.

However, there are factors that make a similar employment rate feel worse. College costs have risen, and today’s graduates have a lot of debt, while inflation-adjusted salaries have lagged while inflation chugs ahead.

Firefox Announces Free VPN and ‘Startpage’ Search Engine Rolling Out to Android, iOS - Plus GeForce NOW Support

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
Firefox 154 “brings a number of usability improvements,” writes PC World:
The free built-in VPN, introduced with Firefox 149, continues to offer a selection of virtual locations — temporarily extended to 28 countries until the end of August… The free VPN is currently available to Firefox users in the US, Canada, the UK, France, and Germany. In addition, the free VPN can now also be used in Firefox for Android (rolling out gradually) with iOS to follow soon.
Firefox 154 also begins adding the privacy-focused search engine Startpage to its address-bar search options for desktop users in Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, and the Netherlands (the home markets for the Netherlands-based search engine). And Startpage is also coming soon to Android and iOS. “When so much of the web experience is decided by a handful of very large companies, a search option that’s private by design and European by origin isn’t a small thing,” explains a Mozilla blog post, with Ajit Varma, Head of Firefox, saying this now gives millions of people in Europe one-click access to “real results, zero profiling, AI-free.”
Queries aren’t stored or linked to you, and there are no AI answers pushed above your search results. In fact, there’s no AI at all. Based in the Netherlands, Startpage built its product around a simple idea: great search and personal privacy can go hand in hand… Firefox users were choosing Startpage long before today — to the tune of more than a billion searches a year, every one of them required some assembly: an extension, a manual setting, a workaround… Startpage ranks among the most-requested search engines in the Firefox community. When demand is this clear, our job is to remove the friction…

Most browsers have already decided how you’re going to search. Firefox hasn’t. Pick your search engine, control what happens to your queries, decide who sees data about you, even turn AI on or off. It should always be your call. Not everyone wants the same thing from search, and a browser shouldn’t pretend they do.
“Firefox has always been the browser for people who want to make their own decisions about the web,” said Startpage President Stewart Marlborough, “which makes it a natural home for private search.”

Nvidia’s GeForce NOW cloud-gaming platform is also now officially supported on Firefox, expanding access across even more devices,” according to a Nvidia blog post:
Members can outfox big downloads and jump into high-performance PC gaming directly from the browser — no waiting on lengthy game installs or updates. The experience delivers GeForce RTX-powered performance at up to 1440p and 120 frames per second for GeForce NOW Ultimate members. Simply download the latest version of Firefox, head to play.geforcenow.com and start playing. The cloud handles the heavy lifting, so games are ready to play without taking up valuable storage space on the device. Firefox joins Chrome, Edge and Opera in supporting GeForce NOW on Windows browsers.
Mozilla’s own blog post even includes an animation of the Firefox mascot playing games:
Gamers put real effort into making their rigs their own, and Firefox gets that. Users can choose themes, custom colors, and tab settings to customize their setup, instead of sitting there like just another window. We also know online gaming doesn’t happen in just one window. It’s social and sometimes spontaneous. With Firefox, you can have a Discord call running in Split View, a guide open in another tab, or Reddit pulled up between matches. Then go full screen when you’re ready to play, no need to switch browsers to stream games.
“In the security report for Firefox 154, Mozilla lists 58 resolved security vulnerabilities, 54 of which were discovered and reported by external security researchers,” notes PC World. (“Mozilla classifies 17 of these vulnerabilities as high risk.”) With Firefox 155 (scheduled for September 1), Mozilla is switching to a fortnightly release cycle for major versions, like Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge.

You haven’t started Firefox in awhile

By Powercntrl • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

Here’s an ambiguous prompt that will delete all your extensions, themes, and custom settings if you answer “yes”. Just think of it as our little “fuck you” for using Chrome. Oh, by the way, welcome back.

Years and years

By markdavis • Score: 3 Thread

>“Firefox users were choosing Startpage long before today”

Yep. I have been using StartPage and DuckDuckGo as my sole search engines for many years. DDG has been included in Firefox for quite a while, but not StartPage. So I am glad to see it added, although adding it yourself is not difficult.

StartPage is essentially Google search without Google spying on you and without AI and other annoyances.

DuckDuckGo is essentially Bing without Microsoft spying on your and without some of the annoyances.

New York Dethrones San Francisco Bay Area As Largest Tech Talent Market

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
fjo3 shares a report from SFGATE:
The San Francisco Bay Area, epicenter of the artificial intelligence boom, is home to a massive amount of tech workers employed by some of the world’s most valuable companies, from Apple to Nvidia. But for the first time, New York has eclipsed the Bay Area as the home of the largest “tech talent workforce,” a report by real estate and investment firm CBRE shows. The firm has published the annual report for 13 years. Last year, the New York Metro Area’s tech talent workforce reached 394,300, surpassing the Bay Area’s 375,730, according to the report. Fueled by mass layoffs, the Bay Area’s tech talent workforce dropped by 6% from 2022 to 2025. New York’s tech talent workforce, on the other hand, grew by more than 8% during that period
“The Bay Area is likely to remain … the central location for the AI industry and for innovation. But as we’ve seen during past cycles, as it tends to grow, that spreads out to all the key markets,” Colin Yasukochi, executive director of CBRE’s Tech Insights Center, said during a news conference Tuesday.

Uh oh

By ArchieBunker • Score: 3 Thread

What happens when the democratic socialist mayor experiment turns out to be successful?

Skylla and Charybdis

By HnT • Score: 3 Thread

Like choosing between Skylla and Charybdis, which red-green-alliance Marxist Islamist would YOU choose?
Or Escape to Austin, Texas?

The metro area has little known options

By couchslug • Score: 3 Thread

If you’re rocking tech money there are many good places to spend it. The metro area has some beautiful wealthy neighborhoods, especially in northern New Jersey, which have fine old housing stock with large plots and good schools. Many good boarding schools are in easy range of the metro area.

The news focuses on the usual urban hellholes but many metro areas were never heavily industrialized and remain surprisingly refined. Passenger rail is well developed and built the burbs long before automobiles were more than a curiosity.

Tech money can also buy into Pennsylvania which is in easy reach by rail. If you’re a tech worker expecting to make bank I suggest not living IN NYC but in rail commuting range instead.
I quite enjoyed relaxing on the train vs. driving.

West = East = West

By Local ID10T • Score: 3 Thread

When I started in tech, the cycle was Bay Area to New York City to Bay Area.

You could talk your way into an entry level position in a Bay Area tech company just by being available and willing to learn. You could grow your skills but became pigeon-holed as an expert in a narrow function, and unable to progress to a mid-career job.

You had to go east to break that barrier. The companies in NYC were desperate for tech talent, and would take someone with a few years of bay area tech experience as a team leader or senior analyst.

A few years of being responsible for results in a NYC company gave you the opportunity to move back and take a management or senior developer position in a west-coast tech company (CA or WA).

Some of us even took detours thru Texas or Atlanta instead of NY, but the pattern held.

Don’t read too much into tech people moving around the country at different stages of their careers, it is just the way it works.

Over 1 Million People Have Clicked LinkedIn’s AI Slop Button

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
According to a post from chief product officer Hari Srinivasan, “over a million people” have clicked on LinkedIn’s new “Seems like AI slop” button, which launched after one analysis found 41% of the platform’s longform posts were fully AI-generated. The Verge reports:
In Thursday’s post, Srinivasan said that users are overall “now experiencing 40% less views on what we classify as AI slop from just a few weeks ago.” LinkedIn is also adding a new message that will tell users who make a post if “Some members told us this post seems like AI.” “We approached this assuming good intent; I know I’m increasingly conscious on how to not sound like AI & the goal is to provide helpful feedback,” Srinivasan said.

100%

By commodore73 • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
LinkedIn is 100% slip, whether or not “AI” was involved. I spent about a year trolling there. I’m quite confident in my percentage estimate.

what’s the point?

By argStyopa • Score: 3 Thread

I can’t see any point to this other than providing LinkedIn ai training data.

  I *want* ai to keep clearly sounding like fucking ai (although, being honest, I can’t think of a single post on LinkedIn that didn’t sound like it was written by a robot, ever).

“now experiencing 40% less views on what we classi

By Finallyjoined!!! • Score: 4, Informative Thread

Fewer!

Self fulfilling prophecy

By tiananmen tank man • Score: 3 Thread

How to make sure no one reads the linked story: link to a paywall article.

When in doubt, ask a Bob.

By geekmux • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

LinkedIn is 100% slip, whether or not “AI” was involved. I spent about a year trolling there. I’m quite confident in my percentage estimate.

If someone was asked 15 years ago what LinkedIn exists for, they would likely tell you it’s a site where you can store your digital resume and network with people you know and trust, who also know you. Essentially your digital references.

Today LinkedIn only leaves a Bob asking ”What would you say you do here?”

‘Off the Charts’ El Nino Is Already the Strongest Since Records Began

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A rapidly developing El Nino is already reaching record-setting levels for this time of year and is expected to intensify further over the coming months. “The El Nino has blossomed. It is off the charts. Usual measures of El Nino have blown past prior record levels in the period with good data, even though maximum effects are still several months in the future,” writes renowned climate scientist James Hansen at Columbia University in New York in a newsletter sent today. Climate scientists disagree over whether it has already surpassed previous “super El Nino” events on every metric, but several say the signal is unprecedented in forecasts and could ultimately become the strongest modern event on record. New Scientist reports:
There are different ways of measuring El Ninos, which occur when warm surface waters spread eastwards along the equator across the surface of the tropical Pacific Ocean. Hansen thinks the best measure is how much warmer than usual the upper 300 meters of the eastern tropical Pacific becomes. “Our preferred metric, the heat anomaly in the upper 300 meters of the Equatorial Pacific Ocean… already exceeds the 1997-98 super El Nino,” he writes.

[…] What’s clear is that this developing super El Nino will soon exceed previous events on all measures. “I have never seen an El Nino signal this intense in our forecasts,” [Adam Scaife at the Met Office, the UK’s national weather service] said in a statement released today. “If the forecast is accurate… then 2026 will far exceed our recent experience of El Nino and its worldwide climate influences.”

While Hansen is comparing the developing super El Nino to other modern events for which we have direct temperature records, Hayley Fowler at Newcastle University in the UK thinks it could also exceed historical events suspected to be even larger. “The super El Nino evolving in the Pacific will likely be the biggest ever recorded, reaching or exceeding the levels of the 1877-1878 El Nino which caused widespread impacts, including famines and around 50 million deaths (3-4 percent of the global population at the time), mostly across Asia and South America,” Fowler said in a statement.

The climate is going extreme

By Alain Williams • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

yet people still claim (and some maybe even believe) that climate change is a hoax. Do something before it is too late. I used to think that it would affect my grandkids, not me (I am 71), but I am now not so sure - this Summer has been hot!

Gotta love stories like this

By quonset • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

The word ‘El Nino’ was mentioned 10 times and the word ‘Super El Nino’ twice. Yet nowhere does it bother to mention what this means. What effects? How long? Who might be affected?

Yes, there is this thing called ‘the internet’ that I’m told can be used to look up information (or watch cat videos), but if you’re trying to disperse information, it might be nice to include said information so people can better understand the point you are trying (and failing) to get across.

Climate visualization

By SilentTristero • Score: 5, Informative Thread

I’ve been working on a climate dashboard with daily-updated sea & surface temps on a 3d globe as well as various regional trend graphs, at https://globe-viz.oberbrunner.... The Nino 3.4 region’s sea surface temp has been in daily-record territory since June 1, and it’s likely to reach an all-time record soon. Most ocean temps are well into record or near-record territory, and some local areas like the sea of Japan are over 6C above their long-term averages.

And many people believe ....

By Viol8 • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

… that an all powerful sky fairy spoke to some peasents thousands of years ago and “revealed” the truth to them while other believe the earth is only 4000 years ago and others than its flat.

You can’t fix stupid.

At this point the people who believe anthropogenic climate change is a hoax/conspiracy won’t change their minds no matter what anyone says or what evidence their own eyes give them. Just ignore them and move on.

Re: The climate is going extreme

By geekmux • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

Some people actually want the climate to heat up, for their personal comfort. I’ve also seen arguments that increased CO2 helps plants grow. People are amazingly good at rationalizing whatever behavior they like, including attempts to use its negative consequences as justification.

A crushing lack of empathy, is the most dangerous behavioral trait that has ever emerged from a new generation of humans.

A young single never-married childless person, cannot grasp the love a mother or father has for a child. I get that lack of empathy based on lack of life experience. Seen it plenty of times. But a good person can still have a basic level of empathy.

GenMeMeMe can be found to be quite different. Zero sympathy. Zero empathy. I can’t even say remorse or regret has increased as a result of bad outcomes. Which is sadly indicative of psychopathic behavior.

China Joins Europe In Scrapping Windows For Linux

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet:
According to a Bloomberg report, attributed to China’s Ministry of State Security, the country has ordered some government agencies to drop Windows 10 China Government Edition for Chinese-made Linux distributions. Why not Windows 11? Because China, like many other non-US governments, no longer trusts American companies with their software and services. This approach is all about digital sovereignty. In addition, even before the recent trend of governments outside America moving away from Windows, Beijing has started a long-running push to replace foreign technology in sensitive systems with domestic, open-source alternatives.

[…] The Chinese government did not specify which Linux versions would replace Windows 10. However, the stock prices of Chinese Linux suppliers, Kylin Software and Tongxin Software Technology (commonly known as UnionTech), immediately jumped. These companies’ respective operating systems, Kylin OS (no relation to Ubuntu Kylin) and UnionTech OS (UOS), were already positioned as domestic desktop and server replacements for Windows in government, state-owned enterprise, and critical-infrastructure environments. […] Huawei’s HarmonyOS 2, which began as an Android variant but is now a proprietary mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) operating system, is also being developed into a PC platform. HarmonyOS 2 won’t be deployed anytime soon. Kylin and UOS are the only mature desktops that are ready for institutional desktop deployments.

[…] … this transition won’t be easy. For agencies now moving off the government Windows build, the issue will be more demanding than simply swapping one desktop interface for another. Migration requires application testing, peripheral and driver validation, identity system integration, document-format compatibility, staff retraining and, in many cases, replacement or adaptation of Windows-dependent line-of-business software. The report provides no details on exactly how this transformation will occur. But the speed of the shift suggests that these issues are already being addressed in China’s centralized managed desktop stack.

Re:The only reasonable move

By 0123456 • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Iran has been “two weeks away from a nuclear bomb” for at least thirty years now. It’s all been part of Israel’s plan to convince American boys to die for Israel in a war on Iran.

Well, they got their war and it turns out that a) no sane American boy wants to die for Israel and b) all those expensive American wunderwaffen don’t win wars.

So Iran will do what it wants. If it wants nukes, there’s nothing American will do about it. And the Iranians now clearly see that the only way to be safe from American attacks is to have nukes like North Korea does.

As for Sharia law, we’re going to have Christian Sharia law or Muslim Sharia law. There’s no future in which ‘uman rights’ and ‘wimmin’s rights’ continue to exist much longer because they’re utterly destroying Western society.

Re: “domestic”

By Mr. Dollar Ton • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

Not much local pride to be had,

It isn’t about “pride”, dear. It is about something else entirely.

Re:The only reasonable move

By ArchieBunker • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

Did you hear about the woman in Iran who suffered a stillbirth and was then sent to jail for 18 years?

Actually wait, I have that incorrect.

It was Alabama. https://www.wsfa.com/2025/12/3…

Re: The only reasonable move

By muffen • Score: 4, Informative Thread
I think you need to define what winning means. If it’s wrecking havok on global economy, then Iran did in fact win, as I doubt the higher inflation and interest rates that come with it was one of the winning goals of the US.

pretty easy actually

By smithcl8 • Score: 4, Interesting Thread
These are government bureaucrat computers we’re talking about here. Spreadsheets, email, typing memos, and using a web browser for their apps. This is not the heavy lift it was even 5 years ago. The only part I would be interested to see if how you centrally manage login credentials without Active Directory. I’m sure there are systems available for it, but I’m yet to see any enterprise use anything other than AD. Maybe you really don’t need it and can just use local authentication, then handle deeper authentication on the server resources, I don’t know.

Township Fights Nuclear Weapons Data Center By Passing a Moratorium on Electrical Infrastructure

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Ypsilanti Township, Michigan, has imposed a six-month moratorium on “major electric utility infrastructure” in its latest attempt to delay a proposed $1.2 billion University of Michigan-Los Alamos data center that would support nuclear-weapons research. Township leaders, who have already paused water service for data centers, say the project has moved forward without adequate consultation and want more time to study noise, grid impacts, and other effects on residents. 404 Media reports:
Last year, the university announced it was partnering with LANL on the construction of a massive 220,000 square foot hyperscale data center in Ypsilanti Township and residents have been fighting it ever since. During a meeting of the Township Board on August 18, the council unanimously passed a resolution that will delay the construction of new electrical infrastructure for 180 days. Data centers need a lot of energy, and Michigan’s power authority will have to build new substations in the Township to power the proposed facility. The moratorium asked the local power authorities to use the six month delay to study noise pollution and how the new infrastructure would affect existing customers.

The moratorium is narrowly focused on “the nature and scale of electrical infrastructure necessary to serve new high-energy-demand land uses […] including infrastructure associated, but not limited to hyper-scale data centers, mid-sized data centers, artificial intelligence computing facilities, and high-performance computational centers, industrial facilities, and other intensive electrical users.”

Earlier this month, the University of Michigan announced it had settled on a specific plot of land in Ypsilanti Township — a 144-acre plot on Textile Road. In a press release about the decision, the University said the data center would have the “capacity to change the world” and insisted it would not be a “high value target risk” in a war, that it would not store any hazardous nuclear material, and was not a weapons production facility. LANL previously confirmed that the data center will be used for nuclear weapons research. Ypsilanti Township Supervisor Brenda Stumbo told WEMU news that the selection of the site was a “travesty of justice” because it ignores constituents’ concerns about environmental impact.

During the August 18 moratorium vote, the Board projected a large stock photograph of an electric substation behind its members. The photo was meant to remind people of the size of the incoming infrastructure and the lack of communication from the university about it. “This picture’s really important to think about because U of M has been so crystal clear that they’ve been communicating to us abundantly — which is not true,” Township clerk Debbie Swanson said during the meeting. “That speaks to the lack of respect.”

Nuclear Weapons?

By RitchCraft • Score: 4, Funny Thread

That’s so 20th century. We need data centers that research photon torpedoes. Good on them for blocking this ancient technology.

The confusing part, explained

By Woeful Countenance • Score: 4, Informative Thread

I was confused … not that this is a terribly unusual state.

“Ypsilanti Township, Michigan, has imposed a six-month moratorium on “major electric utility infrastructure” in its latest attempt to delay a proposed $1.2 billion University of Michigan-Los Alamos data center ....”

This seems to say that the (government of the?) “Township” has (somehow) imposed a moratorium on new electric utility infrastructure — the confusing part is — why? If this is the government of the township, and they don’t want a data center, can’t they just deny permission to build a data center? Don’t they have any zoning laws? Can’t they just pass a municipal ordinance saying, “No new data center”?

Apparently, no, they cannot: “Under the Michigan Zoning Enabling Act (MCL 125.3207), local governments are prohibited from enacting total bans or exclusionary zoning against lawful land uses like data centers if a demonstrated need exists and they fit industrial or commercial standards. Completely prohibiting them leaves municipalities vulnerable to developer lawsuits.”

Because God forbid local people should have any control over their local environment. That might be Bad for Business, and we just Can’t Have That.

Maybe everybody but me already knew this. That also would not be unusual.

Apple Cuts Jobs In Siri, Vision Pro Immersive Video and Gaming Teams

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Apple is cutting more than 200 jobs as it shifts resources toward a rebuilt, AI-powered Siri and other future products. Roughly 100 positions are being eliminated from the Vision Pro organization, including much of its gaming team and some immersive-video staff. Another 100 cuts are hitting the Siri and software teams. Bloomberg reports:
In a statement, Apple acknowledged that it was realigning some teams “to evolve our business to deliver the best experiences for our users.” “While we will create new roles as part of this change, it will also impact a limited number of existing roles,” the company said. “We are grateful to these team members for their contributions, and we are committed to supporting them throughout their transition, including opportunities to apply for other roles at Apple.”

The Siri reshuffling is tied to an upcoming AI-infused version of the assistant, which is built on a new technical architecture. That shift requires a change in the necessary expertise, prompting the company to eliminate a small number of existing roles, reallocate resources and create new positions supporting the updated Siri.

The changes to the Intelligent Systems Experience team reflect an effort to reorganize work on AI-powered capabilities. As more groups bring AI functions to apps, features and services, Apple is realigning teams to match priorities and accelerate development. The restructuring will eliminate some existing positions while creating new roles.

So what?

By Petersko • Score: 3 Thread

If it were a larger, less targeted set of folks I would have questions. But it sounds like they are niche folks with special skills. They’re probably paid in the higher range. Apple could probably find places in the company for them, but probably not roles as well compensated. So overpay them or package them out. Overpaying has consequences, including upsetting peers. Packaging is cleaner.

Lot of assumptions in that… but when your employee base is something like 165,000 this isn’t exactly a cull.

American Who Wiped His Phone With ‘Duress’ Password During Border Search Gets Felony Charges

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Federal prosecutors have charged activist Samuel Tunick with obstruction after he gave Customs and Border Protection officers a duress passcode that wiped his GrapheneOS-powered Pixel during a border search. “His prosecution is one of the earliest known instances of the federal authorities charging a person with destroying evidence using a program designed to wipe a device clean after a specific code is entered,” reports The New York Times. From the report:
“Obstructing federal law enforcement is a serious matter that has serious repercussions,” Theodore Hertzberg, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, said in a statement. “Individuals who destroy or attempt to destroy property, including data, to prevent lawful search and seizure should expect to face prosecution and punishment for their actions.”

A spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that the agency had the authority to search the electronic devices of anyone entering or leaving the United States, regardless of citizenship, to enforce laws addressing terrorism, child exploitation, drug- and human-smuggling, visa fraud and national security threats.

“The border search will only include an examination of information that is present on the device at the time it is presented for inspection,” the spokeswoman said, adding that it searched the electronic devices of fewer than 0.01 percent of all arriving international travelers in the last fiscal year.
“Just the knowledge that the government is peering into your private life in this way, trying to dig up dirt on you, even though it’s unsuccessful, is creepy,” Tunick said, in response to a question about how the charges have affected him.
His message: “The government doesn’t own our communications, our relationships, as hard as they might try to. We have to defend our fundamental right to privacy; otherwise we can’t say that we really live in a democracy.”

Re:This isn’t the EU. He’s going to win.

By Local ID10T • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

The argument is that you have no constitutional protections at the border crossing. Which is complete bullshit, but that’s their position. Inovking the fifth amendment to not give up a password should be an option for all citizens at any time when engaging with US law enforcement.

That is where they have him. He did not invoke his 5th amendment right and remain silent… he gave the federal investigators false information which he knew would result in the destruction of any potential evidence on his device.

If you refuse to give the CBP the password, they will hold you for questioning. They will tell you that you have no choice and that you must give them the password. This is a lie, but they are allowed to lie to you. They cannot refuse entry to a US citizen. They cannot hold you indefinitely (I think they are still bound by the 72 hour limit). They must return your device to you. They can hold it for a few days (and presumably make a clone or try to hack it), but they must return it to you. They will lie to you about all of this. Your attorney will tell you the truth. Demand an attorney, and remain silent until your attorney advises you to speak.

“Solution”

By Himmy32 • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Respectfully, that’s a workaround, not a solution. A real solution to a dysfunctional government is inherently political.

When the laws and their interpretations allow for unchecked executive power to surveil, the outcome isn’t surprising. The solution is to promote, vote for, and elect officials who believe in protecting rights and will nominate court officials with sane views on the 4th amendment and executive power.

Re: This isn’t the EU. He’s going to win.

By ArmoredDragon • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

If you’re a citizen or permanent resident, you can’t be denied entry. Full stop. You can be detained for a short time, they can make you miss your flights, they can maybe impound your possessions, etc. But you can’t be denied entry.

Re:This isn’t the EU. He’s going to win.

By Fallen Kell • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
I think it is also more important to mention who ACTUALLY wiped the phone. Samuel wasn’t the one who entered the code that wiped it, the customs/board patrol agent + FBI were the ones in possession of the phone and the ones who entered the code from everything I have read. If they had felt so confident in the fact there was evidence in there in the first place, the data would have been first cloned with a forensic data scientist and then that cloned data used to do any searches, keeping the original intact and exactly as taken so anything could hold up in a court of law…

Re:This isn’t the EU. He’s going to win.

By thegarbz • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

Demand an attorney, and remain silent until your attorney advises you to speak.

He did so REPEATEDLY.

That is where they have him.

No they don’t. The thing is, even without the constitution there’s many reasons this case will fail. For one, it’s not automatically obstructing law enforcement by destroying something.

To prove their case the government needs to prove the person was authorised to search and seize the particular property, and saying “We’re the police” isn’t sufficient. Also particular property means they need to have a reasonable suspicion on what was destroyed.

Secondly the *defendant* needs to destroy the evidence, he didn’t even touch his phone.

Oh and the big one, the obstruction only applies if the person prevents “lawful authority” from siezing evidence. There’s existing case law that shows this only applies when executing a warrant. In order to do that it ties into the first point, you need to know what you’re trying to take into possession.

So the government needs to argue that they were taking into possession data they knew existed, not just a phone. Good luck to them. This is a hell of an uphill battle, and a complex case to prove, and it’s worth noting that the people who need to do this are the same people who both misspelled the name of the country "Untied States” as well as listed the wrong agency “Customs and Border Patrol” (instead of Customs and Border Protection) being obstructed on their official court docket. I wouldn’t trust these people to get a McDonalds order right let alone be able to argue a legal case.

AI Boosted Homework Scores, Then Exam Scores Dropped

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Economist:
Students and school children are increasingly using artificial intelligence. A survey last year by Chegg, an ed-tech firm, found that 80% of rich-world undergraduates used it in their studies. More recent polls put the figure at 94% in Britain and 93% in Germany. Such widespread adoption has fueled concerns about the impact the technology might be having on learning. Teachers report marking identikit essays that they suspect are churned out by ChatGPT. Yet firm evidence on AI’s educational effects has been lacking.

David Stromberg of Stockholm University and Victor Lei and Wu Yanhui of the University of Hong Kong set out to fill the gap. They tracked 27,000 pupils aged 12-18 in China, where AI adoption has been fast. Around 80% reported using models such as Doubao and DeepSeek; the other 20% formed the control group.

The results are eye-opening. After six months, pupils using AI saw their average homework score rise by 18% across all subjects. The time they took to complete each assignment fell from an average of 64 minutes to 45. But come exam time, the same students scored 20% below their classmates who had not called on AI’s help. Homework scores once predicted exam performance; now those who score highest are, perversely, more likely to do worse in exams.
The takeaway: “AI can boost learning productivity, but only for those who use the technology intelligently,” reports The Economist. “Students must resist the temptation to reach for an AI-generated answer before thinking things through for themselves.”

Get rid of homework

By Valgrus Thunderaxe • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
and test in-person. Your electronic devices go in a locker before entering the test area (many industries have this requirement).

Shocked!

By Local ID10T • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Well, not that shocked.

Using an AI to do your homework gets the homework done without you learning the subject. Then you fail the exam.

Yeah, not shocked at all.

Re:Shocked!

By Rei • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

That is not what they found. What they found is that if you spend 60 minutes doing the homework with AI, you learn approximately as much as someone who spends 60 minutes doing it without AI. If you spend 20 minutes doing it with AI, you learn as much as someone who spends 20 minutes doing it without AI. Etc. The only real difference is that the AI people get way better homework scores, and as a result, tend to stop spending as much time, and thus tend to learn less.

That’s what this preprint study found.

Re:Get rid of homework

By OrangeTide • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Most subjects are best learned through repetition. Learning your multiplication tables isn’t something you just reason out. Learning how to do the process of long division or add fractions is best done by having the student do it thousands of times. Our little monkey brains need to be force fed information in order to build up any hope of retention.

People are addicted to social media because we adults shifted the responsibility for self-discipline onto children. That’s bad, we are bad for letting it get this far, and we should feel bad.

Re:Get rid of homework

By dgatwood • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

But you simply can’t rely on homework scores to be a proxy of learning or time spent studying anymore.

You never could. Parents do their kids’ homework all the time, or siblings, or friends. Ideally, teachers should give a large pile of optional homework. State right up front that although they will grade it, it will not count towards your final grade, and the grade on each homework paper will be given as a percentage of the problems attempted, not of the total set of problems. So if you do five problems and get them all right, you get 100, and if you do 50 problems and get most of them right, you get 90. At that point, the purpose of homework is primarily to help the students learn, rather than being primarily a way to evaluate the students. Give some participation points for doing some of the homework, but not based on correctness.

This has three benefits. First, the smart kids who understand the material quickly will do just enough to make sure they understand it and then will stop wasting their time, but will still have feedback on the work that they did do. Second, the teachers won’t have to grade as much work from students who don’t really need that much extra work. Third, no at-home cheating, whether by technology or by other people will distort their grades.

Obviously this doesn’t work for everything — essays, for example — but for general homework, it’s a big win.

Brief daily quizzes on the previous day’s material will force them to.

You can certainly do that along with what I suggested, though I’m not sure how much difference it will make in the grand scheme of things.

Also, It’s not like students have the excuse of, “I couldn’t study, I didn’t have anyone to explain X to me” anymore. The very AI that they might otherwise use to cheat on their homework can also explain to them the things they missed in last year’s algebra class that are blocking them from learning this year’s calculus, or whatnot. Congrats - you now have an infinitely patient personal tutor who will spend hours dumbing things down for you until you get it. Now you have no excuse - learn the material. It becomes all about actually putting the time in.

Agreed.