[TimothyHollins]: when there is no strong economic incentive and no social norms to push women away from CS (assuming there ever was), you can expect around 15% of CS majors to be female
I asked how about Russia?...
[hsthompson69]: Again, it seems to hold - Russia, being more misogynistic, and having less freedom for women, shows less of a difference than free countries, where women are offered choices.
Sorry, what? You're altering the primary analysis. TimothyHollins made a clear claim "when there is no strong economic incentive and no social norms then XYZ". He did not make a claim about misogynistic nor about freedoms for women. He made a claim about economic incentives and social norms.
The danger with this kind of analysis is we have a small sample set of countries, and we're doing analysis after-the-fact. That's going to lead into data-mining pitfalls where you can always figure out some kind of pattern that fits your beliefs. The only bulwark against this is to make sure you don't alter your primary analysis as you encounter more data.
So, when there is no strong economic incentive and no social norms to push women away from CS (assuming there ever was), you can expect around 15% of CS majors to be female. Unless you think the women are more free and equal in Iran and China of course.
I do see few women builders or repairing roads or lorry drivers or security. It may be in part due to biological differences that a women is less likely to want to be a lorry driver or a programmer. But I also see more women cashiers for example (or rather, it is rare to see a man cashier in a supermarket, but it is the opposite for an electronics part store). So, I guess men would rather do something else than be cashiers.
I think it's quite clear that men are biologically disposed to, on average, spend more time decrying efforts to increase diversity. This is true across all cultures in which there are efforts to increase diversity, so we have to assume it's a biological trait not a cultural trait.
[Sarcasm. I'm copying the same formal structure of argument from one of the points Damore made.]
Russia's forced version of egalitarianism didn't allow people to choose the course they found most fulfilling. It largely assigned them roles based on the system's evaluation of their talents and abilities. It also distorted their thinking about what they should want by bombarding them with ideological messages that deliberately negated old gender stereotypes -- regardless of whether or not those stereotypes were what people actually found fulfilling.
I think you're conflating the communism-era Soviet Union (with its forced egalitarianism) and current-day post-communist Russia (which abandoned that forced egalitarianism). Nevertheless, the percentage of women entering science and technology in Russia *today* is vastly higher than in Europe+US. http://www.bbc.com/news/busine...
This accords as well with the experience of Scandinavian countries who have bent over backwards to ensure not just absolute equality of opportunity, but that everyone has the opportunity to pursue whatever course of education they like and have the talent for. And what they've seen is that rather than fields which are historically dominated by one gender or another equalizing, the ratio has become even more extreme. In Norway, for example, engineering fields tend not to be 50/50, or even 80/20, but 90/10. It appears that when you free people to pursue their own interests, the gender gap increases.
Even if it were the case that the author is actually incredibly misogynistic, and this memo was carefully designed to be a trojan horse to normalize views that naturally lead to misogyny (and I'm not saying it is or it isn't, but I didn't read it that way), it is still intellectually dishonest to call this memo anti-diversity.
Really? And what if the author is actually incredibly anti-diversity, and the memo were carefully designed to be a trojan horse to normalize views that naturally lead to less diversity, would it still be intellectually dishonest to call the memo anti-diversity? I think in that case, calling it anti-diversity would be the MOST intellectually honest description in under 10 words. You'd be accurately describing the nature and roll of the memo as a cultural artefact. (even though that intellectually honest description doesn't jibe with the face-value text).
You can present your case for why you think the subtext is anti-diversity and misogynistic, but you don't get to present the subtext as text and still claim to be playing by the rules of honest discourse.
I'm not sure what are the goalposts here. Is the memo's cultural role more or less important than the face-value of its words? If you believe the cultural role is more important, then you'd pick a description that fits your understanding of that. If the face value of its words is more important, you'd pick a description that fits your understanding of that.
When Breitbart describes it as a "manifesto defending viewpoint diversity" they've got a description that represents some fraction of the words, somewhere between 0 and 100% of the subtext, and half of its received cultural role. When Slate describes it as an "anti-diversity memo" they've got a description that represents none of the words, somewhere between 0 and 100% of the subtext, and the other half of its received cultural role.
I think your "subtext as text" criticism presumes that headline writers should pick a description that matches the face value of the words. I agree that's fair for literary or textual analysis. I'm not sure in other contexts. Personally I think the face value of the words was pretty rubbish in terms of their logical strength, so I've been referring to it as "the stupid Google memo" -- which clearly isn't an attempt to describe either its text or its subtext.
It is not anti-diversity. Maybe it's wrong. But it being wrong doesn't make it automatically anti-diversity.
If someone pours boiling water down an ant-hill while saying "we must save ants and it is wrong to kill ants and no one should kill ants" -- would you say they are anti-ants or pro-ants?
I approached the memo with just a careful logical pedantic mind. There were a lot of logical flaws in it. It read like a string of presumably true citations strung together with false implications. In the face of this, every reader has to piece together from subtext and guesses what the underlying reasoning, logic, motivation is. And if you arrive at contradictory answers? at places where your best guess at the underlying reasons which explain one part of the argument contradict some sentences elsewhere in the document?
It's not surprising that so many people come away with different impressions of the document and of the author. It permits and *invites* so many different impressions. Like so many other influential texts...
For instance: it's quite believable that some of his arguments if carried to their logical conclusion would lead to less diversity, and it's quite believable that his proposals would lead to less diversity; if you have those beliefs then you'd naturally think that his other sentences which claim to support diversity come across as insincere lip-service. He would be the ant-man I mentioned.
Personally I can't tell. I honestly tried to read the document carefully and meticulously to see what exactly his words said, no more no less, without no assumptions on my part. But without at least some assumptions there just isn't a coherent logical argument in it.
From an advertising perspective I don't understand why your browsing history is that useful. No one I know clicks on ads, I've never bought anything based on an advertisement, yet somehow Google and the like continue to rake in money. Until companies figure out that online advertising is useless, there will still be huge pressure for ISPs to cash in on that personal data funny money...greater fool theory and all that.
I think you've got cause an effect the wrong way round. Here's a scenario...
1. Chevy launches a new cinema ad campaign for their new truck. They use variant "A" of the ad in one region, and variant "B" of the ad in another region. 2. People see the ad, and some are curious to go to the chevy website to read more about it. 3. Google scrapes in the visitor information, buying or acquiring it from as many sources as they can. 4. Chevy's advertising bureau sees that variant "A" performed markedly better on middle-aged men with disposable income in the $30-60k range, and there was an anomalous response to "B" from a certain demographic that needs further investigation.
This scenario doesn't depend on the effectiveness of online advertising at all but still makes it lucrative for ISPs to gather+sell demographic information.
Also, for your claim that you've never bought anything based on an advertisement? You might be shifting the goalposts. Can state that "you in an alternate universe where you where never exposed to ads of any form in any media" would have made the same purchasing decisions as "you in the current universe"? Or that if there was a difference in purchasing decision, that it is uncorrelated with ads?
What about something as rudimentary as a producer of item "X" paying to have it positioned more prominently in the grocery aisle, and you end up buying it over the alternative? Maybe you're not counting that as ads which is fair enough (although I presume it would go under the "marketing" budget entry).
Yeah, I'd been looking at that one. This route would be to buy this for $220, buy a cheap laptop or headless computer to plug it into, buy a flat TV, mount them all together out of reach. Then I'd power on the computer, use a mouse to launch skype (or set up an init script to launch Skype automatically).
I think the standalone webcam+android set-top boxes looked more convenient and a lot cheaper. But for some reason all the ones I saw had amazon reviews that said they have poor wifi. I'm also very reluctant to trust privacy of my home to a company whom I don't trust to write secure devices or to offer updates to their version of Android, especially for a device whose only function is to connect to the internet. "The 'S' in IOT stands for Security."
" I'd pay $25 for an ipad video-chat app which isn't so touch-enabled that toddlers mess it up"
So just get Camfrog.
I'm not sure how that would help? It looks like the iOS version of Camfrog still uses touch ubiquitously for its UI? And it has the added complexity that I'd have to install and maintain it on my parents' computer, and train+support them in how to use it.
I would pay $250 for a video-chat appliance in my house.
Currently we Skype with grandparents on an ipad in protective kid case, or on our phones. My toddlers love to see them but fight over it, and paw at the screen pressing all the buttons and all the touch gestures, and they particularly love the red hang-up button. I have to spend an hour holding the thing up with one hand out of reach. I think it'd be better parenting to create an environment that gives them more independence, and makes it so their failure opportunities are triggered by things that they're in control of at their current age, vs things that are beyond their scope.
If I could get Skype or Messenger working on FireTV that'd be great. But that doesn't seem possible. (apparently you can screenshare your phone's video display to the FireTV, but that way you don't get video or microphone).
I want something that looks like a piece of furniture, hung up on the wall, so its physical nature makes it clear it's not for toddler hands to grab hold of. I want it to have a camera that can take in enough of the room to focus on the kids as they wander around so I don't have to keep pointing it in the right direction. I want it big enough so that it's out-of-height positioning doesn't make it too small.
Failing that, I'd pay $25 for an ipad video-chat app which isn't so touch-enabled that toddlers mess it up. There should be a difficult touch-gesture (e.g. ten fingers stretched over the screen and held there for five seconds) to unlock the controls.
This sounds like a bunch of debtors who've found a loophole to get out of their legitimate obligations. Sure, those who provided loans should have tracked things better, but that doesn't eliminate the ethical responsibility borrowers have to pay back what they agreed. The end result will only be to raise the cost of loans for future borrowers.
Ethical responsibility? I agree there's a lack of ethical responsibility. It's on the part of the colleges and the loan companies that together have pushed college inflation at unfair and unjustified levels. If you're being beaten down by an unjust system over which you have no control, do you have an "ethical responsibility" to bow down to accept it? No, NEVER. You just survive as best you can, and if you play along with it then you do so only out of pragmatism. Signing the loan document -- "agreeing" in your words -- brings no more ethical obligations than signing a forced confession in which you agree that you committed crimes that you never did.
Another issue is how do I pay my neighbor kid to mow my lawn with a credit card?
I pay our babysitter with Facebook Messenger payments. (I read that iOS 11 will let you pay over iMessage too). It's really handy. No need to look around for the exact right value in cash. It's also nice to have an authoritative log of exactly when and how much she was paid, clear to her and us, so there's no ambiguity or forgetting whether we paid her or how much. I don't see any "skimming" happening -- the amount our babysitter receives is exactly equal to the amount we pay, exactly equal to the amount deducted from our bank account.
However, it does require both parties to be 18 years old and to have a valid debit or credit card. So I guess it won't help for lawn-mowing-age kids.
Your analogy makes no sense. They want intelligence agencies to be able to see what's going on over the internet, and they can already see what's going on over the roads.
I'm not talking exceptions at all. Only average generalities.
And I stick with my age 10, for the majority of kids that is when they should have the skills, knowledge and thinking skills to get the most benefit from CS.
You have a particular notion of what skills and benefits are associated with CS, and I fully agree that your set of skills and benefits will work best around age 10 (maybe later).
I have a different notion of what skills and benefits are associated with computing in school. I think it keys off a set of skills that are much more fundamental and early skills than the ones you do. I think its benefits are more broad-ranging than you do. That's why I think an earlier age is appropriate.
So, the age I was talking about is close to being the same as yours. you said 9, I said 10, neither age is preschool
True, but you justified your claim of 10 year minimum by listing the skills that people acquire around 10 years of age:
language, mathematics, 3d space, geometry, numbers, size , abstract ideas and hopefully the start of critical thinking
I justified the usefulness of teaching computing to younger kids with an entirely different skillset, skills which are developed since toddlerhood. My only personal experience datapoint was of teaching computer science to 9 year olds (which is why I gave the example) but now that my oldest child is 3 I'm already seeing her have a bunch of these skills:
algorithmic thinking, control, power, data not a mystery
Uh, no one's done 3D facial scanning for authentication
Are you sure about that?
https://www.groovypost.com/unplugged/can-you-trick-windows-hello-with-a-photo/ Windows Hello-supported devices use two cameras to create a 3D image of your face.
https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/how-to-get-working-windows-hello-on-actual-windows-10-insider-preview One of the cool new features announced for the upcoming WIndows* 10 is Windows* Hello [...] The recognition is done using two type of camera in cooperation; the first is a classical HD camera and the second is a depth camera (infrared) for 3D an temperature scanning.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2937701/why-most-of-us-will-miss-out-on-windows-hello-windows-10s-facial-recognition-feature.html But the technology depends on “depth cameras,” which use infrared light to peer through makeup and beards to identify users. It’s these cameras, primarily made by Intel, that analysts and some PC makers believe will be too expensive to build into the sort of cheap PCs (with cheap webcams) that consumers prefer.
http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/SLN298266/windows-10-hello-facial-recognition-feature---supported-systems-and-requirements?lang=EN The Windows 10 Hello Facial Recognition feature requires an Intel RealSense or 3D Camera to support facial unlock features. This is not available on all Windows 10 tested systems and the current list is detailed below.
It's true that one page in the Microsoft docs say that they use IR to account for differences in ambient lighting, and make no mention of the presence of absence of 3d scanning: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-... But then other docs give the impression that Windows provides two API frameworks, "Companion Device Framework" and "biometric": https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...
So maybe it's just down to the device driver whether it uses 2d or 3d scanning to power Windows Hello, as suggested in this article: http://3dscanexpert.com/intel-...
Uh, no one's done 3D facial scanning for authentication. Windows Phone and Windows itself (Windows Hello) use an IR camera purely because IR works better in more lighting conditions than RGB cameras do.
When kids hit 10 or so they should have enough of a grasp of language, mathematics, 3d space, geometry, numbers, size , abstract ideas and hopefully the start of critical thinking of being able to analyse a situation and make some sense of it.
I've taught computing to 9 year olds, 14 year olds and 15 year olds. These were the average-ability class. We didn't do the kinds of things you're imagining (I think you're assuming that they will be taught the same stuff that you remember doing when you were 10). We did robot turtle graphics at age 9 with physical robots, and LOGO turtle graphics at age 14.
I saw *LOTS* of value coming already at age 9. They were learning algorithmic thinking in a good solid way, that reinforced the algorithms that kids used to learn in maths (e.g. long division, addition, subtraction) but no longer learn in new maths. I think that algorithmic thinking is a key life skill and it was good for them to pick it early in a way that reinforced their other lessons.
They also got a good feeling of *control* and *power*. You probably see it in kids who learn to ride horses from a young age. It's the realization that they can control the world around them, even big things. It's quite different from playing make-believe with dolls and action figures. They always had this ability from a young age (e.g. throwing tantrums, acting out) and now they're at an age where they can start to do it with the power of their mind, and with things they created with their own hands. It's delightful. You see it also when they build a machine with lego.
And they're learning well already by this age that data isn't a mystery to them! They can make sense of it and process it on their own. This is the most important life skill for someone growing up in the digital age. It's the key leap that turns them from passive consumers of media into actively engaged citizens. I think this precise skill is more important than linguistics, maths, anything else. And I've seen them ready for this by age 9.
Hey, remember those assholes that would said this shit was impossible? Remember how when they landed a rocket that those same assholes said it wouldn't be reusable? Remember after they relaunched it the first time those assholes downplayed the amount of money saved and the significance of it?
If you're a legal U.S. citizen OR you have a legal work visa, I don't think you have anything to be "nervous" about?
Are you not thinking of the tech employees with legal work visas who went home for their holidays as normal, but then weren't allowed back into the US because of the short-lived immigration ban? And the tech companies which advised their legal-work-visa-holding employees not to travel abroad for fear of not being allowed back?
European law says that an author has a "right of communication to the public".
This case was precisely about the definition of "communication to the public".
It has to involve an "act of communication" and a "public".
An "act of communication" (according to prior case law) includes just offering links to your users. However it specifically doesn't include (according to statute) situations when you merely provide facilities that let users communicate between each other.
The operators of the Pirate Bay did provide links, and they did a lot more than "merely provide facilities that let users communicate with each other": they also provided a search service, provided a classification service, they themselves checked to ensure that copyright material had been placed in the appropriate category, they themselves deleted non-functioning links, and they actively filter content. Therefore they were making an act of communciation.
Your example of "instructions in your possession" fail the two tests that were the sole focus of this judgment: they are not an act of communication, and they're available to the public.
The part that not enough people are discussing is why a private Facebook group became public knowledge enough for Harvard to make this decision. This should be a discussion of privacy and how to not trust anyone, but instead it's all bickering and arguing about who's a bigger asshole.
Read TFA. (Also the source article it links to). Harvard created an official group for the Class of 2021. TFA says: "students were required to post provocative memes in the bigger group before being allowed into the smaller one". So of course this was visible to Harvard, which is how the Harvard Admissions Office reached out to the posters of offensive memes asking for an explanation. I have to assume that at least one of the people they contacted, went on to tell them about the private group and showed them messages.
Let's be honest, pretty much all computer languages since the first one, and especially the more recent ones, last 20 years are merely repeats of the same stuff. Same loops, same if statements, same function calls, same everything.
There's some genuinely new programming constructs like "async/await" in the 2010s. (well, Scheme and StandardML have long had "callcc" but it was was basically unimplementable in an efficient way, and Scheme got "shift/reset" in the 2000s which is more feasibly than callcc but still a bit hairy).
Slashdot Mirror
[TimothyHollins]: when there is no strong economic incentive and no social norms to push women away from CS (assuming there ever was), you can expect around 15% of CS majors to be female
I asked how about Russia? ...
[hsthompson69]: Again, it seems to hold - Russia, being more misogynistic, and having less freedom for women, shows less of a difference than free countries, where women are offered choices.
Sorry, what? You're altering the primary analysis. TimothyHollins made a clear claim "when there is no strong economic incentive and no social norms then XYZ". He did not make a claim about misogynistic nor about freedoms for women. He made a claim about economic incentives and social norms.
The danger with this kind of analysis is we have a small sample set of countries, and we're doing analysis after-the-fact. That's going to lead into data-mining pitfalls where you can always figure out some kind of pattern that fits your beliefs. The only bulwark against this is to make sure you don't alter your primary analysis as you encounter more data.
So, when there is no strong economic incentive and no social norms to push women away from CS (assuming there ever was), you can expect around 15% of CS majors to be female. Unless you think the women are more free and equal in Iran and China of course.
How about Russia today, where 40% of computer programmers are female?
http://www.bbc.com/news/busine...
I think your general conclusion isn't warranted by the specific data points you picked.
I do see few women builders or repairing roads or lorry drivers or security. It may be in part due to biological differences that a women is less likely to want to be a lorry driver or a programmer. But I also see more women cashiers for example (or rather, it is rare to see a man cashier in a supermarket, but it is the opposite for an electronics part store). So, I guess men would rather do something else than be cashiers.
I think it's quite clear that men are biologically disposed to, on average, spend more time decrying efforts to increase diversity. This is true across all cultures in which there are efforts to increase diversity, so we have to assume it's a biological trait not a cultural trait.
[Sarcasm. I'm copying the same formal structure of argument from one of the points Damore made.]
Russia's forced version of egalitarianism didn't allow people to choose the course they found most fulfilling. It largely assigned them roles based on the system's evaluation of their talents and abilities. It also distorted their thinking about what they should want by bombarding them with ideological messages that deliberately negated old gender stereotypes -- regardless of whether or not those stereotypes were what people actually found fulfilling.
I think you're conflating the communism-era Soviet Union (with its forced egalitarianism) and current-day post-communist Russia (which abandoned that forced egalitarianism). Nevertheless, the percentage of women entering science and technology in Russia *today* is vastly higher than in Europe+US.
http://www.bbc.com/news/busine...
This accords as well with the experience of Scandinavian countries who have bent over backwards to ensure not just absolute equality of opportunity, but that everyone has the opportunity to pursue whatever course of education they like and have the talent for. And what they've seen is that rather than fields which are historically dominated by one gender or another equalizing, the ratio has become even more extreme. In Norway, for example, engineering fields tend not to be 50/50, or even 80/20, but 90/10. It appears that when you free people to pursue their own interests, the gender gap increases.
Counterpoint: Russia, which found the reverse.
Even if it were the case that the author is actually incredibly misogynistic, and this memo was carefully designed to be a trojan horse to normalize views that naturally lead to misogyny (and I'm not saying it is or it isn't, but I didn't read it that way), it is still intellectually dishonest to call this memo anti-diversity.
Really? And what if the author is actually incredibly anti-diversity, and the memo were carefully designed to be a trojan horse to normalize views that naturally lead to less diversity, would it still be intellectually dishonest to call the memo anti-diversity? I think in that case, calling it anti-diversity would be the MOST intellectually honest description in under 10 words. You'd be accurately describing the nature and roll of the memo as a cultural artefact. (even though that intellectually honest description doesn't jibe with the face-value text).
You can present your case for why you think the subtext is anti-diversity and misogynistic, but you don't get to present the subtext as text and still claim to be playing by the rules of honest discourse.
I'm not sure what are the goalposts here. Is the memo's cultural role more or less important than the face-value of its words? If you believe the cultural role is more important, then you'd pick a description that fits your understanding of that. If the face value of its words is more important, you'd pick a description that fits your understanding of that.
When Breitbart describes it as a "manifesto defending viewpoint diversity" they've got a description that represents some fraction of the words, somewhere between 0 and 100% of the subtext, and half of its received cultural role. When Slate describes it as an "anti-diversity memo" they've got a description that represents none of the words, somewhere between 0 and 100% of the subtext, and the other half of its received cultural role.
I think your "subtext as text" criticism presumes that headline writers should pick a description that matches the face value of the words. I agree that's fair for literary or textual analysis. I'm not sure in other contexts. Personally I think the face value of the words was pretty rubbish in terms of their logical strength, so I've been referring to it as "the stupid Google memo" -- which clearly isn't an attempt to describe either its text or its subtext.
It is not anti-diversity. Maybe it's wrong. But it being wrong doesn't make it automatically anti-diversity.
If someone pours boiling water down an ant-hill while saying "we must save ants and it is wrong to kill ants and no one should kill ants" -- would you say they are anti-ants or pro-ants?
I approached the memo with just a careful logical pedantic mind. There were a lot of logical flaws in it. It read like a string of presumably true citations strung together with false implications. In the face of this, every reader has to piece together from subtext and guesses what the underlying reasoning, logic, motivation is. And if you arrive at contradictory answers? at places where your best guess at the underlying reasons which explain one part of the argument contradict some sentences elsewhere in the document?
It's not surprising that so many people come away with different impressions of the document and of the author. It permits and *invites* so many different impressions. Like so many other influential texts...
For instance: it's quite believable that some of his arguments if carried to their logical conclusion would lead to less diversity, and it's quite believable that his proposals would lead to less diversity; if you have those beliefs then you'd naturally think that his other sentences which claim to support diversity come across as insincere lip-service. He would be the ant-man I mentioned.
Personally I can't tell. I honestly tried to read the document carefully and meticulously to see what exactly his words said, no more no less, without no assumptions on my part. But without at least some assumptions there just isn't a coherent logical argument in it.
From an advertising perspective I don't understand why your browsing history is that useful. No one I know clicks on ads, I've never bought anything based on an advertisement, yet somehow Google and the like continue to rake in money. Until companies figure out that online advertising is useless, there will still be huge pressure for ISPs to cash in on that personal data funny money...greater fool theory and all that.
I think you've got cause an effect the wrong way round. Here's a scenario...
1. Chevy launches a new cinema ad campaign for their new truck. They use variant "A" of the ad in one region, and variant "B" of the ad in another region.
2. People see the ad, and some are curious to go to the chevy website to read more about it.
3. Google scrapes in the visitor information, buying or acquiring it from as many sources as they can.
4. Chevy's advertising bureau sees that variant "A" performed markedly better on middle-aged men with disposable income in the $30-60k range, and there was an anomalous response to "B" from a certain demographic that needs further investigation.
This scenario doesn't depend on the effectiveness of online advertising at all but still makes it lucrative for ISPs to gather+sell demographic information.
Also, for your claim that you've never bought anything based on an advertisement? You might be shifting the goalposts. Can state that "you in an alternate universe where you where never exposed to ads of any form in any media" would have made the same purchasing decisions as "you in the current universe"? Or that if there was a difference in purchasing decision, that it is uncorrelated with ads?
What about something as rudimentary as a producer of item "X" paying to have it positioned more prominently in the grocery aisle, and you end up buying it over the alternative? Maybe you're not counting that as ads which is fair enough (although I presume it would go under the "marketing" budget entry).
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008... Although it might fail on the "not attractive to toddlers" front.
Yeah, I'd been looking at that one. This route would be to buy this for $220, buy a cheap laptop or headless computer to plug it into, buy a flat TV, mount them all together out of reach. Then I'd power on the computer, use a mouse to launch skype (or set up an init script to launch Skype automatically).
I think the standalone webcam+android set-top boxes looked more convenient and a lot cheaper. But for some reason all the ones I saw had amazon reviews that said they have poor wifi. I'm also very reluctant to trust privacy of my home to a company whom I don't trust to write secure devices or to offer updates to their version of Android, especially for a device whose only function is to connect to the internet. "The 'S' in IOT stands for Security."
" I'd pay $25 for an ipad video-chat app which isn't so touch-enabled that toddlers mess it up"
So just get Camfrog.
I'm not sure how that would help? It looks like the iOS version of Camfrog still uses touch ubiquitously for its UI? And it has the added complexity that I'd have to install and maintain it on my parents' computer, and train+support them in how to use it.
I would pay $250 for a video-chat appliance in my house.
Currently we Skype with grandparents on an ipad in protective kid case, or on our phones. My toddlers love to see them but fight over it, and paw at the screen pressing all the buttons and all the touch gestures, and they particularly love the red hang-up button. I have to spend an hour holding the thing up with one hand out of reach. I think it'd be better parenting to create an environment that gives them more independence, and makes it so their failure opportunities are triggered by things that they're in control of at their current age, vs things that are beyond their scope.
If I could get Skype or Messenger working on FireTV that'd be great. But that doesn't seem possible. (apparently you can screenshare your phone's video display to the FireTV, but that way you don't get video or microphone).
I want something that looks like a piece of furniture, hung up on the wall, so its physical nature makes it clear it's not for toddler hands to grab hold of. I want it to have a camera that can take in enough of the room to focus on the kids as they wander around so I don't have to keep pointing it in the right direction. I want it big enough so that it's out-of-height positioning doesn't make it too small.
Failing that, I'd pay $25 for an ipad video-chat app which isn't so touch-enabled that toddlers mess it up. There should be a difficult touch-gesture (e.g. ten fingers stretched over the screen and held there for five seconds) to unlock the controls.
This sounds like a bunch of debtors who've found a loophole to get out of their legitimate obligations. Sure, those who provided loans should have tracked things better, but that doesn't eliminate the ethical responsibility borrowers have to pay back what they agreed. The end result will only be to raise the cost of loans for future borrowers.
Ethical responsibility? I agree there's a lack of ethical responsibility. It's on the part of the colleges and the loan companies that together have pushed college inflation at unfair and unjustified levels. If you're being beaten down by an unjust system over which you have no control, do you have an "ethical responsibility" to bow down to accept it? No, NEVER. You just survive as best you can, and if you play along with it then you do so only out of pragmatism. Signing the loan document -- "agreeing" in your words -- brings no more ethical obligations than signing a forced confession in which you agree that you committed crimes that you never did.
Another issue is how do I pay my neighbor kid to mow my lawn with a credit card?
I pay our babysitter with Facebook Messenger payments. (I read that iOS 11 will let you pay over iMessage too). It's really handy. No need to look around for the exact right value in cash. It's also nice to have an authoritative log of exactly when and how much she was paid, clear to her and us, so there's no ambiguity or forgetting whether we paid her or how much. I don't see any "skimming" happening -- the amount our babysitter receives is exactly equal to the amount we pay, exactly equal to the amount deducted from our bank account.
However, it does require both parties to be 18 years old and to have a valid debit or credit card. So I guess it won't help for lawn-mowing-age kids.
Your analogy makes no sense. They want intelligence agencies to be able to see what's going on over the internet, and they can already see what's going on over the roads.
It is a car analogy.
Yes there are always exceptions
I'm not talking exceptions at all. Only average generalities.
And I stick with my age 10, for the majority of kids that is when they should have the skills, knowledge and thinking skills to get the most benefit from CS.
You have a particular notion of what skills and benefits are associated with CS, and I fully agree that your set of skills and benefits will work best around age 10 (maybe later).
I have a different notion of what skills and benefits are associated with computing in school. I think it keys off a set of skills that are much more fundamental and early skills than the ones you do. I think its benefits are more broad-ranging than you do. That's why I think an earlier age is appropriate.
So, the age I was talking about is close to being the same as yours. you said 9, I said 10, neither age is preschool
True, but you justified your claim of 10 year minimum by listing the skills that people acquire around 10 years of age:
language, mathematics, 3d space, geometry, numbers, size , abstract ideas and hopefully the start of critical thinking
I justified the usefulness of teaching computing to younger kids with an entirely different skillset, skills which are developed since toddlerhood. My only personal experience datapoint was of teaching computer science to 9 year olds (which is why I gave the example) but now that my oldest child is 3 I'm already seeing her have a bunch of these skills:
algorithmic thinking, control, power, data not a mystery
Uh, no one's done 3D facial scanning for authentication
Are you sure about that?
https://www.groovypost.com/unplugged/can-you-trick-windows-hello-with-a-photo/
Windows Hello-supported devices use two cameras to create a 3D image of your face.
https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/how-to-get-working-windows-hello-on-actual-windows-10-insider-preview
One of the cool new features announced for the upcoming WIndows* 10 is Windows* Hello [...] The recognition is done using two type of camera in cooperation; the first is a classical HD camera and the second is a depth camera (infrared) for 3D an temperature scanning.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2937701/why-most-of-us-will-miss-out-on-windows-hello-windows-10s-facial-recognition-feature.html
But the technology depends on “depth cameras,” which use infrared light to peer through makeup and beards to identify users. It’s these cameras, primarily made by Intel, that analysts and some PC makers believe will be too expensive to build into the sort of cheap PCs (with cheap webcams) that consumers prefer.
http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/SLN298266/windows-10-hello-facial-recognition-feature---supported-systems-and-requirements?lang=EN
The Windows 10 Hello Facial Recognition feature requires an Intel RealSense or 3D Camera to support facial unlock features. This is not available on all Windows 10 tested systems and the current list is detailed below.
It's true that one page in the Microsoft docs say that they use IR to account for differences in ambient lighting, and make no mention of the presence of absence of 3d scanning:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...
But then other docs give the impression that Windows provides two API frameworks, "Companion Device Framework" and "biometric":
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...
So maybe it's just down to the device driver whether it uses 2d or 3d scanning to power Windows Hello, as suggested in this article:
http://3dscanexpert.com/intel-...
Uh, no one's done 3D facial scanning for authentication. Windows Phone and Windows itself (Windows Hello) use an IR camera purely because IR works better in more lighting conditions than RGB cameras do.
I see. Thanks for the clarification.
When kids hit 10 or so they should have enough of a grasp of language, mathematics, 3d space, geometry, numbers, size , abstract ideas and hopefully the start of critical thinking of being able to analyse a situation and make some sense of it.
I've taught computing to 9 year olds, 14 year olds and 15 year olds. These were the average-ability class. We didn't do the kinds of things you're imagining (I think you're assuming that they will be taught the same stuff that you remember doing when you were 10). We did robot turtle graphics at age 9 with physical robots, and LOGO turtle graphics at age 14.
I saw *LOTS* of value coming already at age 9. They were learning algorithmic thinking in a good solid way, that reinforced the algorithms that kids used to learn in maths (e.g. long division, addition, subtraction) but no longer learn in new maths. I think that algorithmic thinking is a key life skill and it was good for them to pick it early in a way that reinforced their other lessons.
They also got a good feeling of *control* and *power*. You probably see it in kids who learn to ride horses from a young age. It's the realization that they can control the world around them, even big things. It's quite different from playing make-believe with dolls and action figures. They always had this ability from a young age (e.g. throwing tantrums, acting out) and now they're at an age where they can start to do it with the power of their mind, and with things they created with their own hands. It's delightful. You see it also when they build a machine with lego.
And they're learning well already by this age that data isn't a mystery to them! They can make sense of it and process it on their own. This is the most important life skill for someone growing up in the digital age. It's the key leap that turns them from passive consumers of media into actively engaged citizens. I think this precise skill is more important than linguistics, maths, anything else. And I've seen them ready for this by age 9.
Apple is raising the bar
Apple is raising the bar... by using an authentication that's been in other devices (including even Windows and Windows Phone!) for years?
Hey, remember those assholes that would said this shit was impossible? Remember how when they landed a rocket that those same assholes said it wouldn't be reusable? Remember after they relaunched it the first time those assholes downplayed the amount of money saved and the significance of it?
Actually, no, I don't remember any of that!
If you're a legal U.S. citizen OR you have a legal work visa, I don't think you have anything to be "nervous" about?
Are you not thinking of the tech employees with legal work visas who went home for their holidays as normal, but then weren't allowed back into the US because of the short-lived immigration ban? And the tech companies which advised their legal-work-visa-holding employees not to travel abroad for fear of not being allowed back?
Yep, there were a lot of nervous people.
This is now a precedent.
If you have *instructions* in your possession to lead you to copyright infringement, you are guilty of infringement.
Do we have other examples?
That's a wildly incorrect interpretation of the ruling. Read the judgment: http://curia.europa.eu/juris/d...
Your example of "instructions in your possession" fail the two tests that were the sole focus of this judgment: they are not an act of communication, and they're available to the public.
The part that not enough people are discussing is why a private Facebook group became public knowledge enough for Harvard to make this decision. This should be a discussion of privacy and how to not trust anyone, but instead it's all bickering and arguing about who's a bigger asshole.
Read TFA. (Also the source article it links to). Harvard created an official group for the Class of 2021. TFA says: "students were required to post provocative memes in the bigger group before being allowed into the smaller one". So of course this was visible to Harvard, which is how the Harvard Admissions Office reached out to the posters of offensive memes asking for an explanation. I have to assume that at least one of the people they contacted, went on to tell them about the private group and showed them messages.
Let's be honest, pretty much all computer languages since the first one, and especially the more recent ones, last 20 years are merely repeats of the same stuff. Same loops, same if statements, same function calls, same everything.
There's some genuinely new programming constructs like "async/await" in the 2010s. (well, Scheme and StandardML have long had "callcc" but it was was basically unimplementable in an efficient way, and Scheme got "shift/reset" in the 2000s which is more feasibly than callcc but still a bit hairy).