HexesofVexes

And when this measure fails to protect children and, instead, becomes a data security nightmare, another scheme will be proposed to further erode the freedoms the web brings.

I look forward to hearing about the workarounds kids find.

I’ll extend this further - students are also not ok.

What I’ve observed this year is that a lot of students are opting for AI taught methods, or asking AI to summarise course materials for them. They then make bad copies into their notes, conflate these methods with those taught in class, then fail hard when an open note exam comes around.

The truth of the matter is we’ll see a post-AI degree lose its value against a pre-AI degree, and this will create a new vehicle of intergenerational inequality.

Teachers are never going to be ok - we’re “essential workers”, and we all know what that means. Our students though, they believe their actions are buying them a better future; when they learn otherwise, they’ll need all the support they can get!

Ehh… Application of a addiction model is somewhat controversial for pornography (the ground seems divided on whether it’s a compulsion or an addiction). Social media, however, is no less controversial (it’s just the media likes to hype this more).

I will say - the point of a porn site is to sell user data and deliver ads, whereas the point of social media is to keep the user scrolling by any means possible. By its design, the latter cultivates addiction as a clear goal (the goal to scroll is artificially imposed), whereas the case for the former is less clear (the goal to masturbate isn’t something porn created). In essence, one creates a drive and then sates it, whereas another sates an existing drive.

Honestly, I think, at the moment, we’re on the “violent video games cause violence” stage of the research. In other words, not enough data to decide so the media has decided for us.

Depends what you want kids to learn.

Propaganda, yes; everything else, no…

That’s the real joke behind it all, the use of AI is such a problem because we’re turning education into a stamp dispenser - everyone needs an A* to get anywhere.

AI has given every student a path to this - however if industry stopped demanding that universities train their damn staff for them, and instead insist we teach their future staff how to be trained (as well as giving them subject specific knowledge), then we’d see the misalignment vanish. Once the need for an A* to land a good job is gone, then so is the misalignment.

Ah yes, goal misalignment at its finest.

The students need high grades to get a job, so they focus on ensuring that happens (AI use being the easy path).

The teachers have progression targets to meet, so they focus on ensuring this happens (keep the AI vulnerable assessments).

If you want to change a module as a teacher, good luck getting that work loaded when you should be implementing AI in your curriculum ^_^

I’ve got this move coming up - my plan is to dual boot and slowly wean over.

Game crashes in Linux, try for a fix and if I get frustrated, boot into windows and enjoy the game.

Might be a rocky year, but the dual boot will likely take the stress off!

I’ve seen a lot of fedora-based distros pushed for gaming (mint is Debian based), apparently these can work better. Still looking into it, but no definitive answers there yet!

Either that or medication!

I abandoned hope long ago when I learned that excel was turing complete.

The darkness has already consumed me, there is no salvation from this sin.

Worse - pulling data from a web page, then using the power of pure jank to parse this input, and then invoking a sheet of reference string builders to construct formulae and execute them using too damn many @indirects nested into vlookups before finally adding in date aware data reveals, because no excel abomination is complete without trying to parse dates.

Or false regret, either or.

I’ve done things in excel that are an abomination in the eyes of the divine.

I have absolutely 0 regret.

Had to be done. It’s just too damn close not to.

“Treatment request rejected, insufficient TC level”

One of the experiences I will never forget was “teaching” an ICT class about 2 decades ago (I was a TA who got left to cover a class - good times).

The older ones of you will remember the trick (many of us used it for playing flash games like adventure quest!) - have two browser windows open, minimise the one with the thing you were not supposed to be doing on it when the teacher comes around - no evidence right?

These kids were doing the same thing - I swear I’ve never seen so much porn in my entire life. Oh and yes, a lot of it involved Japanese animation. This was on a network with parental controls enabled by the way, because it didn’t block those sites.

Here’s the thing - and we all know it, no matter what measures you put in place kids will find away around it. More crudely put “If little Timmy wants titties, Timmy going to move heaven and earth to find them”.

They’ll sneak a parental passport at 3am when you’re sleeping, or just VPN on in, or even invest in a fake ID. Nothing you do is going to stop that; you have to sleep some time, you have a lot of goals, they can stay up all night, and they only have one.

Catching your kids with porn and dealing with it is a game of whack-a-mole every parent has to play, and honestly it’s one they need to play. It’s about having those difficult talks and saying “it’s ok to want to look as long as you realise it isn’t real”.

Mass surveillance isn’t the way - if I were a government hostile to the USA (and soon the UK), I’d be working on making the best free porn site ever made. Think of all the free documents and credentials, think of all the blackmail material, think of all the harm that could be inflicted.

Admittedly, skin cream is likely to face less of a rabid drive from kids, and isn’t something you’d blackmail over. Then again, maybe little Timmy needs some lotion, or maybe president Puta wants to use my girlfriend’s skin lotion addiction to compel me to spy for Russia?

Early games were designed to delight, slightly more modern games are designed to both delight and advertise.

It’s the difference between “I can’t beat this boss so I’d better go level up for 20 mins, ooh I unlocked a new spell” and “I can’t beat this boss I had better prep for a 10 hour grind, this is so I can find the X to craft the Y so I can begin to make the Z which offers me a 1 in 10 chance to unlock the option to craft a new spell… Or I could just pay $5 to skip that bit by buying the spell…”

DROP TABLE Musk

Repolarise the electron microscope’s phase inverter!

Of course we do, you just need to keep on zooming!

Keep going! It’s almost visible!