Schools are not about education but about privilege, filtering, indoctrination, control, etc.

Many people attending school, primarily higher education like college, are privileged because education costs money, and those with more money are often more privileged. That does not mean school itself is about privilege, it means people with privilege can afford to attend it more easily. Of course, grants, scholarships, and savings still exist, and help many people afford education.

"Filtering" doesn't exactly provide enough context to make sense in this argument.

Indoctrination, if we go by the definition that defines it as teaching someone to accept a doctrine uncritically, is the opposite of what most educational institutions teach. If you understood how much effort goes into teaching critical thought as a skill to be used within and outside of education, you'd likely see how this doesn't make much sense. Furthermore, the heavily diverse range of beliefs, people, and viewpoints on campuses often provides a more well-rounded, diverse understanding of the world, and of the people's views within it, than a non-educational background can.

"Control" is just another fearmongering word. What control, exactly? How is it being applied?

Maybe if a “teacher” has to trick their students in order to enforce pointless manual labor, then it’s not worth doing.

They're not tricking students, they're tricking LLMs that students are using to get out of doing the work required of them to get a degree. The entire point of a degree is to signify that you understand the skills and topics required for a particular field. If you don't want to actually get the knowledge signified by the degree, then you can put "I use ChatGPT and it does just as good" on your resume, and see if employers value that the same.

Maybe if homework can be done by statistics, then it’s not worth doing.

All math homework can be done by a calculator. All the writing courses I did throughout elementary and middle school would have likely graded me higher if I'd used a modern LLM. All the history assignment's questions could have been answered with access to Wikipedia.

But if I'd done that, I wouldn't know math, I would know no history, and I wouldn't be able to properly write any long-form content.

Even when technology exists that can replace functions the human brain can do, we don't just sacrifice all attempts to use the knowledge ourselves because this machine can do it better, because without that, we would be limiting our future potential.

This sounds fake. It seems like only the most careless students wouldn’t notice this “hidden” prompt or the quote from the dog.

The prompt is likely colored the same as the page to make it visually invisible to the human eye upon first inspection.

And I'm sorry to say, but often times, the students who are the most careless, unwilling to even check work, and simply incapable of doing work themselves, are usually the same ones who use ChatGPT, and don't even proofread the output.

And republicans will still say that mainstream media has a heavy left bias, and they don't trust them.

"Why sex?"

10/10 starter question, no notes.

This headline is wildly misleading.

From the study itself that was used to justify the ruling:

there [was] insufficient data to determine if the low fluoride level of 0.7 mg/L currently recommended for U.S. community water supplies has a negative effect on children’s IQ

The determination about lower IQs in children was based primarily on epidemiology studies in non-U.S. countries

Interesting, I wonder why they didn't conduct these studies in the U.S, y'know, where this is supposedly a big issue for the EPA to take action on.

There is a concern, however, that some pregnant women and children may be getting more fluoride than they need because they now get fluoride from many sources including treated public water, water-added foods and beverages, teas, toothpaste, floss, and mouthwash, and the combined total intake of fluoride may exceed safe amounts.

Great, if we find out the total consumption is too much, we can simply have people not need to buy things like mouthwash, or certain extra-flouride toothpastes as much. Doesn't seem like a water supply problem, seems like more of a "consumers buying too much of products they don't need" problem.

I can't find even a single source online that mentions any area with a flouride level above the maximum recommended amount by the CDC and EPA. That doesn't necessarily mean there isn't one, but it doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the idea that this is something the EPA truly needs to take any action on.

It looks like organizations like the "Flouride Action Network," an anti-flouride organization, are celebrating this.

The studies I could find cite differences in IQ with a few points maximum, and this is seemingly primarily due to heavy levels of consumption of flouride by pregnant women, not by the children themselves.

To me at least, it seems like they should be recommending specifically pregnant women stop using mouthwash while they're pregnant, and that very young children don't use mouthwash. Not that they need to "take action" over drinking water flouride levels.

Just a reminder that these patents, while bad, are nowhere near as bad as what might be authorized by new legislation in the U.S. which could re-open the door to "on a computer" patents.

(i.e. "Picture galleries, on a computer" "Healthcare, through a computer" "Dating, through a computer" etc)

IP Law is a mess.

I prefer using the self checkout, I don't consider it work, because I also consider it work to mentally deal with meaningless small talk, and to deal with waiting in line for ten minutes when I'm buying just a few items.

You might feel like it's work for you, and that's fine. You can then use the staffed checkout lanes, which are explicitly there for anyone who dislikes doing self checkout.

The problem isn't doing "work" by using self checkouts, the problem is capitalist cost-cutting, which would be done with or without self checkout machines.

And on top of that, even in cases where it is demonstrably true that any given group/population/region, say, does more crime than the average, it almost always boils down to the fault being laid on the existing discrimination against that group causing further harm.

Like how racists will say that black people do more crime because they're fatherless, (and that it's a result of their culture that causes the fatherlessness) but don't see the problem with specifically over-policing those neighborhoods and arresting the fathers they say need to be there for the kids, thus perpetuating the cycle in the first place.

Even if it were true that, somehow, miraculously, trans people did indeed do more crime than the average for their gender or sex, they also face multiple times higher abuse rates than non-trans people, which is known to perpetuate cyclical violence. But yet, somehow, they still do the same amount of crime as everyone else (at least, comparative to their birth sex, generally.)

"MtF transitioners were over 6 times more likely to be convicted of an offence than female comparators and 18 times more likely to be convicted of a violent offence. The group had no statistically significant differences from other natal males"^{https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/18973/pdf/}

LGBTQ+ people are also more likely to be incarcerated after being convicted, and were more likely to serve long prison sentences. The graphic cites prison service data, the amount of currently incarcerated people, as a way to determine the rate of sexual offending, which is is a patently bad measure of offending rates.

I could see this as a way to make fun collage photos of yourself (i.e. you in multiple different poses in a wide shot of you in front of some cool mural/object)

But I feel like this then takes the meaning out of being there in the photo when you directly edit your entire presence into the photo.

I can understand tweaking eyes to remove red-eye, or replacing the background with a slightly better lit one from a different photo in the same shot, because that still captures the original essence of the shot, but when half the people in a photo quite literally weren't even next to the others, it doesn't feel like one side of the photo recognizes the presence of the other side, because they weren't really there.

Nowhere near that amount of people was actually added to the population that would need housing.

Not to mention the fact that there are over 11 million year-round vacant properties in the US, 6.7 million of which are simply held off the market, and 3.1 million are for rent, but not receiving any tenants year round (a tactic often used to artificially keep rents high for surrounding properties)

There's also an additional 3.5 million homes that are "seasonal" properties, (i.e. vacation homes) that are still perfectly good for housing human beings, but are only actually used for part of the year.

There are an estimated 662,000 unhoused people in the United States, (Including those already in temporary shelters) so only a fraction of the available empty housing would completely house every homeless person in the United States.

The problem isn't a made up "crisis" from immigrants, it's a lack of care for other human beings that drives landlords, property investors, and multi-home owning individuals to hoard housing that people need to survive.

At least they seem to have addressed some of the security implications:

The database will be encrypted at rest and will require authentication (and periodic reauthentication)

The feature will also be off by default

But of course, nothing on the front of whether or not Microsoft will collect data on you using it. We can trust them there, I'm sure.

Surely they would never add even more telemetry that reports back nearly all of your important online activity to Microsoft.

Right?

You will eat here, and you will be happy about it! 😡

it's getting so hard nowadays

It's definitely not easy, but sometimes we just do the best we can, even if it's not the most that could be done.

Everyone has their own unique threat model. A random everyday person will have less need for personal privacy than, say, a government employee that works for an intelligence agency. Do what you can to protect what matters most to you, but don't stress if you can't upend your entire life to improve your privacy.

there are so many more important problems

You can support multiple solutions to world issues at the same time, without needing to make any individual one the most important one, or completely throwing out your other beliefs.

Privacy protects you from anything ranging from annoying ads, to targeted election misinformation, is key to dismantling the surveillance state that is regularly used to silence opposition to current political powers, and protects your right to free speech in a world where every government wishes they could control you just a bit more.

Privacy protects you from self-censorship. It keeps you safe from people who might want to harm you or your family for your views. It lets you protest oppressive policy.

Companies make money off your data. And what are these companies contributing to? Global warming through ever-expanding datacenters running AI models you didn't ask for. Political campaigns that endorse monopolies. The exploitation of third-world countries.

By taking away their ability to sell you for profit, you indirectly reduce numerous other harms.

I just can't remember why I thought it was something worth fighting for

The world is crazy. It's not weird to let things like privacy fall to the wayside when seemingly larger problems pop up, but privacy doesn't exist in a vacuum. Everything is interconnected, and privacy directly impacts these other issues.

It's okay to just do what you can. the world isn't perfect, and neither are we.

Privacy directly helps dismantle systems of power, surveillance, advertising, and manipulation. So if that's worth it to you, then keep fighting.

And recently, Mozilla has been trying to develop a privacy-preserving ads business.

I'm not a big fan of ads, but if Mozilla can actually make ads that don't track users, and are uninvasive, they might be able to garner some market share in the ad space, and distance their revenue from Google even further.

The very strategy of asking LLMs to "reason" or explain an answer tends to make them more accurate.

Because instead of the first token being "Yes" or "No", it's "That depends," or If we look at..."

Thus increasing the number of tokens that determines the answer from 1, to theoretically hundreds or more.

I was happy when they used an entirely on-device AI to generate alt text for photos, but this is just ridiculous. They quite literally already have an extension that does the exact same thing this new "feature" offers.

Firefox was supposed to be a less bloated than chrome, but all they've done now is continued to add more and more to the browser that nobody actually asked for.

Give me bug fixes, UX and performance improvements, not entire sidebar popups for review checking that only works on 3 stores on the entire internet.

I think we'll probably see a phone comparable to at least 2022 specs in the coming years, since they seem to release a new model every 2-3 years, with pretty decent improvements each time. Especially with their growing partnerships with chip manufacturers, it might even be possible to keep prices more reasonable too.

I currently use a phone released in 2022, and it's perfectly functional for all my needs. Would more performance be nice? Sure, but yeah, I don't actually need more than that.

If Fairphone could reach that mark, I would consider my next replacement phone being a Fairphone, although the lack of GrapheneOS support is kind of a deal-breaker for any phone purchase for me right now.

Even if you buy a phone that isn't a pixel, then you just end up giving money to a different privacy-invasive corporation that will continue to partner with Google for search deals and surveillance advertising.

Pixels have wide aftermarket repair parts available, relatively reasonable pricing, and the largest support from custom roms since they all test on Pixels as a standard device. (same with app developers)

Pixels often have longer update periods than other brands, and many custom roms provide extended security updates on top of that.

Android development is guaranteed to continue supporting at least the Pixel phones over all others, it'll be easier to repair down the line, and the money Google makes from the sale is nothing compared to the money they'll lose by having less power to surveil you.

And as much as I like Fairphone, the specs just aren't worth the cost currently, although they are catching up as time goes on.

I personally use a Pixel with GrapheneOS, and it works better than any phone from Samsung I've owned in the past. (plus it's usually a bit easier to unlock the bootloader)

Just make sure that, no matter what phone you buy, you don't buy it through your carrier, as that will make your bootloader un-unlockable unless you pay off the full payment plan and have a carrier that supports unlocking the bootloader in the first place.