This is the analog hole all over again. As long as 100% of the content is not managed and controlled in an environment - people will find a way to cheat.

What the proctoring service is attempting to do is to give a reasonable expectation that people didn't cheat. The ways I have seen people cheat on tests is amazing. Hearing aids, camera glasses, phones, etc. You cannot stop a dedicated person who has the intent from cheating but you can have about a 99% assurance that they are not cheating.

Nintendo USA has offices right across from the street from Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, WA. This could have been two companies, in close proximity, and could have done something. While I get the hate for MSFT, and what Nintendo's design/ideals are, I find it amusing that they were "laughed at for the whole meeting".

I have played all versions of gaming consoles going back to the ColecoVision and Atari 2600, and in 2001, some of those games on the MSFT platform, and X-Box live, would have rocked. Could you imagine GoldenEye on the web (not just on the local network)?

You first !!! Tell me everything the browser is collecting and be able to turn off (either known or unknown).

While I agree with you in principle (not about Hitler, but the KISS part), it wont happen.

Marketing and sales are all about how to differentiate cars from others. Those features are what drive profits. Profits is what drives the car industry. What I mean is that they take a $100 screen and box, and put some software, and now it is $2000 infotainment system. $1900 of pure profit. They can sell the software and update last years model car as it has the same screen and box, but nope, new car to get that new feature.

Everyone is looking for something, and once it hits that point, it becomes expected. I loved my 1994 Pontiac Grand Prix, but I could not drive that today as there were not that many features that I would consider essential in today's world. I am not alone, most car buyers are that way. 20 cup holders, place for a 20" laptop in the center console, big screen, app integrations, wifi, etc. are all features people buy on.

Now if we are looking for people who would buy new, but don't because they are looking for value (slightly used, big depreciation hit taken already), or cannot afford new, you won't make much profit unless you can churn out a ton of those cars. GM tried it (and failed), VW tried (and failed), Nissan tried (and is still failing), Toyota is the only one that has not fallen on hard times with this strategy.

Switched networks meaning switched subnets. Yes cellular hot spots are suggested as "not to use" for this reason.

Most remote proctoring software requires the test takers to:
Be in a seated location (not a couch, but like a dinning room table).
You cannot leave that location for the duration of the assessment.
You swing the camera around the room to make sure no one else is around.
Monitors your tabs and keystrokes (so you are not Alt+Tab to Wikipedia or online website)
Other things.

You don't have to be online 24/7 - just the duration of the assessment/test. After that - you are free to do what you want. What would you be doing if you had to be in class and filling out the little blue books like when I was in school.

CS is all theory, Programming is all about the how. If you want to get students to understand how a computer THINKS, teach it logic. I mean the basic programming is VARIABLES, IF, WHILE, FOR, and CASE statements. If you teach them how to do those things, students will understand the basics, can go to any programming language, syntax, and not be so afraid of CS theory.

A phrase I used on all my college students teaching them C 101, "A computer is stupid, it does exactly what you tell it to do, faster than you can blink and eye." So if you are writing a program, and it does something unexpected, it is doing exactly what you are telling it to do in your code.

Most MBAs I know care about month-to-month .. Quarterly is for the boardroom and C-Suite who have stock options.

This is simple. Anyone who wants to take this job wants the pay. Secondly the job cannot be done due to the regulatory mess that the UK government is currently involved with (GDPR, Brexit, etc.) Unless I am not remembering carve-outs for Government usage of data in the spaghetti legal code, they cannot do stuff (anything to make them more modern) without consent from people.

If you want a better portal for paying taxes or doing those sorts of things, they are not actually making them a leader in digital transformation, just doing what other countries have already done.

This is a no brainer for the GOVT. Turbo Tax basically said you must pay for a full version of the application to submit taxes (with a tiny "maybe not" button) when their required free version would have sufficed. In layman's terms this is fraud.

I have been using Turbo Tax (or ilk) since the 1980s when I was a wee lad in my early teens. It was great when you had federal, and state to do (I have most of my life), and do a single set of forms, and then print them out and mail in at the appropriate times. I have had businesses, complex investments, etc. and had no issues with the software that does well what it is supposed to do, help me fill out the right forms/boxes with the right info. I will pay 30 bucks for that, and to submit free. I laugh at my old state (Indiana) which requires a $19.99 payment to take e-file. Okay, I can print and mail the shit to you so you can pay someone to manually enter the data (instead of have it already load into your systems). When I owe I just login to their pay system, and tell them to charge my credit card (no additional charge to me) on the day the taxes are due (incurring more expense for them). This is my little middle finger to them to get out of the 20th century and allow us to e-file and put our banking info on it.

Now that I am in a state with not state taxes, and no business, I might look at the free options. If they can handle the different schedules (A, B, D I believe) then I will be golden.

I am saying this not to start a holy war, but as someone who has done the same thing with a spouse and children's PCs. Try Mint or change Ubuntu from stock UI to Cinnamon as it will ease the shock for your other users (family). Just a thought.

Then this is a poor design. Crappy (relatively, cheap, non-powerful is what I mean) laptops and have everyone VPN into VDI infrastructure would make work much more productive. Pulling large amounts of information, via SMB shares, to remote work places is a horrible security and network utilization method. That information should be centralized, and controlled, and on quicker networks.

Your company may not invest, have the expertise, planning, budget, etc. to implement this. However this will solve many of your problems and overall a majority of papers state that remote workforce is more productive than at the office.

I honestly think other parts of the country are in for it worse than a 1-3% hit. I consult at several companies (remote) and have had 6 clients since new years. Each of them are larger multi national companies with multiple offices throughout the country. Every one of them is looking to cut their office space (either entirely or massively like 75% SqFt reduction) for satellite offices.

One client which has a main headquarters in CA, and like 10 offices in the US is looking to close all 10 office locations and reduce the size of the headquarters.

One of the biggest things this COVID-19 stuff has shown us is that butts in seats in offices only helps old school managers.

While I agree there are some companies that are not doing right by their employees, My transition (in Feb) from going to office 100% to WFH 100% went smoothly. I was given a docking station, new laptop (mine was 5 years old), 2-24" monitors, I could have brought a keyboard and mouse (I use my own), and a video conference device. I already owned an office chair and I spent 25 dollars at Costco for a 2'x4' folding table which I setup in my office. My Internet I already had so no big deal.

Literally when I am done for the day I roll my chair over to my other 2'x4' table and my home PCs. I save money on work clothes, I get more sleep (no commute), Car Expenses, etc. Again - depends on what the company provides. Some companies give you $1000 and say get your stuff. Who knows what the right answer is going to be.

I can see ECC on the desktop, but not IPMI. Why would you need that?

Windows is losing what made it great. Yes it has been happening for decades but each one of these things is making it harder for people to know what is going on. You used to be able to control what windows did from the GUI, now they are "stripping down" the GUI and replacing the tools that people use for full control and not replacing them. I remember in Windows XP and Windows 7 I spent very little time in the registry. I spend more time in the Windows 10 registry to set things they way I want them than I have in any other system. What used to be a simple click, is now a regedit add or modify.

Windows - you have gone from being on every machine I own, to now being relegated to VM status, on one instance. Sorry - if I cannot get to the things I need easily, and have to resort to 20 minutes of google-fu every update to get things back - you are fucking too many things up. Sorry that I say this as a former MSFT employee ... auf weidersehen.