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Comment Re: What? how long can that possibly take? (Score 1) 181

Why pay for you to drive to work? Are you working while driving?

You're carrying out an activity solely for the benefit of the employer that you wouldn't be doing otherwise and you're unable to use the time for your own activity - you are working.

I'm fairly sure the $80-100k salary you make at the office is perfectly fine... the $9 a day ($0.45/mile, 30 miles) you make on the drive to work isn't going to add a whole lot.

Those who live closer or work remotely don't have these costs.
If you assume that there are 252 working days in a year, then your commute costs you $2268 annually, which you have to pay after tax. Many people pay significantly more for commuting, and earn less than $80k.
If you didn't commute daily then you might not need a car at all, or could reduce the number of cars in the household.

For example the following figures published for the UK, where most people commute using public transport:
https://ifamagazine.com/averag...
These costs are paid from people's post-tax salary and the tax rates there are higher than the US.

Another goal should be to make companies put proper thought into where they locate their premises if they need one. Currently they will just gravitate towards the business districts where there are lots of offices but usually very little in the way of affordable housing and extremely congested travel routes at peak times. They don't care about the high cost of housing or the high cost (both time/money) of commuting because that becomes the individual employee's problem. If you make it the company's problem then they will start doing something about it.

Comment Re:maybe I'm too dumb, but (Score 2) 79

Go to https://brew.sh/ - this is legitimate software for macos and the installation instructions are basically "paste this into a terminal".
It downloads a shellscript from github, and executes it.
There are quite a few legitimate programs like this, which trains users that this is normal.

Comment Re:PowerShell defaults (Score 2) 79

Same on macos and linux, it's not a windows specific fault.
In fact there is a lot of legitimate software which provides "paste this into terminal" instructions, for instance homebrew on macos (https://brew.sh). This then goes and retrieves a shellscript and executes it with no validation.

This is a general purpose computer fault. The fact is general purpose computers are not a suitable tool for the masses, they are highly complex tools only suitable for those who know how to use them safely. Most people would be much better off with an appliance.

Comment Re:Are people this ignorant of basic online securi (Score 1) 79

The problem here is that many legitimate companies do in fact send unexpected emails containing links, or make unexpected calls without proving their identity (and even asking you to).
All of this trains users to expect such actions, and makes them more susceptible to the scams.

If you do practice basic precautions and question these companies for their poor practices they will often push back and call you paranoid.

Comment Re:Woke AI education is now a thing :o (Score 2) 64

“Children and young people will leave school fully equipped to thrive in the modern world of work under reforms to breathe new life into the national curriculum unveiled today.”

So what will happen is that they will start developing a curriculum based on the state of the art AI models of 2025.
By the time this curriculum is ready it will be 2026 or even 2027, add another year for it to get rolled out to schools and for teachers to get up to speed on it and you will have kids in 2028 learning about 2025 AI tech.

By the time those kids graduate it will be 2033, so you will have a whole bunch of kids leaving school in 2033 who know all about 2025 AI tech, none of which will still be in use by 2033.

The same thing always happens when you try to teach about a fast moving field. The technology moves faster than the teaching, so a lot of what they learn is obsolete by the time they leave school.

Comment Re:GCSE computer science was absolutely not rigoro (Score 3, Insightful) 64

Home computers did use magnetic tape storage, see the Commodore 64 and Sinclair Spectrum series.
The problem with any educational material is that the time it takes for it to get written, approved into a curriculum, distributed to all schools and the teachers trained how to deliver the material - it's already obsolete.
The teaching curriculum is set up to teach things that do not change - like history, rules of mathematics and physics etc. For a fast moving technology it doesn't fit.

You might get lucky and have a teacher who's an enthusiast and keeps up with technology himself, but chances are you'll get a teacher who has no personal interest in the subject and just follows the supplied material.

Just a few years ago the schools were only teaching basic use of word processors and spreadsheets.

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