Although that's not what he said, the idea is absolutely right. Except for a very very small minority of students AP should NOT be offered in HS and definitely not until jr. or sr. year.

I've watched this play out in our own school district. Kids are being told to pick their college majors while in middle school (oh and you can only select from STEM or you're a failure) and they're being forced into AP courses (which are for-real college level content) in freshman year and being told that if they don't they won't get into a 'good' school and that their life is basically over. This is a horrifically destructive lie.

These kids don't get a chance to grow up and mature and make as smooth as possible transition from child to young adult. They are coached that they can never fail in anything and so are discouraged from trying anything off the beaten path. AP has driven out 'college prep' track classes; now your choices are go to college while you're still in HS (AP courses) or take an on-level course. There is no middle ground. It's taking a huge toll on these kids' mental health.

Go back to letting kids take home ec and wood shop. Let kids try things and fail and then learn that failure isn't final. This drive everyone to AP initiative isn't getting kids to college any better prepared (the % of kids who have to take remedial courses keeps climbing) and it's seriously damaging their mental health in the process.

"Another reason is fear that the information might be misinterpreted, Ms. Nordlund said."

This is the story in a nutshell: "misinterpreted" meaning "correctly interpreted but leading to conclusions we'd really rather you not reach."

*snort* yeah your right. 2016-2020 you never heard a single bad thing about trump because of all the silencing of the critics.

In this you are completely correct. Unfortunately, the people who most needed to understand that, Facebook and Twitter, seem to be oblivious. So, short-sighted ignorant politicians are going to end up wrecking the protections of Section 230 to punish the bad behavior of two companies who thought they were too powerful to threaten and the rest of us get to live with the consequences. Someone remind me to send Zuck and Dorsey a Christmas basket full of coal.

I had a similar run like that: years with no mod points or meta mod, then suddenly a couple of years ago *poof* it was back. I didn't do anything differently so I also don't know why I was suddenly in good graces again. *shrug*

Muhahaha! There is no protection from me!

You're making a towering, unstated, and very material assumption: SprocketCo can continue to sell the same number of sprockets at $1.25 as it did when the price was $1. In that case, which is your absolute best case scenario, you can completely pay for the increased input cost of the minimum wage with the increased revenue of the now more expensive sprockets. The rise in sprocket prices exactly offsets the increased labor costs making them _exactly equal_; the relative percentage of increase is irrelevant, and that's just your best case scenario.

That won't happen in reality of course. In the real world a 25% increase in sprocket cost is going to reduce the total number of sprockets sold as some portion of worldwide sprocket sales will no longer make financial sense for the sprocket buyers. Now you've got a gap between the cost of providing the minimum wage (increased labor costs) and paying for it (revenue); so who's going to pay for it?

There are lots of different ways to answer that question but the underlying fact remains: someone is going to pay for it. Maybe SprocketCo lays off workers to make up the difference (or simply freezes hiring), maybe SprocketCo reduces their dividend and pays out less to shareholders (or reduces bonuses for your non-minimum wage workers), maybe they start looking to outsource labor to some other country (or invest in more automation), or maybe all of the above.

In any case, you've provided a temporary benefit to a small number of people and permanently harmed some other group or groups. In the end though you've only really made everyone worse off. It feels good but that's just an illusion.

Interesting, I didn't even know there was auto-refresh on /. Perhaps I have the .js blocked somehow. In any case I'm glad not to have it. If you feel like it's necessary, I'd suggest something like Disqus' feature where it shows a visual indication there are new comments but doesn't actually insert them in the thread.

+1 on this idea.

Also perhaps occasionally require a metamod (old style; on a different story) before you can submit a post?

IIRC correctly the old metamod system had a link right there to see the post in context. I recall needing to use it about 1/3 of the time which is probably a good enough reason to show some of the thread context without asking, as you suggested.

Agreed, this is a site for nerds. Exactly how hard would it be to give us versioning on edited comments?

It's not a defect of /. per se but a reflection of the type of stories that have been promoted recently. The previous owners made an intentional decision to post inflammatory political stories that brought the political kooks out of the woodwork. Over time we got more political kooks and less geeks. It definitely started a death spiral; I know I stopped coming here as much. Now you can't even post a geeky article without it devolving into a red v. blue flame fest.

That's not something you can fix over night. It's going to take a long established history of restoring the 'news for nerds' mantle to /. before the user base recovers. When that happens then you'll see a return to the quality of comments we used to have.

-1 Disagree

-1 Challenges my intellectual prejudices

+1 Agree.