I own a Hyundai Ioniq (the hybrid version, not a plug-in or fully electric). It has not had any problems. My brother-in-law has a Sonata also, same deal, no problems (he's had his a while, probably about 10 years). If you search reliability data on the internet, Hyundai seems to be typically middle-of-the-pack. This article (out of the UK) seems to indicate that they may be higher than that.

Not sure what to believe because there are so many competing reports out there, but I don't think Hyundai warrants negative attention.

The examination consists of two parts. One part is a multiple-choice examination. The second part is a portfolio submission of work. While they canceled the multiple-choice examination (all AP examinations were free-response only last year), they retained the portfolio submission.

This is analogous to what happened with AP CS A (the course that is equivalent to Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming at many universities). I teach that course, and the multiple-choice questions were eliminated, the students had to answer a series of free response questions.

Incidentally, the MC section of AP CS A is much harder than the free-response, in my opinion. It is loaded with tricky questions that require close reading (students who are not careful readers often are hurt by this portion). I have seen veteran programmers during AP instructor workshops get questions wrong on the multiple choice. Some of these are people who left industry after a long career and entered teaching. Last year, I had a 100% pass rate on AP CS. I expect that some of my "3" scores (minimum passing grade) would have been "2" scores had the multiple-choice test occurred. I also teach AP Calculus BC and in my opinion, I think the situation is reversed on that one (FRQs are harder than MC) because they are very picky about how answers have to be written up.

This year I expect AP examinations will be back to normal. We have enough time to figure out how we can administer the examination in a socially distanced format. We have already had to do that (successfully) with the PSAT. Just like university students got some easier grading in Spring 2020, so did students in AP classes. I'm okay with that for one year. It most likely won't happen again. We may have another pandemic, but we've learned a lot from this one and we probably wouldn't need six months to figure out what to do.

Just as a disclaimer, I'm an active Catholic. So you can decide to ignore what's to follow if you like. I lean left politically, and I would describe myself as a "moderate" Catholic, somewhere in the middle theologically. We go to Mass every Sunday. The church we attend has a lot of measures in place to prevent spread, it is frankly safer than my school (I'm a teacher). Even reception of Communion is pretty safe, with everyone cleaning hands before and after. This only works because the building is bigger than the congregation needs. I personally think the Brooklyn diocese is insane for pushing for this in the midst of one of the world's largest cities. Watching Mass at home is okay. We did it every Sunday while the initial shutdown was going on, and while it's not the same, I still felt connected to the Church.

I disagree with your position about "the Church getting sued." The Catholic Church is not (as much as some people think otherwise) some sort of unified financial entity. That's a good thing too, because sexual abuse victims would have gotten nowhere by suing the Church as a whole, instead of suing individual dioceses and religious orders. This suit was initiated in one of the "smaller" New York City dioceses by an individual bishop, who probably sued because he was either afraid of losing donations, or afraid of offending major donors who wanted churches to remain open. We still have a lot of conservative bishops in America, although Francis has been making some headway there. Chicago and Washington DC now have moderate bishops.

I think what Francis was really doing was putting a lot of conservative Catholics (and conservative non-Catholics) in their place, reminding them that --- in the midst of all of the poverty, disease, war, and other calamities people in all countries have to face --- wearing a mask is really not that big of a deal. I teach in a Catholic (Jesuit) school, and we have had a lot of students chafing about having to wear masks. We may not be back in-person for a while, but when we go back, the statements of the pope are going to be hung in my classroom. Particularly the one where he says that people who think wearing a mask makes them victims are victims only in their own imaginations.

Chegg will probably tell you who did this if you are willing to invest a little bit of time. I had a similar experience in a graduate course I took last year, the professor said one of the questions on a take-home test went straight to Chegg. I think Chegg should give authenticated professors free accounts so they can see who's posting and (more importantly) what the provided answers are. If the person is foolish enough to post your hints about how to make a table in your LMS, they are probably foolish enough to quote the provided answer with a minimum of paraphrasing, allowing academic dishonesty charges to be filed.

That being said, I totally agree with you that people will cheat if they can. The nuclear scenario is someone who's extremely rich simply paying someone $50,000 per year to complete their degree for them.

I teach Introduction to Object Oriented Programming, Calculus I, and Calculus II as an adjunct, and high school mathematics and computer science, so I completely understand the frustration.

I understand some of your frustration here. I have taught AP CS A for seven years. My students typically perform well on the examination. There are two AP computer science courses (CS A and CS Principles). Computer Science Principles is aimed at replicating the general education course that most computer science departments offer, and has many of the features you want (being able to choose a language, ethical implications of computing). It also includes some room to explore data science.

Incidentally, I have never seen a "required section" about teaching what you mention with regard to intellectual property and pirating media. Questions concerning that have never been on the examination (and I'd hear about it from the students if they were). The syllabus does say you are supposed to teach about philosophical concerns such as ethics, and many books include case studies talking about "great" moments in CS (like the Therac over-radiation incident). Many teachers are so concerned with the content that they just ignore that. In my class I frequently discuss concerns about privacy, encryption, and free software. I'm biased of course, and the kids know that. I have "converted" some students to run Ubuntu or Mint (no one has tried anything harder yet).

Again, your concerns about language choice are valid and I'd like to see them realized by giving people choice. One issue is that the entire AP examination would have to be written in pseudocode (and you'd have to teach everyone a common pseudocode which would take time). One issue off of the top of my head that would be a huge pain is how lists work in Python vs. Java. Some languages might not even have a built-in list type. Another issue is that you would have to have the teams of professors and teachers who grade the exams divided into different language groups.

If we were given the choice, I would stick with Java. Partly because I'm a graduate student and I see Java used a lot at the university level (along with Python, and in data science programs, R). Partly also because it is syntactically similar to C and so for students majoring in electrical/computer engineering where they may end up doing C in operating systems/embedded work, it gets them a little bit of a head start.

Speaking as a veteran, one of the difficulties that we encounter is that the AP syllabus is so focused on developing console applications (and frankly, so are a lot of university courses) that there's nothing "flashy" going on in my class. Of course, students who are motivated and independent learners (probably about 25% of each section) figure that out on their own, and I help them find tools that make things easier for GUI development.

I had a Surface Pro 6 which fell off of a table about a week after I bought it. I had bought the complete care package from Microsoft since it was for work. I walked in, handed the guy the Surface, and 10 minutes later walked out with a replacement. It was a great experience. I won't be purchasing Surface hardware again since the Linux compatibility is so bad (even with custom kernels, you can't get the cameras working, and it seems to lock up a lot). But if I was someone who needed Windows and liked Surface hardware, it was pretty convenient. At our mall it was just a larger kiosk in the middle of a mall. That one closed about a year ago though, and the nearest one was in Chicago-land, so that benefit had already gone away.

Here are some of my observations from the trenches (currently I teach in an urban private school, I have taught in the suburbs, and my kids attend a suburban public district):

1) Most teachers are perfectly fine using the technology. Before this happened, we were all using learning management systems along the lines of what universities use. So communication of assignments / grades / etc. was not a problem. Zoom raised some issues because of the "meeting crashers" but once we all turned on the waiting room feature (and once Zoom stopped using 32-bit integers as meeting IDs) that went away. Many of us had even recorded videos and done basic editing because we've occasionally done "flipped classroom" instruction, where the students watch the lecture at home and then work on the problem sets in class (I teach math and CS). A lot of teachers took educational technology like document cameras (or in my case, a Surface with pen) home so that they could have something equivalent to a whiteboard.

2) Special education students are probably the biggest victims of this situation. We did not have enough time to figure out how to address their needs. I know that in my own school, there's a lot of professional development going on this summer to talk about what we can do better if this happens again.

3) Assessment was a big issue. Take home assessments do not work well at the high school level. They barely work at the college level. I took a graduate course in mathematics last fall and the professor gave take home exams. She was reaming us out because people were posting problems on places like Chegg. We did not have enough time to figure out a good way of assessment. If we do this again in the fall, it's likely to be a blended model (meaning we would have some in-person days). Most of us plan on doing assessments only when we have the kids in the room with us.

4) Students' situations were all over the place. My own kids were high performing before, and were still high performing. Some students improved because they had more time to do their school work; other students were emotionally wounded by the whole scenario. Some students stopped doing work because they thought they could get away with it. I have some high performing advisees who choked at the beginning and then pulled themselves together after a few weeks (with their parents' help). Some kids were given too much work, but more were not given enough. My son was not getting enough work, so my wife and I supplemented with extra writing assignments and math contest problems. By the way, I recommend Noetic Learning for math contest problems if your kid is entering grade 7 or below. There's a fee, but the problems are well written.

5) This was hard on everyone: students, parents, and teachers. We learned a lot. Like just about every problem in American education, it usually comes down to societal issues -- segregation, poverty, parental educational backgrounds, access to internet connectivity. I'm taking a graduate seminar in computing this summer and this week we're talking about attempts to improve broadband access through satellite constellations and 5G. Rural counties in particular suffered here.

As others have commented, none of this is super surprising. What blew me away when I was preparing my students for the revised exam format is the following statement from the College Board:

"We will be monitoring social media and discussion sites to detect and disrupt cheating. We may post content designed to confuse and deter those who attempt to cheat." That's per this document. Part of me wondered about the ethics of that at the time.

I am currently a part-time graduate student in computer science. I know the College Board is not the most popular outfit around here, but I do believe that a student who passes AP CS A with a 4 is ready to move on to CS2 (Data Structures or Data Structures/Algorithms 1). I've had students go to the university in our city and get As in Data Structures while still in high school, because they took AP CS A as juniors. What's even more impressive is that the most recent student who accomplished that was a fairly typical student at our school --- he had to work hard in AP CS A and really grew as a programmer during the course.

I'm glad someone mentioned this one ... I use the snipping tool all the time, and every time I see the message of its impending deprecation I get nervous. Usually I'm using Linux so it doesn't matter, but at work I sometimes use a Windows machine.

The other big one for me is the system image backup. I use that often, especially after I reinstall Windows on a machine. Once I have all the drivers and software set up correctly, I create a system image. All you need to restore it is any Windows installation ISO. It works very well --- you can even put the image on a Bitlocker protected drive.

Don't be so sure. After the 2020 census Evers will have veto authority on the updated electoral district maps. I suspect we will be seeing some improvement on this issue. This is one reason why it was so important for Evers to win the 2018 election.

Speaking as a Wisconsinite also, because of revenue limits, your property taxes will not go up by 10% unless your property is unique in going up in value. If everyone in your municipality has seen the same increase in property value, revenue limits will result in a lower levy rate (which means your taxes will remain flat). This is a common misconception --- I live in Waukesha County, and our house has gone up in value by at least 15% since we purchased the house. Our taxes have been relatively flat during that time.

Don't get me wrong, under some circumstances you might be correct, I hope you're not right for your sake; enough people have gotten hurt by this "deal."

With Debian in my experience, you are better off not using the Live DVD. I don't think the Live DVD receives the same level of attention as the standard installer DVD.

I don't think you need to worry about x.org support going away. Too many applications still do not work well on Wayland. Debian will need to support X11 for a long time because many DEs that it ships (e.g. Cinnamon, XFCE) do not currently support Wayland. I would hold off worrying until you see major distros drop x.org support. I don't believe I've seen that happen yet, even with Fedora which of the major distributions seems to make radical changes first. That would be the canary in the coal mine, so to speak.

We saw recently Ubuntu tried to make a radical change (dropping the i386 archives) but backpedaled once they realized how many things would break.

You are correct insofar as direct tax incentives are concerned. However, as a Wisconsin resident, I am paying for the massive upgrades to I-94 in Racine County that are part of this deal (you may be also, depending on how the highway money was allocated). Now, all things considered, those upgrades will help the state regardless of the outcome of this deal, because I-94 connects Milwaukee and Chicago, and so it's a big part of our economic infrastructure. The government also took property from residents using eminent domain laws. I suspect there are other effects also.

I would prefer to run Ubuntu (and Ubuntu derivatives, like Mint) exclusively. There are four things that I use Crossover (a commercial distribution of Wine) for:

1) MS Office (2007). I also use LibreOffice, but I'm a graduate student and docx is supported more than odt in many platforms.
2) EasyMP, the software to connect through LAN to Epson LCD projectors.
3) An old release of MATLAB that I purchased as a student, which doesn't require Internet activation.
4) A Windows-based Euchre game since there's not really a Linux option for that (please let me know if I'm wrong on that one)

In all of these cases, Crossover works flawlessly. I actually bought a lifetime license with Codeweavers because I appreciate how convenient it makes installing Windows applications.
 
The news that the 32-bit archive was going down was disappointing; I honestly thought I needed to go back to Windows. I think it's fine for them to only have a 64-bit distribution, but they need to keep the 32-bit archive going. This is not just a Wine issue; I have a Microsoft Surface (yes, I know, I'm sorry, but I like the design) and it has a HiDPI screen. The regular version of DOSBox in the repository does not work on the display; I had to install the Daum SVN version, which is 32-bit and requires the installation of some 32-bit libraries from the package archive. I did some research; people have tried to compile a 64-bit version from source but have not gotten very far.

I think Canonical made the right move here. Breaking Wine is not going to help Linux on the desktop. I appreciate their willingness to listen to the community. They have been criticized for that in the past, and they deserve credit for changing their ways.