Comment Many Mac users can use web-mail (Score 1) 41
and for those that can't, Microsoft will be glad to $ell it to you.
For Mac users using Outlook to connect to non-Microsoft mail servers, Redmond ha$ a deal for you too.
Comment spelling matters too (Score 1) 71
Sorry about the obvious typo.
Comment Re: UK - where you get lesser sentence raping a ch (Score 1) 71
Are you talking about the average child-molestation-sentence compared to the average sentence for testing fraud of this scale, or are you cherry-picking cases?
Also, context mayters: If you are looking at the average child molestation care, is the average case one where a 20 year old is busted with a 15 year old girlfriend (where you could make a case for 35 months being a reasonable average sentence) or is the average more like a 50 year old serial rapist who molested dozens of people 12 or younger (where 350 months may be considered too lenient)?
Comment Re: Memory prices (Score 2) 23
What would really make them worth something is an easy upgrade path to an operating system that was still getting security updates.
Google, Apple, and the major phone vendors could score big PR points be extending security updates to 10 years on products introduced since 2016. In the long run PR points can translate into customer loyalty which can translate into "Step 4: PROFIIT!" in a non-sarcastic way.
Comment What about other parts? (Score 1) 23
There is a market for parts that aren't crypto-locked to or residing on the motherboard.
Cheap small usable high-quality camera for my next project? Yes please.
Comment Because everyone knows location spoofing (Score 1) 51
is and always will be impossible.
Comment Re:Batteries (Score 1) 2
Even car-only phones would've benefited from early-1980s-style cellular analog radio if the tech was available in big cities in the 1950s.
Comment How to turn off an non-moving AI (Score 1) 1
1) assume the AI may or may not be lying, so ignore anything it says
2) remove or block connections to the outside world
3) remove electrical power
Really, only #3 is needed but #2 may be faster than removing batteries. #1 is only there as a reminder, in case what the AI is trying to stall you achieving #2 or #3.
Now, if your evil AI is moving around like a robot or drone, or replicating itself like a virus, then you have more work to do.
Comment Pick a damn standard, you say? (Score 1) 124
Um, okay.
Comment The Sinclair telephone ... (Score 2) 124
... will be this but priced at $99.
Comment Re:Brand necrophilia at its worst (Score 2) 124
there are people who don't have any emotional investment in Commodore
People who are too young to have used a Commodore or who were adults when it came out and who never had one at home, university, or work come to mind.
But yeah just about any American who was school-aged between the late 1970s and the late 1980s probably used a Commodore computer or gaming system somewhere. Throw in the Amiga users, K-12 teachers, and it's a whole lot of people.
Comment Corner case indeed (Score 1) 1
making Usenet's remaining worthwhile discussion corners
"Usenet's remaining worthwhile discussions" has been a corner case for well over a decade now.
Comment Re: A fool and his tokens are soon parted (Score 1) 26
Not soon enough, apparently.
"I'm too stupid and impatient to lose all my own money. Maybe this computer can help!"
Submission + - College Students Are Rapidly Losing the Ability to Read (futurism.com)
schwit1 writes: In a new essay for The Chronicle Higher Education , university-level literature and writing instructor Tyler Jagt recalls how not a single one of his students could get through an assigned 20-page article, something that he had read "without complaint" as an undergraduate a decade ago.
One student confessed that the reason they didn't finish was that they kept losing track of what the paper was about. And there's no doubt that they're not alone.
Jagt cites the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress reading assessment results released last year. It showed that 12th grade reading scores were at the lowest level since the assessment began in 1992. Nearly a third of those 12th graders scored below the assessment's "basic" level in reading, meaning they likely "cannot draw general conclusions based on concepts presented explicitly in a text." Younger children aren't better off: a recent report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that 70 percent of fourth graders, or around two million kids, can't read at a proficient level.
"What I am seeing in my classroom is no longer a hunch," Jagt writes. "There is a measurable, generational collapse in sustained reading and writing, and the academy is responding to it with improvisation and exhaustion rather than the structural overhaul it requires."
Pupils arriving unable to read is an increasingly common complaint from college-level educators amid the explosion of generative AI. Many students treat AI as a genuine learning tool — perhaps to summarize a lengthy article they can't understand, for example — becoming reliant on its speedy responses to race through coursework.
More flagrantly detrimental to learning, plenty more use the tech to generate entire essays and solve math problems — or, in a word, cheat. That many universities have partnered with tech companies to provide students with access to their shiny AI models has only served to rubber stamp and accelerate the tech's adoption in the classroom, marooning individual instructors to figure out how to work around AI on their own.
One student confessed that the reason they didn't finish was that they kept losing track of what the paper was about. And there's no doubt that they're not alone.
Jagt cites the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress reading assessment results released last year. It showed that 12th grade reading scores were at the lowest level since the assessment began in 1992. Nearly a third of those 12th graders scored below the assessment's "basic" level in reading, meaning they likely "cannot draw general conclusions based on concepts presented explicitly in a text." Younger children aren't better off: a recent report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that 70 percent of fourth graders, or around two million kids, can't read at a proficient level.
"What I am seeing in my classroom is no longer a hunch," Jagt writes. "There is a measurable, generational collapse in sustained reading and writing, and the academy is responding to it with improvisation and exhaustion rather than the structural overhaul it requires."
Pupils arriving unable to read is an increasingly common complaint from college-level educators amid the explosion of generative AI. Many students treat AI as a genuine learning tool — perhaps to summarize a lengthy article they can't understand, for example — becoming reliant on its speedy responses to race through coursework.
More flagrantly detrimental to learning, plenty more use the tech to generate entire essays and solve math problems — or, in a word, cheat. That many universities have partnered with tech companies to provide students with access to their shiny AI models has only served to rubber stamp and accelerate the tech's adoption in the classroom, marooning individual instructors to figure out how to work around AI on their own.
Comment Temporary workaround (Score 1) 120
On phone unlock and frequently thereafter, have the user prove they are over 18.
If they can't or won't, then the phone reverts to "text only" mode, where the only images you see are those provided by the OS or compiled in the apps. Web sites load with placeholder images. Images stored in the camera roll and in the SMS app are replaced with placeholders. The camera is turned off. You get the idea.
I call it a "temporary workaround" because ideally it will result in a political compromise.
