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Comment History. . . (Score 2) 160

Some of us were around in 1974 for the US year round DST experiment.
It was not pretty. It was not safe. It was so dark at school bus stops, that many stores and even McD were giving out packs of reflective stickers for kids to paste on their clothes, shoes, and bookbags so they could be seen.
Just keep standard time year round. Happy farms, zero real harm, no more changing, no more kvetching about changing twice a year.

Comment Re: Tablets and apple computers (Score 1) 109

This rings true. Assembling a RPi into a working computer, printing a case, sussing out power, cables, setup os, add software, shows them the whole shebang and takes away the monolithic masque nature of current devices. Some problems are solved in code, some in hardware, some in pressing the right button. And they can take any path or part of this that they glom onto. Cuts through platform worship and slowly builds confidence that they have agency as they work through getting everything done.

Comment Re: Next time... (Score 1) 109

I have always made sure that students see how to do something the *original* way, calculate stocks, chart results, see how and why stats were created and how to use them, *then* do the same tasks with a computer. They may curse me for a moment, but they are better equipped to see if the results make sense and to suss out bizarre results. The stubborn part which was made worse by the rush to LMS platforms is the google everything mentality. The world has become a massive old school game where you had unquestioning grab every object for your inventory. With largely the same future results of damage and regret. Wikipedia only slightly less so. Use your own brain first, then go rely on the billions of others *as needed*. Yes, electrons are easier to move than atoms, but atoms are easier to keep track of, and you mostly have to hit them with a hammer rather than a wrong keystroke to really mess things up.

Comment Re: Tablets and apple computers (Score 1) 109

Swift was able to turn a corner on this with Playgrounds on both macOS and iPadOS with an easy move to Xcode and the draw of being able to code an app on it. It is easy enough for newbies and challenging enough for middle school students who want to *really* code. I have heard many times that it is more important to get kids coding well than to focus on a specific language for specific reasons. And having seen AP CS live through three languages each of which have their rooters and detractors, this path seems valuable. Hypercard seems a toy now, but it was a great on ramp in schools and helped start the path to javascript which has had a pretty good run. Ya never know.

Comment Re: Call me old fashioned but (Score 4, Interesting) 73

I have seen it work in both directions. I was a technology wrangler when desktop publishing took off. It was great that you no longer needed letraset and actual paste, but much of it turned into, if you can do this on your computer then you no longer need an assistant (then secretary). But that also took another valuable brain and set of eyes out of the process. Conversely, we worked on some multi year projects with LEGO, and watched as they automated more and more of their US plant. Adding computer control to sorting and packing lines, and automating such mundane tasks as making sure a minifig heads were on straight. They prided themselves for never losing a person from this, they would assign them to a new project or product. This was about the time they were turning the corner on adding outside IP to their lines. It allowed them to use experienced people to staff these new initiatives, and from all indications, it kinda worked.

Comment Glad to see these, making it into a consumer produ (Score 1) 30

30 years ago, we worked with these through the MIT media lab but as stringable baubles.
Almost forgot about them until seeing the story a few days ago.
Very little chance they will somehow put the brakes on traditional LEGO.
Having worked with every generation of mindstorms, I was skeptical about spike PRIME.
Was worried it might be too simple and not enough expansion.
After seeing this yearâs FLL season, I had nothing to worry about.

Comment With an accent or not⦠(Score 1) 43

A friend once worked in Washington on a defense project, and took classes in Russian at the Washington branch of the Defense Language Institute. He was very proud of himself and after a while, he decided to head to a Russian bookstore in town, walked in and told them in Russian that he was looking for some books on biographies of Russian diplomats. The clerk looked up and with a big smile exclaimed DLI !. Apparently Russians can tell that youâ(TM)ve been trained there.

Comment While some cancers have benefitted greatly from si (Score 1) 75

such as breast, skin, testicular, prostate, many others, like liver, kidney, brain, esophagus, stomach, pancreas, remain undetected until organ failure or metastasis to brain, bone, spine etc. Even prostate can be a toss-up until ruled in/out by MRI. This scanning approach, and ones like CancerGuard are on the long tail of cost, still expensive and unapproved by insurance. There needs to be some middle ground, driven by research, cost efficiency or both. Insurers may see such cases as a tiny percentage of outcomes, but for the person who is facing death 10, 20, or even 30 years early, and their families, it is 100 percent of their reality.

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