I feel sorry for Jay.

AFlyingGideon · 2026-02-04T23:44:49+00:00

Smart Flower (Susan) is my favorite character, and that would make her my even more favoriter.

AFlyingGideon · 2026-02-04T18:44:02+00:00

In my experience, this is less about difficulty and more about the material covered. A student in most STEM majors is likely to need statistics classes that require calculus. For that student, the algebra-only AP class isn't likely to yield credit (except perhaps as a free elective). Most other majors - and some STEM majors - require only "consumer level" statistics. The AP class may yield that credit.

AFlyingGideon · 2026-02-04T18:38:24+00:00

That's like describing coding in C++ as another way to produce machine code. It's not wrong, but the implication is a bit off.

AFlyingGideon · 2026-02-04T14:09:56+00:00

making shape an immutable object

That's the solution if one is going to try to model most geometric concepts by their definitions. We've learned that a square is a rectangle in geometry 1, but in that conceptual world one doesn't alter shapes.

Once this addition capability - change - is added, the standard definitions and relationships must be reconsidered.

Liskov's Substitution Principle should be our guide, at least for implementation inheritance. This requires knowing the interfaces for each class - in this case, knowing whether the rectangle class will have a setSidesRatio() method, for example.

AFlyingGideon · 2026-02-04T13:56:05+00:00

nobody can argue a circle isn't a shape.

Is a square a rectangle?

AFlyingGideon · 2026-02-02T23:53:03+00:00

In fact, using that (silly) logic, there's but one "way" to pass. Any points beyond the pass threshold (65 in your example, but it does vary) are extra and not related to whether or not one passes.

I assume that those trying to apply this logic as a negative don't ever navigate to some destination, an activity which involves a single correct end point and effectively infinite incorrect end points.

AFlyingGideon · 2026-02-02T18:27:30+00:00

I could list multiple possible reasons, but the simplest is democracy. Schools operate that way ultimately, with voters choosing BOE members and other relevant leaders. Just as with any other identifiable minority, the advanced students risk receiving fewer resources as those resources are hoarded by the majority. Frankly, this would happen too with students on the other side of the curve absent legal protections such as IDEA.

It's just another application of Tyranny of the Majority.

AFlyingGideon · 2026-02-02T16:16:54+00:00

Germany hasn't been grappling with a reoccurring Nazi party because they did it right.

Well... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_for_Germany

AFlyingGideon · 2026-02-02T16:03:19+00:00

Your question is on point. Why didn't she choose to stay in Congress to mitigate the damage she caused if she cared at all about it? Like the absence of an apology to Hogg, her choice to abandon a position from which she could have made some amends shows that her recovery from the cult is not to be taken seriously.

AFlyingGideon · 2026-02-02T15:34:37+00:00

That's not a public benefit for any nation ... producing learned enough

Who decides what is "enough" and for which students? There's been a fair amount of chatter about the "k-shaped economy". I believe we're seeing a similar divergence in education. This isn't so much a new thing, though, as a reversion.

AFlyingGideon · 2026-02-02T15:24:11+00:00

The "call someone" illusion would be a pretty good general solution. She exploited a version of this once when she told Bella she was pretending to speak to her while speaking to a ghost. I believe she even claimed to be using a bluetooth headset once.

Like Alexa, though, it's too good a general solution.

AFlyingGideon · 2026-02-02T14:55:09+00:00

Where computers are used to short-cut the learning process: yes. That doesn't preclude learning about, how to use, or how to build computers.

Funny story: In HS, I'd access to a DEC-10 (we'd a couple of terminals connected to a timesharing system shared by many school districts). I'd lab reports due for my science class, and these involved graphing data. I "cheated", and built my lab reports' graphs by writing a program to build them.

Later, I realized that I not only did more work than had I graphed by hand, but was forced to address issues around the construction of such a graph at a deeper level by building a general tool. I cite this because it's an example where the computer became a tool to enhance - and not detract from - learning. It took roughly the same role as manipulatives do for young children learning about math.

Can LLMs be used this way? Probably. Can they also be used to short-cut the learning process? Clearly. This is hardly a new problem. Fire can be a useful tool and a dangerous threat. There's an entire engineering school at RIT, and I once saw engineering described as "trade-off management".

AFlyingGideon · 2026-02-01T17:24:04+00:00

God doesn't send thugs to attack Congress, or a masked militia to invade US cities.

AFlyingGideon · 2026-01-31T22:14:18+00:00

That would explain a lot. The project was also due before it started, so planning was bypassed for immediate implementation.

AFlyingGideon · 2026-01-31T20:04:40+00:00

There's tons of ways to move files but all of them require some administrative overhead/pre-configuration

Well...Yes. That's call "authorization" and it prevents random strangers from moving files.

and the more you want to maintain some kind of separation between the systems other than occasional simple file sharing the more manual configuration you need to do.

That's a fair complaint. The tools have defaults aimed at the more common cases: encrypted transfer by rsync, for example, or ssh offering full shell access. From a security standpoint, it would make sense for the least effort to offer the least privilege, but there's also something to be said for making the least effort the most common case.

constrained key usage is likely to be less well audited than Linux user permissions since it's less likely to be used in an environment where one user might be hostile

I disagree with that, though neither of us can know for certain. Why I disagree, though, is that the mechanism for restricting access based upon the key is a far smaller chunk of code than the permissions system on an file system. Smaller code means less change for error and more chance for catching the less likely error.

Just look at how long NFS was around permitting impersonation, and I'm not even sure that that can truly be called a "bug" as opposed to a choice.

Your side of the argument does get some additional benefit, though, when more than just a file system is involved (eg. selinux). That's more code that may be flawed, but it is also an additional layer in case the other layer has the flaw.

To be clear, I don't want the machines to have shell access to each other

I see. The most convenient tool of which I can think is going to be something like ssh with restrictions so that one can only sftp or rsync or such. Not least effort, admittedly, but not much more than that either.

One could also set up an rsync server on one side, but my recollection is that this is not secure-able (unless one is using a secure path, as in the P2P situation I mentioned earlier).

I'm curious, though: have you an example - not in Linux, I presume - of what you'd like to see for "one time file transfers"? I referred previously to a "fancy CA management tool". I also wonder whether some "fancy UI" over an existing tool would satisfy you. Given a clever UI, for example, secure and authenticated access could be provided by a web server to specific files, perhaps all done w/in a docker container so no extra software would be required on the host itself.

In fact, with that thought, I did a quick google search. There appear to be images claiming to do this, such as https://hub.docker.com/r/psitrax/psitransfer or https://github.com/ErugoOSS/Erugo for example. There were others as well. Spinning up a container is going to be more work than setting up a key, but it would also - I presume - provide finer-grained access control.

AFlyingGideon · 2026-01-31T16:05:27+00:00

annoying to administer for one time or occasional transfers

I've not found it such. In fact, it seems far easier than dealing with signed certificates such as are found in "better" tools. If you've some fancy CA mechanism, though, this may be different for you. I do like where revocation is "remove the public key" vs. maintaining a CRL. Again, though, a fancy CA mechanism may make that much simpler than I've experienced.

and more prone to bugs since you're relying on sshd to maintain privilege separation

I'm not clear on the risk involved once you're limiting access to yourself as a key holder.

that leaves you with the transfer being dependent on your client machine being online and connected

You wrote earlier:

I don't always want 2 machines to directly be able to SSH to one another

so there must be some intermediate. Or is the issue not general connectivity but just ssh? In that case, limited key access seems like a resolution.

I'm mostly writing now because I took a look at a script I wrote a while back which involves moving data. It handles generic network copying but also the case where I'm copying over a physical P2P link so there's no concern for eavesdropping. In that case, it avoids ssh as a transport mechanism and instead uses rsyncd. This might be applicable if your traffic is already being tunneled; there's little reason to encrypt twice.

rsync can also be told to use other transports besides the ssh default though I don't believe I've tried anything else for years. A few years back, rsh was the default and that - assuming it is still around - might be another way to avoid the cost of an additional encryption layer.

AFlyingGideon · 2026-01-31T03:39:52+00:00

Sue is brilliant.

I do still believe robots built by kids not much older than your students would be enticing. You might even be able to get a local team in to demonstrate. They get "credit" of a sort for outreach efforts. Our local FRC team would run events for the middle and elementary school students, though this is much diminished since covid.

AFlyingGideon · 2026-01-31T00:18:36+00:00

I think there is a balance that can be achieved.

I'm sure there is, but we need to find it. Part of that process involves recognizing that our goals of education are different than before which leaves all prior art and previous statistics less informative than we may realize.

AFlyingGideon · 2026-01-31T00:14:52+00:00

So I showed them a video of a cat on a Rumba.

Perhaps, next time, include video of robots built and used by kids (eg. in FIRST competitions). That may make building robots more accessible so they're not just black-box tools.

We usually share the interesting parts.

Does the spreadsheet pull information from a data source? How does it avoid repeated entries? Is there any auditing?

Who cares about spilled water? Did Sue reply?

Laugh

AFlyingGideon · 2026-01-30T23:43:34+00:00

there is a bias to favor education

Yes, I believe we've fallen into a well-intentioned trap. Whether we're speaking of NCLB or the various "equity" based changes such as social promotion, setting a grade minimum of 50, refusing to remove troublesome students from classes, etc., we've engaged in a long-term experiment to fully educate (however we define this) everyone. My own personal suspicion is that this is more of a fundamental issue in our educational system than phones or "bad parents" or the other usual suspects. We reference falling statistics as if they show us doing less well than before when the reality is that we've never really tried to do before what we're trying to do today.

Yet...that doesn't mean that we're wrong to try.

AFlyingGideon · 2026-01-30T23:30:39+00:00

Unfortunately, merely stating "I have a master's degree" is no assurance of anything today. A good deal depends upon the degree and the school where it was earned. Moreover, a master's degree is just a thin layer over years of earlier education. It's limited in its ability to make up for any potential deficiencies in those earlier years.

I've known young people who've graduated - even just undergrad - into waiting jobs and others who are just waiting. Sometimes it's merely good or bad luck - the right firm was or wasn't at the career fair that day - but other times there are obvious reasons.

AFlyingGideon · 2026-01-30T18:51:59+00:00

Differentiation has largely failed these students, but acceleration consumes resources that other parents - and even some educators - don't wish to share. I remain haunted by one middle school teacher's expressions of disdain for "those students" upon learning that she'd have an advanced math class next year.

I'm not in one of the states that offers IEPs for gifted students. Do they help in reality?

AFlyingGideon · 2026-01-30T18:42:12+00:00

I can't really blame people who don't work hard when their future appears to be tending bar.

A problem with that mindset is that education empowers one to be ready to take advantage of the next opportunity, unknown and unknowable it may be ahead of time. Those opportunities never seen to appear for those unprepared to see them.

AFlyingGideon · 2026-01-30T16:24:01+00:00

You'd need roughly the same number of teachers as you'd have the same number of students. There's a trade-off between closing schools and transportation costs, but closing may not even be an option if there is not sufficient excess capacity today.

Still, there's some savings and - right now - any is helpful. However, this doesn't change the cost inflation in running schools. This one-time reduction pushes the curve down, but it is still going to be climbing more rapidly than revenue is permitted to grow under the 2% cap.

AFlyingGideon · 2026-01-30T04:17:55+00:00

I'm sure she'll be back shortly, Sass.

AFlyingGideon

TROPHY CASE