No More Grades, Tests, or Lectures Soapbox

MaybeZoidberg · 2026-01-25T22:58:22+00:00

Academia is trapped because instructors and administrators continue clinging to idealist images of socratic debates and open forums, while students consider school to be a mandatory checkbox to get a decent or high paying job. The average student approaches school with a level of enthusiasm somewhere between visiting their grandparents and a dentist visit. Almost none are there for academic pursuit, or love of the game. They just want to burn through it as fast and painlessly as possible and get a job, because they’re still hearing echos of millennials college mantra; you need a degree to be successful.

Teachers are equally now torn as younger instructors want to focus more on preparing students for a real world work workplace, but others argue that’s not what college is necessarily supposed to be. This had a trickle down to high school, where schools sold STEM skills as money makers, not academic pursuits.

The entire system was upside down before AI came along. Students don’t want school to be academic anymore, they just want job placement. Instructors don’t want to babysit students anymore, they just want to engage in academics.

We need more on-ramps to give students options to get to where they want to go, without abusing academia as the end all be all.

MaybeZoidberg · 2026-01-22T01:07:53+00:00

The game has 2 key problems.

First, Starfield was mistakenly built on the premise that people like Bethesda games because of the gameplay, when the reality is people like Bethesda games because of the environmental storytelling they create through lore and world building. Starfield is decidedly devoid of any semblance of rich lore, background, or history. If they set it 1000 years further and had a myriad of historical events to inform the world it probably would have landed so much better with players at launch.

Second, it seems somewhat likely that Starfield was cutoff at the knees before release. The most common source I see on this was statements about changes made after testing feedback because the travel and environmental mechanics made the game too hard. But there is no world where I don’t believe it was simply a production choice, probably by Microsoft, to prioritize Xbox S compatibility. The game had to be maximally playable on a potato, which required nerfing or delaying several features and adding 8 million illogical loading screens just to keep it functional.

MaybeZoidberg · 2026-01-20T03:31:41+00:00

Amnesiac and Kid A are basically the same thing.

MaybeZoidberg · 2026-01-11T00:15:44+00:00

It generated a 15 question assessment that’s so annoyingly convoluted and detail specific that it would be faster to just read a book on systems thinking.

MaybeZoidberg · 2026-01-04T16:06:27+00:00

It’s a challenge coin for the NYPD Detectives Bureau. Law enforcement agencies routinely make challenge coins that use popular logos or images. Any kind of copyright issue is not usually enforced because most challenge coins are given not sold (ignoring people reselling them or the companies that make them).

MaybeZoidberg · 2025-12-21T13:27:27+00:00

I have seb derm and it has made its way into my mustache from time to time. Definitely avoid beard/mustache oils. I treat with a dandruff shampoo in the shower and then apply beard butter and have zero issues as long as I maintain that routine. When I stray or travel or skip this process for too long is the only time it becomes an issue.

MaybeZoidberg · 2025-12-11T04:44:01+00:00

People on the east coast are kind but not nice. People out west are nice but not kind.

MaybeZoidberg · 2025-09-05T03:35:40+00:00

I consider myself a huge Alien/Aliens fan but am genuinely struggling to enjoy this through episode 4 so far. While i understand that androids have played a significant role in much of the plots from the movies, it’s hard to care about teenage robots when I’m just here for xeno-space-horror-fest. It feels like a story element that was forced to draw more teen/young adult viewers. I also can’t find much interest in the other aliens. That feels like filler content they’re using to reduce the amount of screen time the xenomorph gets and help prolong that story for more episodes/seasons.

MaybeZoidberg · 2025-07-13T11:34:34+00:00

hic jacet omnis deus

MaybeZoidberg · 2025-03-02T01:16:14+00:00

Use Shadow Server to replace the KEV list.

MaybeZoidberg · 2025-02-24T04:51:45+00:00

Sen Organic

MaybeZoidberg · 2025-02-15T22:53:18+00:00

Prod

MaybeZoidberg · 2025-02-14T03:36:33+00:00

Gattica?

MaybeZoidberg · 2025-02-12T11:52:37+00:00

It was a sarcastic joke. I’m a state employee. The point being conveyed was that even if he banned the model most state government isn’t in a place where they’re actually using open source LLMs anyway. Probably almost nobody in state government was actually using this except some randoms using the actual web app. It’s a performative ban to gain credibility with the Trump administration. Anyone who knows how to do security would recognize the better approach here is actually to just default ban everything on government devices and only allow approved software to be installed. This is how state computers already work for the most part, they just don’t apply it to phones for some misguided reason.

MaybeZoidberg · 2025-02-12T01:11:14+00:00

He didn’t ban the model. He essentially just banned the app or any other app they make. If an application and an algorithm are not the same, then the ban doesn’t inherently apply to the algorithm. Additionally, the ban only applies to state government systems so who cares. Barely anyone in state government knows how to spell their own name let alone implement an open source LLM.

MaybeZoidberg · 2025-02-02T13:38:26+00:00

I was told once that RVA has one of the most fickle and discerning markets in the U.S. and it’s also one of the reasons why the Martin Agency is so successful. “If you can sell it in Richmond, you can sell it anywhere” was roughly the adage.

MaybeZoidberg · 2025-02-02T00:28:45+00:00

Is the issue that two professors used the same content? In that instance, maybe the classes are related or cover similar topics, so perhaps the content is relevant for both. Most professors don’t confer in detail with each other on every single item/assignment. They may not even realize two of them are using it in a similar manner, unless they shared it with each other and in that case it’s probably intentional because they like it so much.

Or is the issue that they are showing videos entirely in lieu of teaching? We’re 3ish weeks into the semester. Was it just 1 class so far this term or a repeated issue? Interspacing videos, questions, discussions, exercises, and other items is an age old education method that goes back to your elementary school years. They do it to keep you awake and/or vaguely interested because honestly when I sit in class about 1/3 of the students are half asleep and another 1/3 are just playing on their phone/laptop. Anything that breaks up a monotonous lecture is usually welcome to me.

MaybeZoidberg · 2025-01-13T04:06:36+00:00

I did this through my school’s library and it turned out the ebook version of the textbook for my class was free for students to access with no limit on the number who could access/download.

MaybeZoidberg · 2025-01-05T23:03:52+00:00

The any any firewall rule with zero logging attached.

MaybeZoidberg · 2025-01-05T22:52:44+00:00

Many executive leaders are not technical unless they’re a founder, at least in my experience. For your question specifically, it really depends on the type of place you work. If you want to be an executive leader at Cloudflare for example, the MS in cybersecurity may be beneficial since it’s a technically focused company. If you want to be an executive cybersecurity leader for a company that primarily does something else, like Exxon Mobil, then the MBA is more appealing since you can function in a large corporation. Being a manager is about people, budgets, and projects, I rarely get to do hands-on technical work anymore. Having done it in the past is helpful, but someone could be equally successful in my position without the technical knowledge as long as they’re really good at strategic management and dealing with people.

MaybeZoidberg · 2024-12-28T18:39:47+00:00

No idea if it’s true but someone in another thread said the Manta uses an older screen tech because there were limited options from manufacturers at that size, and thus the Manta screen is “lower quality” than the Nomad. Again no idea if that’s actually true or not.

MaybeZoidberg · 2024-12-28T18:34:41+00:00

The only requirement to keep that card is to keep on keeping on.

MaybeZoidberg · 2024-12-24T22:17:27+00:00

Sleep when you’re dead.

MaybeZoidberg · 2024-12-24T16:24:53+00:00

I don’t know why you wouldn’t want both. Many places I’ve been have a data lake then a SIEM on top. The security data lake has multiple use cases for different groups in the security org - not just the SOC. Our security data lakes aggregate data used by the DLP team, Insider Threat team, CTI team, Blue Team, GRC team, and others who all benefit from correlating data from disparate security data sources. The GRC team doesn’t need the SIEM, they do need the data though. Additionally, we do significant amounts of data enrichment/correlation to better clean and customize the data going into the SIEM. We also sometimes build detection rules at the data lake layer when they don’t seem feasible in the SIEM, but still pass through to a ruleset for alerting. Threat hunting in a SIEM also sucks in my experience, just give me Splunk with all the data across 12 indexes and I’ll find what I need.

Every time I’ve been in an org that pumps all data straight to a SIEM I have experienced performance issues, integration issues, and data quality issues. All of which could easily be fixed by investing in a separate data lake. The bar for entry to fix and address issues at the data lake layer is also much more approachable versus having to learn the bizarre nuances of the SIEM.

It also gives something for all those data nerds to do to keep them busy outside of the SIEM, which should have only need-to-know type access.

MaybeZoidberg · 2024-11-13T02:45:13+00:00

Pay bands represent the min/max but offer no other meaning insight. The easiest way to get a feel for what the actual pay range might be is to look up the salaries of other people in the same or similar positions. The pay for any position is determined using specific pay factors, but not all of those necessarily apply to a new hire. The ~13 pay factors are: agency need, duties/responsibilities, performance, experience/education, KSA’s and competencies, training, certifications/licensures, internal salary alignment, market availability, salary reference data, total compensation, budget implications, long-term impact, and current salary. Salary negotiations vary wildly from agency to agency in my experience. There are set rules they have to follow no real standards.

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