Parents watching what their kids were learning (or not learning) was probably the largest acceleration into home and alternate school in history. That's what happened to nearly every family in our home school co-op.
Funny you should mention that, we're currently looking for a home school co-op in our area. It has become apparent that my child has learned basically no analytical skills whatsoever so I'm planning on homeschooling for a year to see what improvements that makes before making a final decision about what to do for high school.
This is the bias that keeps us from actually making improvements to the education system. I guess it's easy to repeat and blame money. Kind of like a brilliantly colored red herring.
We still need to find a cause for declining results. If it isn't funding, what is making our children stupider?
Regardless, I'd think that a study trying to find a correlation among practice, funding, and measurement would need at least a generation (~thirty years yea?) of results to show meaning
One sad fact I learned about adolescent suicide (12 to 18 years of age) is that it's seasonal. It picks up during the school year and drops precipitously during summer and winter vacations.
Being in school has a profound impact on whether or not a child wants to kill themselves.
I wasn't suicidal when I was in high school, but I absolutely understand people's depression around the school year.
I actually don't hate school as much as an adult, but I really did view school like a prison when I was a teenager. I didn't like homework, I didn't like most of my teachers, I liked learning but due to the fact that schools have to go at a pace slow enough for the dumbest person they want to pass, I would get very bored during class, and so high school in general was existentially dreadful every day. Even when I got home, I would dread the fact that in about ~15 hours, I would have to go back to school again.
It didn't help that there was a dread with grades in general; I wasn't abused or anything, and I think my parents in general were pretty ok at parenting, but as report card season came nearer and nearer, I would get more and more depressed, because when I would inevitably get middling-to-bad grades, I would get a lecture and/or grounded by my parents. This meant no computer, no games, I wasn't allowed to hang out with my friends, and they hoped that it would force me to study more. It's not dumb logic, but it just didn't work. I would just be sad and angry and still wouldn't do the homework.
No doubt a large chunk of this was just hormonal, but I really think that the typical American school system is not a good fit for a lot of people, myself included. I don't think anyone has ever seriously called me stupid, but I would be in camp that endlessly frustrated teachers: I would do well on the tests, I would do well on the AP exams, no one disputed that I understood the course material well enough, but I just didn't care enough to do the homework so they would be forced to give me bad grades. I don't blame the teachers for this at all, they're just doing their jobs.
Despite being in AP classes and having skipped two grades in math, I was seriously considering dropping out of high school and just trying for the GED so I wouldn't have to go anymore, and I probably would have done that if I didn't think that my parents would freak out.
I didn't want to kill myself, but very few things brought me more joy in my life than knowing I wouldn't ever have to go back to high school again. I know a lot of people say that these are the best times of their lives, and power to them for that, but they were decidedly not for me.
Adults put teenagers together and some of them get miserable. The adults’ response: oh lament the teenage woes, what is to be done. We are just adults with all the power on our side.
I get the feeling that modern Western society and institutions are woefully maladjusted for those particular years.
Those teenage moodswings are somewhat like upvoting/downvoting on HN.
It's funny you can take something that every major multinational company does and slap "Tesla" on it and then write a whole news story.
> The practice, while controversial, is a common maneuver through which multinational corporations use loopholes in tax law to save money by moving profit from one jurisdiction to another with more favorable tax rules. “It’s not the way the international tax system should work,”
Yes but that is how it works and it can be changed at any moment in the US Congress. There seems to be bipartisan support for it working this way, in fact.
> It's funny you can take something that every major multinational company does and slap "Tesla" on it and then write a whole news story.
What's your alternative? Never write about these practices after the first instance gets an article?
IMHO, it's newsworthy that a particular company does this, and the exploitation of tax loopholes is an evergreen topic until those loopholes disappear or cease being controversial.
> There seems to be bipartisan support for it working this way, in fact.
Is there actual affirmative bipartisan support for this, or a lack of sufficient support or ability to push a change through our dysfunctional congress? With the filibuster and Republican attitudes about taxes, I'm sure any change would have to clear a super-majority.
That was kind of my take... not only that, but you can be against a practice, but still use it while it's there... There's a certain amount of fiscal/fiduciary responsibility the heads of companies have that could get them into trouble if they didn't take advantage of any loopholes they're aware of.
That said, like you mention... It would be easy enough for Congress to change the law and even add incentives or fees for trying to shift financial profits or exfiltrating currency/value altogether.
I'm very surprised at the quality of the new Gemma 4 models. On my 32 gig Mac mini I can be very productive with it. Not close to replacing paid AI by a long shot, but if I had to tighten the belt I could do it as someone who already knows how to program.
love hearing this. and think about it, if the 2B is already doing this well on your mac mini, imagine what the 4B, 26B, or 31B can do on 32 gigs. with lower quantization you can fit pretty much any of them. if you want full precision you still have solid options at the 2B and 4B level. you're sitting on way more capability than you're probably using right now. the coding block on just the 2B scored 8.44 and caught bugs most people would miss. glad you're getting real use out of it, thanks for reading.
Google is not creating a replacement for anything.
Apple is getting a base Gemini model (not a Gemma), and it will run on Apple private compute. Apple foundational models will remain the on device model
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