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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Linux users are hard for using a terminal when they could just open a document in a text editor.

    The command line is always there and always has the same basic tools, assuming the system is bootable at all. You can’t guarantee that a given system has a working GUI—it may be broken, inaccessable, or never installed. Having some kind of TUI editor installed is usual on non-embedded systems, but you can’t guarantee which one or that it’s fit for purpose (coaching a newbie through a vi session isn’t something anyone wants to do). That means that the generic instructions that get passed around because they’re fit for most systems (regardless of distro or purpose) use the command line tools.

    So there is method to the madness, but if you’re coming from a “GUI or bust!” OS it can take a while to get used to.








  • I have mixed feelings about the necessity of this.

    On the one hand, I know they don’t really need the cell phones, because they didn’t exist when I was in school.

    On the other hand, the kids who are paying attention to their cell phone rather than the teacher probably wouldn’t listen to the teacher if the cell phone wasn’t present, either, and some of them would be far more disruptive toward other students who are trying to listen.

    On the third hand, expecting the kids to pay attention all the time even if they’ve already mastered the subject and are bored out of their skulls by the repetition needed for the kids below the class median to have a chance of understanding too is a problem in and of itself.

    Fortunately, I am not a teacher, a student, or the parent of a student, so I have no horse in this race and am not required to make a decision on whether the bans are useful or just obnoxious.







  • And if the panic button is going to call the police, how is that any different from the passenger using their phone to contact police? Seems like extra steps of middlemen and confusion when the passenger could just call once they feel the need.

    Think of it as a backup for the phone in the case where, say, there’s an adult and a kid in the car, the kid has no phone of their own, and the adult loses consciousness with their phone locked. Or the car is being actively jostled by a group of people (say it drove into the middle of an embryonic riot), causing the passenger to drop their phone, whereupon it slides under the seat. Or the phone just runs out of charge or doesn’t survive getting dropped into the passenger’s triple-extra-large fast-food coffee. It won’t be needed 99% of the time, but the other 1% might save someone’s life, and (presuming the car already has a cell modem it in) the cost of adding the feature should be minimal.