Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re: If you're not familiar... (Score 1) 337

First, we're down in the weeds down here. I replied to someone who said "SF median teacher salaries are between 100k and 150k" and "and that doesn’t even account for benefits", providing a source that shows mid-career teachers make $98k on average *including benefits*. So that was pretty much fail.

> And this doesn’t change the easily verified overall fact that the median teacher salary in virtually every state exceeds the states’ overall median salary

Given that all of the teachers have above-median education, it would be rather extraordinary if this *weren't* true.

Comment Re: If you're not familiar... (Score 1) 337

On the other hand, teachers have above-median levels of education, too.

> and that doesn’t even account for benefits,

Actually, your source does account for benefits. It says mid-career teachers in San Francisco Unified make $98k in total compensation counting benefits. And, of course, mid-career is not median; a whole lot of teachers wash out of the profession early.

Comment Statistical irony (Score 1) 337

The irony here is -- on a properly designed exam the median student should be getting a 50-60 raw point score out of 100. This is what gives you the greatest statistical power to distinguish student performance. Then, a "C" at 41/100 is not unreasonable and entering it as 0.30 + sqrt(score) * 0.70 in the gradebook makes a lot of sense.

But this doesn't mean taking existing exams where students show mastery at 85-95% and then accepting 41% as a C.

Comment Re:Algorithms (Score 1) 100

Common core 8 (for 8th grade) includes most of what would be in an Algebra I class (functions, systems, radicals, polynomials with emphasis on quadratics) and a lot of what would be in more applied-style geometry classes.

The minimum graduation requirements in California for high school requires 2 classes beyond 8th grade math, including something at or above Algebra I.

"On-level" math is Algebra I in 9th, after a lot of similar course work in 7th and 8th. This is about the same as 50 years ago. The big change is that a lot of students get through calculus in high school, which was rarer long ago.

A lot of the "new new math", "Singapore" math focuses on exploration and argument, which is an improvement. Perhaps too much: a certain amount of rote is needed to not mentally context switch too much.

Comment Re:Gigabit speed... (Score 1) 70

There's no reason in the "laws of physics" that latency has to be bad. The satellite are at 340km. So the path from you, to the satellite back down to a ground station might be 340 * 2 * sqrt2 = 961km, or 3.2ms.

Increased use of routing on the satellites could push this 3.2ms always in a useful direction, and distant sites could be reached at a lower latency than terrestrial networks.

The big limitation in latency right now is the handling of the shared medium and the need for terminals to take turns. But that's not intrinsic to the medium.

Comment Re: A 6 year old just shrugged and switched famili (Score 5, Informative) 132

Kids kidnapped at age 8 or under stop trying to return home pretty quickly, coming to accept stories for their new living situation and losing details of their old one.

And memories are malleable. I have few memories before age 8, and the ones I do have e.g. older and more familiar versions of my parents copy-and-pasted in. I am often surprised looking at old photos.

Comment Re:3 reasons (Score 4, Interesting) 217

> I don't think I've heard of a single scenario where the parts weren't available for EV repair. This is not a logistics problem, it's a design problem.

e.g. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.carscoops.com%2F2023...

Problems during scale up are intrinsic: building the service network early is too expensive, and there's competition for parts between repairs and growing manufacturing. But Tesla has really failed to ramp service capabilities and inventories of repair parts.

There's some fundamentally increased cost structure to repairing EVs. But I think a big part of what we're seeing is immature infrastructure, logistics, and too much of a monopoly on repair by manufacturers.

Comment Re: The current shape really does suck for travel (Score 1) 29

> Seriously, who takes an Xbox or playstation on holiday with them?

Most people who travel with a console are either military, military contractors, or people who make a habit of getting into 1-3 month consulting engagements in the private sector. College students often fit into the category, too. It's a use case that's important to a few percent of users. Of course, it's not as important as fitting into a small entertainment center, which greatly increases the appeal to 30%+ of people.

> Get a life.

Don't be a dick.

> And no, you cant use the kids an excuse, they're quite happy on touch devices'

Think a little before you comment. There's other reasons than the one you reflexively reached for.

Slashdot Top Deals

People are always available for work in the past tense.

Working...