Comment by liendolucas | Hacker News Reader

Comment by liendolucas | Hacker News Reader

Oh yes, the world is enshittificating at an unbelievable pace. Here's one I have recently had to deal with. Sometime ago I failed my theory driving exam. The computers presented a series of 30 questions, to which you answer true or false. Fast forwarding to a few weeks ago, I found myself for round 2. The computers have all been changed. Shiny IBMs ThinkCentre with a small camera on top. The exam is supposed to start, but it doesn't. After 20 minutes of hearing someone absolutely not understanding why all the computers were blocked they suddenly are ready for its candidates to answer the questions. The little camera on top, why is there? Because if you deviate your eyes from it the quiz gets temporarily blocked until you get lucky once again and allows you to continue. WHY on earth the italian goverment has decided to spend money on this crap instead of buying simple cheap computers with a mighty reliable mouse is beyond my imagination. Ah before I forget, there was also a pinwheel in the corner whose only main purpose was to do facial recognition the same way is done in some airports. This is the enshittified world that we live in today, and it will get much much worse. Can we please stop all this BS?

Italian government and enshittification, name a more iconic duo, I'll wait.

They built (more correctly, paid) for the IO app for it to be the one touch point for interacting with the government, then started cutting off features from it in other apps. Now they want to aggregate everything again on CIE, which not everyone has yet. Then you have local governments (looking at you, Lombardia) which build random apps which technically support SPID (something like state-provided SSO) and CIE (SAME THING) but wrap them through their custom authentication system because what's better than multiple passwords for the same account? Which already has 2FA?

Man, I wonder if they ever use the crap they build.

I don't know everyone else, but this is certainly not how I expected technology to evolve in general. A completely unnecessary over-engineered world. For me no technology has to negatively interfere with what you're supposed to do and more important, there always has to be a human back up alternative. Is infuriating to assume that every single human being is supposed to have a smart phone to pay for parking. I do really feel sorry for the elders the way they are being technologically-excluded.

Proctoring exams is a crazy, messed-up world. It has always been extraordinarily difficult for human teachers and TAs to prevent cheating on tests. And the tech companies have convinced administrators that technology can proctor exams better than an eagle-eyed human, and so they've designed elaborate biometrics and heuristics and ML to determine who the cheatingest students are, and it's a dumpster fire of false positives and bugs and general injustice. And now we've got LLMs!

For this particular case, the camera thing that I mentioned is absolutely pointless, it's doesn't prevent anything, just an annoying thing that forces you to sit in a rigid, uncomfortable and fixed position to answer questions. But besides that, there are always 30 computers in a relatively small room with each computer spaced from other ones, one person watching from a desk and another one always stood up watching for everyone. Is way way more complicated to cheat than to actually prepare yourself to pass it. Before entering you are even scanned with a magnetic detector! Just in case you are wearing an electronic device that will help you to answer a randomized set of questions.

> And the tech companies have convinced administrators that technology can proctor exams better than an eagle-eyed human.

This to me denotes complete ignorance on the persons that are supposed to evaluate the implementation of a particular technology.

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