rawgabbit

I am not a front end dev. But one question I always had is why px and not em? I thought em as a relative distance would be better than hard coding px?

Google’s cash cow is ads. I think the writing on the wall is ChatGPT and other AI search engines will dominate. It is to be seen how Google will respond. But in the end, their monopoly on web search is coming to an end.

In the United States, clergy never had formal political power. Religious movements did play major roles in the abolition of slavery and Prohibition of alcohol.

The United States had campaign-finance laws to limit the political influence money can buy. The McCain–Feingold Act restricted “dark money”. The Supreme Court struck it down in Citizens United v. FEC.

Any advice on how to use or not use AI?

My first thought is what happens when I drop a $1999 device and break it.

I found this nugget on page 315. It seems to say the OECD acknowledges students are just blowing off this test.

     For most students, PISA is a low-stakes assessment: they can refuse to participate in the test with no negative consequences and do not receive any feedback on their performance. There is a risk, therefore, that students do not do their best on the test; and that they behave differently from what they would do in other circumstances.
    ...In most countries/economies, students reported making less effort on the test in 2025 than in 2022 and in 2018: on average across 35 OECD countries, the difference corresponds to -0.5 points on the 10-point scale (compared to 2018; and -0.3 points compared to 2022) (Table I.A1.1). Meanwhile, the proportion of students who indicated that they invested very little effort in the PISA test increased from 3.5% to 5.4%.

There is also this strange entry here(https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/pisa-2025-results-volum...).

     In this section, the analysis focuses on two types of incorrect responses that can be identified on most, if not all, items: skipped responses (item responses left blank, in-between non-missing responses); and hasty responses (item responses that were not scored as correct, and on which students spent less time than the fastest, yet accurate respondents). More precisely, a “minimum threshold” of time effort required for each item was defined as the 1st percentile of the (unweighted) distribution of response times among all respondents who solved the item correctly, across all participating countries and economies.2 This means that only 1% of all full-credit respondents were able to respond to the item in less time, and 99% of full-credit respondents spent longer than this threshold. The minimum threshold of time required was increased to 10 seconds in all cases where, mostly because of correct guess answers, more than 1% of full-credit respondents had provided the correct response in less than 10 seconds. Respondents who did not obtain a full-credit score on the item, but who spent less time than this threshold, are considered to have given a hasty, speeded response (as defined, a “skipped” response may also be a “hasty” response).
     Table I.A1.12 shows how the proportion of skipped and speeded responses evolved between 2018 and 2025. A clear trend emerges: on average across OECD countries, the average proportion of hasty (incorrect and fast) responses increased significantly between 2018 and 2025. The average proportion of hasty responses increased by over 4 percentage points over the period, reaching a total of about 9%. The average increase across items of hasty responses exceeded 10 percentage points in three countries/economies (Kosovo, Dominican Republic and Bulgaria, in descending order of that increase). Similar analyses for the mathematics and science test are presented in Tables I.A1.13 and I.A1.11; analyses for math, in particular, also show an increase in the proportion of hasty responses between 2022 and 2025, with the largest increases observed in Serbia, Malta and Israel.
    In the PISA test, sequences of items that are left blank at the end of the test are not considered when scoring students’ answers. Similarly, in these analyses, the corresponding students and (missing) answers are excluded from the percentages of “skipped” or “hasty” respondents. Indeed, in PISA, these items are considered as if they were not administered to students, who, most likely, did not reach them. Such non-reached items are also ignored when estimating item difficulty and student performance. However, because, over time, students became more likely to skip or to provide a fast (if incorrect) response rather than to continue working on a task that they perceived as difficult, it is interesting to note that the proportion of non-reached items declined in reading, by about 2 percentage points (Table I.A1.12), on average across OECD countries.

From what I read Texas will have larger and more intense heat domes. On the plus side, this high pressure shifts tornado alley towards the east away from Texas. On minus side, Texas will be the new Arizona.

I have a hard time believing this site also. When I looked at their methodology at how this list was created, it said "Please fill out our Methodology Request Form, and a member of our team will get back to you, typically within one business day.". As far am I am concerned, I can safely ignore this site.

https://docs.alphageo.ai/climate-resilience-suite/climate-ri...

Quote

     PISA 2025 was the largest assessment to date, involving 760 000 students across 91 countries and economies.

What were the sample sizes in previous years and their related demographics?

TLDR. 15 years ago they avoided SQL and created a language for streaming. Today, the industry decided that SQL materialized views with a “freshness” or time lag promise is the correct mental model.

It's the 2026 version of Jerry Springer freak show cum reality TV.

The charitable take is she is an expert in method acting; she has become the fantasy she invented. The less charitable take is that she is a sociopath lacking the ability to realize the danger and harm her fraud is causing.

She would have made a terrific actress playing mafiosi. I can see her giving that death stare while knifing Johnny nine-toes and pulling out his entrails.

Thiel says Zuckerberg is special. He is the chosen one. He will lead an entire generation etc. This is a master class in ass kissing.

That says more about the US software industry than anything else. You “win” by being hostile to consumers while you lawyer up and bribe the powers that be.

For all the pontificating, Zuckerberg is disliked more than Musk. According to this 2025 survey: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/19/how-ameri...

Bread and circuses. Can’t afford the bread but we have games.

Quote:

     A perfectly optimized system that produces incompetent operators is not optimized at all. It has simply moved its failure mode somewhere the spreadsheet can’t see it.

The ancient societies you mentioned, were not anti-intellectual. If anything, they placed too much power in their intellectual elites e.g., monks becoming bureaucrats in Charlemagne's kingdom, scholars becoming mandarin officials in Chinese dynasties.

The US always had an anti-intellectual streak. A common quote was I'd rather be judged by a jury of averages joes than a panel of intellectuals. In 2026, the anti-intellectual and anti-science folks are in charge of US institutions.

I write like this. It's probably a Texas thing as my writing is a close approximation to how I talk. That is the writing is meant to be read out-loud.

BTW, I believe the author was painting the visual image of Beavis & Butthead, not a caveman.

This kind of back and forth reminds me of the Dot Com bubble circa 1999. There were endless articles saying that the internet was a new golden era for mankind and that the hyperbolic company valuations were justified; the detractors cried bullocks.

I use AI every day as I assume everyone else on Hacker News does. Will the S&P 500 drop 20%? I have no idea. If you know, please let me know so I can adjust by 401K.

AI style writing; didn’t bother.

I thought the recommendations in section 3 were substantiative. That is move away from time-bound exams and move towards semester length project portfolios.

     >"In the era of AI, some traditional learning goals may merit rethinking; for example, do the majority of our students need to be able to write complex programs by hand?"

     >"quick, high-stakes evaluations embody the opposite of the signal we want to convey to them right now."

     >"We urge instructors to consider forms of assessment that are less vulnerable to AI, and more valuable for learning, such as oral exams, semester portfolios, and out-of-class assignments paired with in-class conversations. This likely means resources such as TAs and class time will become more central to evaluation."

Sorry. That is double-speak. Yes, there is a shortage of cheap talent; but there is no shortage of skills and no shortage of labor. If you want cheap labor, corps are welcome to move offshore.

Corps can't have it both ways.

No one is saying corporations cannot offshore and move the jobs overseas and hire workers from that country. What we are saying is that it is disingenuous to bring those workers into the country and claim there is a skills shortage; that is a bald faced lie.

Yes, you're probably right.

With large sets or sequences of numbers approaching almost infinity, counting as a method of determining how large things are ... doesn't work well as you found out. To determine if ginormous set A is larger than ginormous set B, you have to do things like matching-pairing. For every element in set A, pair it with an element of set B; if you exhaust all of the elements in B but still have elements in A... then set A is larger than set B.

To formulate the probability of B happening, for example, you have to make an educated guess. Create a functional equation that map A (all possibilities) to B (desired possibility). Then you make a ratio-fraction with the equation in the numerator and set A in the denominator. Using Algebra, try to eliminate references to A in both the numerator and denominator to give you an educated guess of what the probability is.

A few years ago I visited downtown SF for a convention at Moscone center. I remember walking along St Patrick’s thinking this is a beautiful place but , my God, the entire area stinks of urine.

Gold hit $4700 today. Hyperinflation looks like where we are headed.

When a debt crisis occurs, there is only one good option and many bad ones. The good option is the debt holders realize they need to compromise and are willing to forgive part of the debt for proper governance. ie. forgive part of the debt as long as the US adheres to a strict budget which involves raising taxes and cutting services. And no more giving out tax breaks and tax holidays as if they were free.

All the other options are infinitely worse. The problem is that such a deal is political suicide. MAGA will run on repealing the deal like they ran on dismantling Obama care. They are the party of financial self immolation.