It’s not a dichotomy. It’s just a comparison. There is no suggestion that these are the only two options.

On the early days of the internet, I found a website about a comic I like. I emailed the person who made the website. I told them that I liked the site, and I sent them a game that I’d made (which had nothing whatsoever to do with the comic or their site). They tried the game and said it was fun…

That kind of interaction can never happen any more. Money has ruined it. Scams and monetization, everywhere, making everything into manipulative toxic sludge.

From your point of view it is ‘all the risk’, but you must understand that the biggest most important risk is what they are trying to avoid: going to hell. For people who believe in that kind of thing, it’s the only risk of any real significance.

And the whole set of problems only exist because there are too many cars.

I guess the current ‘stage’ is human-induced ecological collapse. Just another chapter in the earth’s story.

I still reckon it was probably a fake story created to get people talking about the existence of that service. i.e. an ad.

yeah, it’s pretty common for AI answers to feel very accurate and useful on topics the user doesn’t know much about, but highly error-prone and unreliable on topics the user is an expert in. … … …

:)

Yeah, maybe “trash” is a bit harsh. But it definitely isn’t on the same level as 2; and it has a lot of problems. Even the turning off power thing was a bit weird. I’m certain the top-side could easily outlast the under-city in that kind of standoff. I’m not really sure why they needed the power back so urgently. There didn’t seem to be a lot of critical infrastructure, and most people living there didn’t have any tech that could use the power anyway.

Master was said to be really smart and knowledgeable and important, but I don’t recall seeing him demonstrating that at any point. He seemed to just command other people to fix stuff and do stuff. And even when he lost that command, he was still never shown actually doing anything or sharing knowledge. So it was a bit of a mystery to me why the others thought he was important.

… And why was he in the thunderdome cage? “Two men enter, one man leaves” was a big deal; and the guards definitely did not want to open the gates. But then suddenly, inexplicably, Master is just standing right next to them in the cage. Like, wtf is he doing in there? – Ok… I’ll shut up. I do take back saying it was ‘trash’, but I definitely don’t think its a good movie.

Yeah, I definitely don’t blame her for the movie’s faults. She was very good.

To clarify, I didn’t mean “basic” as a negative thing. (That’s the kind of word association that someone might have if they grew up with the Marvel universe - but I’m older than that!) I was trying to say that it was tightly focused on the core ideas. I like that movie. It was not a criticism, but it was not exactly what I expected.

I’d try this, but I don’t know what address to email them at. All of the support / contact instructions are a labyrinth of automated systems, with the fallback option of using the ‘community forum’. Google doesn’t seem to want anyone to contact them for any reason.

I thought that too at first, which is why I tried every other available option first. But that theory is disproven by the fact that the first attempt with the number told me that the given number was not registered to the account (and so I still couldn’t log in). Clearly they were comparing the entered number to something they already had.

Heh. I just spent half a minute squinting the dark trees in the background, looking for the outline of a car. I didn’t realise the picture was swapped.

I don’t know what you mean by favouritism. The reasoning for the phone ban goes something like this:

1. Teachers and education researchers have agreed that children are less productive in school due to mobile phones.
2. But preventing children from using their phones in school creates significant additional workload, due to conflicts and arguments.
3. Various governments have recognised this, and have created a law which can remove the phones without the workload.

If you’re talking again about the fact that teachers are allowed phones but students are not, then I’m disappointed. I’ve put in quite a bit of good faith effort into talking about this stuff. At the start of our conversation I felt that I was answering genuine questions, and perhaps helping clarify why someone might want a law like this. But now I’m starting to feel like that was entirely wasted, because you never wanted to think about it anyway - you only wanted to fight it. That’s how I’m starting to feel. Maybe I’m wrong, but this ‘how does the law prevent favoritism’ seems like a totally bullshit line to reasoning to me.

Different laws and rules target different groups of people for different reasons. There’s a huge list of rules and responsibilities that apply exclusively to teachers and not other professions. And there’s a heap of rules that apply to children and not adults. There can be different rules for different reasons. As for phone usage, I’d personally be totally fine if all smart phones were phased out for everyone for all purposes across the entire world. But I do think it’s a false equivalence to say that if phones are banned for students they should also be banned for everyone else. It a totally separate argument. And note: I’m not introducing this law. I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t design it. I don’t even live in the country that the article is from. I’m only try to outline what I understand to be the motivation. If you think something negative is going to result from this law, you should try to outline what that is. What-aboutisms are not helpful.

The primary purpose of making it a government policy is to defuse the endless arguments and pushback that schools were fighting to stop students using phones.

If the rule is a case-by-case thing implemented by individual classroom teachers, it doesn’t work at all - because students will quickly see and exploit differences in how the rule is enforced by different teachers. It means the phones still get used, and any attempt to remove that distraction becomes a massive battle of “why are you targeting me. That other student is allowed to use theirs. The other teachers don’t mind.” etc etc.

Having a clear school-wide policy mostly fixes that; but it still gets a very similar effect from the parents. “I give my child permission, because they need it for such-and-such reason”. It can be dealt with, but it is genuinely a large burden on the school. But having a clear government policy removes that battle for the school. The answer is always clear “it’s a government policy, it is not our decision to make”. (By the way, there are still some exemptions for medial reasons; but again, there are no case-by-case arguments, because the policy is the same for all schools.)

So in short its about consistency; to reduce conflict between teachers and students, and between schools and parents.

There are at least a couple of distros that are based on Ubuntu. Mint is a popular example. I’d say that based on Ubuntu means it is also a Debian derivative.

To avoid any risk of legal liability the school rule becomes “do not bring a mobile phone to school”, similar to the advice that schools give about valuables in general - especially on sport days. Bring at your own risk. This is especially true when it is a government policy - i.e. not the school’s decision.

Note, this article is talking about France. But as has been pointed out, France is not the first country to do this. I live in Australia, and my comments are based on the phone bans here which have been in place here for a few years (I think the state of Victoria was first, and all states have seen one-by-one followed that example because they see it as a good idea.)

The discussion about whether or not teachers should have smart phones is a separate issue. It has a totally different pros and cons, benefits and challenges.

Perhaps this is what Musk means when it says that empathy is bad.

If your goal is to maximise your own personal wealth, then empathy really is a hindrance. But I put to you that maximising money is not a goal worth devoting a lifetime to. And perhaps not scamming dumb people is a valuable way to act regardless.

(This is essentially what motivated the Quakers to push for set prices for goods rather than constant bartering. They believed that dump people should still be able to go to a shop and buy stuff without getting ripped off. I’d say that moral position has made the world a slightly better place.)

day-dreaming isn’t intrinsically bad. People do need time to think about stuff, and have their mind drift from topic to topic. Some modern teaching practices advocate deliberate “brain breaks” for students.

The issue with phones isn’t so much that students are sometimes off task, but rather that the phone consumes their attention entirely. It uses up the students’ useful concentration as well as their ‘rest’ time.

About ‘better at hiding them’; maybe so; but that will largely be down to how the rule is enforced. Some schools basically just say “please don’t carry your phone. Put it in your locker.” In those schools, basically every student has their phone in their pocket. Whereas other schools are more strict about it. The phone can be confiscated on site, and in some cases require the parent to collect it. In those cases, compliance goes way up.

As for ‘no phones for teachers and admin’; unfortunately, some of the jobs and responsibilities of teachers are done using a phone. Teachers are required to carry a phone during yard-duty, for emergency purposes. And teachers often use their phone to mark class attendance rolls. … But its definitely a bad look when a teacher is walking down a school corridor staring at their phone while student phones are banned.

As for the reasons for the ban… well, they are many and varied - including all of the things you mentioned. (liability, mental health vs bullying in particular, and distraction from class activities.)