When my 3 kids were teenagers (though younger than 18) I had an Asus Router that had pretty good access controls, I assume most Asus Routers still have the same controls. You could actually limit internet access by MAC address to certain times of day. For all of my kids' devices (phones, video game consoles, computers) I found their MAC address in the table in the router management website and limited the devices internet access to just a couple of hours a day that we agreed the kids could have screen time. For the most part it was easy enough to figure out which device was which, for a couple I had to do a little experimenting like just cutting off MAC addresses while they were playing a game until I heard yelling (;
I agree with the sentiment here that this is no substitute for parenting and having an actual conversation with your kids. But it is a tool that you can use to enforce you're rules. I caught my boys on multiple occasions playing video games late on school nights after we had gone to bed, and this was after we had discussed with them not playing games on school nights. Shutting down their internet access at the router put an end to the problem and grades came back up fairly quickly after that.
This is not accurate, I just had a kid graduate from Dartmouth a couple of years ago and my wife and I make right around $150k combined with her working part time. We paid around $35,000/year, so Dartmouth covered about half of tuition costs. We did also take advantage of the federal student loans, it seems reasonable for the kids to have a little skin in the game as well.
I don't think it's rank speculation, the article itself mentions 1 in 6 men are unemployed, and there have been plenty of other articles that have been posted on here with statistics on the number of men that aren't just unemployed but have no interest being employed. College enrollment of men is somewhere around 44% of the student body nation wide in the US, the number of men in higher education has been dropping for a couple of decades now. Girls are significantly outperforming boys from Kindergarten to 12 grade nearly everywhere. This stuff has been posted on here and discussed many times.
There was another article posted on here before similar to this one and I posted my thoughts on the trend from the perspective of coaching high school girls and boys sports:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30274979&p=4#30276972
There is a lot of evidence that I think backs up your anecdata. For example Massachusetts has the highest performing public school system in the US (arguably, but by many measures) and their curriculum is based on the content heavy Core Curriculum (not to be confused with the watered down Common Core) created by E.D. Hirsch. Hirsch was a college professor and his argument is that knowledge is a significant portion of literacy, he witnessed this first hand trying to teach college freshman that simply didn't have the background knowledge to understand the college level books Hirsch was teaching, even though they had no problem reading the words. Hirsch's books "Cultural Literacy" and "The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them" go into detail about this and he has some essays available online that are worth reading.
There's also the fact that coal power plants tend to be pretty far from heavily populated areas. Even if the US power grid were 100% coal (which it is not) this would still be a win as far as cleaner air goes for a significant portion of the population. There's a big difference between a coal burning power plant's emissions 50 miles away and a school bus idling right outside your house in terms of air quality. That's not even counting the air scrubbers and particulate capturing systems many coal power plants are required to have. The bottom line is the exhaust coming out of a coal burning power plant is much cleaner than even a brand new diesel school bus, let alone all the older buses still in service.
Even in terms of primary cost, diesel buses are expensive to maintain. My FIL was a mechanic for the local school district for 15 years, so I got a little insight into that aspect of the district. Our medium sized school district, 4 big high schools and all the feeder schools for them, employs around 6 full time mechanics plus their manager with all the equipment and the facility to work on the buses year round plus parts etc. It's not difficult to imagine that cost alone adds at least $1 million to our district's budget annually. In addition they have to have some percentage of extra buses because they are constantly rotating buses out for maintenance. They also have to have at least one extra bus and driver on standby every day because diesel buses breakdown regularly during a route and they have to go out with a second bus and pick up the kids and finish the route.
So if a district can outsource part of that maintenance cost, and electric buses prove to be lower maintenance and more reliable that their diesel counterparts, there are significant savings to be had for the school districts.
Depending on how much space you have a you can find treadmills cheap on Craigslist. People practically have to give them away just to get rid of them. I use a treadmill in the winter and go outside during the summer. There are also walking only treadmills that are pretty affordable ($300) that fit under a desk and you can walk during meetings etc. I generally agree going to a gym just to walk seems like a waste.
We get a number of bald eagles in Colorado over the winter (and a few that stay and nest in the summer). I have seen them kill full grown Canadian Geese in the winter and catch ducks in the air (very fast). Bald Eagles in particular are shockingly fast and agile when they want to be. They can be magnificent predators when they need to be but they are also very flexible and adaptable and if there is an easier option they will choose it. I've been a falconer for 30 years and eagles (both Bald and Golden Eagles) can be the bane of a falconer's existence in some areas. Eagles are the absolute apex avian predator and they make a significant part of their living bullying other birds of prey and taking their kills. I've known a number of falconers that have had their falcons or hawks killed by Eagles, I assume it happens in the wild all the time as well. I've seen our local eagles regularly harassing Osprey and taking their fish in the summer. It's like Bears, Wolves and Mountain Lions, they can also be magnificent predators, but when presented with an easier option like getting into the trash or eating someone's pet or livestock they'll often take it easier option.
For birds when they are trapped and banded they are not tranquilized, typically they can be placed in a sock or otherwise wrapped up to restrain them and keep them calm, so the chances of them dying or getting hurt are very low. I’ve been involved in several bird banding outings and never saw a bird get hurt or die. The privacy thing is another issue I’ll leave to other experts.
It definitely doesn’t work with mine, just a black pair of Ray-Bans. I just tried it again to make sure it hasn’t changed with the latest update. I use my phone as an offline GPS for hiking and it’s been a constant frustration for me, as there is a significant delay before it gives you the keypad after FaceID fails. I’ve tried setting up an “alternative appearance” in FaceID with my sunglasses on and it just complains that my face is obstructed.
FaceID doesn’t work with sunglasses on either. It would be nice if we could just have both to cover most weather scenarios. Of course too much face covering and gloves in the winter and neither are going to work then (;
I'm not disagreeing with your point, but I don't think this entire trend can be blamed on a lack of fathers. I'm fortunate now that I coach at a school in a pretty affluent community, the vast majority of the kids I coach have married parents with active fathers in the house. I still see many of these young men fairly checked out by high school. I think in many of these cases boys are over protected these days, they grow up without the freedom to explore and test themselves and their parents create an environment where it's OK not to try or put forth an honest effort or finish your commitments etc.
Years ago I coached at an inner city school, lots of single moms, I've seen the results first hand. I'd like to think for many of those kids I was a positive male role model, maybe one of the only ones in their life. Unfortunately I don't live in that area anymore.
I think it's probably some of both. Boys are definitely more distracted with stuff like video games than girls, but then again many girls are absolutely obsessed with social media (TikTok/Snapchat etc) and still manage to succeed in school and sports. I do also think it has to do with the age of maturation, girls just mature earlier than boys.
I've coached high school sports teams, both boys and girls, for the last two decades. I've seen some of these trends unfold over the years with my student athletes. My observation is girls are just more motivated than boys, even for something fun like sports practices and workouts, girls in general will show up more consistently than boys. The teachers I've spoken to at the school where I coach have confirmed the same thing with school work. What I've seen is the boys that are successful at school or sports have at least one parent pushing them at home, and from my experience it's often the mother. I'm not trying to downplay the role of positive male role models and their impact, but what it seems like many boys are missing these days is motivation and drive, and that can come from anywhere. I don't know what it is but it just seems like girls are much better at thinking about the future and putting in the work to get where they want to be, boys often need the guidance of an adult to steer them that way, and fewer of them are getting it now.
There are certainly some exciting projects happening in the fusion world coming up. It seems likely we will start seeing much higher energy outputs, I think for SPARC they are predicting >10x the energy produced as what it will consume (Q > 10).
My biggest question is with the crazy temperatures involved will we ever see one of these things able to run for hours at a time? With SPARC they are shooting for 10 second bursts, so that would double this breakthrough for the JET reactor. Even with the magnetic containment there are components in there exposed to millions of degrees Celsius right? That leaves us with some significant material science problems to solve.
You ever wonder what Manhattan used to look like before New York City was built or San Francisco Bay? We’ve leveled mountains mining coal and covered deserts and seas with oil rigs. Unfortunately this is not a new problem for humans.
The problem is colleges and universities have increased their prices so much over the last 20 years they're forcing people to make this kind of analysis on ROI. In the old days a young person could pay for a local university with a part time job and spend 4 years getting a major with a poor ROI just because it was interesting or so they can participate in campus life, but those days are gone. Now that a 4 year degree could result in a lifetime of debt people should do some careful analysis before making that kind of decision, and that’s purely on these institutions of higher learning for pricing themselves out of the market.
They're unique arrangement with Netflix predates their Video Partner Program and probably some of their other app store rules:
Peter Stern:
"Longer Version: I explained that these IAP tests are not OK for Apple. Our commitment to developers and customers is to run the world's best App Store, and when Netflix is cycling in and out, they are undermining that. I also explained that we run a principled App Store, and they have a unique arrangement because it was struck before the existing Video Partner Program came into effect..."
Agreed, I've spent quite a bit of time in Bangkok and Tokyo and while the Thai and Japanese food is incredible in those two cities, the selection of other ethnic foods is pretty limited. You won't for example find Mexican, Brazilian or Moroccan food in these cities. When it comes to both quality and selection of ethnic food from around the world it's hard to beat the large US cities.
According to the article it's not the mental exertion that causes the weight loss, it's the stress and anxiety players experience for extended periods of time, quote from the article: "Grandmasters sustain elevated blood pressure for hours in the range found in competitive marathon runners".
So it's unlikely extended periods of mental exertion would have the same effect without having additional stress or pressure.
Doing prescribed burns outside of the normal fire season allows them to reduce the fuel load and restore more natural conditions without the risk of creating giant runaway fires.
Funny how they never talk about doing this with medical doctors, or expanding the number of medical schools. I guess their wages aren't considered too high, despite the insane costs of medical treatment in the US. Engineers need a stronger lobby, see the AMA for an example apparently.
This is hardly beyond standard practice in the industry.
The SLS is going to orbital flight with no flight testing. Heck the Falcon Heavy launched a car past Mars' orbit on it's first flight. I think SpaceX's main goal was to refine their manufacturing process and make sure they can achieve a certain level of consistency in building these things. The fact that they installed all these Raptors before even doing a pressure test tells you they are far more confident in their processes than they were even 6 months ago.
Tesla invested a significant amount of money into building out a charging network for their cars. Toyota has been selling fuel cell vehicles for longer than Tesla has been in existence and they've made no such effort to create a network of hydrogen fueling stations. Even now with the threat of battery electric vehicles becoming the next platform for personal transportation Toyota continues to sit on it's hands when it comes to supporting it's own technology. Even their lobbying efforts aren't around trying to push hydrogen, it's around protecting their hybrid and gasoline vehicle business. Their actual efforts around hydrogen vehicles tells you everything you need to know: it's not viable and they know it. Toyota could be selling as many Mirais as Tesla sells vehicles, the demand is clearly there and people would pay a hefty price to get them like they do for Teslas. So why don't they?
This is true in theory, but in practice I think hybrids are the worst of both worlds. I've had two Toyota Priuses and a Honda Civic Hybrid all of which we drove to around 150,000 miles each. One of our Priuses and the Civic Hybrid needed their hybrid batteries replaced during their lifetime. Not only was this a significant cost but I've got to believe that it negates a lot of the environmental benefits of the vehicle. It's not an uncommon problem either, there are plenty of 3rd parties selling refurbished hybrid battery packs, it's a common enough problem that a whole industry has built up around it. In addition both of our Priuses started burning oil at some point over 100,000 miles. This is a notorious problem with the Prius and there are lots of discussions about the problem in online forums. It certainly ruins any illusion I had about clean emissions from the cars over the course of it's life. I never fail to notice the little puff of grey smoke when behind Priuses at stop lights when the engine starts up again, so much for being the clean air poster child.
We have a Tesla Model 3 now with about 50,000 miles on it, we've only seen about a 2-3% decrease in range so far, if even that. The only maintenance so far has been refilling the washer fluid and we've replaced the tires once. I see no reason why it won't easily go to 150,000+ miles. The difference with the hybrids we have had is night and day, it's not even close. Toyota does not have a winning hand to play here and they know it. They bet on the wrong tech and they are tied down by a dealer network that is dependent on maintenance costs to support them.
This is why I think it sucks when device manufacturers like Apple and to a lesser extent Google (Google Play has been more open to allowing development related apps in their store) restrict the kinds of apps that can be downloaded from their store. Smart phones are every bit a generic computing device as a PC, and for many people world wide it's the only one they have access too. For companies like Apple to say nope, you can take selfies with this thing, but you are absolutely not allowed to upload an IDE or code editor to our app store is really taking away opportunities like the one in this story.
If the stars are reasonably close together a supernova would do it. Even a relatively distant supernova (like 30-40 light years) would likely render most planets inhabitable for a long time.
I have 3 kids in college right now, actually one just graduated with a computer science degree. All 3 of my kids have talked about how much gender ideology has creeped into the classroom at the college level, to the point where virtually every class including computer science, engineering and science courses, has to start off with addressing pronoun preferences. It is a political hot-topic for sure, and those often go horribly in online forums but to say that it's not related to software development and startup culture is a bit disingenuous. It is effecting higher education in a big way, and it is creeping into corporate culture.