Hacker News Reader

skhuntedon Disney Plus and Hulu won't let you sign up through Apple anymore

According to this Reddit thread you can cancel online but you must first chat with an agent. That's the Sirius XM I know. This thread is a year old. Maybe they have changed their ways but I'm skeptical. Consider me the Apostle Thomas. I doubt unless I see it with my own eyes.

https://old.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/100rb5f/siri...

skhuntedon Why is Apple so bad at marketing its TV shows?

I will. Thanks.

skhuntedon Why is Apple so bad at marketing its TV shows?

I believe Apple has some fantastic shows. Severance, Tehran, Silo, Slow Horses, Liason, Physical, For All Mankind (season 1).

skhuntedon The Forest Service Is Losing 2,400 Jobs–Including Most of Its Trail Workers

You do not understand how this all works. Social Security "spending" does not add to the deficit. It is not the source of any budgetary imbalances or of any structural budgetary issues in the United States. It is a pension system that is funded by workers that happens to be run by the government.

skhuntedon The Forest Service Is Losing 2,400 Jobs–Including Most of Its Trail Workers

I didn’t say it was a majority. I said it was the largest expense. Plurality vs. majority.

You are absolutely wrong in your belief. Defense spending is roughly 50% of discretionary spending.

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59729

skhuntedon The Forest Service Is Losing 2,400 Jobs–Including Most of Its Trail Workers

> If the government decided to make Social Security a private corporation it could No, it couldn’t. There were promises made with the full faith and credit of the United Stares.

I'm not a lawyer so I'll rephrase. In an alternate universe the U.S. government created a corporation to run Social Security. It mandated that people participate in it. Everyone called it a pension system because that it what it is.

Congress can amend them at will.

All pension systems are subject to amendment. Many pension systems have been amended over the years.

skhuntedon The Forest Service Is Losing 2,400 Jobs–Including Most of Its Trail Workers

If the Supreme's deem it so then it must be. Are there any decisions they've gotten wrong?

Your benefit is based on what you pay in. It pays out less than what it takes in. If it were privatized you and the Supremes would call it a pension. It acts like a pension, quacks like a pension and is a pension.

skhuntedon The Forest Service Is Losing 2,400 Jobs–Including Most of Its Trail Workers

Indeed! They've done a great job at muddying the waters. Otherwise knowledgeable people don't understand how this works.

skhuntedon The Forest Service Is Losing 2,400 Jobs–Including Most of Its Trail Workers

Apparently you don't understand how pensions work. Take a 401(k). Under normal circumstances what you take out of the 401(k) far exceeds what you put into it. This is what happens with investments generally speaking.

Saying, "Social Security beneficiaries receive more than they paid in..." indicates you don't know what you are talking about. And, believe it or not, Social Security does invest money.

And yes, it does salvage the argument. Defense spending (all of it not just DOD) is the largest expense of the government. This is expected when you are the hegemon.

skhuntedon The Forest Service Is Losing 2,400 Jobs–Including Most of Its Trail Workers

They call it mandatory spending but this is a misnomer. When you pay into a pension system and pre-pay for insurance it’s expected that you receive the benefits you paid for. That it is government run is irrelevant to how it should be viewed. Social Security is not an expense of the government. It’s a government run pension system.

skhuntedon The Forest Service Is Losing 2,400 Jobs–Including Most of Its Trail Workers

You are wrong. From ssa.gov:

The Social Security Retirement benefit is a monthly check that replaces part of your income when you reduce your hours or stop working altogether.

Most people would refer to this as a “pension”. Call it whatever you want to. The fact is that its issues are easily fixable and your benefit is based on how much you put into it.

skhuntedon The Forest Service Is Losing 2,400 Jobs–Including Most of Its Trail Workers

If the government decided to make Social Security a private corporation it could. If it did this, keeping in place Social Security “taxes” that would then go to the new corporation, we would not consider Social Security a budget expense. Being government owned or private doesn’t matter in terms of how the expenditures should be considered. This is why Social Security and Medicare are not part of the normal budget negotiations at budget time. These are obligations that need to be paid to the people who paid for them.

skhuntedon A new book shows how the power of companies is destabilizing governance

There are lots of examples of countries having much higher minimum wages without the consequences you mentioned.

skhuntedon Disney Plus and Hulu won't let you sign up through Apple anymore

Canceling subscriptions is so difficult to do the the U.S. that a federal agency has announced new regulations designed to make it easy.

skhuntedon Disney Plus and Hulu won't let you sign up through Apple anymore

I don’t believe you based on my experience.

skhuntedon The Forest Service Is Losing 2,400 Jobs–Including Most of Its Trail Workers

Social Security is not an expense of the government. Well, for the most part. It’s a pension plan that people pay into. Similarly for Medicare. People pay into it before retirement. Then at a certain age they get this insurance benefit. Private insurers will not insure the elderly. If anything you should characterize this as a private insurance industry subsidy. It allows insurers to offload their riskiest clients to another entity.

Your characterization is badly wrong.

EDIT: Until recently Social Security took in more money than it paid out. It’s run by the government so its expenditures are counted as a budget item. But it is a sound pension system whose defects can be easily fixed if a certain party would actually govern. It is not the largest expense by the government. It’s just that it is a government run pension system. It’s not an entitlement either.

skhuntedon Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

I made the point I wished to make. Someone else made a point you wanted to hear. The two points were not quite the same. It will benefit you to find a way to accept that this occurs without getting into a tizzy.

skhuntedon Disney Plus and Hulu won't let you sign up through Apple anymore

Obviously you did not understand what I wrote. I clearly stated that sometimes it is as easy to cancel a service outside of using Apple as it is with using Apple. I followed up with a rhetorical question: “Why take the risk?”

skhuntedon Disney Plus and Hulu won't let you sign up through Apple anymore

By signing up through Apple you are guaranteed to have an easy way to cancel. With many subscription services it is very difficult to cancel. Sometimes a service you can sign up for using Apple is easy to cancel even if you sign up outside of Apple. But why take the risk if you can sign up through Apple?

skhuntedon Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

I think you have very little experience teaching.

skhuntedon Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

One should not memorize in mathematics at the college level. If you understand you don’t need to memorize anything. The memorization that should occur is when you remember certain facts because you’ve done enough problems that your brain “just knows” them.

Anytime students are allowed technology there is massive amounts of cheating. Knowing a certain body of knowledge off the top of your head is important in all areas of study.

skhuntedon Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

You don't, IMO, directly care how they produced the answer, you care about it only as a proxy for them learning the material well enough to solve the problem.

I don’t care about the answer. I care about the thought process that went into finding the answer. The answer is irrelevant.

And making people do them in person with no technology is unrealistic - not because it can't be done, but because at that point, it's not a reflection of how you'd use it outside of that classroom, and people are going to call it pointless, and IMO they'd be right.

There’s body of knowledge a person trained in a given area ought to know without use of computers or notes. There are things a person who calls themself “an engineer” or “a physicist” ought to know off the top of their head. A person going into mechanical engineering ought to have some familiarity with how to integrate without using a computer. Such is my belief.

skhuntedon Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

Can't or didn't? I had a different message to convey. You can't understand that. Or perhaps, you didn't understand that. Can't or didn't?

I reiterate:

But even requiring in person proctored exams is not the full solution. Students are not used to doing the necessary work to learn. They are used to doing the necessary work to pass. And that work is increasingly cheating. It’s a clusterfuck. I have calculus students who don’t know how to work with fractions. If we did truly devise a system that prevents cheating we’ll see that a very high percentage of current college students are not ready to be truly college educated.

K-12 needs to be changed as well.

skhuntedon Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

That's why this has to be mandated by the Higher Learning Commission or the federal Department of Education.

skhuntedon Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

Since the state no longer properly funds higher education there has been a shift in attitude. We are now a business and the client is the student. This has negative long term consequences. One of them is that I pretend to give real tests and real grades. The client must pass. The cost of acquiring new clients is much greater than the cost of keeping existing clients. It's easy to give a passing grade.

Students largely just want to pass. They mostly don't care that they don't know anything.

skhuntedon Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

There is much less homework these days than in, say, the 1980’s. This is true across all levels of education.

skhuntedon Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

…don't think there needs to be drastic changes, just some small things that allow the education and curriculum to become more engaging.

I think the vast majority of people who say and think this haven’t taught in the classroom much.

skhuntedon Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

That’s the Higher Learning Commission’s job. Partly their job. The HLC is a joke and an expensive farce.

skhuntedon Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

Matriculation agreements are based on content covered not on whether or not the students learned the material. But since community colleges have less grade inflation than other institutions passing our classes means more.

The Higher Learning Commision is a farce. It’s purpose is for sinecures for its employees.

skhuntedon Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

A lot of colleges have become zombie colleges. Enrollment is way down. Gotta please the remaining clients.