111–120 of 174 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The privacy policy for education and the article both explicitly say they are not doing this.
> say they aren't doing this. Well, problem solved! Neither the government nor Google have ever lied to us. ;-)
A couple personal anecdotes related to this: I volunteer at a school to help maintain around 300 iPads and ~20 iMacs. It's awful. (I am a longtime Mac user at home BTW). The management tools around updating the iPads, installing apps, and configuring users are all terrible, unreliable and old. It leads to teacher frustration and less use of the equipment in the classroom. The only thing worse are the windows computer…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Chrome book is indeed a real killer product, not just for schools but for average home users as well. Microsoft used to have a Briefcase icon on desktops for offline file syncing. It used to work for those who used it effectively (it was under used of course). But yes, Dropbox went further than anyone else.
I remember Microsoft Briefcase. It was one of the new, exciting features you could only get with Windows 95! Yes, woefully underused. But in those days networked storage was difficult to set up and removable media meant ZIP drives. Today we have The Cloud™, aka PFM that just works.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're talking about engineers. Of course you need to understand some formulas if you're going to be an engineer. But for most of the people who aren't going to do that, they're useless.
But for most of the people who aren't going to do that, they're useless. A system that cuts out a whole range of career paths simply because as a kid someone didn't like maths, is a bad one. Kids don't know what they need in life. That's why our culture takes decisions away from them until they are 18.
I have mixed feelings about this. Personally, working as a contractor at Google was one of the interesting jobs I have had and I generally like Google. That said, after reading Dave Eggers' excellent book "The Circle" last year and having watched the movie yesterday, I was reminded of the dangers (even if fictional in the case of the book) of a monopoly controlling knowledge. The book/movie is obviously about Google…
I also think it is kinda backwards that a for-profit corporation is subsidizing public education. This is a symptom of a broken system and instead of praising Google we should fix what is broken about the system. This also creates an interesting precedent if it sticks. Are parents going to beg Google to prop up their schools now?
Who is we? The state? I don't trust the state to be able to fix this. Remember the launch of healthcare.gov? Google employees had to step in to fix it to make it usable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> say they aren't doing this. Well, problem solved! Neither the government nor Google have ever lied to us. ;-)
Without an example that shows that Google has a habit of lying your comment just wastes people's time. Do your research and make your comment useful.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also think it is kinda backwards that a for-profit corporation is subsidizing public education. This is a symptom of a broken system and instead of praising Google we should fix what is broken about the system. This also creates an interesting precedent if it sticks. Are parents going to beg Google to prop up their schools now?
> we should fix what is broken about the system Who is we? The state? I don't trust the state to be able to fix this. Remember the launch of healthcare.gov? Google employees had to step in to fix it to make it usable.
Google is providing cheap, stable laptops for education and most people commenting here are painting Google as an evil data-hungry corporation. I get that companies should be subject to scrutiny due to their outsized responsibility and impact, but this is just silly. In 2013 only 60% of children had internet access at home in the U.S.[0] It might not seem like a big deal for HN readers, but computer access is still a…
But this way? Sorry, but after the past years you can’t honestly believe this is pure altruism.
They are also building profiles on every single one of those students which is not only creepy but downright dangerous. Imagine if Trump decided he no longer wanted to hire anyone for a public sector job, if they are pro-green politics. Society will come to regret this and I'll probably still be alive to witness it.
The privacy policy for education and the article both explicitly say they are not doing this.
Oh, wait, they did exactly that with Gmail.
I have mixed feelings about this. Personally, working as a contractor at Google was one of the interesting jobs I have had and I generally like Google. That said, after reading Dave Eggers' excellent book "The Circle" last year and having watched the movie yesterday, I was reminded of the dangers (even if fictional in the case of the book) of a monopoly controlling knowledge. The book/movie is obviously about Google…
I also think it is kinda backwards that a for-profit corporation is subsidizing public education. This is a symptom of a broken system and instead of praising Google we should fix what is broken about the system. This also creates an interesting precedent if it sticks. Are parents going to beg Google to prop up their schools now?
The fact that Google is providing a subjectively better alternative isn't remotely new, but if it works better and see lower cost to schools, I'm more than happy to see it happen.