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Maryland will hand out 133k Chromebooks to the public

statescoop.com

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Re: Maryland will hand out 133k Chromebooks to the public

#61

Post by JaDogg »

graphe wrote: post #17

Instead of creating jobs, or trying to help businesses, let's buy 133,000 laptops because lack of Chromebooks are what are holding people back. 28 million can't be spent better than buying Chromebooks.

Please do not create jobs. Seriously, this is a good way to get people related to politicians in various places that just pay a salary. Now the whole neighborhood is worse off. This will only lead to corruption and nepotism.

Helping businesses with something like an incubator is a good idea, and these businesses can create jobs instead of the government creating jobs.

Hopefully, these Chromebooks will make it easier for people to access knowledge/entertainment, leading to businesses/self-employment/more jobs naturally and sustainably.

Re: Maryland will hand out 133k Chromebooks to the public

#62

Post by kube-system »

bhpm wrote: post #55

The state of Maryland funneling the data of 133k low income citizens to a giant spy corp. This is dystopian as fuck. Couldn't they at least have put a lightweight linux distro on it?

> Couldn't they at least have put a lightweight linux distro on it?

ChromeOS is a lightweight Linux distro.

Re: Maryland will hand out 133k Chromebooks to the public

#64

Post by type0 »

bhpm wrote: post #55

The state of Maryland funneling the data of 133k low income citizens to a giant spy corp. This is dystopian as fuck. Couldn't they at least have put a lightweight linux distro on it?

> Couldn't they at least have put a lightweight linux distro on it?

They couldn't, but I agree, it's dystopian. They're using taxpayers money to give more Google users.

Re: Maryland will hand out 133k Chromebooks to the public

#65

Post by type0 »

kube-system wrote: post #62
bhpm wrote: post #55

The state of Maryland funneling the data of 133k low income citizens to a giant spy corp. This is dystopian as fuck. Couldn't they at least have put a lightweight linux distro on it?

> Couldn't they at least have put a lightweight linux distro on it? ChromeOS is a lightweight Linux distro.

So what? Red Star OS is also Linux distro.

Re: Maryland will hand out 133k Chromebooks to the public

#66

Post by orangepurple »

explaininjs wrote: post #50
orangepurple wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all, over the last decade, the [teachers] union spent $6,448,327 on travel expenses. That comes out to an average of $53,736 a month, every month, for 10 straight years. How does that fulfill the union’s tax-exempt mission to “elevate the quality of public education for all students”? That amount does not include "Conferences, conventions, and meetings." https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/marylands-te…

The real question is whether the state standards should be expected to apply to inner city schools. The knee jerk reaction is to say yes of course how could they not, but that ignores all sorts of socioeconomic context that goes into education.

They had 800 million dollars to figure it out and they FAILED. The entire system needs to be purged.

Re: Maryland will hand out 133k Chromebooks to the public

#68

Post by robocat »

sokoloff wrote: post #21
pton_xd wrote: post #9

I think it'd more effectively go into the appropriate hands by at least charging some nominal amount. Advertise that anyone may visit the public library and purchase a subsidized internet-capable device for $20. Or $5. Free just has no chance of being an efficient distribution.

Exactly this. The amount of wasteful greedy/hoarding behavior that is induced by free and is curbed by charging even $20 is quite high. Charging 50% of the going resale rate is probably enough to prevent hoarding and substantially curb resale. That might be slightly too much for the aims of the program, in which case adjust as needed, realizing that you're trading off one outcome for another.

"user pays" prevents the benefit from occurring.

For example in New Zealand (public healthcare) there used to be a $5 copay for prescribed medication (by government healthcare doctors). There is now no copay ($0) because 3% of people would not get the medicine because of cost. This was particularly true for low-income families, Māori, Pacific peoples, and disabled New Zealanders. That said, our conservative party wants to bring the fees back: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/budget-2023-5-prescription-fee...

If people don't pay a small amount to get something important like medicine, they perhaps wouldn't pay even a a token $20 or 50% for something luxury/"unnecessary" like easier access to the internet.

Re: Maryland will hand out 133k Chromebooks to the public

#69

Post by type0 »

adventured wrote: post #43

Spent most of my life living in Maryland. This isn't going to go well. The results will be very mediocre. After the fact they'll say: well at least they tried something. It's just like burning $27 million. They need to focus on the education and severe crime problems in and around DC + Baltimore. Nothing is getting much better in Maryland for the poor until that improves. This is a temporary 1/4 of 1% improvement man…

The best we can hope that can happen from this is that The Wire reboots with product placements for Chromebooks. Otherwise expect to find a bunch of very cheap Chromebooks on Craigslist

Re: Maryland will hand out 133k Chromebooks to the public

#70

Post by trog »

ge96 wrote: post #27
madars wrote: post #13

Recent Chromebooks are extremely nice devices. For example, $299 at BestBuy gets you an Asus CM3401. It has AMD Ryzen CPU (with similar performance as 8th gen mobile i7), 1080p screen, and an M.2 SSD you can upgrade yourself. Downside is the weight -- 1.8kg (almost 4lbs) -- and that 16 GB RAM model costs extra. But perfectly good for using Crostini (ChromeOS's Linux VM -- you can run your favorite Debian programs, in…

I wonder what is the percentage of people that would even consider "run [their] favorite Debian programs..." on their Chromebook.

I set up the Linux version of Firefox on our company's Chromebooks so we could use client certificates (not available in the Android version available from Play Store).

It's super easy so I imagine any nerd with a Chromebook that wants more functionality that they can get from mobile apps would do it!

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