I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled • Hacker News Board

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#721

Post by fivestones » Sat, Jan 11, 2025, 6:10 PM UTC

duck wrote: post #683

Jcampuzano2 wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until they post evidence, legal counsel comments on it, or its reported by a news agency its a bit moot. I personally would have gone full nuclear and posted all evidence to put pressure on the school already by now. If I'm already defacto expelled I'd have nothing to lose by putting this on blast. Its weird that he hasn't posted anything given the retaliation he is receiving, hence why its hard to take completely se…

It made the news this evening: https://www.king5.com/article/tech/university-of-washington-...

Interesting that the article skirts around the part where they imply they’ll lift the hold of and when he gives them the ip/works to build a solution for them unpaid.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#722

Post by j45 » Sat, Jan 11, 2025, 11:28 PM UTC

wl wrote: post #576

j45 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An example of the difference between being independent vs third party. Who mostly pays them sets the rules.

The entity paying the lawyers isn’t making the rules here. This is professional ethics: the attorneys in question have a conflict of interest.

It’s subtler than conflict of interest.

Anyone working for students while being paid for by the university (like some ombudsman) might think twice before going too hard after anything in the institution side that they work at, with people, etc.

This isn’t to say it should be adversarial, just not endlessly borne back against the currents into being neutralized by bureaucracy and office politics.

If it was independently funded..

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#723

Post by lazyasciiart » Sun, Jan 12, 2025, 8:59 AM UTC

croemer wrote: post #660

lolinder wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general I worry about ragebait stories that trend on HN. They're sometimes legit, but way too often there's a quiet coda where someone figures out it was all a sham, but that discovery occurs after the story has already been drawing attention for 24 hours or more, and the recall doesn't get the attention the initial rage did. So people walk away remembering a story that was a lie, while the truth gets quickly forg…

I also worry about this which is why I've been researching things and posting my findings here. I wish this got picked up by at least the student newspaper. UW should be able to present their side. Hard to predict whether we will ever know the truth.

https://www.geekwire.com/2025/uw-and-computer-science-studen...

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#724

Post by lazyasciiart » Sun, Jan 12, 2025, 9:06 AM UTC

zifpanachr23 wrote: post #429

turbojet1321 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was more thinking that there's not a particularly natural overlap between sports and academic ability. You'd think that by tying the two together, you'd get both worse sporting and academic performance than if they were unrelated.

The US has a decidedly liberal viewpoint on education. Sports ability is in some sense an educational endeavor. The ancient Greeks called it "athletics". So US educational institutions don't really have any hangup against treating sports any differently than they might treat a CS class. They are a subject you have to study and train at...and sometimes sit in a theatre and have a class time about (watching scout foota…

Not really. You can’t major in playing sports, you can’t get credit for it, and i don’t know what you mean by “as rigorous as anything else academically”, but it’s probably not true. I didn’t play division 1 anything but I did play in college (no scholarship).

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#725

Post by adi4213 » Sun, Jan 12, 2025, 6:17 PM UTC

Are you looking for a job? I’m hiring a software engineer and was definitely impressed by reading this story! Regardless, you should definitely consider working at a startup - the world is full of annoying gatekeepers to innovation. When I was an undergraduate, I built a system to better forecast and map campus bus shuttle routes and also received a letter like this

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#726

Post by lkbm » Sun, Jan 12, 2025, 8:12 PM UTC

diggan wrote: post #483

lkbm wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some required courses are only taught in Spring or only in Fall. Some of those "Fall only" courses are prerequisites for other required Spring-only courses. If you can't get into a required course, it can delay your graduation a full year. That costs way more than a couple hundred dollars. I ended up needing to stay an extra semester for a single course my final semester, because I planned poorly and discovered too l…

> If you can't get into a required course, it can delay your graduation a full year. That costs way more than a couple hundred dollars. Sure, but if you don't have "a couple of hundred dollars", you don't. It's a bit like saying "Why are people poor? Just put $1 million into a savings account, then you'll get enough to survive each month". Great for the ones who can, irrelevant for the ones who can't.

If you're able to scrape together the funds for another semester, you can probably scrape together a couple hundred bucks to avoid paying for that extra semester.

People going to university like to talk about how poor they are, but they're obviously not "can't manage a couple hundred bucks for college" poor. I've known a lot of constantly-bordering-on-homeless people, and they're usually lucky to even manage community college. UW is $13k a year just for tuition.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#727

Post by eru » Mon, Jan 13, 2025, 3:35 AM UTC

fakedang wrote: post #684

dmurray wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've obviously never worked in consulting.

I've never considered the run of the mill management consultants as engineers, and yeah, I haven't worked in/as a technical consultant.

Management consulting != consulting in general.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#728

Post by eru » Mon, Jan 13, 2025, 3:36 AM UTC

roywiggins wrote: post #221

dylan604 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because even if you "win", you now have all of those lovely legal bills that the lawyer sends you. If you loose, you now have all of those lovely legal bills that the lawyer sends you. So the lawyer wins either way.

Well yeah, if you hire someone to help you with something, you often end up owing them money, whether or not it ends up successful.

Depends on the contract.

But I agree in general.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#729

Post by fakedang » Mon, Jan 13, 2025, 9:11 AM UTC

KPGv2 wrote: post #702

fakedang wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never considered the run of the mill management consultants as engineers, and yeah, I haven't worked in/as a technical consultant.

There are plenty engineering consulting firms. In fact, I'd go so far as to say all engineering firms are consulting firms except the ones that are a department within a larger construction or manufacturing company. Consulting is when you're hired to advise someone else on a task, right? I'm not sure what service an outside engineer offers except consulting services.

Yes, I know engineering consultancies exist, and I've previously engaged with them.

My point is that engineering consultants, at least in the industries I've worked at, are not paid for the duration of the project, but for specific deliverables. Software is the exception in engineering, not the norm.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#730

Post by clamprecht » Mon, Jan 13, 2025, 3:26 PM UTC

I went through similar crap with University of Texas at Austin when I wrote Classgrabber around 2002. Universities are pathetic when it comes to this stuff. If a CS student (or any student) does anything to show how incompetent their own staff is, they go berserk. And they still have the balls to ask me for alum money every year.