Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops • Hacker News Board

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#181

Post by bsagdiyev » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 5:22 PM UTC

namdnay wrote: post #106

locallost wrote: post #29

> The platform is a complex system that’s made up of three different parts, containing 18 individual modules that are maintained by five external companies. The sprawling system is used by 600 preschools and 177 schools, with separate logins for every teacher, student, and parent. The only problem? It doesn’t work. > The Skolplattform, which has cost more than 1 billion Swedish Krona, SEK, ($117 million), has failed…

So an app for schoolkids is a really good idea. In France the app is built by the (semi-public) post office, it's called "kidscare". teachers can upload photos live, you can set who is allowed to pick up your kids, you can send a notification if your kid is sick etc... not the slickest or most stable app, but miles better than using whatsapp

Our sons preschool (a Montessori school) has something similar. It is really nice. Daily updates on what he did, pictures of him throughout the day doing things, it’s amazing.

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#182

Post by jacobolus » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 5:26 PM UTC

silicon2401 wrote: post #177

jacobolus wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden is something like 20% foreign immigrants and another 5% who are children of 2 immigrant parents. For the past half century Sweden has taken in a lot of refugees and other immigrants, and has more foreign residents per capita than the USA. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden Taiwan is 3% foreign immigrants, Japan is 2%.

The article doesn't say where those immigrants are from. Swedes and Norwegians have different cultures and histories, but there's a huge difference between 20% Norwegian immigrants and 20% Chinese immigrants

According to Wikipedia the biggest groups are Syrians, Iraqis, and people from the former Yugoslavia. There are also a lot of Finns. Then there are Poles, Iranians, Somalis, Afghans, Turks, Germans, Eritreans, Thais, Indians, Norwegians, Danes, Chinese, Romanians, Etc.

Something like 5% of Swedish-born residents are descended from Finns if you go back a few generations (not counted among foreign-born immigrants).

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#183

Post by GhettoComputers » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 5:27 PM UTC

silicon2401 wrote: post #179

GhettoComputers wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People trust those that look more like them. It’s just human nature. It’s why people say all all white jury is racist when defendants are black, or why cops are racist. Putnam’s diversity study also confirmed it. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-diversity-cr... the authors hand save the data with the usual ham fisted white people are racist retort. Sociologists aren't respected because of authors like…

> “Han Chinese” isn’t based on genetics it’s many different races that call themselves Han because they share culture. Not quite. Han Chinese is a specific ethnicity. But it is true that "Chinese” isn’t based on genetics, it’s many different races that call themselves "Chinese" because they share culture. Or to cover all cases, it's many different races that the Chinese government calls "Chinese" to push a facade of…

What do you mean about it being a specific ethnicity? From what Chinese people say and the history of it, "Han Chinese" is a recent concept and used like you said to push homogenuity. Its like calling people black, white or other nebulous terms. The Cantonese language is being removed in China but the people are still Han for instance.

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#184

Post by bjourne » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 5:29 PM UTC

theptip wrote: post #123

urvader wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I am Christian Landgren, cofounder of the project) You are right, the city believes they have ownership of the data, mainly because they fail to understand that they aren’t showing data in an app, but rather publishing data in an API. In Swedish law, once you have released data from a government, the receiver have the right to do whatever they want with the that data (as long as it isn’t violating any other laws). T…

Is there any way to write an app that doesn’t “publish the data” by this definition? It seems like publishing was not their intent, and furthermore they were not legally allowed to “publish” personal data. For example if their system includes an app that lets you see your students grades and disciplinary issues, presumably you would not want that published. Is it simply impossible to build an app with such data in Sw…

There may be some terminology confusion at play. The data may be an "offentlig handling" ("public document"). Christian's argument is that since the data is a "public document" it can be published through his app. That argument is correct at least as long as he has an "utgivningsbevis" ("letter of publishing rights"?). However, it doesn't follow that the way his app is accessing the data is lawful. You may go to a bank and withdraw your savings but you may not break into a bank and physically take your savings.

Grades are "public documents" in all schools in Sweden. With other things like disciplinary issues it varies depending on whether the school is run by the government or a private company.

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#185

Post by silicon2401 » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 5:29 PM UTC

mattlondon wrote: post #153

whatshisface wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard this argument before, but is there any reason to believe it? What exactly about diversity stops social programs from working? Also, if diversity is the problem (hypothetically) why can't we implement Swedish/Japanese/Taiwanese stuff in those American towns with no diversity? Without any more explanation this sounds like one of those things where you find two statistics about two countries and say "this exp…

It might be that it is diversity of opinions that count here, and that there can be significant differences in opinions based on where you grew up etc. So swedes are cool with this, but what about people from different backgrounds? As the GP hints, people working in Sweden who are not Swedish are not comfortable with this, so perhaps in countries with much more diversity these things would never get off of the ground…

You hit the nail on the head; this is one of the many issues with diversity that is never discussed. Or rather, this is an example of how many people nowadays want superficial diversity (skin color, food, etc) but don't actually want diversity of opinions (thus we have political correctness, cancel culture, etc).

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#186

Post by silicon2401 » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

GhettoComputers wrote: post #183

silicon2401 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Han Chinese” isn’t based on genetics it’s many different races that call themselves Han because they share culture. Not quite. Han Chinese is a specific ethnicity. But it is true that "Chinese” isn’t based on genetics, it’s many different races that call themselves "Chinese" because they share culture. Or to cover all cases, it's many different races that the Chinese government calls "Chinese" to push a facade of…

What do you mean about it being a specific ethnicity? From what Chinese people say and the history of it, "Han Chinese" is a recent concept and used like you said to push homogenuity. Its like calling people black, white or other nebulous terms. The Cantonese language is being removed in China but the people are still Han for instance.

I mean that Han Chinese is a specific ethnicity. It's a documented thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_East_Asians...

> the northern and southern Han Chinese are genetically closest to each other and it finds that the genetic characteristics of present-day northern Han Chinese were already formed as early as three thousand years ago in the Central Plain area.[22]

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#187

Post by munk-a » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

titusjohnson wrote: post #145

bjourne wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there is no API here. The article makes it clear that you were intercepting client-server communication not meant to be used by third parties in order to write your own client. That it could be used as an API doesn't matter since the intent wasn't to create an API. I could do the same thing and write an app for, say, the tax agency by scraping its website but it would be a legal gray area.

There is clearly an API in play here. The article mentions it numerous times. The client app has to use an API to get its data, that's a downside of deploying a SPA. You need to make an API for it to get data from. If you don't want to make an API that exposes raw data just write a SSR app. If you want to deploy a SPA, well, you have to deploy an API as well and you need to plan around the fact that when you throw an…

It might technically look like an API - but it could still not count as an API legally (for the constitutional trick) if the interface was not intended to be public.

If you want to stretch the terms, everything on and off the web that does communication is basically an API - it's just that some of those APIs use JSON to encode their data and make it really easy to access... and some of them bury it in mountains of HTML - but if the data is there the data is there. There really isn't a functional difference between a scraper that goes from TEXT => DATA and a json decoder that goes from TEXT => DATA except how easy it is to write and maintain it.

One outcome of this fight might be that government organizations are directed to use more proprietary communication methods which would be a poor outcome for everyone involved.

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#188

Post by dakr » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

For $117 million they could have hired administrators at each school to field phone calls from parents and take care of records.

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#189

Post by matheusmoreira » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

dgfitz wrote: post #166

matheusmoreira wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> parents should have no insight on what their kids are doing unless the kid decides to tell the parent As a kid this is exactly what I believed. Parents believe otherwise, of course.

Do you have children? Honest question.

Not yet.

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#190

Post by kiklion » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

taylodl wrote: post #22

The first thing that jumps out is Sweden has a national identity system, BankID. The APIs appear to be protected using those credentials. With that in mind I have two questions: 1. Who owns the data? 2. Should public funds be used for the creation of private APIs that manage the data? The answer to (1) has consequences for (2). I think many HN readers, including myself, and certainly these parents would argue that th…

I feel like focusing on who owns the data is unnecessary.

If there is an API that grants access to data by passing in a valid auth token, then it doesn’t matter if it’s called from a SPA app or postman or curl.

As long as you are using the public API and haven’t forged an auth token then it doesn’t matter how you call the public API.