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Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

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Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#421

Post by savrajsingh »

snazz wrote: post #32

Here's the relevant frontend source code for the file upload picker, if anyone's wondering (webpack://src/components/exam/submissions/FileInput.js): { const [file] = Object.keys(e.target.files).map(key => e.target.files[key]) const fileSizeInMb = file.size/(CONVERSION_BASE*CONVERSION_BASE) const fileSizeInKb = file.size/CONVERSION_BASE const split = file.name.split('.') const fileType = split[split.length-1].toLowerC…

Haha, the fact that we are code reviewing this on HN is amazing. OK, the issue is "accept" isn't formatted as "image/jpeg, image/png", it's a list of file extensions. Which apparently wasn't enough to trigger iPhone's auto-conversion, and they just decided there wasn't a tech fix. You can totally see why -- they just never tried the mime-types.

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#422

Post by thetinguy »

tedunangst wrote: post #398
azinman2 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, as many others have pointed out by specifying the accepted file formats in the tag, they would avoid HEIC entirely as the phone would simply convert to one of the accepted formats. It's also not clear to me that this patent license is actually an issue in terms of decoding and converting file formats on the backend. Even if that were the case, I'm certain there is some commercial license software they c…

Wait. There's a way to get safari to upload HEIF without conversion? All my photos, which are HEIF on my phone, turn into jpeg when I upload them. I've been trying to get the original HEIF off for months.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207022

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#423

Post by JohnTHaller »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #355
tpush wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iOS's market share in the US is 61.25% according to [1]. [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-sta...

StatCounter shows the number of folks who visit sites with StatCounter on it. Fun fact: iOS users generally do more browsing, so this has a tendency to skew stats like StatCounter.

Similarly NetMarketShare shows Android at over 70%, since they are more business website heavy. This stat is just as flawed as StatCounter's is.

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#424

Post by Polylactic_acid »

pornel wrote: post #385
gkoberger wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't feel like Apple adopting a new format inherently means they're moving fast and breaking things. The work on HEIF started in 2012, and Apple has used it since 2017. 8 years isn't exactly a breakneck speed. First off, they do a good job of converting it to a JPG when necessary. They've thought about backwards compatibility. Secondly, if we didn't move forward, we'd never see any innovation. HEIF is smaller and…

HEIF (H.265) is heavily patented, so 8 years is way too soon. We need to wait 20 years for the format to be freely usable.

Hopefully they change to AVIF soon. Apple has always been the one to hold back free file formats in the past though.

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#425

Post by Polylactic_acid »

HumblyTossed wrote: post #41
_bxg1 wrote: post #3

This is the latest in a string of incidents where critical software systems, facing new pressure due to the pandemic, are catastrophically failing their users. I think what's happened in the past is that most public-facing software systems either a) were not really critical (because people had the alternative of doing things in-person), or b) (as in the case of all the ancient COBOL systems underpinning the US gov) h…

They specify they support PNG and JPEG, the two most common format. Why is it their fault that Apple made HEVC the default?

Its their fault that the system did not reject the file, show any actionable error message or allow users to try again. Its also their fault for saying "take the test again in a few weeks" instead of "we fucked up, send us the file again today.

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#426

Post by Polylactic_acid »

MattGaiser wrote: post #208
vaidhy wrote: post #134

I do not understand this huge criticism against college board for this. My daughter took 5 AP exams this time and we got multiple remainders from her teachers and AP board that HEIC will not work. Here is the relevant FAQ: Can student submit an HEIC file of a photo of their handwritten work? Recent iPhones and iPads save photos as HEIC files. HEIC photo files can’t be submitted “as is” in the online exam. They must b…

We are criticizing them because fixing the software to accept it and batch convert it later should be relatively easy.

HEIC is patent encumbered. The system should have blocked it and linked to the instructions on how to get a png/jpeg

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#427

Post by ummonk »

_snsh wrote: post #414
azinman2 wrote: post #299

It’s amazing to me that so many are blaming Apple. Despite the fact that this site is all about new technology (so ironic!), uploading a photo from an iPhone isn’t exactly an edge case. They should have tested this, and apparently they did enough to send a tweet about it.. as if that’s enough. Clearly the college board dropped the ball in adequately informing people of their not-great workaround, instead of either sp…

This whole blame game is weird. Could the college board have handled this better or have a better upload mechanism? Sure. Could apple be more clear about the way they are storing and transferring photos? Sure, finder on my macbook actually does worse in handling .heic files than my windows 10 desktop unless I sync using photos. But if I got this right the upload page stated the accepted file formats, why should they…

Is this for comment real? Why should being tech savvy enough to jump through esoteric technical requirements be part of the test?

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#428

Post by _snsh »

ummonk wrote: post #427
_snsh wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole blame game is weird. Could the college board have handled this better or have a better upload mechanism? Sure. Could apple be more clear about the way they are storing and transferring photos? Sure, finder on my macbook actually does worse in handling .heic files than my windows 10 desktop unless I sync using photos. But if I got this right the upload page stated the accepted file formats, why should they…

Is this for comment real? Why should being tech savvy enough to jump through esoteric technical requirements be part of the test?

> esoteric technical requirements

Knowing a file type is an "esoteric technical requirement" ?

Yes, this comment is for real. I'm the head of IT for a university and we do online applications. We actually accept everything within a given size requirement (which people are unable to respect). I have a bunch of scripts that run over all applications in the end to put them in the right formats, to do OCR for the photos of a printed PDF form that has been filled out by hand in pencil, I even run a script to scrape annotations in PDF portfolios to scrape video links and pass them to youtube-dl, to ensure everything submitted gets picked up and is provided for evaluation.

This is why I think it would be nice if there was at least some responsibility on the part of the student.

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#429

Post by whatatita »

_snsh wrote: post #419
josho wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I may restate your position: "If a student uploads an image in the wrong format then it is acceptable for their entire test to be invalid and they can retake the entire exam." Rather I think what is acceptable is HEIC is not accepted by the system, and if a student attempts to submit this format they receive an error saying that only JPG images are allowed.

> If I may restate your position: "If a student uploads an image in the wrong format then it is acceptable for their entire test to be invalid and they can retake the entire exam." Yes, being able to understand the conditions should maybe be part of passing the test. Like I said, could the upload form have handled this better? Sure, although I have not read enough to understand if this was actually the upload form fa…

> Yes, being able to understand the conditions should maybe be part of passing the test.

I agree, when It's part of the subject in test. I don't see any reasonable cause for a student to have to know about file types to submit a test, if that test isn't about file types. I don't, for example, expect my doctor to know how to convert an image file because that's not his job.

> The OP article claims "Spencer ... tried to convert it by renaming the HEIC file to PNG" which is not how you convert files.

This highlights the level of knowledge the users of this application have in this area. The developers should have made it Painfully Clear that uploading directly from an iPhone isn't supported.

> Maybe students learning that early on is not a bad thing?

I agree they should learn this stuff, but don't think it should cost them their grade to do so.

Now, I'm not saying that we shouldn't increase public understanding of these "slightly-technical" topics but I think we're a long way off and we can't expect that understanding just yet.

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#430

Post by Mirioron »

Jach wrote: post #320
Mirioron wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you wrote is almost unreadable to me in the text itself. The only reason I got it is because I recognized the formula from sqrt(b^2 - 4ac). x = (-b +- sqrt(b^2 - 4ac)) / (2a) This, however is somewhat readable. Requiring me to use TeX or Mathematica is what I would consider difficult. Whenever I actually need to write math they won't be available. I'd have more luck using custom emojis as math symbols in most ca…

Ok, how long do you think it'd take to get somewhat comfortable with reading/writing such things? Would it really be "so difficult"? You can also write what you wrote in TeX too, it just won't look as nice in the output and might mislead a reader into thinking a multiplication of s, q, r, t is happening as well as wondering what's going on with the "+-". ± is a symbol too you know.. On Linux it's just compose key the…

>Under what conditions are you writing math on a computer where you don't have proper tools to do it?

Chat applications. From IRCs and MSNs to Skypes, Telegrams and Discords. Other places would be comment sections such as these. They're never going to have built in TeX or any other such support.

Does the compose key work on different keyboard layouts?

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