_snsh · HackerTrans

6 years agodiscuss

No one rational makes absolute comments on the internet.

Maybe university IT departments are staffed by people. Maybe even at the college board it's just some IT guys trying to keep a shitty platform working. Maybe they did the best they could working within their constraints and they expected the same from students who have a vested interest in getting their results submitted. Maybe this is just much ado about nothing.

_snsh

6 years agodiscuss

> I suspect few would know much beyond that, and most would not have had much reason to worry about converting between formats.

Ok, first of, why should I (as an institution) care about the people unable to fulfil the conditions of my test? Maybe I only want people with a basic understanding of file formats because chances are they will have less issues with future applications?

> They did need to provide detailed instructions ahead of time, including possible issues with unsupported formats.

They send out a message a week before the tests. The website only accepted the allowed formats. You could complain about them using Twitter to send out that message but you are not.

> They didn't need to accept heif files. They did need to provide detailed instructions ahead of time, including possible issues with unsupported formats.

They did not accept .heic files (see the source from the upload js file). They did provide a list of supported files. Maybe the handholding should stop at some point?

_snsh

6 years agodiscuss

I'm not overestimating them. I see lots of college admission files, I know how inept most high school graduates are. I would like to see a higher base standard because frankly these issues are not going away for them and I don't see it as a tertiary education issue. 3 to 6 years later they will still have to submit resumes and portfolios and they will suck at it but the places they submit these to now longer offer any grace periods. File size to large? Fuck you. Wrong file type? Fuck you. Unsigned PDF? Fuck you. Missing a document? Fuck you. Missed a dead line? Fuck you.

_snsh

6 years agodiscuss

    else if (!isAllowedExtension)
         error = { title: 'This file type is not acceptable.', details: 'Please check the requirements, save your file in one of the accepted 
    formats, and resubmit.' }

Or, maybe theverge is just lying or relying on the misconception. If you think renaming your file is the same as converting your file, maybe you are misplaced in the advanced placement program...

_snsh

6 years agodiscuss

[flagged]

_snsh

6 years agodiscuss

Out of curiosity which office did you work in between 2007 and 2018 when you started working for stripe? How is your teams WFH experience within stripe?

_snsh

6 years agodiscuss

[flagged]

_snsh

6 years agodiscuss

Sadly, it's not. I've had lots students who would use the Opera VPN or one of the "free" anti-virus providers VPNs because they got sold (by adds or dumb friends) that it would be safer.

You seriously over-estimate the "tech-savviness" of the average student and that really is part of the issue I'm pointing out here.

_snsh

6 years agodiscuss

[flagged]

_snsh

6 years agodiscuss

Yes, if you want to use a cell phone and/or a computer to complete your tasks you should have some basic knowledge about how it operates.

You can shift responsibility for that knowledge wherever you want but I would say that at the age between 16 and 19 (which google tells me is the average age for AP classes) I would expect that knowledge from someone applying for AP credit. And if someone didn't know what the accepted file types (as stated in the FAQ) meant at that age I'd expect them to figure it out for themselves.

_snsh

6 years agodiscuss

It's not an explicit category on the test and I never debated that. It might be an implicit requirement though.

Just how when you take your drivers test you should actually be able to operate your vehicle and know the laws around operating a motor vehicle aside from the explicit knowledge required from you in the test. But I understand how this might be a foreign concept for someone from the US.

_snsh

6 years agodiscuss

>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.

Understanding the conditions of your test is part of the test. And your doctor doesn't have to know. His toolchain forces him to use certain programs and settings. If anything is set up wrong, your MRI image is just a worthless CD-R.

>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.

They did. The supported file formats were clearly stated. Your issue here is with apple.

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

It doesn't. They can retake the test without punishment.

>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.

I disagree. The sooner people learn that renaming a file does not constitute conversion the better. When I was a student 15 years ago it was painfully clear you could not upload the 50MB .tif file your scanner spat out (silly websites at the time would just not take 50MB uploads most of the time...). I think this "slightly-technical" knowledge is something akin to correct spelling and grammar. It's fine if you disagree but, in my opinion (even if that was not the intent of the college board), this is not a bad lesson to teach.

_snsh

6 years agodiscuss

Well, I disagree. I think "media competence" is more important than spelling or grammar and should be something expected of someone entering tertiary education.

_snsh

6 years agodiscuss

You would be surprised how many students use an iphone and a macbook but are unwilling to use safari (or icloud, photos) because of privacy concerns.

If you stay in the "regular" apple workflow everything is fine: iphone camera -> icloud/photos (airdrop/photos) -> safari. If you deviate at certain points though the workflow breaks down. Whose fault is that?

_snsh

6 years agodiscuss

> 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.

_snsh

6 years agodiscuss

> 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 failing. The OP article claims "Spencer ... tried to convert it by renaming the HEIC file to PNG" which is not how you convert files. Maybe students learning that early on is not a bad thing?

_snsh

6 years agodiscuss

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 accept anything else? Sure, there are workarounds to handle uploading .heic files and automatic conversion works in certain cases but why should they care? The onus is on the user to ensure his submission is correct.

EDIT: I just tried .heic files on my Surface and had to install an MS store app to actually be able to open .heic files in full resolution.

https://www.microsoft.com/de-de/p/heif-bilderweiterungen/9pm...

EDIT2: I guess for me it boils down to, why should we coddle the applicants? Being able to understand the conditions of a test is not an unreasonable hardship. From that I gathered the website stated the accepted file formats. The uploader source suggests it did refuse certain file formats. There are technical solutions for this/these problem(s) and of course it would be nice if every system would be perfect. But it would also be nice if people would just work within the given constraints of a system.

_snsh

6 years agodiscuss

The site will always try to trigger the registered protocol handler but couldn't you just block the handler?

_snsh

6 years agodiscuss

Out of curiosity, why did/do you not use the Zoom web version? I haven't tried their linux client but if it sucks there is an alternative. The "it just works" crowd probably uses mostly Windows/Mac OS, iOS/Android or the web version.

Getting the join by browser link apparently can be an issues but at least in the edu account I manage there is an admin setting to always provide the join with browser link.

_snsh

6 years agodiscuss

Just as an FYI 2 weeks later... We decided on not enforcing Zoom accounts for our students for various reasons. So the PRC might have IP address access to a SIP/Zoom server but this is not something we, as a small university, can solve. Even without Zoom the PRC could trace access to our bigbluebutton server or a jitsi videobridge and I don't presume that using Webex or Vidyo or what have you would solve this issue (and honestly all other solutions would have ended up being more expensive).

We still do not have any evidence that the PRC has access to unencrypted Zoom server logs and frankly I assume we would have the same (or worse) issues I had with my tests from Iran that either SIP/WebRTC doesn't work or appears to be intercepted. So, at least for me and my users, Zoom is the most accessible and "least worst" solution.