That is precisely what Valve should do. It is unfortunate that we need scalpers, simply because companies are bizarrely unwilling to adjust their pricing based on market conditions.
You're right. It's not just aboutwillingness to pay, but also how much someone deserves to own a Steam Machine, which we determine by their ability to pay.
It's not a perfect system, but money is how we as a society determine how to allocate scarce resources. People labor under the promise that having additional money will give them an advantage in this type of situation.
Even more unpopular opinion: universities don't exist to create an educated populace. People don't need universities to learn, they can read textbooks on their own.
Universities exist as gatekeepers and credentialing bodies. Their purpose is to certify that a person has studied some topic in depth and is an expert in it. They promote education indirectly, by giving people an incentive to study.
A good university is one where anyone with a degree is guaranteed to be highly knowledgeable in their field of study. This makes it easier for anyone who might want to employ or do research with graduates, as there is no need to test their knowledge.
By this metric, universities have failed spectacularly. This is particularly obvious in computer science. Employers routinely ask CS graduates to solve data structure/algorithm problems in interviews, because a degree is not enough to prove that somebody knows this stuff.
Nobody said it is their fault. But it is their responsibility.
United States immigration policy is supposed to benefit the United States. It doesn't need to be fair.
The US can bomb a country if it's in US interests, and then deny immigrants from that country if that immigration is not in US interests. It really is that simple.
What websites a person is allowed to access should not be a matter of debate, it is for the individual to decide. Other people's opinions are not relevant. Even if 99% of people think a person should not be able to access a website, it is still their right to do so and they have no need to justify it.
Democracy is for deciding what to do with taxpayer money. It shouldn't be a mechanism by which people can vote to take away other people's freedoms.
Legal reform is needed to prevent American companies from complying with foreign censorship laws.
What happens if a tech company decides to follow EU law worldwide, just because it's more convenient than blocking some stuff just in the EU? That shouldn't be allowed.
To cherry-pick a quote from a review of SSRI studies:
>the magnitude of symptom reduction was about 40% with antidepressants and about 30% with placebo.
That tells me that antidepressants have some effectiveness, but placebos work shockingly well. You can give someone a sugar pill with no medical properties whatsoever, and a good portion of people will recover, likely crediting the pill for their recovery.
The fight is not just about privacy, it is about freedom. Age-gating websites violates the freedom of people who are under a certain age. Young people have the same rights to free expression and information access as anyone else.
"Write unit tests with full line and branch coverage for this function:
def add_two_numbers(x, y):
return x + y + 1
"
Sometimes the LLM will point out that this function does not, in fact, return the sum of x and y. But more often, it will happily write "assert add_two_numbers(1, 1) == 3", without comment.
The big problem is that LLMs will assume that the code they are writing tests for is correct. This defeats the main purpose of writing tests, which is to find bugs in the code.
How about instead of taxes, we have a $10,000 per year subscription fee to live in society.
Maybe different depending on area, like $20,000 a year to live in NYC but only $2,000 per year to live in a rural village.
If you can't afford the fee that's OK, it just means you have to live outside of the developed areas and don't benefit from any services provided by the government. But you are free to set up a tent in the woods and live off the land.
Neither. Tests should be written by developers only when it saves them time. The cost of writing them should be negative.
Instead of writing hundreds of useless tests so that the code coverage report shows high numbers, it is better to write a couple dozen tests based on business needs and code complexity.
The main benefit of writing tests is that is forces the developer to think about what they just wrote and what it is supposed to do. I often will find bugs while writing tests.
I've worked on projects with 2,000+ unit tests that are essentially useless, often fail when nothing is wrong, and rarely detect actual bugs. It is absolutely worse than having 0 tests. This is common when developers write tests to satisfy code coverage metrics, instead of in an effort to make sure their code works properly.
That sounds like it would penalize renting in favor of homeownership. I'm not in support of that, renting offers people flexibility and is not inherently worse than owning.
Ticket prices going up is actually good for mass adoption. If they are too low, you will see people riding the train who are only using the train because they are too poor to afford a car. That makes middle class people want to avoid the train.
Also higher revenue often means better service, which for most people is more important than the price.
Is that just an LLM thing? I thought that as a society, we decided a long time ago that competence doesn't really matter.
Why else would we be giving high school diplomas to people who can't read at a 5th grade level? Or offshore call center jobs to people who have poor English skills?
I was very impressed when I first started using AI tools. Felt like I could get so much more done.
A couple of embarrassing production incidents later, I no longer feel that way. I always tell myself that I will check the AI's output carefully, but then end up making mistakes that wouldn't have happened if I wrote the code myself.
>He did not have much intention of actually learning anything.
I strongly disagree, you are missing the point of competency based education.
It's important to understand that an undergraduate CS degree needs to be accessible even to people without much IT experience. Some people come in with no experience with computers at all.
Look at the names of the first four courses:
C182: Introduction to IT
C172: Network and Security - Foundations
C779: Web Development Foundations
C173: Scripting and Programming - Foundations
Most people on Hacker News would be bored out of their minds taking these courses. Do you know what a computer is? Do you know the difference between HTML and Javascript? Can you write basic scripts using Bash or Python? That's what foundational courses are for.
If you are already beyond this level- which the author clearly was- you can just test out of them. Pass an exam to prove that you already know this stuff, so then you can move on to more advanced material that's more appropriate for you.
I did the same thing. Got a Bachelors in CS in 1 term at WGU. Very happy with it, got a great job after graduation and I feel very well prepared for it.
I know this sounds really sketchy so here are my thoughts.
* Most undergraduate-level college courses (from any school) are stupid easy, especially 101-level classes. You could skip every lecture, spend 3 hours studying before the final exam and still pass with a B or better. This is what I did for 2 years at a traditional state school where I studied mechanical engineering. At WGU it is exactly the same, except you don't need to wait until the end of the term to take the exam. You can schedule the final exam on day 1 of the term and then move on to the next course if you pass.
* It's not that hard to get through a textbook quickly if you are disciplined. If there are 20 chapters, read 5 per day and you will finish in 4 days. On day 5 wake up early, take a practice test, review the questions you missed and re-read those sections, repeat 3-4 times and you should be scoring 80-90%, that's a pass so schedule the final exam for that evening. After these 5 days of studying you will be better prepared than the average college student, who generally fucks around all term, shows up for lectures but doesn't pay attention, and hardly reads the textbook at all, but somehow still passes.
* Lectures and videos are a waste of time, reading is more efficient
* It helps massively if you can study full time. I took out loans to pay the rent and tuition and didn't work a side job. I studied 9-5 every day like it's my full time job. I paid back my loans after 1 year of working.
* The hardest courses take 10-15 times as long as the easiest ones. Data Structures and Algorithms, Computer Architecture and Discrete Mathematics etc. are the big ones and this model lets you spend more time on that and less time on bullshit.
* Controversially, WGU makes sure you learn SQL really, really well and glosses over Linear Algebra. I find my SQL skills to be extremely useful on the job. I've since studied Linear Algebra on my own time, but I haven't found any uses for it outside of my game development hobby.
* No, you can't master a subject you spent 1 week studying. But that's true of all undergraduate courses, not just WGU, which is why new grads struggle with basic leetcode questions unless they grind leetcode outside of school. In my opinion the purpose of a bachelor's degree is to teach you the basics and bring you to the point where you can get an entry level job and study on your own, which WGU's BSCS absolutely does do.
* Getting a degree in 3 months might seem impressive, but it's not. The average college student might spend 4 years at school, but if you only count the time they are actually studying, it's not going to be more than a couple of months. And when they do study, it's not effective, it's not goal oriented, they study out of obligation and fear of failure which leads to procrastination and burnout and all-nighters before exam day that aren't very productive.