I'm absolutely wary of any technology that's going to enable/encourage bullying or trolling. I think there's a fine line between censorship and ensuring a safe community (especially in the wake of the Oregon shooting and corresponding reddit thread), but I see this app leading to Bad Things happening.
That said, the thing I'd like to see the discourse focusing on is not necessarily an app that encourages bullying, but bullying itself. I think the intensity of the uproar this is causing is throwing up a huge red flag - people as really scared about bullying. I think we as a community/country/world should absolutely talk about Peeple, but in talking about the symptom, I hope we can also get to talking about the root cause and what we can do to treat it.
that's exactly what I came here to post. I find it even more troubling that the teacher was clearly aware of this possible outcome - going so far as to tell the kid to hide it from other teachers. but for all we know maybe he did speak up and was shushed by administration? who knows...pretty frustrating either way.
I've been thinking how interesting (fun and a little mean) it would be to teach a Software Development class where you
- assign groups of students that don't really get along,
- have groups consume APIs written by previous groups,
- change the assignment (slightly or significantly) every week or so,
- constantly email students asking if they could "just make one little tweak"
- etc...
If you were completely up front about expectations (this is about learning the processes/pitfalls of software development, not about submitting a polished assignment at the end) maybe you could give students a sense of the skills needed to succeed not just at computer science, but software dev as well.
This is what I would have said. I've only been a software dev for a couple of years, but by far the most important thing I've experienced is buy-in. Every team I've been on that all understands and trusts our process has been significantly more successful and efficient (not to mention more enjoyable as a dev) compared to teams where members don't understand or agree with why we're doing a-b-c or x-y-z.
I think in order to get to that point of buy-in, you NEED the team to be able to say "this isn't working, so let's throw it out and try something new."
To add to this, I always find that making sure everyone understand the 'why' as well as the 'what' makes a world of difference. My favorite project manager would always ask "do you understand why we do this?" when suggesting/introducing new process, and she maintained a good deal of fluidity in our methodology so that we could adjust as needed. One big thing about Agile is quick iteration cycles - build, test, tweak - and I think that applies just as much to process as it does development.
Just regarding the imposter syndrome aspect of your comment:
But isn't the thing about imposter syndrome that it's not about whether YOU think the musician is good, but whether THEY think they are. As an amateur musician I can totally understand feeling like I'm really not that good, even if other people tell me I am - I just assume they didn't hear that sour note in the 3rd lick I played, or that they didn't notice I should've played a certain phrase more staccato. Especially when I hear recordings of myself, all I hear is the bum notes or the missed opportunities to do something better than I actually did. Even if I put on a performance that people say they enjoy, I often feel like it was just dreadful and I shouldn't have been on stage in the first place. To me, that's exactly what imposter syndrome describes.
(Not trying to throw a pity party...I love music and will happily keep playing anywhere that will let me for the rest of my life.)
I don't remember how old I was, but I distinctly remember an occurrence at one of my first swim lessons. It was a group class, and we were all hanging on a rope taking turns swimming to the instructor a few feet away. I thought I heard my name called, so I tried to push off the rope to swim to them. Since it was a floating rope, I didn't get the momentum I was expecting, so before I knew it I was frantically trying to get to the rope, or the wall, or the instructor, or ANYthing I could grab onto. After what seemed like hours (but I'm sure was a few seconds) the lifeguard hopped in and grabbed me. It's been at least 20 years, and I'll never ever forget the panic - and to think it happened in the middle of a swim class with an instructor not 10 feet away.
My dad always told me when we went on vacation to the beach to "respect the ocean", and if I ever have kids I will for sure expand that message to "respect the water" and pass it along - whether it's the atlantic or a kiddie pool.
I lifeguarded throughout high school and college, and it always surprised me that most of the difficulties I had were with parents/adults. For the most part, kids would give a sullen look and then listen. My only memorable troubles were the occasional adults who would just flat-out ignore or contradict rules, no matter how many times you told them (I always assumed because they thought they knew better than a ~15 year old). At that point, you have a young lifeguard who has to choose between causing a minor scene (ie: whistling a manager over to "tattle" on them) or having other children see rules not being consistently enforced, which they perceive as license to do whatever they want.
I made one rescue after a little girl faceplanted from the high dive and came up crying and clearly struggling - the whole time I was helping her to the wall, I had her mom yelling at me from the pool deck that "she's fine, you're just scaring her!" I came away from that second-guessing myself - that maybe I SHOULDN'T have gone in after her, and that I should've just let it play out a little more - which is a really scary thing to second-guess.
My first hope was that the video was actually a performance of the discovered sheet music, but is that actually correct? The video is amount a minute in duration but according to the article, "The scrap of music...would have lasted no more than a few seconds."
I think especially at the early stages it will depend on use case. For something like business meetings/transactions I would certainly not tolerate grievous mis-translations. However, I would happily tolerate some mis-translations if this allowed me to speak with my great-grandmother (I only speak English, she only speaks Albanian). It would be annoying certainly, but well worth it, especially if my mother and/or grandmother were around to correct any odd translations. I'm sure it will take awhile for this type of software to be usable in professional settings, but for more casual applications, bring it on!
I have Google Fiber in Kansas City, and I've been incredibly happy with customer service. Especially after dealing with Time Warner for a couple years, I was extremely surprised and pleased with Google's support. I've had a couple of minor issues, and each time I've called in the people I've talked to have always been friendly, knowledgeable (about their product but also technically), and helpful. They've sent a tech out twice and ditto for each tech - they both showed up on time, listened to what I had to say, and solved the issue. 10/10
Here's a great talk by Greg Baugues in which he discusses his own mental illness (bipolar type II and ADHD) and notes that often there is a fine line between a symptom of depression/mental illness and a trait of a successful developer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFIa-Mc2KSk
Wow I had a completely incorrect understanding of what credit unions are and what you'd use them for...this looks like exactly the kind of alternative I'd like to explore. Thanks!
As someone else who uses Chase, I'm having trouble with the same reconciliation. As an individual consumer though, what can I do to stop feeding and perpetuating the system? My initial reaction is to "vote with my feet" but is there any bank that isn't similarly suspect? Alternately is it realistic to exit the banking system completely, or is that just wildly impractical? I see a lot of discussion on hackernews about "security vs convenience" (albeit in a completely different context); maybe the parallel here is "morality vs convenience."
That said, the thing I'd like to see the discourse focusing on is not necessarily an app that encourages bullying, but bullying itself. I think the intensity of the uproar this is causing is throwing up a huge red flag - people as really scared about bullying. I think we as a community/country/world should absolutely talk about Peeple, but in talking about the symptom, I hope we can also get to talking about the root cause and what we can do to treat it.