I went to high school when cell phones were common and most students had them. But, at least at my school, if you had one out during class it was instantly confiscated and returned by the front office after school. I assumed this was the norm, so articles about "cell phone bans" as a new policy are surprising to me. I assumed it always was this way.

When did schools start allowing cell phone use during class? Do teachers no longer have the power to confiscate devices that are used at inappropriate times?

There are teachers out there asking students to look up words in their phone. They forget to add "and please ignore all notifications, games, etc. while you're at it".

And then there are kahoots, which makes learning a game (you don't need effort!) and exercises are automatically corrected (so teachers don't need effort either).

There is no way to escape tech in some places.

Same policy here. Seemed like it worked just fine. If you really needed to use it, you had time between periods and during lunch.

Using a phone during class was indeed never an option, but, can I ask you since you went to school with smartphones (I am much older): Is your experience that most students pull their phone out as soon as they exit the classrooms? Do they spend most of their breaks on their screens? If so do you have the feeling you have poorer conversational skills because of this and would you not rather have just enjoyed school engaging with the people around you?

I see youngsters now that have hundreds of messages a day, on many platforms, and consequently hours of screen time a day. Does it not feel like this time would be better spends in face to face engagements?

I read about girls that are just tired, they have a good time, everybody gossips on Social Media, they have to maintain "status" there, streaks, presence, likes, it never ends, last thing before sleep, first thing after waking up. It sounds so exhausting.

Yes, there were distractions in my time as well, but I would say it's quite different because now you don't have to go anywhere, you can just pull out your phone mid-conversation and 'be somewhere else'.

I do think (hope?) the temporary removal of dopamine hits works in the long run. If I'm regularly not near my phone to check on whatever, the impulse to grab my phone is removed, because I'm engrossed in other things. Do that often enough and it may just wean people off of this online crack.

I went to grade school in the 80’s and high school and college in the 90’s.

It wasn’t anything like you describe at all. For better or worse people did actually talk to each other.

And while we did call each other on the phone reasonably often, generally when you weren’t in the room with someone you weren’t communicating with them at all.

I believe most UK schools have the same policy. However, I've heard from teacher friends that it's difficult and time-consuming to enforce -- kids will do anything to sneak in a bit of phone time during lessons.

If you really needed to use it, you had time between periods and during lunch.

The people campaigning about this are concerned about that too.

> When did schools start allowing cell phone use during class?

I wonder to what extent this is an effect of the age of the teachers themselves. The median age of a teacher in the US is ~40 years old, so a significant proportion of them are accustomed to phones being an essential part of social life and hence may be a bit more lenient to students occasionally checking their phone when it appears to be non-disruptive. Needless to say though, this easily becomes a non-fallacious slippery slope.

Kids are great at detecting hypocrisy. As a teacher, you can't tell a kid to make it through the day without "checking" their phones if you can't make it through the day without checking your own phone.

No, it's 100% the parents. The parents are younger, and phone addicted too. And I don't know what happened in the past 20 ish years but parents are unbelievably entitled.

Many parents freak out if you take their kid's phone. That's not okay anymore, I guess. Detention doesn't really exist either because parents don't want it. Even summer school is just a suggestion at this point. Parents have bullied their local ISD's into being weak.

I don’t think this is discussed enough when PLCs are compared to other embedded systems (such as this product).

Through a PLC’s IDE, which is almost always proprietary software provided by the PLC manufacturer, a developer has the ability to view variable values, edit their values, “force” or “lock” a variable to a specific value (making assignments to that variable a no-op), and make edits to the code logic. This can all be done while maintaining the realtime guarantees of the system. These features (called “online editing” by PLC manufacturers) are essential in many applications where PLCs are used and are the biggest differentiator between a PLC and any other embedded system, such as Arduino’s products.

GDB-style debugging of a desktop program or JTAG/SWO debugging of a microcontroller can do some of what a PLC IDE can do, but it’s not as reliable and safe as PLC products.

This is notable not because of the board itself, but because of the incredibly small footprint of the MCU on it. This chip is ~40% smaller than the already tiny Kinetis KL02.

Although I must wonder if there are many applications where .5mm difference in package size is really meaningful

Embedding a keylogger not merely in a cable, but actually in a connector?

While the Broad institute is private, it is a non-profit that is tightly affiliated with MIT and Harvard. To me, this is different than a patent getting transferred to a multinational pharmaceutical corporate.

I didn't know they were a nonprofit. In that case, my OP is pretty off-topic for this case.

Non-profits can still have patent portfolios that they try to exploit for commercial gain -- though by licensing, rather than producing products directly. When the research was publicly funded, the same conflicts of interest apply.

The Broad also makes enormous bank as a sequencing service for pharma. They are "non profit" but they make a profit.

You're confusing Panic (the software/video game company behind this device's concept and software) with Teenage Engineering (a Swedish hardware company that designed the device)

Teenage Engineering has a variety of products unrelated to this game console, including the ITX case.

Sorry you're right, but my comment stands word for word with the name replaced

Teenage Engineering is behind the physical device, which is what represents most of what I'm describing here

This is not true. 5 axis mills and 9+ DOF CNC mill/turn centers exist, and they are becoming more common, however 3 axis vertical mills are still the backbone of most machine shops.

> would rather have one extra tank than available supply for every citizen

I think the problem here is that the Big Tank industry is paying kickbacks, but the Big Mask industry is not.

You don’t need to be sent to prison to be irreparably harmed by an accusation.

One of the things that is happening now is that the entire PhotoDNA system is finally coming under the level of oversight that it should have had right from the start.

I can tell you from working in this area that it's possible for someone to have their lives ruined by a misplaced investigation, have that investigation abandoned because they turn out to be obviously innocent, and for that to not be well-known, because people simply would not understand the context.

Before this Apple scandal, if you'd written to your reepresentative or a journalist or an activist group and said "I was framed for child abuse because of computer program that misidentified innocent pictures", they would attach a very low priority to dealing with you or publicising this. And almost all people who have experienced this kind of nightmare really don't want to re-live it in public for some tiny possibility of real justice being served for them, or for others. They just want it to all go away.

We certainly have Apple's PR blunder to thank for that, but if PhotoDNA always held that potential for abuse due to its very nature, why did we remain silent for 13 years?

Maybe it's because Google and Microsoft and others' policy of security through obscurity actually succeeded in preventing the details of PhotoDNA from coming to light, and it took Apple exposing their hashing model to reverse engineering by including it on the device for people to finally wake up.

Considering I didn't know about:

- PhotoDNA

- CSAM scanning on cloud photo platforms

- the acronym "CSAM"

Before this whole Apple client-side scanning debacle... seems pretty likely. A lot of privacy-focused people also avoid Google and Microsoft cloud services like the plague and trusted Apple up to this point to protect their privacy. The fact that Apple was (and is) scanning iCloud Photos libraries for CSAM unbeknownst to most of us is just another violation of that trust and shows just how far the "what happens on your iphone, stays on your iphone" privacy marketing extends (read: not past your iphone, and sometimes not even on your iphone).

I think the actual issue is that Apple wasn't scanning enough user data, so the government or the FBI or some other external force was holding them accountable for it out of public view, and Apple was pressured into increasing the amount of scanning they conducted.

"U.S. law requires tech companies to flag cases of child sexual abuse to the authorities. Apple has historically flagged fewer cases than other companies. Last year, for instance, Apple reported 265 cases to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, while Facebook reported 20.3 million, according to the center’s statistics. That enormous gap is due in part to Apple’s decision not to scan for such material, citing the privacy of its users." [1]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/05/technology/apple-iphones-...

You are commenting a lot for this many places in the thread. Are you arguing for this system or for Apple? It reads like pro-Apple and doesn't add anything except "I think it is good, therefore it is good".

It can get a little frustrating to hear so much inaccurate FUD being spread around which detracts from a reasoned discussion on the merits.

If you have a point which you feel rebuts a common argument, it seems reasonable to leave that comment in places you see that argument. The alternative is "minority positions should be drowned out", no?

FYI: when you wrote this comment, you had posted 5% of all the comments on this thread.

I attended a large state school in the early 2010’s and I witnessed a lot of the things described in the article. Many affluent out-of-state students had dorm rooms lushly decorated with disposable tchotchkes. Most of this is completely between the students and parent, however, there definitely was some sort of commercialization involving university administrators.

At the beginning of every school year, the university distributed marketing material literature for services such as:

- On campus “pop-up shops” for dorm decorations

- Overpriced minifridge rentals

- Overpriced and low quality linens/sheets/towels

- Organized shopping trips to department stores (students were bussed from campus to the store and the store was closed to the public)

The advertisements were often construed as official university services, but were actually just lead generators for 3rd party businesses.

Obviously, the university was getting some sort of kickback for all of this.

That all definitely fit the headline of the article but also seems to be much better reporting than the article itself presents. :|

In the early 2000s the only ones of those we got at my state school were: kiosks for posters in common space on campus + minifridge rentals + rug sale kiosks. Definitely a LOT more spartan.

The title seems inaccurate. Disney didn't make a trademark claim on a specific work. A marketplace voluntarily removed a work because it's title contained the word "Loki".

From the screenshot in the tweet

> [...] We had to remove your artwork from the Redbubble marketplace, because it _may_ contain material that violates someone's rights. (Emphasis added)

> In most cases, this means that the rights holder did not specifically identify your work for removal, but that Redbubble has detected potential similarity between your removed work and one or more words, phrases, or images in the right holder's removal guidance.

It seems that Disney gave Redbubble a blanket list of keywords. The item in question is entitled "Low Key Loki", and despite not containing any depiction of the Disney/Marvel character, was removed because Loki was in the name.

I mean, “voluntarily” in quote marks. They were likely threatened in some way and had to react pretty strongly, no? This looks like a typical action of a legal-compliance department or individual. “we just want you to know, Disney wanted us to take down everything with the keyword Loki and we are terrified of their legal department so we did.”

The title just says “claims trademark over Loki” which may be semi-inaccurate (they may be claiming copyrights or other authorship rights) but I mean, you are complaining that the title is inaccurate for being pointed at “a specific work” and, like, the title doesn't say any such thing. I would have written “claims trademark over ‘low key’” and that might have indeed been a little more misleading in one way, but more illustrative in another...

It’s probably even worse than that because I’d be willing to wager that no smart company wants to risk litigation against one of the biggest companies in the world. Disney doesn’t even need to threaten them because it’s clear that Disney can bury most companies in legal fees. Unless selling “Low Key Loki” is critical to their business it’s just not worth the risk.

I'm honestly more concerned about reducing >800 years of mythology to a filmed image of a photogenic dude with cheekbones and silly costumes than about questionable copyright claims.

Although the claims are an outrage too.

As an Icelander, we are very aware of our heritage and mythology and I'd really prefer that it not be copyrighted by greedy American corporations.

Fortunately for you, copyright doesn't work in a way which would allow that, so you are safe.

As a fan of the stories from Norse Mythology, I’d argue that the MCU has done a great disservice. Thor for example is nothing like the mythology figure. In Norse Mythology Þór is not a good person, his violence is actually blamed for the fall of Ásgarðr. His stories most often revolve around his overdrinking and the troubles he gets into. I can’t remember a story where he actually does a good deed.

Previously I was able to tell people these stories and they would enjoy them for what they are. Now most people giggle at them because they can only think of the Marvel characters.

Come on, you have to admit, when considering the Þrymskviða, the image of Þrymr pulling back the bridal veil to reveal Chris Hemsworth in a dress standing before him is pretty funny. At least I thought it so.

I like to look at the media depictions of these characters and compare them to their mythological counterparts. Disney's Hercules was ridiculous and a missed opportunity. But the way they depicted Maui was really, really good -- and when you consider that Maui is slightly different in every Polynesian culture that discussed him -- almost plausible as legitimate Polynesian mythology.

For the most part, the majority of the pagan gods are not exactly nice people in the stories. Plenty of rape and killing relatives to go around. Not that the Old Testament Yahweh is exactly a shining role model either.

Also, while it's not so much in the "evil by modern standards" category, New Testament Jesus is often rendered benign and generically harmless by people who profess to be Christians but don't want to deal with any of the parts of his teachings that might inconvenience them.

Most of the old stories/religions have been cleansed for the modern palette. For better or worse, I suppose it's bound to happen, religions have to evolve or suffer the fate of extinction. A little ironic =)

Nothing religious about Marvel, except Disney’s worship of Manna.

If there are any modern “pagan” worshippers of the traditional gods, I hope they’ve preserved the fundamental version. Probably closer to any truths.

There is no "fundamental" version of these myths. In many cases (particularly with Norse mythology) all we know is what was written down by Christian scribes, purposely redacted to fit a Christian worldview. Modern Neopagan ideologies necessarily have to differ because of the dearth of original sources from which to reconstruct the religion, and because neopaganism in modernity would be inextricably linked to modern political, cultural and moral norms (as any religion in any age would be.)

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopaganism_in_Scandinavia

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81satr%C3%BA

Paganism is well and alive. It is the 5th most popular religious sect in Iceland (and the most popular non-christian sect; excluding atheism). I bet there are even people here on HN that know some people that are pagan.

I’m not exactly sure how they worship their gods, but I’ve heard there are some feasts and artwork dedicated to certain gods. In Iceland most people (even Christians and Atheists) attend a “Þorrablót” which is feasting in honor of Þór.

You should go to a Comicon =)

When I speak of the old gods, I throw Yaweh (God or Allah depending on the sect) in there as well. A 5000 year old run counts as an old god in my book.

Pre-MCU at least, Loki in particular had come to be seen as god of merely mischief/trickery--I assume in part from various comic/cartoon treatments. Heinlein spends some time on this "rehabilitation" in Job: A Comedy of Justice.

I think Baldr is supposed to serve as the role model in these stories (and is arguably inspired by Jesus). And that is sort of why Loki is such a villain, since he conspired to have Baldr killed.

Loki was more a trickster than an outright villain. Most of his stories are about him cleaning up the Æsirs' messes and getting zero respect for it.

>Most people will never have even heard of, much less care, about Loki or Norse mythology

I doubt that's the case. Thor for example at least has been pretty popular from before, maybe on the level of Zeus, I'm guessing Loki was at least half as popular of a mythological character.

Even separately, I must've read at least 10 fantasy works with a trickster god named Loki.

>Thor for example at least has been pretty popular from before

That’s safe to say. Thursday is literally Thor’s day

Short-lived, but there was at least one other 1960s vintage cartoon Asgardian series as well. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0156221/

From my perspective, Norse mythology was maybe not quite as generally known as the Greek/Roman pantheon (outside of northern Europe anyway). But it was certainly not obscure--at least as far as the Odin, Thor, Loki basics.

Not sure why the downvotes. Thor appeared in various Marvel comic book properties starting in the early 1960s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_(Marvel_Comics) I'm sure this contributed to public knowledge of Thor at least among a certain demographic.

Likely because while technically correct, it's probably a very small fraction compared to how many have heard of Loki through other means.

You might be surprised. I sort of went through a mythology phase so I was probably familiar with the Norse pantheon from other sources. But I also certainly remember watching both that 1960s cartoon (though only remember the theme song) and reading the comics in (mostly) the 60s.

I'd be willing to bet that the majority of Americans who can give a vaguely correct answer to Who is Loki? (or Who is Thor?) know that answer because of Marvel at some point in their lives.

> Why? Most people will never have even heard of, much less care, about Loki or Norse mythology in any context until Marvel

:-o

For one datapoint, when I grew up in England, you'd learn about the Greek Myths and the Norse Myths in school.

I was an adult before I ever heard of the Marvel comics.

> bury most companies in legal fees

I can't stand that this is part of the "justice" system. The outcome of a case should depend on its merits, not the litigants' war chest. Anything less invites corruption.

It doesn’t invite corruption, it was designed that way.

The English legal system was setup for aristocrats not peasants. We changed a lot about how the criminal side works, but very little about the civil.

Does the DMCA not provide a safe harbor from trademark claims as well?

>digital millennium copyright act

Judging by the name, and the fact that the wikipedia article contains zero instances of the word "trademark", I'm going to guess "no".

> I mean, “voluntarily” in quote marks. They were likely threatened in some way and had to react pretty strongly, no?

No, I don't think so. It wouldn't completely shock me if it was true, but I wouldn't expect it.

My prior is that Redbubble has a list of words that just trigger takedowns or at least reviews, and "Loki" is one of them. I don't think Disney needs to threaten companies like Redbubble over every individual item, they can file a normal takedown request. I suspect that Redbubble is just generally scared of Disney overall, and that fear leads them to issue broad takedowns without the need for any other inputs.

I don't know for certain, but I suspect this is an unprompted, voluntary move by Redbubble.

Which is still a story, just a different story: the mere possibility of legal action has a chilling effect on entire creative domains because platform owners are too scared to get within half a mile of where the actual line is drawn.

> platform owners are too scared to get within half a mile of where the actual line is drawn.

This. Then the tech news and commentators on HN, etc., get agitated and complain about IP rights as if the actual lines are drawn where the scared platform owners think they are.

Yet another reason to reign in the freedom of platforms, as you say they aren't following the law they make their own laws that are much more hostile to the little guy.

> Yet another reason to reign in the freedom of platforms

Forcing platforms to host material that may, arguably infringe copyrights or trademarks isn’t a solution.

What’s needed are bright-line rules for determining fair use. Bright-line rules, however, are basically impossible for all but the simplest cases. Most cases are far too nuanced or deal with novel uses.

(It’s “rein in,” like a horse.)

Oh sure, the DMCA absolutely has a chilling effect on creative industries, and Redbubble is probably justifiably scared of Disney, and that fear is a huge source of unjustifiable takedowns online. Disney in particular has a lot of responsibility for this, they have fought hard to expand copyright and are famously litigious. In my mind, the company very consciously and deliberately contributes to a culture of fear around fan works, references, and fair use in general.

The DMCA in its current form chills both free speech and industry, and it should be revised or repealed.

But, I suspect that Disney did not directly threaten Redbubble over this specific shirt. My guess is that this takedown is a product of the system, not a product of a specific phone call from a lawyer.

> Oh sure, the DMCA absolutely has a chilling effect on creative industries

Are you using “the DMCA” as shorthand for “the risk of contributory infringement lawsuits which predates the DMCA and which the DMCA safe harbor provisions mitigate”, or something else?

The main problem with the DMCA is not that it provides a safe harbor, it's that the DMCA's safe harbor is provisional on following takedown requests.

This creates an environment where platforms are extremely trigger-happy to remove content. There is very little reason not to take down every piece of content you get a request for, even if it's obviously fair use, because refusing to take it down opens you up for liability as a platform. Compare this to something like Section 230, where platforms are just not liable for 3rd-party content period. They don't have to worry so much that they're going to suddenly get dragged into court because they refused to listen to someone who complained about a likely legal piece of content.

The DMCA safe harbor is better than making platforms directly liable, and a repeal of just the safe harbor laws and nothing else would be pretty bad. But lots of things are better than making platforms directly liable, that's not a high bar to clear. Even with the safe harbor provisions, it's still generally a harmful piece of legislation because it strongly incentivizes thoughtless takedowns.

Also worth noting that DMCA does not simply maintain status quo on copyright law outside of the safe harbors, it also expanded copyright in a number of harmful ways (most infamously barring circumvention of DRM). Those parts aren't so relevant to what we're talking about, but I do want to bring up that there are plenty of other reasons beyond the current situation with Redbubble to criticize the law.

> the risk of contributory infringement lawsuits which predates the DMCA

Don't get me wrong, I'm also open to revising/repealing some of them, but they weren't the thing I was referring to in this comment.

> Compare this to something like Section 230, where platforms are just not liable for 3rd-party content period.

That's actually a controversial judicial expansion of 230 which has, AFAIK, only been been explicitly endorsed by one federal appeals circuit (and which there is a very strong case from the text of the CDA is the wrong interpretation), though I don’t know that any circuit has ruled the other way (cases which would turn on the distinction are not super common); on its face 230 only removes publisher liability under the conditions it provides, which would, under the rules applicable pre-230 (and not offline content still), leave distributor liability. Distributor liability is notice-based, much like contributory infringement under the DMCA safe harbor regime, though it operates on actual notice, rather than requiring adherence to a prescribed procedure.

I haven't personally seen any cases rule in that direction, and I haven't seen any strong movement from Congress or the Supreme Court to suggest that the interpretation is incorrect. But maybe there's a movement that I'm not aware of, I'm not always in the loop on this stuff.

Regardless, Section 230 as it is applied today protects distributors like Twitter from liability for hosting illegal content in a way that the DMCA as it is applied does not. Reworking the DMCA to work more like the common interpretation of Section 230 by companies and the courts would be a large improvement over the current DMCA.

Whatever the law's intent, in practice platforms like Twitter, Youtube, and Redbubble are strongly incentivized to remove any content they think might be infringing without considering fair use or the validity of the takedown requests they get. This incentive and its effects are much more noticeable with the DMCA then they are with most other liability laws online, including Section 230. And that incentive is harmful for creativity, industry, and speech.

> I haven't seen any strong movement from Congress or the Supreme Court to suggest that the interpretation is incorrect.

Congress—both parties, for different reasons—seems more in the vein of “the basic idea of 230 is wrong in any case and we need to broadly restore publisher liability” (though most of the specific examples cited for that position seem to be situations where the host had actual notice, so there's probably a good argument that the expansive application of 230 beyond its text is a central part of the reason it keeps getting chipped away at); I think Justice Thomas wrote extensively on the distributor liability argument in a dissent (maybe concurrence) to a decision that turbed on another issue.

This is interesting, but seems to be getting a little off topic.

The DMCA as it's applied today has a lot of unintended consequences and problems. For Section 230 to be interpreted in the same way would not equalize the two laws and make both of them unproblematic, that would just be a world where content was as vulnerable to stuff like frivolous libel takedown requests as it currently is to frivolous copyright takedown requests. It would be a disaster for the Open Internet.

My take is that we can look at the application of the DMCA today and see its effects, and view that as pretty strong evidence that this approach doesn't really work and that very little else in regards to platform/distributor liability online should be set up to work like the DMCA does. So I would love to see the DMCA revisited and the takedown provisions dropped.

That seems likely. Maybe Disney shipped them the list and maybe they didn't. And presumably Disney could own copyright (trademark?) to some elements of the Loki and Thor characters as represented in the MCU. They just obviously can't own the name, as they can with many other characters.

Fear the Maus!

This is effectively what rights holders did to YouTube and lead to the creation of content ID.

Never heard of RedBubble before but their site seems filled with copyright-infringing materials. I wonder if they are trying to clean up their marketplace to position themselves for growth without the legal headaches.