[HN Gopher] Stockholm parents built their own school app, then t...
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Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called
the cops
Author : hakonbogen
Score : 409 points
Date : 2021-11-04 12:41 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.co.uk)
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| 114 million dollars for the original app! I almost can't believe
| how bad an inefficient our government is sometimes.
| drcongo wrote:
| Every edutech platform I've ever had to use (UK, with 3 kids
| going through school) is an abomination, the whole sector needs
| disrupting. My current nemesis is Iris Parentmail [0], a
| convoluted jumble of javascript that presents the user with a
| challenge - try to read the apparently important message the
| school has sent you before Parentmail crashes your browser. If
| the message is particularly long, then there's an end of level
| boss where you have to try to read the whole thing before the
| laptop gives you third degree burns. HNers, please, disrupt the
| hell out of this sector because it's nothing but chancers,
| consultants and chancer consultants.
|
| [0] https://www.iris.co.uk/education/engagement-suite/iris-
| paren...
| pwdisswordfish8 wrote:
| For anyone who's been burned by these:
|
| Why aren't you equally as mad at the personnel at your child's
| school? It's one thing for a national or semi-national rollout
| of broken enterprise junk, it's another thing for your child's
| instructor to go along and demand that you use this broken
| system instead of providing reasonable affordances (e.g. low-
| tech, paper-based notices/forms that get sent home with your
| kid).
|
| For that matter, how do your school systems handle the
| situation where no one in the household is able or willing to
| install the damn thing because e.g. you don't own an iOS or
| Android device, or you have no smartphone at all? Is there an
| actual legal requirement for you to contribute on an ongoing
| basis to the bottom-line of select tech companies like Apple
| and Google in order to participate in public life--as if it's
| on par with the necessity to pay for e.g. renewing your
| government-issued ID?
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > Why aren't you equally as mad at the personnel at your
| child's school? It's one thing for a national or semi-
| national rollout of broken enterprise junk, it's another
| thing for your child's instructor to go along and demand that
| you use this broken system instead of providing reasonable
| affordances
|
| You don't expect people who face no consequences for anything
| short of criminal conduct to change their behavior. Being mad
| at civil servants is like being mad at the weather and only
| slightly more likely to accomplish anything.
| rndgermandude wrote:
| >it's another thing for your child's instructor to go along
| and demand that you use this broken system instead of
| providing reasonable affordances
|
| I am not sure, but it might be that the teachers are not only
| encouraged but required to use these systems?
|
| >you don't own an iOS or Android device, or you have no
| smartphone at all? Is there an actual legal requirement for
| you to contribute on an ongoing basis to the bottom-line of
| select tech companies like Apple and Google in order to
| participate in public life--as if it's on par with the
| necessity to pay for e.g. renewing your government-issued ID?
|
| That really became a problem here in Germany, when
| politicians proclaimed that "digital/remote learning" will
| safe the day in covid times. Not realizing that a lot of
| kids, especially in the poor neighborhoods, nor their
| parents, actually have any capable devices for that. Or fast
| enough internet (with enough mobile data) to support zoom
| meetings and such each day.
| pfortuny wrote:
| You should not underestimate the power of "ISO-9000" in
| European institutions (including schools) and the "necessity"
| of an official "document trail" of everything.
|
| I lecture at a Uni and it has not reached me _yet_ but am
| expecting it.
| sosborn wrote:
| I work with these systems in my day job, and yes, if any one
| wants to work on this problem I would love to be a part of it.
| capableweb wrote:
| > The work started at the end of November 2020, just days after
| Stockholm's Board of Education was hit with a 4 million SEK
| ($456,658) GDPR fine for "serious shortcomings" in the
| Skolplattform. Integritetsskyddsmyndigheten, Sweden's data
| regulator, had found serious flaws in the platform that had
| exposed the data of hundreds of thousands of parents, children,
| and teachers. In some cases, people's personal information could
| be accessed from Google searches. (The flaws have since been
| fixed and the fine reduced on appeal.)
|
| $400K sounds like nothing when it comes to something this
| serious, but then the fine also got reduced? Reduced to what I
| wonder, and for what?
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I don't really understand the fine, its a board of education so
| are the funds taken from public school funds? Seems wrong to
| take money from a school district.
| kalleboo wrote:
| One would hope their contract with the developer assigns the
| liability to them
| locallost wrote:
| > The platform is a complex system that's made up of three
| different parts, containing 18 individual modules that are
| maintained by five external companies. The sprawling system is
| used by 600 preschools and 177 schools, with separate logins for
| every teacher, student, and parent. The only problem? It doesn't
| work. > The Skolplattform, which has cost more than 1 billion
| Swedish Krona, SEK, ($117 million), has failed to match its
| initial ambition.
|
| So JIRA for Schools failed. It's a top down system, where people
| on top decide to solve problems for all people below, without
| really knowing how to solve it, or what the problem even is. And
| then contractors get involved.
|
| People are willing to put up with this if you can press them,
| e.g. they are at work, they are in the army etc. so they have to
| put up with it, but it's not going to work for anything else. It
| attempts to solve everything for everyone, where it's
| questionable if most of these things are even worth solving. E.g.
| from the article, what is somebody's child doing in school, what
| do they need in gym class. You might just ask them, no? There are
| quarterly or so meetings with the teacher to discuss things,
| progress, problems? The problem is not that the menus are
| convoluted, but that maybe most of this stuff is not worth
| categorizing, not worth having an UI other than a piece of paper.
| Entalpi wrote:
| Rather its that the goverment funded development resulted in a
| bad product. People reimplementing it in a their spare time
| resulted in an even better product.
| wahlis wrote:
| More likely the MVP covered all the basics that the platform
| should do. Then all the rest of the legal requirements had to
| be implemented and that broke it. Support for secret
| identities, all the special needs, support for non employees,
| legal guardians and a million other things which is important
| for the last 5%. It would probably be cheaper to give those
| with special requirements personal support than to write the
| code for it
| namdnay wrote:
| So an app for schoolkids is a really good idea. In France the
| app is built by the (semi-public) post office, it's called
| "kidscare". teachers can upload photos live, you can set who is
| allowed to pick up your kids, you can send a notification if
| your kid is sick etc... not the slickest or most stable app,
| but miles better than using whatsapp
| chrisweekly wrote:
| KidScare is how I first read that.
| Disruptive_Dave wrote:
| We have many of these in the US. I've used two in daycare.
| One was amazing, the other is pretty good. Both fall short
| because of poor use by teachers and faculty.
| bsagdiyev wrote:
| Our sons preschool (a Montessori school) has something
| similar. It is really nice. Daily updates on what he did,
| pictures of him throughout the day doing things, it's
| amazing.
| dangerface wrote:
| Its difficult to evaluate the value of the info, if no one can
| find it because its buried in menus then yes it is useless but
| that doesn't mean it cant be useful, in general if its worth
| printing its worth putting on your website.
|
| I don't get the point of non web apps because usually they are
| just a subset of the website.
| chasil wrote:
| What is particularly insulting is the needless API/URL changes
| made in the official app in order to sabotage the efforts of
| the parents.
|
| The Google Play listing should have had a "Mismanagement Count"
| prominently displayed that incremented every time this
| happened. The log, and the time spent, should be in court.
|
| The parents decided to build this front end for free. They did
| not decide to play hide and seek with the interfaces, and for
| this they deserve compensation.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yeah, it's like they go out of their way to break
| compatibility with anyone trying to integrate with their
| services out of spite. What a pain.
| ashton314 wrote:
| > _User-driven IT development is interesting but must work
| together with legislation and responsibility for secure personal
| data_ [sic]
|
| To legislators, everything is a legislative problem to be solved
| with legislation. Government must be democratic, but boy it would
| be so helpful if those in office knew enough about technology to
| be a little more humble.
| pmdulaney wrote:
| This is a bit off-topic, but why are magazines doing so much
| better in the UK than here in the US? Why is the spinoff UK
| version of WIRED so much better than the original US version?
|
| Is it just the case that the Brits have more of an appreciation
| for print culture than we do?
| throwaway2331 wrote:
| Americans don't read.
| pmdulaney wrote:
| (sigh) Yeah, that's probably most of it...
| kalleboo wrote:
| Maybe due to public transport?
| pmdulaney wrote:
| You may have something there. I myself do most of my reading
| on my commuter bus.
| ess3 wrote:
| Ah the joy of public procurement in Sweden. It's basically an
| extremely long requirement gathering process where the company
| the can promise the most for the least amount of money wins. Only
| problem is that the people ordering this are not the users and
| they just want to cover their backs, meaning that behemoths
| usually win because they're more trustworthy.
|
| I was in edu-tech world for a while in Sweden. The most
| frustrating thing is that even if you have a good product that
| your users enjoy you will fail because you can't sell it to
| individual schools. You have to sell it to all the schools in the
| entire county, which just means that some giant actor will swoop
| in promise the world for a dollar and then we have this.
| henrikschroder wrote:
| The silliest part of the story is that Stockholm decided to
| build their own system, mostly because of dick-swinging
| reasons, because the actual needs of schoolchildren and parents
| across the country aren't that different!
|
| It _should be_ perfectly possible to have the same underlying
| system across the entire country.
|
| And in a perfect world, there would be some kind of common API
| for all schools, and a competing app ecosystem where parents
| and teachers and children can pick the one they like the best.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| > In some cases, people's personal information could be accessed
| from Google searches.
|
| SEO providers should take a note here.
|
| > It warned parents to stop using the app and alleged that it
| might be illegally accessing people's personal information
|
| If your API allows data extraction, it probably isn't a fault of
| any client. Perhaps they meant that creators could steal
| credentials. A problem with any software.
|
| I think this digital child managing system sounds moderately
| dystopian to be honest. I would have hated to give my parents
| access to anything like this. Kids will of course learn from how
| their parents behave...
|
| An open API is a must in my opinion, but the rest of the App
| should be open source too.
|
| That said, I don't really see the Swedish strategy as a model for
| other countries to follow. You don't need to give children
| chromebooks to learn. These are skills they have already mastered
| far better than their parents. They will learn about domain
| specific apps and there are indeed some really good ones, but
| such platform can also limit creativity because they are
| essentially sandpits. Depending on age that might be appropriate,
| but kids may have greater ambitions than their parents.
| nineplay wrote:
| > I think this digital child managing system sounds moderately
| dystopian to be honest. I would have hated to give my parents
| access to anything like this. Kids will of course learn from
| how their parents behave...
|
| I don't really disagree but we are in an era where children's
| academic outcomes are based entirely on parental involvement.
| Scratch any surface of any under-performer lightly and the cry
| will go up "The schools can't be blamed for poor parenting!"
|
| I think we rarely acknowledge that this is a recent
| development. Ask most Gen-Xers ( me ), ask boomers, ask
| greatest generationers if you know any. "How involved were your
| parents in your schoolwork?". You'll probably get a blank stare
| - "None?".
|
| I suspect it started with the "Asians are going to beat us"
| panic from the 80s. They were killing us in math scores and if
| we weren't careful we'd all be working for them someday. In
| retrospect the danger was exaggerated.
|
| Now, however, heavy parental involvement is required for kids
| to succeed. If the kids don't finish their homework - could it
| be that they are getting to much homework? Nah, it must be bad
| parents. If they can't pass the tests, could it be their
| teachers have not prepared them? Nope - the parents should have
| been spending their evenings going though flash cards.
|
| It only exacerbates the difference between that haves and have
| nots. If you don't have a parent who can devote time every day
| to overseeing your education, you're out of luck.
| burnished wrote:
| This is all information that the parent would have anyway.
| Lunch isn't private information, the curriculum isn't private
| information, tests and homework as well isn't private, its just
| that it was all a shit ton of minutia that typically didn't get
| memorized by any individual.
|
| Part of being a parent is helping your child navigate and learn
| about the world. Having this sort of information - what are the
| details about what this institution is offering on a daily
| basis - sounds invaluable.
| JackFr wrote:
| > I think this digital child managing system sounds moderately
| dystopian to be honest.
|
| I think you misunderstand the point of the system. It's much
| more mundane than that. The system just replaces paper notices
| going home with kids and getting lost in their book bags,
| looking phone numbers to report you child out sick, etc. It's
| not brave new world, it's simply replacing paper and phone
| tasks with an app.
| falcolas wrote:
| Yes! I recall all of these kinds of things being available
| and used when I was a child well before cell phones existed.
| Photocopied calendars. Sheets of paper a reticent child would
| carry around to their teachers for weekly reports. Report
| cards. Teachers calling parents when more attention was
| needed.
| beyondzero wrote:
| > I think this digital child managing system sounds moderately
| dystopian to be honest.
|
| A lot of the reactions and rebuttals to this comment are from
| HN childless people, whose perspective is their memory of being
| a child age 12-17, talking past HN people with children, whose
| perspective is about their kids age 5-12. At one end of the
| range you are educating about drugs and sex and good decisions,
| on the other end of the range you are worried about clean butts
| and walking across busy streets.
|
| The method of CREATING an older child who can be an independent
| and functional adult is by "MICROMANAGING" early-on so they
| develop good habits (especially good habits of independence!).
| And I am a Montessori parent which is fairly radical compared
| to the normal US system.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| "I think this digital child managing system sounds moderately
| dystopian to be honest" I disagree, I have 2 kids in elementary
| school and it is very useful to be able to look up what the
| kids have scheduled for the day to determine what to dress them
| in, see what's for lunch and if I need to pack them something
| if they won't like the available option. Most importantly
| though its very helpful to look up what homework / tests are
| due as the kids tend to not manage this so well themselves. It
| also allows me to check their grades. Its not so much a "child
| managing system" as a way for the parents to be empowered to
| ensure their kids are doing well and what is going on in their
| school lives. As a parent, my kids are my responsibility, any
| tool I can use to be better at that is a good thing.
| rndgermandude wrote:
| Back when I was in school we had a schedule, for the
| semester. That worked perfectly well for me and my parents.
| Our kitchen had a pin board with these schedules pinned to
| it. After a month or so we all had a new schedule
| internalized anyway. As for food, we had a cafeteria which
| served warm meals, usually at least two different options,
| and various other things like sandwiches, along with two
| "kiosks" where the janitors's wives sold some more snacks and
| sandwiches. And there was a supermarket across the street. I
| never had a packed lunch, ever, simply because there was no
| need for it. If I really hated the hot meals of the day, I
| would get a sandwich. We kids didn't really keep to the
| schedules anyway, we sometimes went early or stayed late to
| make use of the table tennis, foosball (or "kicker" as it's
| called in Germany) or billard tables, or play board games
| (our school had a sizable collection of these), or play
| soccer (or "football" as it is called correctly) outside on
| the school's fields. Mom's only order was to call her (from a
| pay phone inside the school) if we stayed longer than 1h, so
| she didn't need to worry (dad was at work). Pickups weren't a
| problem in this system, as we would always take the public
| bus or bike when it was warm enough. Our school had something
| like 1200-1500 students, and about only 30-50 were dropped
| off and picked up by parents regularly, simply because they
| lived in some tiny villages somewhere with shitty bus
| service.
|
| Homework and test prep was supposed to be managed by the
| students, not their parents, anyway, but most classes had
| just printed exercises and/or a sheet of what to expect in
| tests, so parents could always just check that. Test were
| also in about the same weeks of every semester, so my parents
| might not have known the exact dates unless they asked and I
| told them, but they knew that tests were happening. My
| parents kept interest, asked me how it was going regularly,
| if I needed help with something, when the tests are and what
| my results were, and so on. I think so it makes a big
| difference in the kid's experience if the parent asks them,
| or if the parent essentially goes over their head and
| consults some online resource.
|
| I personally was too proud to want help with school work from
| my parents from an early age on, and even felt that it only
| slowed me down; I wanted to be outside with my friends not
| slowly working through the homework as a team exercise. My
| grades were good, so my parents let me do my stuff. My
| sisters (they are twins) needed some help in some areas (they
| are very likely partially dyslexic), and got it.
|
| Should the grades of a student change abruptly for the worse
| or remain at a low level, teachers would just call up parents
| and discuss the situation and suggest ways to improve, and
| the semester reports had to be signed by a parent anyway, and
| that signature had to be presented at school.
|
| This was mid to late 90s by the way, my mid and "high" school
| time. In elementary school my parents were still more hands-
| on, of course.
|
| I too find "digital child managing systems" rather dystopian,
| enabling parents to micro-manage their kids even more, which
| I am convinced is not good for the kid's overall development.
| There has to be a balance between the parents need to care
| for a kid (and the care a kid actually needs, of course) and
| letting the kid grow up, and I feel such systems push that
| balance too much away from teaching kids self-reliance and
| let them make minor "educational" mistakes on their own.
|
| Then again, I of course realize that each kid has it's own
| needs, and some need a fair bit of micro-management at times.
|
| >what to dress them in
|
| May I ask, how old are your kids? Sounds like they are still
| young, if you dress them? Then of course, more micro-managing
| makes more sense. The younger the more care kids need.
| itronitron wrote:
| The main problem with the current set of schooling
| management systems is that they require a lot of work from
| parents to extract any useful information, and that level
| of effort amplifies an imbalance between parents having the
| time and ability and the parents that don't.
|
| What would have been helpful to me as a parent (while my
| children were enrolled in school) would have been a short
| weekly email, one from each teacher/class, simply
| summarizing the topic for the next week or two. That* would
| be useful in helping parents engage with their children
| before the material is covered in class. Instead my
| experience over the past four years has led me to believe
| that most teachers and school administrators are very poor
| communicators.
|
| * Another option would be for teachers to provide a course
| syllabus at the start of each semester. But for whatever
| reason teachers no longer provide those, either because
| they think the online stuff is sufficient (it's not) or
| because they haven't planned ahead.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Kids are 7 and 10. I am targeting my comments more towards
| that age group. With that said though, I don't discount
| such a system towards highschool kids as well. I think most
| parents have a good relationship with their children and
| would understand on a case by case basis how to utilize the
| information they are given. I do think it is good to
| provide parents with the option of using this information
| though as they should know their kids the best.
|
| "This was mid to late 90s by the way, my mid and "high"
| school time" You are probably the same age as me. :)
|
| "I too find "digital child managing systems" rather
| dystopian, enabling parents to micro-manage their kids even
| more, which I am convinced is not good for the kid's
| overall development." The system in question is just a
| digital calendar essentially I think far to much
| malevolence is being attributed to such a simple tool.
|
| I very much don't think packing the kids a lunch, reviewing
| their homework and seeing when their next tests are is
| micro managing, but obviously everyone is coming from
| different starting points.
|
| My parents did not involve themselves in my schooling much
| at all. I graduated with straight A's, skipped school all
| the time, only did homework if it was graded and barely
| studied except for classes like chemistry or physics and
| went to college on a full ride. Then I failed out of
| college twice because no one had ever sat down with me
| taught me how to study and learn or made me think that
| study was important. I think I would have done much better
| at college if my parents had worked with me as a kid. Still
| love my parents though and think they were good parents.
|
| My approach to other parents is I generally assume they are
| doing the best they can, mean well for their kids and will
| use whatever tools they have in that spirit.
| antihero wrote:
| > it is very useful to be able to look up what the kids have
| scheduled for the day to determine what to dress them in
|
| I swear we just had an A4 piece of paper with my lessons on
| it on the fridge.
| falcolas wrote:
| And printing out a schedule for every child is a bit silly
| when there is calendaring software...
|
| Everything once done on paper is now done electronically -
| and revisions (fixes) happen much more quickly to boot.
| alibarber wrote:
| You're not wrong, but, my school timetable changed once
| every quarter, that was sort of feature. It's not work,
| no one is flying in from $city on $day to kick off a
| project, students and teachers would follow a routine, it
| was easy.
|
| Frankly there are some aspects of it I miss...
| watwut wrote:
| It is literally the same thing then. If one is not causing
| outrage, nor should the other.
| kwdc wrote:
| I'd also say that a school denying access to this information
| should rightly expect pointy and sharp questions coming at
| them. Parents being part of the education system shouldn't
| come as a surprise to a school. It would be like hiding the
| school timetable.
|
| Usual common sense caveats still apply: Privacy and
| authentication are still valid aspects but not to block those
| who could reasonably expect to successfully authenticate, eg
| a parent of a kid in school.
| tata71 wrote:
| > its very helpful to look up what homework / tests are due
| as the kids tend to not manage this so well themselves
|
| How do you expect they'll develop these sorts of self-starter
| skills and mental models, besides experiencing things like
| the (comparatively low-impact!) consequences of not handing
| in your 5th grade homework....?
|
| Hopefully you're going full parabola and also providing
| disproportionately strong incentives to do the "right"
| behaviors, because otherwise it's as likely they'll succeed
| as they'll become sand through your tight grasp.
| pawelmurias wrote:
| Migrate them to keeping their own calendar, rather then
| using the old fashioned way of a mixture of scribbling
| stuff in random places and not giving a shift
| wonderwonder wrote:
| The reactions people are expressing to a parent stating
| they like to know what their kids are up to in school and
| what assignments are due is pretty odd.
|
| "it's as likely they'll succeed as they'll become sand
| through your tight grasp" lol, I have no idea how my
| statement on working with my kids on their homework and
| liking to know what is going on has evolved into an image
| of me being some sort of god king in my house, but hey
| whatever makes you happy.
|
| My kids have homework, I sit down with them and work on it
| with them, we bond, we joke around, they learn and they
| turn it in the next day. The horror.
|
| Edit: "How do you expect they'll develop these sorts of
| self-starter skills" To add some color, my 9 year old
| decided at the spur of the moment while they were asking
| who wanted to stand up and give a speech to be on student
| council to do it and he won. I had no input and he just
| made the decision in the moment so I very much don't think
| sitting down with kids and doing homework with them or
| keeping an eye on their schedule kills any self-starter
| skills. There are always extremes but the overall reaction
| to this is a bit silly.
| watwut wrote:
| What you propose is to not teach them nor give them
| gradually more responsibilities.
|
| You literally demand the system in which kids are expected
| to be well organized. If they are not they will be punished
| until they learn to be organized. If they don't despite
| punishments in school, parents won't be told until end of
| year. Then they get the surprising final report and only
| thing they can do is to yell at kids or something.
|
| That is rather poor pedagogy.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| As I said, as a kid I would have hated this. I don't think
| kids benefit from this kind of overbearing parenting in the
| long run. Better than being neglected, I guess. Perhaps this
| is useful for very young children, but knowing myself I would
| have broken out of there as quickly as possible.
| true_religion wrote:
| Let me preface this by clarify that when I say 'children',
| I mean young children 12 and younger, not teenagers in
| secondary school who can reasonably be expected to care for
| themselves...
|
| Personally, I'm not seeing why this is a huge issue. In the
| 1980s, parents of at least the private school that I used
| would get a syllabus containing all the homework and class
| plans for the year.
|
| If you wanted to know what was happening on week #7, you
| just had to look it up on paper without having a handy app
| to put it on your calendar. It wasn't seen as surveillance,
| but rather normal planning. If the teacher and school
| system know what's upcoming, then why shouldn't parents. It
| was seen as obvious that parents would help their children
| with homework, and that education necessarily involved
| parental support.
|
| Along the way if there were _any_ disciplinary or academic
| issues, parents would have to sign-off on handling minor
| problems, and would get a personal phone call from the
| school for major ones. This is in addition to monthly
| meetings, PTA, etc.
|
| Has the world changed so much nowadays that people just
| drop off young children at school and can reasonably expect
| to be totally uninvolved?
|
| Now to contrast, in my country, secondary school (13-17) is
| usually boarding so kids are 100% outside of your view for
| 4 years and are forcibly made independent.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| All kids are sent home with a folder that lists the
| homework they have due, tests they have taken etc. This
| just puts it online? Are you saying that putting it online
| is the issue or that parents should have no insight on what
| their kids are doing unless the kid decides to tell the
| parent?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > parents should have no insight on what their kids are
| doing unless the kid decides to tell the parent
|
| As a kid this is exactly what I believed. Parents believe
| otherwise, of course.
| dgfitz wrote:
| Do you have children? Honest question.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Not yet.
| teawrecks wrote:
| Also don't have kids. I'm in my 30s. Totally agree with
| the other commenter. As a kid in school, I had to learn
| to be responsible for things, it was my responsibility to
| decide what I could handle on my own and what I told my
| parents about, and I paid the price when I dropped the
| ball. Yeah, there are always a few kids who need more
| help learning these skills than others, and I could see
| the app in the hands of good parents being useful. But I
| don't want to live in a world full of people whose
| parents never trusted them.
|
| I feel like one of those old people complaining that
| "kids these days aren't allowed to go play on their own,
| climb a tree, scrape their knees, etc". But this seems
| really troubling on a whole new psychological level. IMO
| kids need autonomy to mature, which can't happen if their
| parent can "magically" know anything.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Your parents already had access to the app, just in the
| form of a folder you were sent home with that had
| everything printed out. This is just a digitized version,
| its not the 2nd coming of the Gestapo. Also you need to
| think about this from the perspective of the parents,
| having kids in school mean you have to do things, you can
| either be informed ahead of time and do them in a
| leisurely manner or you can find out last minute, rush
| everything and get stressed. The app helps people avoid
| that stress. You are young, I am surprised you are anti
| the digitization of something that has been inefficient
| for so long; and trust me if you have kids in school you
| would know just how frustrating it is to keep track of
| everything that is going on or due.
| teawrecks wrote:
| It sounds like you may have had a very unorthodox
| childhood and may not realize it. No, my parents didn't
| have access to, or knowledge about my things. As soon as
| you entrust a child with a document, it is up to that
| child whether that document survives more than a few
| steps out of the classroom, let alone whether a parent
| ever knows about it. That is a very strong form of
| autonomy, important to a child's development, that the
| app completely eliminates.
|
| The stress you are talking about seems to me like the
| hallmark of an overbearing parent. Let your child fail
| sometimes. That's ok, they need to experience that,
| that's how you learn. You can't let them think that
| someone else will always take care of the things they
| don't. You're not doing them any favors by ensuring they
| always succeed.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| We should leave them out on the hills to fend for
| themselves, feeding them will only make them weak! /s
| Larrikin wrote:
| When you let elementary school children fail constantly
| at easy tasks because they forgot about them it just
| instills in them that the grades don't really matter.
|
| Little children need the habit formation brought on by
| asking if their homework is done everyday, how they're
| doing in school, and if there are any upcoming projects
| because they just don't have the discipline at that age
| usually. As they get older these checks can lessen if
| they've formed the correct habits. It also emphasizes
| that their education is important to you so that they
| realize it probably should be important to them.
|
| Some children form it earlier than others but you're
| setting your future kid up for failure and being behind
| early if you think you should be totally hands off with
| their education.
|
| Also all the other good parents will be ensuring their
| kids succeed and children start getting sorted out by
| grades fairly early in their education. Letting them take
| a bunch of preventable failures early on before they even
| realize the importance of education, when you do just
| seems cruel.
| teawrecks wrote:
| You spent a lot of effort responding to a strawman that
| isn't at all the point I'm making.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I think maybe we are thinking of distinctly different age
| groups. My kids are in elementary school, they are sent
| home with a folder everyday that lists what is due.
| Teacher told us at the beginning of the year that this
| would happen. If my kid suddenly did not bring his folder
| home I would know something was wrong.
|
| "The stress you are talking about seems to me like the
| hallmark of an overbearing parent" Maybe but I have kids,
| and most of the parents I know are the same way, so I
| guess there are a ton of us that are wrong. Your opinion
| may change once you have kids.
|
| "Let your child fail sometimes. That's ok, they need to
| experience that, that's how you learn." Appreciate the
| advice and I accept it as its advice I would have given
| when I did not have kids, thought I had it all figured
| out and believed raising kids was easy.
| Nullabillity wrote:
| > Your parents already had access to the app, just in the
| form of a folder you were sent home with that had
| everything printed out.
|
| Where are you from?
|
| In the 7 different (pre-university) schools I went to in
| Sweden, _none_ of them had paper folders, and only one
| had a digital platform like this. And that one was only
| for teachers and students, parents didn 't have access.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I'm in the US, and my kids are in elementary school, so
| mileage may vary.
| yibg wrote:
| But kids have to do a lot of things they don't want to do.
| Going to school in the first place is often one of them.
| watwut wrote:
| It is not like this would be secret in the past. The ones
| most likely yo not tell are actually 6-7 years old who
| genuinely forgot and then are stressed cause teacher is
| complains.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I can understand personal preference of a child but study
| after study show that children whose parents are actively
| involved with their education and schooling get better
| results.
| Loughla wrote:
| I guess this comes down to the definition of actively
| involved versus overbearing.
|
| There is a fine, fine, fine line to walk between the two.
| Knowing how your kid is doing, asking questions, and
| being interested in their schooling is okay. Using it to
| force action without learning consequence is not.
|
| It is, sometimes, okay for a kid to miss an assignment
| because they're not great at time management. That's how
| they learn consequences for their actions.
|
| Anyway, you two have a fundamental disagreement, I
| believe, about the level of interaction and control
| required to be involved.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| Kids primarily benefit from parents education and their
| engagement in their children. But more by providing
| stimuli, not by surveillance.
|
| This isn't a black and white issue and as I said, it
| depends on their age. As I understand it we are talking
| about more or less preteens here.
| eptcyka wrote:
| I don't know anyone personally whose parents were
| involved with them during their school years and they
| achieved moderate or high grades.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Correlation does not equal causation. Parents more
| involved in school are more likely to be involved at home
| more generally.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Active involvement = parent teaches child various skills
| and ideas, reads books aloud, suggests interesting
| problems to solve, works together with them on extra-
| curricular projects, obtains materials and resources
| related to the child's personal interests, ...
|
| Micromanaging the completion of their school-assigned
| busywork is something different.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I don't know if you have kids, I am guessing not, if I am
| wrong, my apologies. Knowing what your kids have due for
| school is not micromanaging its a core part of being a
| good parent. I know if my kid has a math test so it lets
| me sit down with him and review for his test, it allows
| me to ensure he knows the basis for whatever comes next
| in his curriculum. Terribly overbearing parents are not
| good but I think people are for some reason assuming the
| worst from this app and more so the parents that use it
| and it seems very odd to me. I ensure my kids study for
| their weekly spelling tests for 10 minutes a day, and
| review with them before tests and that is seen as
| micromanaging and negative? Strange times.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| Yeah, that's micromanaging.
| jacobolus wrote:
| My oldest kid is 5, but I hope when he is older I can
| leave him to handle his own schoolwork (offering help if
| he wants it).
|
| > _study for their weekly spelling tests for 10 minutes a
| day_
|
| Aside: Spending 1.5+ hours per week between home and
| school studying spelling per se in the way students
| typically study spelling is an outrageous waste of time.
|
| Arguably studying spelling per se is a waste of time in
| any quantity (as compared to spending that time on
| intrinsically motivated reading and writing, and learning
| how to spell as a side effect), but anyone who cares
| enough about this to devote hundreds of hours to it
| should set up some kind of spaced repetition system.
| pixl97 wrote:
| > I can leave him to handle his own schoolwork
|
| It turns out that kids are not adults. Part of raising
| them is teaching them life skills such as time management
| is something that takes a of time and management. You may
| be lucky and have a child that manages time well, or you
| may have a contrarian that does what they want. Part of
| being that manager, is knowing exactly what you are
| managing and having readily available data is part of
| that.
| cmurf wrote:
| I am contrary. Around 12, I rejected homework, learned to
| manipulate and lie instead. It took many detentions and
| frustrated parents to get me reoriented. I can completely
| understand kids who don't like being told to be a rote
| learning little worker bee who does what's told without
| question. Why do this at all? Why do it this way? No one
| else cares, they just want it over with as fast as
| possible, but the same crap comes up over and over again
| as if to make kids comfortable being bored, and doing
| what they're told. It's such magnificent bullcrap.
|
| Rejoice if your kid is difficult. They see a problem.
| Adults need to help them understand it.
| jonfw wrote:
| If your kid is a critical thinker and has problems with
| the school system, but is still learning, that's fine. If
| your kid is two years behind his age group in
| mathematics- that's less fine.
|
| Part of being a good parent in this scenario is being
| able to tell the difference. Data can probably help- is
| my kid getting a D because he doesn't turn things in, or
| because he can't do long division?
| wonderwonder wrote:
| sure, studying spelling is probably a waste of time with
| today's technology but that doesn't change the fact that
| he has a spelling test every Friday and he is going to
| feel better about himself if he passes vs fails. Its not
| a bad thing to set your kids up to succeed within the
| given system. Its fine to be a rebel but you must also
| understand that going to school involves testing and as a
| parent you don't always get to choose the subjects. I
| very much think that the self esteem my kid gains from
| getting good grades and actually learning to study is
| well worth the horror of having to spend a few minutes a
| day with his dad hanging out, practicing spelling,
| learning math and chatting about their day.
| jacobolus wrote:
| If you want to set your kid to succeed at spelling tests
| per se (and he doesn't have enough past reading/writing
| experience to know the words already), you could get a
| list of likely words a few months in advance and put them
| into some kind of spaced repetition system (whether
| electronic or based on paper flash cards).
|
| You'll pay back your initial time investment within a
| month or two, and you'll end up with a dramatic
| improvement to efficiency and long-term retention, as
| well as teaching a useful tool/skill that can be put to
| good effect if the kid ever needs to memorize trivia for
| med school or bar quizzes.
|
| Trying to cram-learn a new list of miscellaneous things
| every week is a fool's game. The key to human memory is
| connections, context, and repeated exposure, not brute-
| force effort.
|
| Personally I always just read science fiction books
| hidden in my lap during spelling time in school, and my
| teachers gave up on trying to get me to study lists of
| words I already knew how to spell. My older brother's
| strategy was to just do poorly on spelling tests because
| he thought it was a waste of time: never seemed to hurt
| him, and decades later he can spell as well as anyone.
| YMMV.
| Diggsey wrote:
| That's absolutely micromanaging and negative.
|
| The goal of school isn't just to pass the tests. If a kid
| fails to revise for a test, but it doesn't matter because
| their parent will just look up the schedule and force
| them to revise, then they learn nothing beyond what's in
| the test.
|
| If they fail to revise and as a result do badly at the
| test, then next time they might actually take the
| initiative and revise through their own motivation, and
| that's a far more valuable skill than anything that might
| actually be in the test.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Interesting strategy. How have your kids performed under
| it?
| watwut wrote:
| Not him, but generally to large extend I have that
| strategy and kids do well. Both have good grades and are
| motivated. Obvious caveat is that if their grades were
| not good, I would get involved more. When their grades
| fallen a bit, I was there telling them that they need to
| learn, analyzing test with them and so on and blah blah.
| When homework was not done, I got involved for a while
| until the kid got into habit of doing it. Other obvious
| caveat is that when they ask for help, I always come in
| to help.
|
| The thing is, hands off approach really works and
| motivates kids - but it still requires attention and
| correction. And it does not work with all kids at all
| ages.
|
| Most people remember 15 years old self and assume kids
| all ages are as mature as they remember themselves.
| Meanwhile, most 6 years old are much less developed.
| renewiltord wrote:
| How did you know the homework wasn't done?
| watwut wrote:
| When homework is not done, teacher sends the email. Or
| gave the kid black point and then the kid was unhappy
| about it and told me. If it did not, that teacher would
| also send mail, but after like 2-3 points within short
| period (don't know the exact rules).
|
| The other option is to ask in the evening "have you done
| homework". One of my kids would never lie and other only
| rarely, so it worked.
|
| To add to it, old system was not freedom. One feature of
| old "parents know only what kids tell them" system was
| that many parents learned about issues only when
| inevitable end of semester report/grades came. At that
| point, issues grew large. Even worst, parents were
| surprised and shocked, tended to react badly, punish the
| kid , yell, beat them etc. I remember reading about flux
| of kids running away each time reports come.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Okay, with this email business we're back with the
| "micromanaging".
| deltarholamda wrote:
| >That's absolutely micromanaging and negative
|
| Not really. Schooling is largely targeted towards the
| great masses in the middle of the Bell curve. These kids
| will need help, prodding, and other forms of
| encouragement in order to keep their basic schoolwork up.
|
| There are a smaller number of kids on the left and right
| tails that will, for the former, never make any effort;
| and for the latter, will require nothing other than
| support. That's just the way things are, I didn't make it
| that way, and there is nearly nothing that can be done to
| change it, and recognizing that fact will do more for
| most children than trying to pretend it doesn't exist.
|
| The mass of kids who need the aid of their parents are
| helped when the parents can follow along. I have to use a
| system similar to the broken Swedish one for my kids.
| It's a mishmash of various systems, and sometimes
| teachers just give up and use something else, or use a
| less appropriate method (like a shared Google doc or
| similar). Keeping up with simple things like "when is the
| next math test" is a real chore.
|
| While it would be great to be able to instill
| "initiative" into the souls of kids, it's unlikely to
| work. Unless you happen to know of a magick elixir that
| can do so, in which case there are a crapload of adults
| who could use a dose of this wizardry.
|
| It helps to not romanticize children. Kids are dumb. Even
| the smart ones. They have little life experience, and
| their brains are still wired in such a way that they
| struggle to see consequences. Most of schooling is just a
| grind to slowly teach them enough basics that they can
| operate relatively efficiently. Left to their own
| devices, they will play games, eat candy, and believe
| that they will make a living as a Twitch streamer or
| something equally ridiculous.
| mattbee wrote:
| _If they fail to revise and as a result do badly at the
| test, then next time they might actually take the
| initiative and revise_
|
| Hahaha no. Have you met an 8 year old? Homo economicus
| they are not.
| true_religion wrote:
| You're saying that the negative results of failing a test
| should come from the school and not the parent. I don't
| see why this is true.
|
| A school will grade a student down, but often kids will
| simply just not care about that unless there's impetus to
| do so from their peer group or people they rely on as a
| role models (e.g. parents).
|
| Also, when talking about kids... I think it's useful to
| clarify what age group you think a particular standard
| applies to. Kindergarteners need more parent care and
| management than secondary schoolers. It's more okay for a
| 6 year old to fail a test, than a 17 year old prepping
| for university. The stakes are different, and the mental
| abilities of the child are different. What is reasonable
| for one is not necessarily reasonable for another.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback on my parenting style Diggsey, I
| will be on the lookout for a visit from child services
| for the terrible crime of paying attention to my kids
| results at school, making sure they do their homework and
| sitting down and studying with them for their tests. I
| only hope they can forgive me when they are older.
| azinman2 wrote:
| I've learned that once you have dogs or children,
| everyone else seems to have a very important opinion on
| what you should do with your own, all related services,
| etc.
| newbamboo wrote:
| I think it's good to be involved but an app that passes
| information to the parent, essentially bypassing the
| child, is disempowering to the child. The child should
| know and be able to tell you she has a math test. If she
| is not good at managing that sort of thing, then she
| needs to get better. Using an app to circumvent the
| child's own management of that stuff is at least similar
| to micromanaging.
| moffkalast wrote:
| And quite the opposite, it reinforces the idea that they
| don't need to remember it so they never will.
| falcolas wrote:
| Are you able to tell us, without looking at your
| calendar, every meeting you have for the next week, every
| assigned task without consulting your task manager, all
| without fail and with perfect recall of the details?
|
| Expecting more from a child's brain than you do of
| yourself is folly.
| newbamboo wrote:
| Should a child know what calendars are for? It seems like
| that could be a useful tool for them to have in their
| toolkit.
| falcolas wrote:
| At least for my nieces and nephews, they have as much
| access to their scholastic portal as their parents. So
| yes, such calendars are absolutely useful tools. A good
| thing for parents and children to look at together.
|
| And much like their calendars, we do not ourselves set
| every event that appears on our calendars.
| _jal wrote:
| > If she is not good at managing that sort of thing, then
| she needs to get better.
|
| ...And how do you think that happens?
|
| "Sarah, I can't help but notice that you have emotional
| regulation issues. Go get better at it."
| newbamboo wrote:
| I would ask her why she didn't do well on her math test
| and encourage her to think about strategies she could use
| to do better on the next one. I believe in providing
| scaffolding and empowering young minds. I realize there
| are different parenting styles but at some point the
| child won't have anyone else to manage her and will need
| to solve problems in her own. It's great if she has a lot
| of practice and experience with self management by the
| time she has to fly solo. I suppose if there's enough
| wealth in the family she may never need to manage her own
| affairs, but I feel like she would be missing out on
| important aspects of life; the pride and comfort that
| comes with self sufficiency and personal accomplishment.
| _jal wrote:
| > ask her why she didn't do well on her math test
|
| That sounds like a reasonable approach for some parent-
| kid combinations. But as far as this discussion goes...
|
| It was about an app that provided information like grades
| and that a test was coming up with the parent. It sounds
| like it would be a perfectly fine complement to your
| approach, no?
|
| I don't see how it is some sort of replacement that is
| going to make everyone into helicopter parents. (And the
| problem with helicopter parents is not caused by some
| app.) In fact, I have trouble seeing how it intrudes more
| than the entirely nondigital approach to school-parent
| communication used when I was a kid - bring back this
| piece of paper with a parent's signature.
| watwut wrote:
| You expect that from 6 years old? They can't even read
| and write.
|
| School age kids don't start at 14 when you can discuss
| strategies. It starts at 6 when the kid starts mostly
| confused and excited.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| "I would ask her why she didn't do well on her math test
| and encourage her to think about strategies she could use
| to do better on the next one." How has that worked with
| your own kids? If my kid comes home with an F on a test,
| they don't want me to sit down and think about
| strategies. They are going to probably be upset (if they
| think academics are important) or not care at all (not a
| great alternative). First thing your kids wants is just
| to be told its fine and that they will do better on the
| next one. But them doing better on the next one will not
| result from giving them strategies, they are kids, you
| have to sit down with them, go over the subject matter
| and discuss it with them to ensure they understand.
|
| "I feel like she would be missing out on important
| aspects of life; the pride and comfort that comes with
| self sufficiency and personal accomplishment." letting
| kids fail a ton of stuff in school so that they can learn
| better strategies sounds good in practice but in reality
| it will probably end up in the kid feeling terrible about
| themselves, and mentally resigning themselves to academic
| failure. Kids don't need strategy they need to know their
| family cares about them and are actively there to support
| and work with them.
| true_religion wrote:
| I kind of think you two are talking past each other here.
| By 'encourage her to think about strategies', I think the
| OP does mean to show that they love and support the
| child. That'd fall under the category of encouragement,
| and they probably think it's obvious that you'd take care
| of their emotional and mental health while problem
| solving.
|
| On the other hand, you seem to be anti-strategy but you
| say that you need to 'sit down with them, go over the
| subject matter and discuss it with them to ensure they
| understand'. Isn't going over the material a strategy to
| do better next time?
|
| It may be that the word 'strategy' is just ill defined
| here. I mean, this isn't the military, so isn't a valid
| strategy the application of _any_ plan whether it be as
| simple as "hey kid, study before the test" or "let me
| teach you English-comprehension personally"?
| geofft wrote:
| I don't really know why you have to have kids to have an
| opinion. All of us _have been_ kids, and "I hated things
| like this for reasons I couldn't express at the time and
| certainly wasn't allowed to express at the time, in
| retrospect it was not effective for me, and in retrospect
| it soured my relationship with my parents as an adult" is
| a valid argument.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| The parents using this system have also been kids. Not
| having kids means that you have not had to deal with the
| frustration of trying to figure out what is going on with
| your kids at school. Knowledge is a very important part
| of making decisions for your kids and the more knowledge
| you have as a parent the better. No one is suggesting
| that the parent have intimate details of everything going
| on with their kids but the reaction to a simple app that
| allows the parent to know what homework is due and if
| there is a test is a little dramatic. Everyone is
| entitled to an opinion on anything, no one is saying they
| aren't but to ignore that parents and non parents may
| have different insight on something like this is
| disingenuous.
| teawrecks wrote:
| I know you have kids, so you're too close to the
| situation to have an unbiased view, but realize that the
| math is only a small part of what your child is learning
| here. They also need to know how to judge for themselves
| whether they are prepared, they need to know how to seek
| out help from you or a tutor when they don't. Similarly,
| they need to learn what happens when they don't do these
| things and just assume someone else will do it for them.
|
| You are doing your child a disservice by ensuring they
| are always prepared for every challenge they face.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| "You are doing your child a disservice by ensuring they
| are always prepared for every challenge they face." I
| think you are very much reading too far into the
| situation. I am making sure my 7 and 10 year old do their
| homework. They know there are consequences for not doing
| it because I explain to them that there are. Kids don't
| have to get hit by a car to know to look both ways, they
| just need the parent to tell them. I understand you don't
| have kids and so are coming at this from a theoretical
| position, but theory and a live breathing, emotional
| child are very different things. You could argue that
| this is the way you were raised and you turned out great,
| but everyone was raised differently and most of the
| people on this site probably turned out pretty well when
| compared to the majority of society at least from a
| financial and capability perspective.
|
| "so you're too close to the situation to have an unbiased
| view, but realize that the math is only a small part of
| what your child is learning here" I appreciate the
| perspective, on the other hand you don't have kids so
| have not experienced the situation at all. The idea that
| a parent is doing a young child a disservice by sitting
| with them, reviewing their homework and discussing their
| day is pretty strange. I wish you well when you have
| children of your own. Now if you will excuse me I have to
| go and tell Brady how to improve the snap in his throws.
|
| Edit: "I know you have kids, so you're too close to the
| situation to have an unbiased view, but realize that the
| math is only a small part of what your child is learning
| here". Your argument boils down to people without kids
| are the best people to know what is best for kids as
| people with kids are too close to the situation. That
| makes no sense and I disagree.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Active involvement would be _talking to your children and
| asking them what they have for school_.
|
| Looking up their schedule on a website is passive
| involvement.
|
| I'm relieved these systems didn't exist when I was a
| child.
| kfarr wrote:
| Of course these systems existed, they just used paper or
| other mediums. Did you not receive calendars, directory
| books or yearbooks, permission slip for upcoming museum
| trip, etc? Save the date slip or important school numbers
| magnet for the fridge?
| tata71 wrote:
| (Reading about people) breaking Blackboard et al was some
| of the best fun in school days....
| falcolas wrote:
| If there's one thing I remember from my own childhood,
| and know from my various nieces and nephews - children
| can't be expected to tell the whole truth, or sometimes
| even remember the whole truth.
|
| One bad test, one missed homework, turns into a spiral of
| shame that makes children hide the truth out of a fear
| for their parent's and other trusted adults'
| disappointment (real or imagined). If my parents knew the
| truth - when I know the truth - we can fix it before it
| spirals into an unfixable situation, and not after.
|
| Not all children are perfect, nor perfectly able to
| remember every event and assignment they have.
| popcube wrote:
| if parents want to do this, they should know they kids
| have exam... just one semester failue on exam, kids will
| start escape and "forgot" homework and more test, if
| parent work too hard they even have no chance find it...
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| That assumes an environment that your parents will be
| actively involved and understand how to use the non
| functional swedish site.
| teawrecks wrote:
| I'm not against the app, but the use cases you gave sound
| like things the child needs to learn to do. If they have gym,
| they need to be responsible for remembering their stuff. If
| the cafeteria has food they don't like, maybe they learn to
| develop new tastes that day. And most importantly, I'd they
| have homework or tests that are due, the child should 1000%
| be solely responsible for this.
|
| As you mention, I guess it can be a useful tool for a parent
| to keep their kid on track, because yeah obviously they're
| learning and they'll be forgetful. But IMO it would also make
| it too easy for an overbearing parent to prevent their child
| from learning important life skills, thinking they're
| helping.
| striking wrote:
| It appears to manage attendance and grades among other things.
| I'm not sure what this has to do with Chromebooks.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| Such devices are part of their strategy for digitization as
| is this school app. Sweden spends a decent amount of money on
| education.
|
| But if look at a purely educational value any notebook beats
| a tablet aside for art. Purely technical knowledge is also
| better gained in more open environments. Depends on age I
| guess.
| soco wrote:
| There are different schools of thought, some people would
| rather have the kids home-schooled or completely different
| like Montessori, Steiner... so maybe the critique comes from
| that direction.
| striking wrote:
| Yeah, but what does that have to do with a school app?
| tomohawk wrote:
| To err is human. To really screw things up, you need a computer
| or government.
|
| Adding both in at once? Watch out!
| zmix wrote:
| > "[...] But you have to involve students, and especially
| teachers, in the development from the start. There has been none
| of that in the School Platform."
|
| Oh my! I can imagine some bureaucrats playing "Lord-Master of
| Administration", enjoying the small power, they have, while
| burning through tax provided money and, generally, making a
| career. There may be sides, I do not understand, but, from the
| article, it just looks like this.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Perhaps Jeff Bezos wasn't the first person to think of it, but I
| give him credit for the decision to turn every single internal
| Amazon service into an API. Obviously it worked splendidly for
| monetizing it, but as a guideline I really appreciate the idea.
| The better the APIs a project has, the better the quality of
| interaction with other development. In the end this just raises
| the tide for everyone.
| cerved wrote:
| Program to interfaces not implementations
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Hmm, I'm not quite following. Curious how this comment tie in
| with the one above?
| contingencies wrote:
| Yes, this is one of the best Bezos observations. Manage as you
| program: create well-defined interfaces. If there's value,
| there's a fair chance you can export it as a spinoff business.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| it is arguable that an entire generation of Western adolescents
| has been traumatized by social media, so why stop there? next up,
| elementary school
| antiterra wrote:
| I can't find any the information in the article that describes
| or suggests social media functionality. Do you have any
| information on this?
| mistrial9 wrote:
| draws a picture of a Godzilla monster (who is the computer
| community and their funding enablers) breathing fire-databases
| on children-in-groups
| JackFr wrote:
| "We don't have an open API"
|
| Sure you do. You just don't know it yet.
| henrikschroder wrote:
| Even before the open app came along, people found _enormous_
| security holes in the system, because they were essentially
| operating with security-by-obscurity. It was super embarrassing
| for the city, they had to close the system for days while
| fixing it.
|
| The official system has a mobile app, where it takes effort to
| figure out the API, and a SPA web app, where it is absolutely
| trivial to see which endpoints it is hitting and how.
|
| And the ridiculousness of the city's defense that it's not open
| is made greater by the fact that if they had made an open API
| from the start, security _should have been_ baked in from the
| start, which means they would have avoided embarrassing
| security incidents along the way. They already _have_ all the
| components needed for a proper, public API. They 're _so close_
| , and yet they're insisting that it's private, and that it's
| illegal to access their private API.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Like twitch's unexpected open source offsite code backup.
| aneutron wrote:
| I audibly chuckled at your comment. Thanks for the laugh !
| tantalor wrote:
| This could be a variant of http://hyrumslaw.com
|
| JackFr's law: With sufficiently angered users of a private API,
| they will build an better, open API around it.
| tata71 wrote:
| The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes
| around it. John Gilmour
| lovecg wrote:
| Plaid
| petermcneeley wrote:
| The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men
| to do nothing illegal.
| abnry wrote:
| On the other hand, that is a very good excuse for those who
| want to do evil.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| No, the whole point of the quote is that Illegal does not
| equate evil. Helping slaves escape was illegal
| Aromasin wrote:
| Or for tricking good people into doing evil.
| tata71 wrote:
| "Don't worry, everybody takes the juice!"
| zzo38computer wrote:
| Open APIs is what we need because too many programs are badly
| designed. Unfortunately, the API may also be badly designed, but
| sometimes it is OK. Designing the open API may also avoid the
| data breach due to making less likely that the design is not
| designed in the way to cause such a breach, I should expect.
|
| User interfaces seem bad enough that I think it might be better
| to design the API primarily and even only the API; you can then
| just use that. If it is simple enough, it can be used from
| command-line interfaces, and others, easily enough if a protocol
| is designed well enough to support such multiple uses in a simple
| way. (It can even make the form automatically too, with the
| user's display settings rather than using the form author's CSS
| or whatever.)
|
| However, they also should not require schools to use such a app,
| especially to require one of their locked systems only. You can
| do education without it, too. That doesn't mean such a system is
| useless (you can use it if you find it useful), only that it is
| possible to work without it, too. They didn't used to have such a
| app in the school and shouldn't require it now either; it can be
| voluntary.
| mvarrieur wrote:
| This should probably link directly to the article:
| https://www.wired.co.uk/article/sweden-stockholm-school-app-...
| dakr wrote:
| For $117 million they could have hired administrators at each
| school to field phone calls from parents and take care of
| records.
| literallyaduck wrote:
| Government should learn from that self organized teams who work
| for passion build better software. Authoritarian dictators
| mandating a poor solution vs self lead, self organized, committed
| parents building a piece of software they will instantly dogfood.
| pfortuny wrote:
| I have said above this: there is no way to win if the opponent
| shows you an "ISO-9000" (et al.) certification and you are a
| "bunch of interested parents"...
|
| You can only lose.
| enumjorge wrote:
| I agree with the main point of your comment but calling the
| people trying to shut this down "authoritarian dictators"
| erodes the meaning of the phrase.
| dylan604 wrote:
| s/authoritarian dictators/power hungry, desperate to remain
| in power/
| addicted wrote:
| Or, far more likely, people who don't understand this stuff
| worried that they are gonna get sued because they let
| private data be accessed illegally.
|
| And I'm sure the vendor they paid a billion to also had
| sales people insisting that what the open source people
| were doing was illegal.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Please. If those in charge allowed the passionate to do these
| kinds of things, they wouldn't remain in charge. Authoritarian
| dicators not required.
| themitigating wrote:
| Because there's only two levels 1. Passionate that produces
| amazing software 2. Completely don't care
| dylan604 wrote:
| In a nut shell, yes, but I'd modify the groupings: 1)
| Passionate people that rally others, 2) everyone else.
|
| Whether you utterly don't care, midly care but not enough
| to do anything, or care enough to do something only when
| someone goes first, it is the passionate people that preach
| to the choir because that's how you get them to sing.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| In most areas there arent enough passionate people to get
| something major done, as most OSS maintainers found out,
| thry rarely get a serious commit or contribution
| aenis wrote:
| It would be interesting to know what contractor delivered the
| original $120m mess, and actively sabotaged open source efforts.
| The combination of large budget and terrible result suggest some
| of the very large contractors used to doing work for fortune 500
| companies.
|
| Shame on those who work there.
| yummybear wrote:
| Are we shaming employees for company choices? Who works at
| companies who haven't done questionable actions?
| aenis wrote:
| Yes. I'd not do it, and I am sure many other would rather
| look for a different job (which is not difficult) than engage
| in such acts. Its a personal choice to work for companies
| acting immorally.
| Fordec wrote:
| I can't speak for you, but for me, I actually audit the
| company before accepting a job offer for and I'm proud of the
| conduct of every position and team I have been a part of. You
| can't buy reputation, which extends to who you choose to
| associate with.
| kakoni wrote:
| Well originally there were 4; TietoEvry, Nova Software, Ping
| Pong and Itslearning [1]
|
| [1] https://axbom.se/oppna-skolplattformen-stockholm/
| teawrecks wrote:
| "It warned parents to stop using the app and alleged that it
| might be illegally accessing people's personal information."
|
| If that is possible, then your API is at fault. Period.
| psyc wrote:
| It isn't only grass roots amateurs who fail at this. Once upon a
| time, there was a medium sized org in a galaxy sized company,
| that set out to make a Moodle/Blackboard-like, but for all ages,
| and "cool" (like they knew what that was). The designers were
| teachers, and the VP was a former god damned state superintendent
| of schools. Seems like they should have known better. When the
| time came to shop around for a test site, it quickly became
| apparent that the app was sort of inherently illegal, and even if
| it were not, there was no chance of it getting past the
| bureaucracy. The VP was fired, and the whole org was absorbed
| into other parts of the company.
| SilasX wrote:
| Illegal on what basis? Data privacy, like in the story or
| something else?
| psyc wrote:
| I believe most if not all of it would have boiled down to
| data collection rules for kids. Some of that may have been
| specific to schools. The extent of those rules meant you
| could not simply bring the app into compliance without
| destroying a lot of the innovative parts.
| mindslight wrote:
| > _To do so, the city struck a deal with an external provider
| that will be able to set up licenses between Oppna
| Skolplattformen and the city. "With this solution, the City of
| Stockholm can guarantee that personal data is handled in a
| correct and secure way, while parents can take part in the
| market's digital tools in their everyday lives"_
|
| Licensing does nothing to guarantee that your systems are secure,
| and the overall law is what enforces the correct handling of
| personal data by outside parties. But in this paper pusher's
| head, anything she cannot control through a contract must be a
| threat. And so she will spend public money wielding the police
| department against individuals actually building stuff, to force
| them into signing her safety blanket of a contract.
|
| In 2021, it behooves us to remember that this type of gatekeeper
| used to be in control of nearly every technology organization -
| empty suits who knew nothing technical, thinking security is
| about checking off certifications and qualifications. It was a
| rare gem to find someone with a clue who held enough
| organizational pull to set policy.
|
| I remember having a meeting with the head of the campus network
| at my university, who was concerned about me running Linux on my
| own machine. He just couldn't understand the point of Linux - he
| could never trust it because "there is no one to sue". As if
| suing Microsoft would have ever been a sensible path. But that
| was his worldview - how do you think he responded to security
| reports?
|
| But the thing that we need to realize in 2021 is that it's not
| like these people just left and found honest jobs - their
| existence was eclipsed by the much larger technical-first
| community. They're still out there, controlling their little
| fiefdoms, reacting in the same destructive ways to stop
| themselves from looking "bad". And with the calcification of
| technology, they might even be poised for a comeback.
| tm-guimaraes wrote:
| > He just couldn't understand the point of Linux - he could
| never trust it because "there is no one to sue"
|
| Well, I guess enterprises can just "buy" linux from RedHat/Suse
| and get some corp to sue.
| mindslight wrote:
| That past interaction stuck with me so hard, I definitely
| think of companies selling services around Free software in
| those terms. From my adult perspective it's an understandable
| business dynamic, but we shouldn't be condoning it from
| public servants.
| donkarma wrote:
| Schools should NOT have applications, what a mistake
| castis wrote:
| Could you go into more detail on why you think this?
| wyager wrote:
| Not him, but I can take a guess:
|
| 99% of apps suck and are horrible to work with. Government
| apps are probably worse than average.
|
| Interacting with the government shouldn't require the use of
| any particular tech device. It sounds like in this case there
| is no alternative.
|
| Schools have managed for hundreds of years without this
| additional complexity, so there's probably not a good
| justification to start adding this complexity now. Usually
| school/government initiatives like this are just driven by
| hype/someone wanting to make an "impact"/nepotistic job
| provision/etc.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "Schools have managed for hundreds of years without this
| additional complexity"
|
| Thats why they managed so well when COVID came along and
| remote schooling became nessesary.
| em500 wrote:
| I'm not the OP, and not so opinionated. But (as the parent of
| an elementary school kid) I can see where the sentiment is
| coming from. I'm not familiar at all with this Swedish
| Skolplattform, but from the description in the article, it
| sounds to me like a solution (or maybe a city budget) in
| search of a problem. It's pretty unclear what the purpose and
| scope of this Skolplattform is.
|
| The article description of the open-source alternative reads
|
| > The app shows school calendars and events such as music
| concerts, a daily schedule for pupils, notifications from
| teachers that link out to grades and news updates, food
| that's being served in cafeterias, and an option to report if
| children are sick.
|
| Apart from privacy sensitive student specific stuff like
| grade reports (which our school does on paper), it seems all
| this stuff can be published just as well on the school
| website, email lists and/or paper brochures. I really don't
| see the need for a separate phone app here.
|
| Our school does have a school-specific app for some limited
| school <-> parent and parent <-> parent messaging, and
| scheduling the occasional parent-teacher meetings. In my
| experience it doesn't do anything better than plain old
| email.
| kalleboo wrote:
| > school website
|
| Developing a website isn't much different from an app these
| days with the React monstrosities being created
|
| > email lists
|
| Where everything gets caught in spam filters
|
| > paper brochures
|
| Which get lost
|
| My kids' daycare switched from paper-and-telephone to an
| app and it's been all positive. The idea isn't bad.
| assbuttbuttass wrote:
| The most hilarious part is the official app was built by _five_
| different contracting companies. No wonder the thing was a mess.
| bink wrote:
| This was the first thing that jumped out at me as well. I've
| worked on govt. contracts and when you put >1 contractor on the
| same project they become competitors. They will sabotage each
| other in the hopes of winning a larger share in the future. And
| beyond that they have absolutely no incentive to help each
| other. Their managers aren't going to pay them to make the
| other contractors code work better.
| coldcode wrote:
| A long time ago some teammates (prior to my joining the
| company) had been assigned to work on some VA related health
| system, turned out they were 8 levels sub contractors, i.e.
| sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-contractors. Project never
| shipped.
| aneutron wrote:
| It still boggles my mind how ANYONE would sign off on a setup
| like this. How does no one see that this will fail without a
| single doubt.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| because no one has a view of the whole system.
| moogly wrote:
| What I want to know: did they have to fill in their time
| reports in 8+ systems, one worse than the other?
|
| When I was a subcontractor, the most I had to do was 3
| (customer and 2 consultancies), and even that was a major
| hassle.
| namdnay wrote:
| "best of breed" + "we want to avoid vendor lock-in" :(
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Seems on par with most state-sponsored IT project here in
| Scandinavia.
|
| Big consulting firms involved, billions spent, horrible
| products shipped.
| rockbruno wrote:
| Funny that they were so concerned about GDPR violations given
| that in Sweden everyone's address/job/phone/salary is public and
| easily accessible. I like it that every time a foreigner joins my
| company (I live in Sweden) it's a matter of time before they post
| a message in our Stockholm channel saying "guys... what the hell
| is this website and why am I in it?". Then the swedes mention
| that they see nothing wrong with it while the foreigners
| playfully call them crazy. Every single time.
| merpnderp wrote:
| Salary? How could that being public serve the public's
| interest? As a privacy advocate that does pique my curiosity.
| Frondo wrote:
| I would ask the opposite question -- why is that an important
| number to conceal? (Please no "it's none of your business"
| replies, that doesn't really answer the question and it's not
| an interesting direction to go.)
| ftrobro wrote:
| It puts a target on the back of anyone that earns a lot of
| money but doesn't live in a high security bunker. Sometimes
| foreign crminals make a quick tour in Sweden, rob a couple
| of rich people in their homes and then get out of the
| country in the same day, with no risk of ever being caught.
| Public records and GPS navigation make this all too easy.
|
| Senior citizens are also targeted by criminals in Sweden,
| because the age and address of almost all citizens is
| publicly available. They might be visited by a couple who
| ask for a glass of water or whatever, and then one of the
| visitors distract the senior citizen while the other
| searches the place for jewelry.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "Puts a target on the back of anyone that earns a lot of
| money but doesn't live in a high security bunker"
|
| I find this unconvincing - firstly, most crime happens in
| poor neighbourhoods.
|
| Secondly, you don't need to know someone's salary to tell
| apart a rich neighbourhood or house from a poor one.
|
| Thirdly, high salary does not mean you have anything to
| steal, my friend earns a lot but all him money is in
| mortgage, stocks or in the bank. All you could steal from
| his house is a laptop.
|
| Lastly, even if everything you said was true, it doesn't
| mean we should cower and hide, it means police are not
| doing their job well enough.
| ftrobro wrote:
| > most crime happens in poor neighbourhoods
|
| That's kind of my point. Let's say you live in a poor
| neighborhood but do some stock trading and suddenly make
| a large profit. That will be shown in public records,
| it's not just salaries that are public. You now have a
| target on your back. Criminals will not come to your
| house looking for a laptop, they will come looking for
| you, putting a gun to your head telling you to transfer
| your assets to them.
|
| > it means police are not doing their job well enough
|
| Principles are nice, but pragmatism is better at keeping
| you alive...
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "They will come looking for you, putting a gun to your
| head telling you to transfer your assets to them"
|
| You talk about pragmatism but give a crime scenario out
| of Hollywood movies.
|
| Do you mean bank transfer? Am I transferring a million
| dollars into an official bank account registered in the
| criminal's real name?
|
| Do you mean I should sign a deed giving them possesion of
| my house, and that would hold up in court?
|
| Any large transfer will trigger a multi-day KYC and
| security process at the bank. Are they going to hold me
| hostage for weeks?
|
| There is a much easier crime that pays better and does
| not involve risk of death and leaving your fibgerprints
| all over: stealing a car, an expensive car.
|
| That's why there are more car thefts than home robberies.
| ftrobro wrote:
| I'm talking about things that have happened to people I
| know personally and things I've read in the news:
|
| https://www.expressen.se/kvallsposten/krim/man-
| misshandlad-o...
|
| There are of course other ways to transfer assets than
| the ones you describe. And yes, one guy was held hostage
| for weeks:
|
| https://www.thelocal.se/20050715/1746-5/
| [deleted]
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Your example assumes that crime (including up to ransom
| and kidnapping!) in poor neighbourhoods goes unpunished.
| If that's the case there are more fundamental things to
| worry about than salary data...
| ftrobro wrote:
| Most crime goes unpunished, no matter the neighborhood.
| In 2020, only 14% of investigated crimes against persons
| in Sweden reached a solution. But that doesn't mean we
| should ignore all other problems.
| hcrean wrote:
| There is an "ignorance is bliss" argument and a "if you
| don't know what is on offer, you can't ask for it"
| argument.
|
| The whole privacy system is geared towards supporting
| employers and people in the upper echelons of salary.
| ghaff wrote:
| And yet, at least in the US, it's probably the people in
| the highest echelons of salary whose salaries _are_ most
| public (in addition to public sector employees).
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Highest echelons of society don't make their money from
| salaries. But they are interested in manipulating your
| salary and making its in your interest to hide it
| ghaff wrote:
| At some point though, not making personal information
| public does come down to societal norms of what is other
| people's business. While the cost/benefit tradeoffs may be
| different, I could argue that making individual health
| records public probably has some benefits with respect to
| understanding health and health outcomes at a more granular
| level than aggregated data. (Which also present issues with
| de-anonymization anyway.)
| kalleboo wrote:
| I don't think it's technically salary but tax information.
| From which it's easy to reverse-engineer salary (since for
| most people income==salary)
|
| It could be argued that transparency in taxes collected is a
| positive thing for a society.
| cerved wrote:
| not salary, taxable income, which got most people is pretty
| much their salary
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| It's considered necessary for a just society that if people
| are going to earn massive salaries that people are aware of
| it. Salary transparency allows people to negotiate with all
| the facts.
| Retric wrote:
| Information asymmetry distorts markets, and the job market is
| really important not just for the people involved but overall
| economic efficiency.
| quartz wrote:
| In most cases salary is private more due to social customs
| and corporate interests than privacy concerns. If EVERYONES
| salary is public, I could see it serving the public interest
| in preventing wage disparity and discrimination.
|
| Even in the US you can look up the salary of many people
| (public university employees come to mind).
|
| One of the most important moments early in my career was
| learning the salary of the people above me. It let me
| evaluate the upside of climbing that ladder for the next 5-10
| years and ultimately helped me make a critical decision to
| leave and take a higher risk role where the upside was
| greater.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| Places like Sweden, Japan, Taiwan are often touted as examples
| of why XYZ works. However people often fail to mention that
| these places are, relative to many countries like the US,
| extremely homogenous in culture and ethnicity. Certain things
| that work in those countries will fall apart when attempted in
| a more diverse country.
| whatshisface wrote:
| I've heard this argument before, but is there any reason to
| believe it? What exactly about diversity stops social
| programs from working?
|
| Also, if diversity is the problem (hypothetically) why can't
| we implement Swedish/Japanese/Taiwanese stuff in those
| American towns with no diversity?
|
| Without any more explanation this sounds like one of those
| things where you find two statistics about two countries and
| say "this explains the difference."
| mattlondon wrote:
| It might be that it is diversity of opinions that count
| here, and that there can be significant differences in
| opinions based on where you grew up etc.
|
| So _swedes_ are cool with this, but what about people from
| different backgrounds? As the GP hints, people working in
| Sweden who are not Swedish are not comfortable with this,
| so perhaps in countries with much more diversity these
| things would never get off of the ground due to the sheer
| number of competing opinions on what is acceptable
| /unacceptable etc
| silicon2401 wrote:
| You hit the nail on the head; this is one of the many
| issues with diversity that is never discussed. Or rather,
| this is an example of how many people nowadays want
| superficial diversity (skin color, food, etc) but don't
| actually want diversity of opinions (thus we have
| political correctness, cancel culture, etc).
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-diversity-
| cr... > Putnam's study, which used a large, nationally
| representative sample of nearly 30,000 Americans, found
| that people living in more diverse areas reported lower
| levels of trust in their neighbors. They also reported less
| interest in voting, volunteering, and giving to charity. In
| other words, greater diversity seemed to be linked to both
| feelings and behaviors that threaten a sense of community.
| The finding was alarming to many people, including Putnam
| himself, because the U.S. continues to grow in racial and
| ethnic diversity with each passing decade.
|
| The authors hand wave his data by saying white people are
| to blame.
|
| > In other words, greater distrust may stem from prejudice
| rather than from diversity per se. Therefore, Putnam's
| conclusion that racial diversity leads to less altruism and
| cooperation amongst neighbors was incorrect. If there is a
| downside to diversity, it has less to do with the behavior
| of racial minorities and more to do with how Whites feel
| when living amongst non-Whites.
|
| They attempt to decouple diversity and prejudice, but that
| is completely illogical. Their logic is if you asked a
| minority if they feel more comfortable with a jury that is
| made of people who are not of a similar culture and racial
| background as them they would, but white people wouldn't.
| That is ridiculous.
| whatshisface wrote:
| > _Past research has shown that Blacks and Hispanics, on
| average, report less trusting attitudes than do Whites.
| Without controlling for this, neighborhoods with more
| Blacks and Hispanics will appear to have lower "trust,"
| but for reasons having nothing to do with the degree of
| diversity._
|
| The linked article has a lot of stuff about how the
| Putnam study misinterprets its data.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Sure, you can say the data is misinterpreted, but real
| world results also show the same conclusion and there is
| no evidence that shows multi racial areas that have
| programs that work as well as those in homogeneous
| societies. I linked it saying it refuted the data: yet it
| has nothing to prove the contrary. They interpreted it in
| a politically correct statement to blame white people and
| call them racist: but they don't prove any opposite
| conclusions. They just hand wave it away by blaming white
| people. They have no respectable information. You asked
| about why they aren't implemented in small towns that are
| homogeneous, what do you think happens in suburbs?
| whatshisface wrote:
| > _what do you think happens in suburbs?_
|
| ... HOAs enforce strict driveway maintenance codes? I don
| 't think there are any suburbs with a national healthcare
| system or a social safety net.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| You being snarky are you? Suburbs have much better pilot
| school programs and why would a suburb have a national
| healthcare system? Do you have an global warming
| prevention program for carbon credits in your backyard?
| jacobolus wrote:
| Sweden is something like 20% foreign immigrants and another
| 5% who are children of 2 immigrant parents. For the past half
| century Sweden has taken in a lot of refugees and other
| immigrants, and has more foreign residents per capita than
| the USA. Source:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden
|
| Taiwan is 3% foreign immigrants, Japan is 2%.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| The article doesn't say where those immigrants are from.
| Swedes and Norwegians have different cultures and
| histories, but there's a huge difference between 20%
| Norwegian immigrants and 20% Chinese immigrants
| jacobolus wrote:
| According to Wikipedia the biggest groups are Syrians,
| Iraqis, and people from the former Yugoslavia. There are
| also a lot of Finns. Then there are Poles, Iranians,
| Somalis, Afghans, Turks, Germans, Eritreans, Thais,
| Indians, Norwegians, Danes, Chinese, Romanians, Etc.
|
| Something like 5% of Swedish-born residents are descended
| from Finns if you go back a few generations (not counted
| among foreign-born immigrants).
| jacobolus wrote:
| (Sweden is comparable in proportion of foreign immigrants
| to New York, Florida, or Hawaii; a bit lower than
| California; much more than most US states. As far as
| diversity is concerned, Japan/Taiwan are more like West
| Virginia.)
| nivenkos wrote:
| What does this have to do with ethnicity?
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| People trust those that look more like them. It's just
| human nature. It's why people say all all white jury is
| racist when defendants are black, or why cops are racist.
| Putnam's diversity study also confirmed it.
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-diversity-
| cr... the authors hand save the data with the usual ham
| fisted white people are racist retort. Sociologists aren't
| respected because of authors like them who have no basis in
| reality.
|
| It isn't the only factor; China does it through culture, or
| Sinofication. https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinicization
| "Han Chinese" isn't based on genetics it's many different
| races that call themselves Han because they share culture.
| This is historically what happened in China and is now
| happening in Africa and South America.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| > "Han Chinese" isn't based on genetics it's many
| different races that call themselves Han because they
| share culture.
|
| Not quite. Han Chinese is a specific ethnicity. But it is
| true that "Chinese" isn't based on genetics, it's many
| different races that call themselves "Chinese" because
| they share culture. Or to cover all cases, it's many
| different races that the Chinese government calls
| "Chinese" to push a facade of homogeneity, marginalize
| minority peoples like Uyghurs, and marginalize minority
| languages and cultures in China that aren't Han Chinese,
| though their current nationality is Chinese.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| What do you mean about it being a specific ethnicity?
| From what Chinese people say and the history of it, "Han
| Chinese" is a recent concept and used like you said to
| push homogenuity. Its like calling people black, white or
| other nebulous terms. The Cantonese language is being
| removed in China but the people are still Han for
| instance.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| I mean that Han Chinese is a specific ethnicity. It's a
| documented thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_h
| istory_of_East_Asians...
|
| > the northern and southern Han Chinese are genetically
| closest to each other and it finds that the genetic
| characteristics of present-day northern Han Chinese were
| already formed as early as three thousand years ago in
| the Central Plain area.[22]
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| If you look at the history of Han Chinese, they called
| themselves many different names.
|
| >Among some southern Han Chinese varieties such as
| Cantonese, Hakka and Minnan, a different term exists -
| Tang Chinese (Chinese: Tang Ren ; pinyin: Tang Ren,
| literally "the people of Tang"), derived from the later
| Tang dynasty, regarded as another zenith of Chinese
| civilization.
|
| >The term "Huaxia" was used by Confucius's
| contemporaries, during the Warring States era, to
| describe the shared ethnicity of all Chinese; Chinese
| people called themselves Hua Ren.
|
| Regionally they called themselves people of the area they
| grew up in, the Baiyue who are now called "Han Chinese"
| did not call themselves Han.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baiyue When reading this
| section I noticed a "Han Chinese" bias.
|
| >The Han Chinese referred to the various non-Han
| "barbarian" peoples of southern China as "Baiyue", saying
| they possessed habits like adapting to water, having
| their hair cropped short and tattooed. The Han also said
| their language was "animal shrieking" and that they
| lacked morals, modesty, civilization and culture.
|
| The actual book linked calls them "citizens of Han" not
| "Han Chinese". https://books.google.com/books/content?id=
| Y3oSAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA...
|
| Han Chinese is like Apple retronaming all of the OSes
| that run on iPhone as iOS, the same way the Chinese
| government is doing the same for all the people's
| historical names of what they called themselves.
| addicted wrote:
| Yeah, no. This is a very outdated stereotype. Sweden, for
| example, is already very diverse and is getting increasingly
| more so.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| It'll be a great data point to see what happens when a
| modern, homogenous country becomes more diverse, in
| contrast with Japan and Korea that aren't likely to follow
| the same path anytime soon.
| arp242 wrote:
| Wait, who publishes this information, and why? Address/phone is
| somewhat standard phonebook stuff (or at least, used to be;
| less so now I guess) but job and salary?!
| Loughla wrote:
| In the US, in almost every publicly funded position, your
| job, salary and benefits are available for everyone to see. I
| am employed by a publicly funded institution now, and
| everything I earn is available for consumption, along with
| extra-duty pay, benefits, and historical data.
|
| Why would it be crazy for that to be available for everyone?
| I genuinely don't get what the big idea is.
| arp242 wrote:
| For publicly funded positions salary is just a matter of
| transparent government. Address and phone? Probably not so
| much. However, the previous post talked about "everyone"
| and "company", not publicly funded positions.
| kalleboo wrote:
| It could be argued that the basis of taxes paid are also
| a matter of transparent government
| ghaff wrote:
| If you own a home in the US, your address is public
| record at least unless you take steps through shell
| companies etc. to hide it. And while it's less relevant
| with the decline of land lines, so was your phone number
| unless you paid to make it unlisted.
| ghaff wrote:
| The logic with the public sector is that "the people" are
| paying for it so it's their business where the money is
| going.
|
| I'm not personally much of a fan of private sector
| salaries, income tax paid, etc. being a matter of public
| record but it's also not obviously "crazy" either. There
| are reasonable debates about transparency at the margins
| and this is a margin.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "I'm not personally much of a fan of private sector
| salaries...being public"
|
| Think bigger, you are missing the forest for the trees.
|
| It is not about Tom finding out Joe is getting paid 5%
| more.
|
| It's about Joe finding out his employer took advatage of
| his inexperienceand lied to him, and everyone in the
| industry gets paid 2x what he does.
|
| Corporations have a massive data advantage and leverage
| over you, they know how much everyone is paid, and how
| much their competitors pay. This data helps level the
| playing field.
|
| It also helps detect illegal price fixing, breaches of
| minimum wage, makes plain effectiveness or
| ineffectiveness of unions, etc. It informs journalism and
| policy.
|
| Every time you refuse to tell your colleague your salary,
| you are not helping yourself, you are helping your boss.
| Loughla wrote:
| I genuinely do not see a downside of publicly available
| salary information. What am I missing and/or not thinking
| about?
| ghaff wrote:
| So I make $50K more than you. And, in your opinion,
| you're a harder worker than me, are more valuable, etc.
| On the one hand, yes, that is perhaps fodder for you to
| have a conversation with your manager. On the other hand,
| it's also fodder to go home and grumble about how
| underappreciated you are because your coworker who
| doesn't do crap as far as you're concerned but makes a
| bunch more than you do.
|
| Not saying either approach is necessarily wrong. But it
| probably works better in public sector which tends to be
| very seniority based. In the US, it _would_ breed a lot
| of resentment towards people who you thought were
| overpaid relative to yourself for many people.
| Loughla wrote:
| I still don't see a downside.
|
| If I know I am a better employee than you, and you make
| that much more, if I am unwilling to do anything about it
| but grumble, that's a personal problem. I would argue
| that anyone who is willing to stay in a shit situation
| without trying to remedy said situation (being underpaid
| and knowing it for a fact) sort of brought those problems
| on themselves. It's a problem to complain about only if
| you have tried to fix it and couldn't.
|
| Systematically, it would allow people to see which
| businesses pay best, where their particular skills would
| be best reimbursed. Therefore, anyone in that shit
| situation who wants to grumble would have even more
| information available to them to be able to shop for
| jobs.
|
| I still don't see a downside.
| ghaff wrote:
| It boils down to what people consider personal
| information. I don't especially want to share this
| information (nor lots of other things about my personal
| life) and that's my decision to make absent public policy
| that goes in a different direction. So it's a downside to
| me simply because I don't think my salary or many other
| things are any of your business.
|
| Also you don't _know_ you 're a better employee than me.
| You think you are but you may not even be aware of a
| bunch of stuff I do.
| Loughla wrote:
| That's fair. I think we just have a basic difference in
| what should be everyone's business. I don't want my
| address out in the world, but I have zero problems with
| my salary and job for public consumption.
|
| >Also you don't know you're a better employee than me.
| You think you are but you may not even be aware of a
| bunch of stuff I do
|
| This is actually still a pro-, in my opinion, on public
| salary information. If I know you make more and approach
| the manager, it opens up a line of discussion on
| expectations versus outcomes versus perceptions. I think
| it actually makes the process of helping staff improve
| much easier!
| ghaff wrote:
| Although if you own a house your address is out in the
| world in the US.
|
| In general default to private is the norm in the US and
| there isn't a general sentiment to generally change that
| with respect to salary, tax returns, etc.
| MobiusHorizons wrote:
| In general I think it would be a good thing as well, but
| there are some downsides that come to mind.
|
| For example, seeking new employment your new employer
| would be able to see your previous salary. That means
| people who start out in the lower wage markets could have
| a much harder time improving their salaries.
| rightbyte wrote:
| On the other hand you can see your colleagues salary.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| https://www.regeringen.se/4a76f3/contentassets/2c767a1ae4e84.
| ..
|
| This principle is why most of the information that our
| government has is public, but not everything is in a database
| accessible by anyone on the Internet, but some information
| is. If I want to know what a private person makes I can call
| Skatteverket and ask, but this info is not available on the
| Internet, though some companies provide services for this.
|
| If you have a registration number for a car you can get
| information about it using the link below, but owner info
| requires me to login with my bankid (online identity service
| that most government and banks, etc, use). I just did this
| and got an email with the owner and owner history within a
| few minutes. I did it for a Tesla that has BITCOIN as reg
| number that I've seen before, you can also try it.
|
| https://fu-
| regnr.transportstyrelsen.se/extweb/UppgifterAnnat...
| wingerlang wrote:
| Where is job and salary noted? I don't think it is, just
| taxes paid. At least that's what I understand ratsit has
| (never ACTUALLY looked at it though).
| ftrobro wrote:
| In paper:
|
| https://www.ratsit.se/ratsitkatalogen
| alisonkisk wrote:
| And in the US the value of real property you own is public
| record!
|
| Do you think whatever your locality does is the obvious
| correct standard?
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I think the complaint was more of a way for the state to save
| face. Much like with the recent incident in the US where the
| governor asked the police to investigate a reporter that
| revealed the state website was embedding social security
| numbers in the application. Reporter was accused of hacking
| even though it was clearly an issue with the site.
| zivkovicp wrote:
| City officials are just upset because it has the potential to
| disrupt the flow of their corrupt / dirty money. Simple as that.
| jderick wrote:
| The movie "Brazil" remade in modern day Sweden.
| renewiltord wrote:
| It's a government system. Of course it's shit. When private
| systems are shit, they die. When gov systems are shit they
| attract more funding.
|
| The simple dynamic of negative monetary feedback for shitness in
| private enterprise and positive monetary feedback for shitness in
| government determines this entirely.
| xputer wrote:
| Clear demonstration of why initiatives such as "public money
| public code" are so important. https://publiccode.eu/
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Monopolies hate competition, they're terrified of better
| products, and a free open source version is better than their
| squandered tax program.
|
| Why are the defending their own poor quality program? Do they
| want Sweden to fail?
| andai wrote:
| I'm reminded of the lukewarm response Microsoft had to refterm.
| henrikschroder wrote:
| The only reason they're defending their shit is prestige at
| this point.
|
| The system was originally procured by city administrators who
| had way too little understanding and experience dealing with IT
| projects.
|
| The contract was awarded to one of the big consultant behemoths
| who specialize in winning government contracts and executing
| them shoddily.
|
| Parents hate it, because it is shit.
|
| Anyone in the industry with a brain hates it, and laughs at it,
| because it is shit.
|
| Elected city politicians hate it, because it is shit, and their
| voters are constantly telling them it is shit.
|
| But the vendor is of course defending their contract and the
| sweet, sweet tax money they're getting.
|
| And the people with power to actually do something about it,
| unelected city administrators, are defending it, because they
| feel they have to double down on their earlier shit decisions.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Can the crown, or some superior authority, pension off 'city
| administrators' in Sweden as they please?
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| How can there be defense against this? The US does this but
| the military contracts aren't executed shoddily, although it
| seems that many others are.
|
| Why would they make such a crappy program, don't they have
| any incentive to have a good reputation or to get more
| contracts? If it sucks and their history sucks, why would
| anyone want to hire them?
| floren wrote:
| > The US does this but the military contracts aren't
| executed shoddily
|
| Did we finally decide to stop shoveling money into the F-35
| or is that still ongoing?
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Is it bad? I don't know whats the problems with it.
| taylodl wrote:
| The first thing that jumps out is Sweden has a national identity
| system, BankID. The APIs appear to be protected using those
| credentials. With that in mind I have two questions:
|
| 1. Who owns the data?
|
| 2. Should public funds be used for the creation of private APIs
| that manage the data?
|
| The answer to (1) has consequences for (2).
|
| I think many HN readers, including myself, and certainly these
| parents would argue that the data is the property of the parents.
| If you see the data as being the property of the parents then you
| would see the APIs as being the means for retrieving and
| manipulating _your_ data - data that 's protected by this
| national BankID identification.
|
| It appears the school system believes the data is _their_ data,
| and not the parents ' data. Therefore retrieving the data through
| any other means than the "official" app is a potential data
| breach.
|
| So who is right? Think about the data we manage on behalf of our
| customers, for example. Who owns that data? What rights do our
| customers have in accessing and managing that data?
|
| This is a really interesting case and hopefully will force the
| answer to these questions.
| cerved wrote:
| I'm obligated to point out that bank id is not a national id.
| It's an electronic ID issued by private banks.
| urvader wrote:
| (I am Christian Landgren, cofounder of the project)
|
| You are right, the city believes they have ownership of the
| data, mainly because they fail to understand that they aren't
| showing data in an app, but rather publishing data in an API.
| In Swedish law, once you have released data from a government,
| the receiver have the right to do whatever they want with the
| that data (as long as it isn't violating any other laws).
|
| The city in this case is responsible to check that the data is
| safe to share publicly and once they have- the data is not
| theirs. This is regulated in the constitutional law regulating
| free speech which goes back to year 1766.
|
| This means that they can't really apply the same logic as a
| private company can when publishing data in their api. A
| private company can still keep license over what can be done
| with the data they publish. A city can not do that because of
| these constitutional laws.
| theptip wrote:
| Is there any way to write an app that doesn't "publish the
| data" by this definition? It seems like publishing was not
| their intent, and furthermore they were not legally allowed
| to "publish" personal data.
|
| For example if their system includes an app that lets you see
| your students grades and disciplinary issues, presumably you
| would not want that published. Is it simply impossible to
| build an app with such data in Sweden now as it would be
| "published"?
|
| Edited to add: and just to be clear, I am fully supportive of
| this use case. Just trying to understand the restrictions
| better.
| bjourne wrote:
| There may be some terminology confusion at play. The data
| may be an "offentlig handling" ("public document").
| Christian's argument is that since the data is a "public
| document" it can be published through his app. That
| argument is correct at least as long as he has an
| "utgivningsbevis" ("letter of publishing rights"?).
| However, it doesn't follow that the way his app is
| accessing the data is lawful. You may go to a bank and
| withdraw your savings but you may not break into a bank and
| physically take your savings.
|
| Grades are "public documents" in all schools in Sweden.
| With other things like disciplinary issues it varies
| depending on whether the school is run by the government or
| a private company.
| urvader wrote:
| No, the app has no communication to us, we don't even
| have a server. This means that from a legal standpoint we
| aren't publishing any information. We only help our users
| to present their own data in a better format (than json).
| tofflos wrote:
| No, because applications, publishing and intent doesn't
| factor in.
|
| Student grades and disciplinary issues become official
| documents as soon as the teacher documents them regardless
| of form (i.e. paper, audio recording, IT-system, etc). The
| school is then obligated to provide those official
| documents to anyone upon request.
|
| The school could argue that this information should be kept
| secret but student grades are not explicitly protected by
| law and it has already been established that this type of
| information is in fact public. I don't know about
| disciplinary issues but interactions with social services
| and psychologists are explicitly protected by law.
|
| The Swedish government has always been obligated to make
| information accessible to humans and with new regulation
| regarding Open data and Digital government that obligation
| has increased to also make information accessible to
| machines. Attempting to create an application that makes
| this difficult would be misconduct - the Swedish government
| is obligated to provide APIs.
| xmprt wrote:
| Can a different parent look at my child's grades? Or is
| there still some level of privacy where only certain
| parties are allowed to view certain documents even if
| they are official.
| tofflos wrote:
| Yes.
| bjourne wrote:
| But there is no API here. The article makes it clear that you
| were intercepting client-server communication _not meant to
| be used by third parties_ in order to write your own client.
| That it could be used as an API doesn 't matter since the
| intent wasn't to create an API.
|
| I could do the same thing and write an app for, say, the tax
| agency by scraping its website but it would be a legal gray
| area.
| [deleted]
| titusjohnson wrote:
| There is clearly an API in play here. The article mentions
| it _numerous_ times. The client app has to use an API to
| get its data, that 's a downside of deploying a SPA. You
| need to make an API for it to get data from.
|
| If you don't want to make an API that exposes raw data just
| write a SSR app. If you want to deploy a SPA, well, you
| have to deploy an API as well and you need to plan around
| the fact that when you throw an API out into the wild and
| authorize people to use it (by handing out auth tokens),
| well, people are gonna use it.
| infogulch wrote:
| Using SPA vs SSR as the sole factor in determining
| "published" status rings hollow for me, because it
| completely excludes any analysis based on intent, and
| intent usually matters in law! (Though I admit I'm not
| familiar in this case and this country.)
|
| Also it's easy to poke holes: does this mean that
| scraping data from html is always hacking, regardless of
| the expressed intent? (See recent Missouri case for what
| that might degenerate into.) What if it's "semantic web"
| and the html contains metadata specifically designed to
| aid data extraction?
|
| I think the parents should own the data, and that's why
| it should be open. But I don't think drawing the line
| based on which kind of technology is used to deliver the
| content is a good method of adjudicating published
| intent.
| titusjohnson wrote:
| Publication intent is trivial to verify.
|
| Q) Are you able to retrieve a document using the
| credentials issued to you by the API? A) Yes: Then you're
| authorized to view it. No: You're not authorized to view
| it.
|
| An API is the encoding of business rules around data
| access and modification. If your API is allowing access
| that you don't intend a user to have, fix your
| authorizations.
| infogulch wrote:
| See I like this argument better because it has nothing to
| do with being an API or HTML and everything to do with
| access authorization. It doesn't make sense for the
| government to have the power to control _how_ the data
| the parents are authorized to view is displayed, or what
| tool they use to display it.
| munk-a wrote:
| It might technically look like an API - but it could
| still not count as an API legally (for the constitutional
| trick) if the interface was not intended to be public.
|
| If you want to stretch the terms, everything on and off
| the web that does communication is basically an API -
| it's just that some of those APIs use JSON to encode
| their data and make it really easy to access... and some
| of them bury it in mountains of HTML - but if the data is
| there the data is there. There really isn't a functional
| difference between a scraper that goes from TEXT => DATA
| and a json decoder that goes from TEXT => DATA except how
| easy it is to write and maintain it.
|
| One outcome of this fight might be that government
| organizations are directed to use more proprietary
| communication methods which would be a poor outcome for
| everyone involved.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > One outcome of this fight might be that government
| organizations are directed to use more proprietary
| communication methods which would be a poor outcome for
| everyone involved.
|
| I agree with the rest of your argument, but I think that
| this part is not necessarily a good example of the risks.
| Far easier would be to use a shared key between the app
| and the site, and thus use encryption to prevent reading
| the data, while still sending it in JSON over HTTPS. A
| pinned certificate would do the trick, at least on phones
| which prevent the user from inspecting app bundles.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think it depends on the outcome of the case - I could
| see some possible resolution like the Swedish supreme
| court declaring that JSON counts as a public record and
| that forcing a block on prohibitive encryption of JSON
| endpoints offered by the government (assuming everything
| the OP said about constitutionality is correct).
|
| We've seen such bizarre technical decisions from high
| courts before.
| aliswe wrote:
| I dont think the swedish legal system uses precedents
| though. Does that matter?
| munk-a wrote:
| I don't know - I think all legal systems use precedents
| to a certain extent - they're just extremely formalized
| in America and Britain. Sorry but I'm not familiar enough
| with their system to reply with confidence but I would
| say that if a high court in a country rules a certain
| way, even if that isn't binding to future rulings, it
| will cause people to adjust their behavior to avoid
| falling into a trap that's been clearly called out
| already.
|
| Uh, also, IANAL.
| monocasa wrote:
| Privately documented APIs are still APIs.
| munk-a wrote:
| I don't disagree (though when it comes to this particular
| case it's a question of what the opinion of Swedish
| courts is) but there's just a lot of grey area there.
|
| Would you consider `ls` an API for exposing your
| filesystem?
| iamstupidsimple wrote:
| > Would you consider `ls` an API for exposing your
| filesystem?
|
| I don't see why not.
|
| It has an interface for input and output, conforms to
| well known specifications and is publicly documented.
|
| There's also multiple implementations behind the API.
| urvader wrote:
| The law is not specific at all in regards to the format
| of the document. So to talk about an "API legally" has no
| meaning. In a private scenario it makes sense but what we
| are talking about here is public documents which are sent
| through an API. The city has responsibility to only send
| information I have (as a parent) legally right to see.
| How I parse it and present it is up to me as citizen
| (through an app or save it as json and upload to an excel
| file or such)
|
| One implication of this project could be that government
| agencies in Sweden can not have private API:s.
|
| To use more proprietary methods (private api:s) will have
| no effect on the constitutional law. You still have
| received a public document as a citizen.
| munk-a wrote:
| Here's one possible issue though - I asked (in another
| sibling comment) if `ls` could be considered a filesystem
| API - I strongly believe it is. That means we probably
| (for sanity's sake) need to differentiate internal vs.
| external APIs and provide a method for safely allowing
| this public document method to be well defined.
|
| If a spy is filling out an expense report via secure
| email after an undercover mission to Norway (trying to
| figure out if Norway is hording lutefisk, I assume) which
| ends up resulting in a bombshell report to the public
| about international lutefisk accessibility then that
| report is clearly public - but the spy's expense report
| (including, I'd assume, their identity) is something that
| should logically be kept secret. There's some press
| secretary in the middle that takes the raw information
| and turns it into the scandal we all know it would be.
|
| The data being transmitted over an API is not intended to
| be directly consumed by the public - there is, instead,
| an application that exists to take that raw data and
| transform it into something that is publicly viewable.
| That application is the corollary for our press secretary
| here.
|
| I am concerned this might be a bigger rabbit hole than
| you expect. I totally agree that the town shouldn't flip
| out and be stupid calling in legal authorities like it
| currently is - but I think this might be more complex.
| toolz wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow why that would matter. Their
| constitution says once data has been released, it is no
| longer their property (because it's a public institution).
| They created a way to access the data, so the data has been
| released to the parents and so the data now belongs to the
| parents. The parents own the data and as such it would seem
| to follow they can access it anyway they want.
| Fiahil wrote:
| A website is an API (poorly designed).
|
| The only way to not make an API out of publicly available
| data, is to encrypt it. Then nobody can read it unless they
| have the right keys.
| urvader wrote:
| If you encrypt it, you have to, at some point, also send
| the keys to the user. The key has the same legal
| protection as the rest of the document so encrypting the
| data has no implication on the legal discussion.
| taylodl wrote:
| That's an interesting angle - the government published the
| data via an API and therefore the data is now public and so
| as a result these other laws you mention come into play.
| Fascinating! Please keep us posted as to how this progresses.
| tofflos wrote:
| The act of publishing has little to do with it. Sweden is
| open by default and the government has to provide public
| access to official documents to anyone and everyone -
| including foreign nationals.
|
| > The principle of public access to official documents
| serves as a guarantee for transparency in the work of the
| Riksdag, the Government and the public authorities. The
| principle is set out in the Freedom of the Press Act, which
| is one of Sweden's fundamental laws, and means that
| everyone is entitled to access official documents.
|
| > Everyone is entitled to contact a public authority and
| request a copy of an official document. Anyone requesting
| access to an official document does not need to provide
| their name or any details of how the document will be used.
|
| The government can opt-in to secrecy.
|
| > The Public Access to Information and Secrecy Act contains
| provisions on secrecy to protect public interests, for
| example, national security. It also contains provisions on
| secrecy to protect individuals' personal or financial
| circumstances.
|
| Source: https://www.riksdagen.se/en/how-the-riksdag-
| works/the-riksda...
| scoot wrote:
| Hi, congrats on the app. I was curious about one thing in the
| article - why would the city pay to license the app when it
| is open source? Do you anticipate that this would be cheaper
| for them than them paying one of their overpriced contractors
| to build and publish an "official" version, given how much
| they spent on a CRUD app?
| edenstrom wrote:
| Swede here. This is just a guess, but I think it's the
| illusion of control. Too much negative press about the
| conflict, and this is their attempt at controlling the
| narrative and "taking responsibility". We'll see what the
| future holds.
| Reimersholme wrote:
| Also, once you get people hooked on what is basically
| welfare, of course over time you can also start nudging
| them in your preferred direction...
|
| (Fellow Swede)
| urvader wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| Well we have already made the source code open and free and
| also encouraged the city to release an app with our source
| code as base. They weren't interested in that. They would
| rather license the app, support and maintenance to us. We
| have quoted a fixed sum per month for that service and we
| plan to use that money to reimburse everyone sending PR:s
| we merge.
| kiklion wrote:
| I feel like focusing on who owns the data is unnecessary.
|
| If there is an API that grants access to data by passing in a
| valid auth token, then it doesn't matter if it's called from a
| SPA app or postman or curl.
|
| As long as you are using the public API and haven't forged an
| auth token then it doesn't matter how you call the public API.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| This is not a story about failure - it's common and unremarcable
| both in government and corporate.
|
| This story is amazing because it shows society at it's best,
| people got together organised and resolved a common problem.
|
| They did this without corporate or government power structures.
| We should remember importance of this third institution and
| cherish it, it gets little lime in the limelight, and it's the
| most precious of them all.
| superjan wrote:
| If someone publishes info on how your API's work that should not
| be a security problem unless you "implement security" client
| side. That would also explain the request to takedown the github
| repo, as well as why the API suddenly changes.
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