csb6 (u/csb6) - Readit News

csb6 commented on Break up bad companies; replace bad union bosses pluralistic.net/2025/12/1... · Posted by u/hn_acker

Aurornis · 11 hours ago

Several Teachers' Unions publicly oppose phonics curriculum as part of a larger goal to shift curriculum choosing power to the teachers unions.

If you want evidence, look to the Teachers' Unions own efforts to oppose phonics education: https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/why-some-teachers-u...

csb6 · 11 hours ago

Seems like the unions have a lot of valid concerns about how the measures in those bills will be implemented and how/if new materials/training will be provided for teachers. It also seems like legislators are mostly ignoring the unions and passing the laws anyways, so not sure how unions are gaining power over curriculums in any way. If teachers’ unions had any significant leverage on legislatures I would think teacher salaries would be higher, which other unions (e.g. dockworkers) are successful at doing.

csb6 commented on Break up bad companies; replace bad union bosses pluralistic.net/2025/12/1... · Posted by u/hn_acker

jdross · 12 hours ago

I would love to address unions in public and semi-public (e.g. teachers' unions, dockworkers, police and fire unions). They are able to hold the public hostage by preventing automation at ports, stopping teaching (often doubling as daycare for children), or withholding public safety.

The counterbalance to a union and to management needs to be customers, but customers aren't able to vote no here. That's fundamentally undemocratic.

And you end up with terrible outcomes like collapsing literacy rates through the prevention of teaching phonics, which leads to parents opting out of public education entirely. There needs to be a feedback mechanism in unions for them to work.

csb6 · 11 hours ago

> And you end up with terrible outcomes like collapsing literacy rates through the prevention of teaching phonics, which leads to parents opting out of public education entirely.

What is your evidence that teachers’ unions are causing these issues and not state/federal education policy? Do teachers’ unions have a big role in developing curriculums or setting educational policy? It seems like state legislatures and superintendents have more to do with that.

csb6 commented on Catala – Law to Code catala-lang.org... · Posted by u/Grognak

alphazard · 9 days ago

Obviously it would be great if this caught on, but it's not even widely understood/agreed on that read-time precision is a desirable quality in a legal system. This is something almost everyone here takes for granted; we want the interpreter or machine to give the same result for the same input. We want that property so we can know the run-time behavior during development.

There are judges and politicians in the US that advocate for various "interpretations" of laws including parts of the constitution, which are different from what the law literally says. In fact they refer to the literal meaning as the "literal interpretation", implying it is one of many valid interpretations, and casting doubt on the idea of language having a precise meaning. The crowd here knows that it is totally possible and often invaluable to work in languages with precise meaning. Anyways, in practice this means: all the steps happened for the law to get passed by the legislature including arguing about the exact text, and instead of enforcing it as written, the judiciary enforces some slightly different but similar law.

A technology like this necessarily concentrates power in the legislature, and takes it away from the judicial system. It concentrates legal power at write time and removes it from run/read time.

csb6 · 9 days ago

Catala is specifically for tax codes and other laws that involve formulas and calculations, not all laws, so I don’t think most of your concerns apply to it specifically. There are often complicated rules governing how, e.g. benefits or tax credits are calculated that natural language is clumsy at expressing, so having a formal language that encodes that logic seems useful.

I agree government/justice by algorithm would be very dangerous, but Catala does not seem to be that.

csb6 commented on Using LLMs at Oxide rfd.shared.oxide.computer... · Posted by u/steveklabnik

csb6 · 9 days ago

Strange to see no mention of potential copyright violations found in LLM-generated code (e.g. LLMs reproducing code from Github verbatim without respecting the license). I would think that would be a pretty important consideration for any software development company, especially one that produces so much free software.

csb6 commented on State Department to deny visas to fact checkers and others, citing 'censorship' npr.org/2025/12/04/nx-s1-... · Posted by u/seattle_spring

inglor_cz · 11 days ago

The most ironic thing to me is just how fast the political pendulum swings.

One day you have kente cloths and taking the knee everywhere, and before you know it, right-winger bloggers are running the law enforcement.

This is no way to live, 80%+ of the population is neither committed progressives nor committed conservatives/reactionaries, but they rule (or ruled) the social networks and thus dominate(d) in elections.

By the grace of the algorithm, you majesty the king.

csb6 · 10 days ago

> One day you have kente cloths and taking the knee everywhere, and before you know it, right-winger bloggers are running the law enforcement.

How are these at all comparable? One is a photo op at the Capitol, and one is leading a massive immigration raid campaign full of civil rights violations. Even if you believe these raids are lawful, they are not performative like the photo op stunt was - they are massive operations that greatly affect millions of lives.

If you are making a “both sides are bad” argument then that is a pretty poor comparison.

csb6 commented on US will now review H-1B applicants' social media – require them to make public businessinsider.com/us-to... · Posted by u/JKCalhoun

dmitrygr · 11 days ago

A country may vet entrants according to any criteria it chooses, just like I may enforce any limits I wish unto who may enter my house. If the criteria are too egregious for the gain the applicants might get by being in that country, the talented immigrants who have options may go elsewhere and the country may need relax the criteria to recapture the market for bright minds.

csb6 · 11 days ago

Countries have that right, and people have the right to criticize them for their policies and agitate to change them. This is a concept known as “politics”.

csb6 commented on Cars are steadily becoming longer, wider and heavier in the UK and across Europe bbc.com/news/articles/cy7... · Posted by u/1659447091

anovikov · 13 days ago

Indeed: promote electric cars: it's fine if they will be massive, if consumers love them, why force them to do otherwise? Tax ICE powered SUVs and trucks heavily but spare electric ones and give people one more incentive to switch.

csb6 · 13 days ago

Larger vehicles tend to have reduced visibility which can cause accidents, tend to more seriously injure pedestrians in accidents, and tend to wear down roads faster. If a government is taxing/restricting ICE vehicles to account for their negative externalities, then the same should be done for all larger vehicles, including large EVs.