Ireland

Hit and runs have been in the news a lot lately. More people need dashcams. But most people have no urgent need to buy one, and they are hassle to install.

This is an easy one for the government to fix. Decree that every garage must offer to do dashcam installation during routine services. Optionally, decree that they must do it for no extra charge.

When a good portion of people take up this option, there will be a critical mass of carmeras on the roads. Hit and runs will become very risky. When people know there is a chance the accident has been recorded, they will not run.

Uniquely, this solution does not enable ubiquitous surveillance by the state, because dashcams are not internet-connected.

It will also be useful that other types of accidents and events will be recorded. People will hesitate before doing anything violent or illegal in the street, when footage can be easily sent to the gardaí or the media. This includes dangerous not-illegal driving, searching for missing people etc.

This is simple, free, and necessary. It must be done now.

Where can I buy individual PC parts (like Power Supply Unit and PC Case) in Dublin? I checked Curry's and Harvey Norman both didn't have individual parts.

I guess only the rich will be getting a tax cut in the next budget.

We have this problem, especially since the Covid educational chaos, that examiners are under pressure to inflate grades. This is understandable and happening for good reasons.

It predictably creates the problem that there are too many people scoring 100% on tests. With many people on identical marks, universities cannot select the students with the best aptitudes.

They are starting to do lotteries. This is unfair. It means that the whole leaving cert has failed to do its job of testing students for eligibility for university. It is not properly filtering students into courses by aptitude. If universities are going to do lotteries to select students, we don't need a leaving cert at all.

The solution is old and well known. the exams are written using whatever scoring system is deems appropriate for that subject. It does not need to be out of 100. Then the results are converted into percentiles, using the bell curve. This means that the best 1% of students get a mark of 100, the worst 1% get 1, and the median/average students get 50. All the other marks follow the same pattern.

(To be kind, it might be decided to give all the worst 10% of students a mark of 10. There might be gaps where for example a mark of 71 does not exist, only 70 and 72, but that is easily dealt with by the simple algorithm.)

There will be no grade inflation. The whole annual stress and debate becomes obsolete and we can focus on the many real issues and problems with the leaving cert.

Percentiles and statistics (L-estimators in this case) are very common in the adult world. L-estimators are fundamental to medicine, engineering, science, etc. It is good that students and teachers become familiar with them. This method is not complex or weird or confusing. If students get used to it, it will help them understand the world better and perform in their careers.

I think this is great news and I hope the work begins soon. Obviously public infrastructure will need to be improved accordingly but overall, positive steps!

Anyone up to anything today? How has the weekend gone so far for everyone?

I took about a week off work and I’m back tomorrow. I’m not dreading it but still… Might do some shopping later before going back to the grind. Must do up my CV as well as I’m looking to change jobs in the near future.

Most C&D waste was backfilled (85%), with only 8% and 7% was recycled and sent for disposal

fuck it into a big hole, it'll be grand

Hopefully we get some decent weather for it 🤞

Heres some positivity! Great to see this happening. Never heard the bird but sounds like its quite the singer

Promise I’ll stop posting so much doom and gloom!

Justice minister says funding package will allow for 240,000 extra Garda hours in Dublin Metropolitan Region by end of year

I'm shortly going to be migrating to Cork. I'd be grateful if someone could point me in the direction of some 'left' or 'centre-left' online news sources for Cork. Preferably with RSS feeds.