Most courses I've taken have obligatory assignments that are pass/fail, and you have to pass a certain amount during the semester to take the final exam. But the grade is determined entirely of the final exam.
Which to me seems the best way, you still have to learn throughout the year. Especially to avoid cheating this works nice. And as an aside, most people I know that did a year abroad in the US got 1-2 grades higher, as it was quite easy to just farm extra credits.
> The alternative would be that each school develop their own platform for this
I worked at a university which did exactly this, in the UK.
It was a bespoke platform which integrated incredibly well with the rest of the systems the university used because it was designed from the ground-up to meet the institution's needs, there were regular user groups involving academics to understand what features needed to be built/worked on etc. At one point it was all OSS on GitHub too, in case other universities could've found it useful. It handled plagiarism detection (integrating with Turnitin), marking, exam grids, coursework submissions and feedback, seminar allocations, personalised timetables & mitigating circumstances.
The in-house dev team was vastly cheaper than anything SaaS would've cost, as well. It also maintained software for on-campus parcel deliveries, online exams, opinion surveys, a mobile app for students/staff, the SSO system, the course catalogue, car parking permits, a content management system and more.
My (also UK-based) university has been working on a new student records management project for years that's been incredibly ill-fated. It's destined to replace all their current systems and the first module module was meant to launch last year, except it thoroughly failed testing and nobody has heard anything about it since.
No idea how long it'll take to pull through. I don't believe it's an in-house effort.
Or it's just another example of why FOSS fails - people (like you) expect free labor and never want to pay for it. They tried to make it a sustainable project, and it would probably have died even earlier if they didn't.
> For the last 5 years, PySimpleGUI offered free software with the hope of sustaining the project with donations. We appreciate the support we received, but the amount has been too small to support the project.
I don't think this is a complete characterization of what happened. From looking at a previous thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39369353), the owner curiously did not allow outside contributions to his GPL project. This is odd, especially if it seems like he was complaining about having issues with maintenance of the project. Then, after he tried to switch the license, he deleted/obfuscated the repo history. Even though it is GPL, because he had the "foresight" of not allowing outside contributions, he was able to take this action unilaterally. I suspect that the owner had his mind on commercialization from the very beginning, and was using the whole FOSS bit as a way to get free publicity before rugpulling.
> with the hope of sustaining the project with donations.. the amount has been too small to support the project
So shut it down, lock the repo, invite new maintainers indefinitely. It's only non-sustainable for the price the author is asking. It'll still be FOSS even if no longer maintainer by the original author, whether a new maintainer steps in or not.
And if they want to fork it an create a commercial alt, no problem - anyone can!
The problem arises, IMHO, when they develop (accept contributions) or propagate (lock-in) a FOSS project in good-will, then somehow leverage their position as a FOSS maintainer transform it to non-FOSS.
I think that was a very constructive comment about the unconstructive way people are shoe-horning other concerns about bun into this thread abut a specific aspect which itself turns out to be just an experiment that someone knee-jerk reacted to, despite several active threads already discussing those matters one of which only just fell off the front page.
While the concerns many have about Bun's potential future direction are valid IMO, of the posts on this thread the one you are criticising is one of the more constructive.
As stated multiple times in the linked discussion: the licensing of the open source code is not the issue. It's the use of the trademark, and making their fork look like an officially endorsed one.
And the fork author was given a oppertunity to remediate without further drama. Instead, the fork author doubled down, where the possible reasons for that behavior are hard to interpret in good faith.
Yes, one of the complexities of open source licensing that people do not understand is that most copyright licenses assign only copyright and that copyright is a distinct and different concept than patents and trademarks.
Yup. Even if "safer per mile", more cars and more miles driven will probably outweigh the benefits. And still be hazardous to cyclists and pedestrians, still make us design stupid cities (built for cars, not people), etc.
Like how electric cars were for saving the car companies, not the planet, autonomous will be the same.
I don't own a (stationary) PC, but I have bought Noctua for other projects due to them having good reviews. Was surprisingly hard to find good fans for my usecase, that wasn't industrial (pricey). And PC fans are easy to control.
TIL: Generally all plastics exposed to UV start to photodegrade. If you google why old computers turn particularly yellow most sources point to bromine-based flame retardant agents in the plastic, but some people make a convincing case[1] that ABS just naturally turns yellow in UV light.
Not much real research into that topic, interestingly.
I've had a few experiences with retrobrighting and having it come out really nicely, then after being stored away in a box for a couple of years it's somehow yellow again. It's probably different with different plastics but it doesn't seem so clear cut that it's always the UV light causing it.
Not sure why all the fire retardants are needed. Besides, steel probably retards fire more effectively than most fire retarded resins and is probably far more recyclable.
In the uncommon event that something in your computer catches fire, the flame retardant keeps the fire from igniting the otherwise flammable plastic and potentially burning your house down.
Yeah they are the trend, so they will probably cause a polarized response - some will find it cliche and reject it, others will coalesce around the standard.
Which to me seems the best way, you still have to learn throughout the year. Especially to avoid cheating this works nice. And as an aside, most people I know that did a year abroad in the US got 1-2 grades higher, as it was quite easy to just farm extra credits.
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