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Cake day: March 22nd, 2025

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  • the problem here is that this is in a university setting.

    the student has almost certainly been made aware of what “discussion” means.

    i explained in a different comment (check my profile if the link doesn’t work, not sure how to properly link comments…) why this is not a sufficient excuse.

    because the previous comment seemed well received, I’ll try to give another example of how this sort of course might generally play out:

    at a typical university you’ll get some general orientation at the beginning of the first semester. this will include things like the rules for exams, the rules for the campus, the rules for the dorms (if there are any), the rules for general conduct and behavior on-campus, and a ton of other shit like safety drills in case of a fire or other catastrophe, laboratory training (if relevant), and on and on. there’s a LOT to cover in the first few weeks. you’ll probably sign a bunch of forms that say “i have read the rules” in legalese, so that there is proof that you have been made aware of the rules.

    this orientation will include, or be closely followed by, a class on scientific work.

    this course will cover the scientific method, scientific literature, scientific citations (in the specific style of your field and university), the formatting of all your submissions (there’s usually a template you are supposed to use, though this is somewhat dependant on the teacher of any given class.)

    there will also be sections on scientific language: the difference between a scientific theory and a “theory” in casual language, what a scientific paper really is and how to tell the difference between a high quality and a low quality paper (or if the paper is just complete nonsense.), and so forth.

    this is were the student in the OP almost certainly learned how the assignment given was supposed to be written.

    there’s literally entire classes for this specific thing.

    and yeah, that’s because it’s actually difficult to do properly!

    there’s nothing “unfair”, or “unexpected”, or “insufficiently clear” about this work assignment.

    it can seem that way to someone who hasn’t been to university, but to everyone who has, it’s clear as day.

    there is never a need to point out things like “you need to use proper citations in your work”, or “you need to follow the scientific method”, because this has already been covered and is then expected in damn near every assignment afterwards.

    it’s the expected standard.

    so there are two possibilities here:

    either the student hasn’t absorbed the material of the previously mentioned class, and just kinda winged it, hoping for the best, and is thus simply an exceedingly bad scientist, which means the failure was entirely deserved.

    …or they did it on purpose, and the failure was entirely deserved.

    my money is definitely on the latter.

    TL;DR:

    she damn well knew this submission would be disqualified.

    because all students know this.

    it’s literally the scientific method, and thus one of the very first things they teach you at university.

    hope this clears up why none of this is explicitly mentioned in the assignment, but feel free to ask more questions!


  • the evidence is: this is a university course.

    this is normal for every university in the world. everyone that’s ever taken a university course knows this.

    it’s quite literally the scientific method.

    it’s almost never spelled out anywhere, because students generally have dedicated courses that teach this method and related things like researching, proper citations, writing structures and styles, etc.

    usually called something like “scientific working” or something (don’t know what it’s called in english, german is usually something like “wissenschaftliches arbeiten”).

    this isn’t kindergarten; there are prerequisites and they are expected by default.

    these aren’t children, they’re adults.

    and everyone involved knew this in advance.

    this is not “hidden” or “secret”.

    it’s a standard.



  • you are confusing the assignment and the grading.

    they are two separate things.

    the assignment was:

    1. A discussion of why you feel the topic is important and worthy of study (or not)
    2. An application of the study or results to your own experiences

    the submission failed on both these points, and thus it is automatically disqualified, no grading is even applied.

    there was no discussion in the submission.

    “discussion” in an academic context is a technical term that means “examining a topic based on evidence from some point of view”. you may have encountered something similar in school as a pro/contra essay. in academia this gets expanded on by requiring evidence in the form of citations in order to support one’s positions and conclusions (or lack thereof).

    since the student did not provide sources, this point of the assignment is not fulfilled.

    the same goes for the second point, for the same reasons: insufficient evidence was provided.

    the teachers explain this in their response.

    since neither part of the assignment is fulfilled no grading is applied: it’s an automatic failure.

    this is also explained in the response.

    you may want to carefully read the responses again, and keep in mind that all of this is happening in an academic context. providing evidence is expected by default.

    “i believe”, “i feel”, 'the bible says", etc., are NOT evidence in a scientific context…




  • not true, it does sort of the opposite:

    debrid services cache torrents in order to provide them at high speed to clients (that’s why they aren’t free: they need data storage).

    this is a good thing, because it means the swarm is only taxed once per file, instead of constantly by potentially hundreds of streamers.

    from stremio’s FAQs:

    How Debrid Services Work with Stremio

    Stremio itself is a media center application that aggregates content from various sources through add-ons. Debrid services enhance this experience by:

    1. Converting limited or slow hosting links into high-speed premium links
    2. Providing access to higher quality sources that might otherwise be unavailable
    3. Bypassing throttling and download limitations imposed by file hosts
    4. Offering cached torrents for instant streaming without waiting for peers

  • that’s got nothing to do with being autistic; that’s just insanely rude!

    yelling is absolutely warranted in that situation.

    seriously fuck those people.

    you’re already in a state of stress due to having major surgery ahead of you. unnecessarily withholding information, for absolutely no reason, would stress out anyone, regardless of wether they’re neurotypical or not.

    fuck that bullshit.


  • sure, and that works at small scales and as long as no change is required.

    when either of those two change (large projects where interdependent components become inevitable and frequent updates are necessary) it becomes impossible to use AI for basically anything.

    any change you make then has to be carefully considered and weighed against it’s consequences, which AIs can’t do, because they can’t absorb the context of the entire project.

    look, I’m not saying you can’t use AI, or that AI is entirely useless.

    I’m saying that using AI is the same as any other tool; use it deliberately and for the right job at the right time.

    the big problem, especially in commercial contexts, is people using AI without realizing these limitations, thinking it’s some magical genie that can everything.



  • yeah, no… that’s not at all what i said.

    i didn’t say “AI doesn’t work”, i said it works exactly as expected: producing bullshit.

    i understand perfectly well how to get it to spit out useful information, because i know what i can and cannot ask it about.

    I’d much rather not use it, but it’s pretty much unavoidable now, because of how trash search results have become, specifically for technical subjects.

    what absolutely doesn’t work is asking AI to perform highly specific, production critical configurations on live systems.

    you CAN use it to get general answers to general questions.

    “what’s a common way to do this configuration?” works well enough.

    “fix this config file for me!” doesn’t work, because it has no concept of what that means in your specific context. and no amount of increasingly specific prompts will ever get you there. …unless “there” is an utter clusterfuck, see the OP top of chain (should have been more specific here…) for proof…


  • no, AI just sucks ass with any highly customized environment, like network infrastructure, because it has exactly ZERO capacity for on-the-fly learning.

    it can somewhat pretend to remember something, but most of the time it doesn’t work, and then people are so, so surprised when it spits out the most ridiculous config for a router, because all it did was string together the top answers on stack overflow from a decade ago, stripping out any and all context that makes it make sense, and presents it as a solution that seems plausible, but absolutely isn’t.

    LLMs are literally design to trick people into thinking what they write makes sense.

    they have no concept of actually making sense.

    this is not an exception, or an improper use of the tech.

    it’s an inherent, fundamental flaw.