Technology

I don't get it. I was never this stupid as a kid.

Edit: thank you for explaining to me that many of you were that stupid. I guess I never hung around any of you.

TikTok is poison for the mind.

Nearly 20 years ago, I was in a computer programming class surrounded by clunky towers and desktops.

Suddenly, a loud popping, then one of the machines starts belching smoke like a budget fog machine. The kid using it is calmly moved to another station while the prof investigates.

Fifteen minutes later - pop. Smoke again.

Turns out the kid was jamming a paperclip into the power supply like he was playing Operation: Arson Edition.

That was his last day.

On the bright side, computers are a lot cheaper now - and kids are still dumb. So, maybe progress?

Youthful rebellion transcends technology.

Is there much difference between this and, say, using a pen to drill a hole in your desk?

Aren't the families responsible for the damages?

the so-called Chromebook Challenge includes students sticking things into Chromebook ports to short-circuit the system.

I am rather surprised that works. I thought any modern device would have overload protection in place. I think I even remember accidentally tripping it on some device, but it would just reset after reboot.
I also tried to see the max output current of my previous phone this way. Load it up till the protection trips. Result: Stable up to 2.1A, tripped at 2.5A.

Oh, yeah. A Xiaomi phone charger I have also shuts down if I either overload it or immediately load it near max rating rather than gradually increase the load.

I wish we lived in a world where they're doing it because they don't want locked-down toys issued by an evil corporation. But of course that's not the reason.

P.S. proprietary software should be illegal in education. Full stop.

I remain utterly convinced that Tiktok is nothing but a chinese psyop experiment to see how far they can manipulate people into actions that would otherwise be prevented by our brains screaming in self preservation.

Has there ever been a "good" trend on tiktok? Every week its just another destructive thing that gullible idiots are being tricked into doing.

It’d be a crying shame if the students were required to complete the school year with physical books and a notebook.

Perhaps it's more like "Kids short-circuiting school issued chromebooks because of excessive surveillance."

...but probably not (or at least, not entirely) because many kids are dumb.

source: was a dumb kid.

Google didn’t respond to Ars Technica’s request for comment.

To be fair, I don't really see why they should. Chances are they didn't factor in that level of stupidity when designing those things.

As I age I find myself feeling more and more like the cool step-dad or uncle.

Y'know I hate everything Chromebooks stand for. "You get 'em, kid. Now how about we get some pizza?"

Fuck chromebooks anyways, Google shouldn't be allowed to steal so much information about our youth directly from the devices they use at school. They should be using laptops with Linux installed on them, preferably Pop!OS to preserve the kids privacy.

I don't condone damaging school property, although I think it's a lesser evil to Google's privacy practices on Chromebooks.

How about the "graduate from highschool challenge"?

Not even that bad, they are learning about electricity in a hands-on manner. USB standards protect against short circuits so this is over exaggerated heavily.

I was dealing with this all last week till finally a kid did it and his battery melted the computer in my classroom. He was told multiple times not to do it so now he is getting charged with possible arson. I have dealt with him doing stupid shit for the past 3 years and now finally the admins do something because it was so outlandishly stupid they have to. I am so glad I am retiring in less than 20 days.

the worst part is expecting kids to learn about computers using a fucking Chromebook.

Why throw the kids in the slammer? So they can eventually come back out as hardened criminals and contribute to the recidivism statistics, further circling society down the drain because they were betrayed by the corporations that injected their explosive products into our tax-funded school systems? They should give the TikTok kids full STEM scholarships for exposing these dangerous design flaws!

Hold the Chromebook manufacturer liable for the unsafe hardware design flaw with no overcurrent protection, hold the school liable for recklessly issuing these dangerous laptops that cheaped out on safety features, and hold Google liable for neglecting power handling in their Chromebook software! Get the CPSC on the phone and get every single Flamebook recalled across the nation!

It's outrageous, egregious, preposterous!

Parents and psychiatrists have been trying to wrap their heads around how some of the more dangerous Internet trends take off, especially among kids.

Kids are dumb and they do dumb things. There's not really that much to wrap one's head around.

If this were an unbiased and honest article; then it would read “Kids are short-circuiting their school-issued Chromebooks for social clout.” The subtle message, in this article, is TikTok = bad, which is illogical because events such as this will occur regardless of platform or even lack of a platform. It will ALWAYS happen. The question is how to mitigate these events as much as possible, because it’s impossible to completely eradicate “kids doing X for social clout.” It’s a part of learning and being human.

So you mean there are laptop USB ports out there without current limiters?
I would want to check my PC's ports, but I am not filthy rich, so I'll just assume stuff is not current limited.

Well, maybe a school-issued computer should be designed differently than a consumer device.

Maybe such things should be considered beforehand.

In industrial ergonomics you are supposed to, ideally, present a worker with a few buttons with abundantly clear results of pressing them and no forbidden combinations leading to unexpected\undefined\dangerous results.

Kids sticking things into what's given to them are not an unexpected event. I'd say kids doing that are better than kids not doing that. And if it's expected, then this is almost entrapment.

Oh, oh, OH, you can't just put a consumer device with a web browser with Google and MS and Apple shit into schools then? No kickbacks from those companies? So fucking sad.

Forcing a kid to wear around a centrally managed device with a microphone and a camera makes me want to vomit. That should be illegal as many other things. It's a disgusting world.

These should be military-level (by resilience to attempts to throw them out of the window, sink them in the water, overheat them and so on) devices with something like FreeDOS+OpenGEM. That's by far enough to run school programs. If you think it's not, then you are possessed by collective delusions, that's a thing in crowd psychology, so drink a glass of water, listen to cars\birds, look at the sky and answer which fundamentally new tasks you need to solve as compared to having year 1999 Internet (as in open a static webpage, follow links, send forms), WordPerfect and Basic. Especially at school.

We use axes, knives, hammers and screwdrivers and other stuff to do things, more or less as they existed 300 years ago, when we are not professionals, who of course use power tools.