Technology

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.

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.

TikTok is poison for the mind.

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.

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.

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.

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

I thought system will turn off USB port if notice current over draw. Look like I am wrong.

Man I'm so sorry to my highschool Chromebook. They gave me that shit in yr seven and I was incapable of keeping things in one piece at that age. I think every key had been taken off by the end of the year and there were several holes in the outer casing.

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.

Youthful rebellion transcends technology.

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