Garacesh

So it's a series of unmoderated chat rooms. And you fail to see why this is a cause for concern? Note that I said cause for concern and not a cast-iron guarantee that the planet is going to explode. I feel like even though we don't have some of the information (e.g. can you invite a non-school user to a school hub server?) we know enough to reasonably decide "block it", given the prevalence of cyberbullying these days and a basic working knowledge of how some kids utilise digital communication software. Unfortunately yes, this is a case - as it often is - of a few bad apples, there are absolutely benefits to the idea of a school chat, but we still have a duty to safeguard, and unless we as a school can moderate the spaces being used, we cannot justifiably encourage use of that space. Which means we must, by design, discourage use of that space by placing roadblocks in the way. And even if you've got the nicest kids in the world, with every single one of them literally having a harp, halo, and glowing celestial wings, we also know that Discord is A-OK with having 18+/NSFW content on their platform, therefore on that rule alone, it is inappropriate for school use (and as such emails from Discord to pupil accounts should be blocked)

This thread is going exactly the way I expected it to, and I am here for it. Maybe they can convert to RFC 1149 and rebrand as Flyers?

Slow day. I'm on 1st-line stuff because my tech is off ill. I got the time

So why shouldn't we want to shut down unofficial discord servers as a safeguarding risk, then? I just can't get my head around why one is a problem but the other isn't? It is that, though. That's exactly what it is. It's letting a pupil (or, if I had to guess, whoever gets to the hub option first? But I'm not entirely sure, I think I've seen there can be multiple hubs per school, too, for like different subjects/clubs/etc) create an unofficial, unaccountable, and unmoderated server that is directly tied to the school via use of the school e-mail address. Now you know that just because it's tied to the school email address, that doesn't make it official. I know that just because it's tied to the school email address, that doesn't make it official. But kids? Parents? People that aren't quite up-to-date with technology, or who haven't dove in to how exactly discord hubs work? They're not going to make that distinction. They're going to assume it is official. It's linked to the school email/domain. Why wouldn't it be official? Why wouldn't we have a hand in this? Admittedly, that one isn't really our fault. Instead, it's an incredibly short-sighted, stupid, and quite frankly potentially dangerous decision on Discord's part, and I cannot understand why they've done it this way. It would be trivial to have schools that wanted to use this as a feature to have to create one via an admin@, security@ etc email address, aliases which I'd expect most network managers to have already. The fact that they've given no thought to moderation baffles me. Sorry, please clarify. What's unconfirmed? The kid's Discord account? Why would it be unconfirmed? In your scenario, it appears you're completely happy to allow the emails from discord to reach the pupil's school inbox, and for them to confirm their account. I mean feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but the way you're presenting your argument doesn't really make me think you're in favour of interrupting this process in any way. The server is unconfirmed? I honestly don't think that matters. It's still tied to the school domain. People are going to think it's official no matter what we say. Hence the assumed (and false) legitimacy-by-association I previously mentioned. I'm not really convinced that impersonation is that big of a deal, I'll agree with you there. I don't think there's particularly a risk of a pupil adding John F. Rando on Discord under the false presumption that they're part of the same school. The problem is that the hubs are unmoderated, so they could be sharing anything from maths homework to pornography (which we know Discord allows, as long as it doesn't depict minors). Again, yes, they could be doing that on their own private servers, I completely agree. But again this ties back to the false legitimacy-by-association that comes with tying a hub/server directly to the school domain/email addresses. Additionally, can you send an invite to a hub to other accounts that don't exist on that domain? Given how open discord's platform is, and its significant bot integration options, I'd expect you can. Does the hub provide some kind of user access control, or is it just essentially a server list that matches a domain to a server? I have no idea. Do you?

Completely agree - that's why I started the process last night as my test pupil account, and got back that there was no school hub for my school 'yet' and they would email me when one was set up. So far nothing new has arrived in the inbox. If anybody is further along in the process, their input would be appreciated.

Answer the question, please. Would that, or would that not, be something you moved to shut down, on the grounds of it being a safeguarding concern? This isn't about a global block of instagram. Nobody is advocating for a global block of Discord. Your argument seems to boil down to "Well kids are going to use it anyway, so why shouldn't we let them create an unofficial, unaccountable, unmoderated account on the service, using our school name?" So surely that applies to other services, no? You don't see an issue with an unofficial school Instagram, facebook, snapchat, TikTok, etc account, being leveraged to interact with minors under the guise of some fake legitimacy-by-association? Or are they a safeguarding risk but somehow Discord isn't? Just trying to understand your position here. Help me out, bud

So, just curious... If I were to open a, let's say an instagram account, under the name of your school, and start badmouthing your staff, PMing your kids and adding them as friends or following them or whatever it is Instagram calls it, would you not move to shut that down? Would that not be considered a safeguarding risk and something that ought to be dealt with? 'cause that's 'not a school resource', right? So nothing to do with your school? And the kids all use instagram anyway, so it's obviously not a safeguarding risk?

Because we have to. So many educational resources are online now, plus the fact that if you take GCSE Computing, there's literally a module about e-mail where the kids have to document they know how to use it (though, this can be done with internal-only emails, that helps not for the likes of HegartyMaths, SenecaLearning, etc, that all require active email accounts) We've literally had parents take phones off their kids to give abuse to the kid at the other end (even demanding the other kid's parent gets put on the phone). This includes, but is not limited to, threats of violence. We've had parents pick up their kid at the end of the day, wind down their car window, and hurl abuse at other kids. Never underestimate the capacity of a parent to do things via their kid. Sure, like you say, they have methods to do it anyway. But those methods aren't sanctioned by us. We're not the ones telling kids to do it. If a kid starts emailing some nonce via a school email account, who's on the hook for it? If we tell a kid to sign up to a pose reference website for art, and a parent gets nouty because there's nude models on there for figure practice, who's on the hook for it? If we tell kids to use a 'school' discord and something bad happens, who's on the hook for it? Please do try and keep in mind that most of us have more than 80 kids in our schools, and some of them - and their parents - are right nasty pieces of work sometimes. They can, and will, find any opportunity to abuse something. Then there's the other safeguarding matter of allowing the kids to use discord in school. Well it's a school resource, why should it be blocked in school? Oh, that's why, because there's no way to manage it, safeguard it, or restrict it. A kid could be on the 'school' discord, just as easily as they could be on one of discord's many 18+ communities. How you fail to see the safeguarding concerns of this is beyond my comprehension. But at this point, I think I'm just playing chess with a pigeon.

I know Discord really tried to pitch in at the start of the pandemic and whilst I do agree it's a noble pursuit, I would be heavily against this idea. As an organisation with a duty to safeguard, we should not be encouraging the students to use any communication service we don't have control over. Take G Suite for example. All our pupils here sign an agreement and get a G Suite account as part of their enrolment. But if a kid decides to 'PM' (read: email, we have Hangouts or whatever it's called now disabled) another kid, I can pull that email via Vault even if it's been deleted by all parties. With Discord there's not really any management. Sure, you can manage a server, but not the platform itself. If a pupil decides to PM another pupil, we got nothin'. Can we even prove who owns what username, given that you can change your discord ID at will? Not to mention the issue of sharing links and/or images. Sure, there are a few proactive steps.. You can tell kids to restrict their messaging to friends only, for example, but with discord being so huge for gaming who's going to do that? You can set roles on a server that don't allow posting images or gifs, or generating that little URL preview, but that only goes so far. And of course, you've got the human moderation element. Live chat moves a lot quicker than email does. What if your mods are all offline? Speaking of mods, who's going to moderate it? I sure as hell wouldn't want to, I already use discord in both a personal capacity. I don't want that bleedover. Is the school going to start buying new phones and contracts that always have data so their staff can always moderate it from a different account, since Discord doesn't have a multi-user mode? Unlikely. It is an interesting topic, and with a bit more thought it might actually be useful, but I see the risks far outweighing the benefits for kids our age. Maybe for university students, go for it. But high school? No way.

Congratulations! Is it a boy or a girl? I should really go about booking my booster.. I was invited for mine pretty early. No idea why but I sure as heck wasn't complaining.

Lol yeah I noticed that. Random bobbies in their regular ol' cop car aren't exactly going to have a machine gun sat in their lap.

Bloodshot (2020, Netflix) The plot idea is reasonably interesting, if not too amazingly executed. Lots of Hollywood sci-fi, and a supporting cast that felt criminally under-used. I do wish what's-her-face that played Darling in Baby Driver got more screen-time. She had a reasonable amount of character development but it did feel pretty rushed. An interesting concept, but ultimately ends up being a 'disengage brain, watch an indestructible Vin Diesel beat people up for an hour and a half'. It's fun, but only if you know what you're in for before you start and don't take it too seriously. Probably wouldn't watch it again, but there's worse ways to kill time.

Anybody into reading about medieval sieges? No? Just me then? Well, anyway, during one particularly long battle, the attackers ran out of rocks for the trebuchet to hurl. So, scouring around for ammunition, they decided to use the heads of the peasants that had been sent to war. Off they go, slinging their plentiful new ammo around, until by chance, the son of the enemy king took a hit, knocking him unconscious. And thus was history's first recorded use of a serf face to heir missile.

I was getting Jurrasic Park Velociraptor vibes, personally.

If I ever run Necrons, I'm 100% absolutely fielding totally-not-General-Grievous as my HQ.

Our LA has recommended (and the school is abiding by) wearing facemasks again whilst moving around the building. I suspect this is only the beginning of a significant regression.

Kinda-but-not-really. I ended up doing the DNS kludge as documented here

To even suggest that I would buy apple devices.. How very dare you!

I never play the lottery. .. And even I bought a few tickets for tonight. God knows what I'd do with that amount of money. I'm not even sure my brain can rationalise it. It just files it under "functionally unlimited money". I mean I'm sure it's quite possible to spend it all, but there's nothing that I want that would run me in any danger of tightening my belt. Probably a house. A better (non-crashed!) motorbike. Pay off any debt my mum might have (tho I think she debt- and mortgage-free now..), er.. Maybe a wardrobe refresh? And now I'm out of ideas. I'm a simple man.

Seen a lot of that on facebook groups. Cinema chains and the like. "I was going to come and see $Film but now I don't think I'll bother!" and it's.. Okay? You weren't going to see $Film anyway, because they've just told you they wouldn't have let you in. Why do you think this is a victory?

In my experience it's just a case of Teacher X creates an account and has the keys to it, IT don't get involved. As long as that teacher (or teachers) keep(s) the password safe, you should have nothing to worry about. And if something gets posted that management take an issue with? That is NOT an IT issue. It's a disciplinary one. (Though, if needs be, keep in mind that you can always seize accounts by intercepting password reset emails) Assist to the best of your abilities, with regards to "How do I...", "Do you know if it's possible to...", "Do you have any recommendations for..." etc as it is - reasonably speaking - something vaguely computer-y, but I'd recommend you damn well put your foot down if they start to indicate they want you to have operational control of it (be in charge of making posts/updates/etc). Social media. The clue is in the name. Social. Parents will use it to try and contact the school. That probably isn't on you to be dealing with.

We can only hope the next pandemic can be properly vaccinated against. I mean ideally, people wise up and learn about diseases, how they spread, how vaccines work, etc, and opt to not spread misinformation at all, but I don't believe that's going to happen. I suspect the best we can hope for is that it's a disease whereby those that choose to keep doing as they're doing aren't still putting those that do the sensible thing at risk.

Amazon tells me Metroid Dread should be arriving today. Been awaiting this one for quite some time.

One might argue a funeral director might have a vested interest in people not getting vaccinated

27" 1440p 1440Hz here. Absolutely phenomenal for gaming. Pretty crappy for office-work, sometimes too much screen real estate is an issue. I can't say I find it problematic, though. Windows is still perfectly fine at 100% scaling, I just tend to have chrome zoomed in at 125% as a lot of sites still don't really scale properly above 1080p. What I have found, though, is with 1440p I can have two windows side-by-side and not struggle at all. So I tend to have Discord on the left and Chrome on the right.