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Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

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669 points danso | 8 comments | 20 May 20 19:36 UTC | HN request time: 1.062s | source | bottom
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Hokusai ◴[21 May 20 17:58 UTC] No.23262161[source]▶
> Basically, only Apple (and, more recently, Samsung) use the HEIC format — most other websites and platforms don’t support it. Even popular Silicon Valley-based services, such as Slack, don’t treat HEICs the same way as standard JPEGs.

This is the key part. Many in the software industry still believes that the start-up mindset of break things move fast applies to us. The economy depends on software, governments depend on software, education depends on software, lives depend on software ... but we treat software as a toy where a new fancy image format is a reasonable change to make because our platform gets a little more fancy and for sure a little less compatible to lock-in users.

I am all for regulation, and it is coming, as the software industry has shown to be an immature risk-taking mess. But, it can be a more bearable amount of regulation if we exercise some level of self-constraint on how we break each new release of software.

If we keep blaming traditional business (education, accounting, grocery stores, etc.) for not "updating fast enough" to new trends, they are going to justly react to our demands on their thin margin profits and ask the government to stop us. When you do not know if your business will survive another month, to have to invest non-stop in new software without any tangible benefit is an unreasonable demand.

Software has become too important the past twenty years. It is time that as a industry we realize that and act accordingly.

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1. jp555 ◴[21 May 20 18:00 UTC] No.23262214[source]▶
You're suggesting bureaucratic "software" works better?

I don't put as much faith in that as you.

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2. Hokusai ◴[21 May 20 18:31 UTC] No.23262791[source]▶
> You're suggesting bureaucratic "software" works better?

It works for building regulations, for electric regulations, for food safety regulations, for all the rest of industries actually. If anything we see people dying because that regulations are not enforced or are removed after lobbying.

So, software is not going to be "better" but more reliable and a less costly foundation for the rest of business and industries. So, software is going to be better for the end users even if it is worse for us to develop.

Do you think that all the students that are now worried of failing are thinking "at least I got HEIC images in my phone". They do not care, and why should they?

Regulations are a trade off. How deep and or even intrusive future regulation are going to be depends on how much misalignment there is between Apple/Google/Facebook business models and everyone else needs and wants. Each time that the Internet is broken and costs people time and money, the fingers are going to point to our industry.

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3. mywittyname ◴[21 May 20 18:35 UTC] No.23262850[source]▶
I'm not sure where you got that impression. I think the parent was saying that software is extremely crucial now, and technology companies can't continue this trend of randomly breaking traditions for the sake of moving forward.

Software is critical to the function of society. And society can't afford to keep up with the rate of emerging technological trends, it's just not possible. Technology companies have to continue to support interoperability with the lowest common denominator systems.

This is significantly worse than Apple ending Flash support. At least that was announced well ahead of time and was major, major news. This migration to a new default image format is a blindsiding. Three years is not really an appropriate time window for such a transition.

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4. bananabreakfast ◴[21 May 20 18:40 UTC] No.23262933[source]▶
lol "works"

Regulate software and you will kill it.

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5. Hokusai ◴[21 May 20 18:43 UTC] No.23262984[source]▶
> Software is critical to the function of society. And society can't afford to keep up with the rate of emerging technological trends, it's just not possible.

You expressed it better than myself. :)

6. sixstringtheory ◴[21 May 20 19:03 UTC] No.23263352{3}[source]▶
One has to wonder how Salesforce ever got their huge glass building in the SF skyline, what with all the regulations preventing anything from working.

Engineering is all about working within constraints. Too many people in software just want to do everything their way, oftentimes what they see as the easiest and quickest way, without worrying about how it affects other people.

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7. neilparikh ◴[21 May 20 19:16 UTC] No.23263555[source]▶
> If anything we see people dying because that regulations are not enforced or are removed after lobbying.

I want to push back on this point a little bit. People die as a result of regulations too, it's just less visible. Here's a very recent example. FDA regulations prevent other labs from creating their own COVID-19 tests, but the CDC tests didn't work. This delay probably lead to people not being diagnosed (and thus not receiving appropriate care), as well as much more spread throughout the US.

Another example would be the FDA approval process for drugs. A drug not being approved probably leads to some people dying, since it may have worked well for them. Zoning regulations in SF probably fall on the definitively net-negative side.

Now, my point here is not that we should remove all regulations. A bad drug being approved would lead to deaths too. Rather, I'm trying to make the point that restricting something has a cost, just like not restricting will have a cost.

8. nemothekid ◴[22 May 20 04:03 UTC] No.23268526{4}[source]▶
Your salesforce example is so comically bad I don't know whether to laugh or to cry. The immense amount of regulation in the city makes it almost impossible for the now unicorn startups, such as Stripe, to find office space inside SF. Those companies were in the process of moving out of the city (or now, going full remote). That same regulation makes it incredibly difficult to build housing. Your intentions are noble, but your outcome is bizarre. Instead of asking "Why is Apple inventing formats", why not ask "Why didn't College Board test their platform on the largest mobile platform in the US?". HEIC has been around for 3 years and would have been the default on any updated phone as old as the iPhone 5S.