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"What does a cosmetology school just outside Dallas need with a 5W adjustable cell phone jammer? Blissful quiet in the classrooms, apparently." https://news.hi

"What does a cosmetology school just outside Dallas need with a 5W adjustable cell phone jammer? Blissful quiet in the classrooms, apparently." https://news.hitb.org/content/texas-beauty-schools-cell-phone-jammer-leads-25k-fine https://news.hitb.org/content/texas-beauty-schools-cell-phon... Something for a future YC startup to pursue?

ipaddr 5y ago
Blocking exam cheaters
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
  That's... actually a fairly decent use case for a signal jammer.
  - parineum 5y ago
    It really isn't. Cheating with cell phones is the same as cheating with a note card except the quality of information. They aren't less or more detectable than other forms of cheating so there's no need to specifically target phones. Teachers just need to continue doing what they've been doing for decades, looking for cheaters.
    - bsder 5y ago
      > It really isn't. Cheating with cell phones is the same as cheating with a note card except the quality of information. It really is. Most cheaters aren't going to assume that their phone is going to be blocked and store things locally. Please do realize that most cheaters are pretty stupid. However, that still doesn't make a jammer a good idea.
      - AlexAndScripts 5y ago
        They will after the year above them tells them about it.
      - parineum 5y ago
        You're missing the point. People still have to covertly read a small rectangle for the answers to the questions. That's what teachers were looking for before and that's what they're looking for now.
    - oefrha 5y ago
      Signal jammers are meant to stop the kind of blatant cheating where you take a picture of the problems, send it to a hired test taker on the outside, and receive the answers. (A Google glass like device would be especially powerful at this.) Not surprisingly if you only use your phone as a digital cheat sheet then an online one isn’t that much better than an offline one.
    - belorn 5y ago
      When they busted a large cheating ring here in Sweden for the national aptitude test the setup involved miniature receivers and transmitters, a central location giving information to all the test sites, and countermeasures to anti-cheat. The cheating was a multi-million operation and the several people involved got multiple years in prison. One could say that the quality of information is one qualifying difference, also the scale and effectiveness. They were less detectable, and also designed and tested to avoid detection in ways that note cards are not.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    You can cheat on an exam without a signal. But people in the area of exam rooms still should be able to call emergency services if they need to. But if you still really want to block cell signals in your exam room, just hold exams in the basement of a well built building with a lot of metal in it.
  - josefx 5y ago
    I may be a bit out of touch with all these new fangled things like people working on neural implants, but back in my day dealing with cell phones during exams (and other school activity) involved either a permanent removal of the offending device and/or an instant fail of the test.
- smoyer 5y ago
  It's illegal to jam signals but it's not illegal to make your classrooms Faraday cages. Some relatively cheap metal mesh put up behind the drywall would be somewhat more expensive but would solve the problem.

ipaddr 5y ago

Blocking exam cheaters

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
That's... actually a fairly decent use case for a signal jammer.
- parineum 5y ago
  It really isn't. Cheating with cell phones is the same as cheating with a note card except the quality of information. They aren't less or more detectable than other forms of cheating so there's no need to specifically target phones. Teachers just need to continue doing what they've been doing for decades, looking for cheaters.
  - bsder 5y ago
    > It really isn't. Cheating with cell phones is the same as cheating with a note card except the quality of information. It really is. Most cheaters aren't going to assume that their phone is going to be blocked and store things locally. Please do realize that most cheaters are pretty stupid. However, that still doesn't make a jammer a good idea.
    - AlexAndScripts 5y ago
      They will after the year above them tells them about it.
    - parineum 5y ago
      You're missing the point. People still have to covertly read a small rectangle for the answers to the questions. That's what teachers were looking for before and that's what they're looking for now.
  - oefrha 5y ago
    Signal jammers are meant to stop the kind of blatant cheating where you take a picture of the problems, send it to a hired test taker on the outside, and receive the answers. (A Google glass like device would be especially powerful at this.) Not surprisingly if you only use your phone as a digital cheat sheet then an online one isn’t that much better than an offline one.
  - belorn 5y ago
    When they busted a large cheating ring here in Sweden for the national aptitude test the setup involved miniature receivers and transmitters, a central location giving information to all the test sites, and countermeasures to anti-cheat. The cheating was a multi-million operation and the several people involved got multiple years in prison. One could say that the quality of information is one qualifying difference, also the scale and effectiveness. They were less detectable, and also designed and tested to avoid detection in ways that note cards are not.
- kube-system 5y ago
  You can cheat on an exam without a signal. But people in the area of exam rooms still should be able to call emergency services if they need to. But if you still really want to block cell signals in your exam room, just hold exams in the basement of a well built building with a lot of metal in it.
- josefx 5y ago
  I may be a bit out of touch with all these new fangled things like people working on neural implants, but back in my day dealing with cell phones during exams (and other school activity) involved either a permanent removal of the offending device and/or an instant fail of the test.
smoyer 5y ago
It's illegal to jam signals but it's not illegal to make your classrooms Faraday cages. Some relatively cheap metal mesh put up behind the drywall would be somewhat more expensive but would solve the problem.