Ethics for Nerds

Dear students,

We have some important announcements:

1. We uploaded the feedback for the term papers. Most of you passed. If you did not pass, we encourage you to participate in the lecture again next year!
If you passed, we invite you to check the feedback since it can help you prepare for the exam. If you have any open questions just reach out to Ursela or Sarah.
We will announce who earned a Bonus by the end of the week.

2. We uploaded a Mock Exam in the Materials Sections (category: “General”)

3. The additional office hours will be on August 4, 9:00 to 11:00 and August 8, 13:30 to 15:30 and take place online.

4. Please register in LSF if you wish to take the exam. (Or unregister if you do not want to take it any longer.) The status of your admission should now be displayed on your personal status page. If you believe something to be incorrect, please contact Ursela.

Best wishes,

Your Ethics for Nerds team

Dear students,

As mentioned in the lecture, today´s office hour will NOT take place. However, we will offer some additional office hours before the exam. We will announce the exact dates and times soon.

If you have any questions, please also make use of the forum. We will answer the posts as soon as possible and other students can benefit from the questions and answers as well.

Best wishes,

Your Ethics for Nerds team

Due to unforeseen circumstances, today's office hour has to be cancelled on short notice. Sorry about that! If you planned to come, please come to one of the other office hours this week, or, if that’s not possible for you, write your question in the forum. The other office hours this week will take place as usual.

Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your understanding!

Best wishes,
Your Ethics for Nerds team

Dear students,

From today, 6/27 to 7/14, you will have the opportunity to digitally evaluate our course. Simply follow the link below and help us identify the weaknesses and strengths of Ethics for Nerds:

https://qualis.uni-saarland.de/eva/?l=136353&p=237782

Note that there is a specific link for the office hours evaluation:

https://qualis.uni-saarland.de/eva/?l=1363531&p=911904

We look forward to your honest and valuable feedback!

See you soon — we'll finally have another lecture on Thursday!
Your Ethics for Nerds Team

P.S.: Please don't forget that the deadline for the term paper is approaching, Thursday, end of day!

The results and the feedback for Assignment 2 is online now. You can see your grading and your feedback on your personal status page. We lowered the number of points you need to 7.5. So, if you have 7.5 points overall or more, you passed the assignments. If you have any questions on your feedback, come to any of the office hours and we will answer to all of them.

We want to also give you a friendly reminder that admission is not over yet – you still need to write an essay, discuss with a tutor, and hand in discussion protocols (which have deadlines, too).

Best wishes,
Your Ethics for Nerds team

(All gmail-servers have rejected this news as an email. If you did not get this information, this might be why.)

There are a two things that are important for you to know:

1. Tomorrow’s lecture will be in HS002 in E1 3 instead of our normal lecture hall. Because of this, the lecture might not be steamed live. It will be recorded as usual. (Expect the video to have relatively poor audio quality, though, since HS002 does not have all the fancy equipment that the GHH lecture hall has.)
2. As you probably have noticed, the HIZ servers had problems which affected both the dcms and emails.
   • If you have uploaded your assignment already, double check on your Personal Status page whether it was really uploaded correctly.
   • If you contacted any of us via email within the last couple of days and we did not respond in a timely manner, your email probably got lost. Please re-send it and we will make sure to answer to your requests.

Best wishes,
Your Ethics for Nerds team :)

PS: You have requested to change the colour of the controls in the video player in our Nextcloud instance. Though this is technically possible, we nevertheless cannot do that for different reasons. Sorry for that! If the controls annoy you, you can download the videos and watch them in your favourite video player. There also is a link to a Youtube playlist in the Materials section that contains all PT videos.

This is a quick reminder that you need a discussion session with a tutor to get the exam admission. Almost none of you have made an appointment so far. To do that, contact Ursela. (If you click this link, you will get a pre-phrased email with all the necessary details.)

Please note:

• Do not wait too long, otherwise we cannot make any guarantees for your favourite time slots. The faster you are done with your session, the better.
• Discussion sessions need no preparation at all. If you manage to get a lively discussion, there is no way to fail the discussion session. You can either choose a topic yourself or you can let the tutor choose a topic for you.
• It may happen that we have a discussion session with two groups at once if you are in relatively small groups.

So, get in contact with Ursela to make your discussion appointment soon.

Best wishes
Your Ethics for Nerds team

Our next lecture will be our third and last Hands-On Session. It will be on how to write a term paper and on the Precise Thinking part of the course. It is best if you have at least watched the videos from PT1 and PT2. It would be even better if you had already watched the videos from PT5. However, if you have not watched any PT videos yet or you don't recall anymore what they are about, then don't worry. This Hands-On Session will even be useful if you come entirely unprepared, since a lot of the session will go into talking you through the term paper and answering your questions that come up in the process. The remainder of the session will be on content from PT2, but we will do a quick recap beforehand. So, even though the PT videos are crucial to the course, they won't be a requirement for the Hands-On Session.

See you on Thursday,
Your Ethics-for-Nerds team

This week is a bit special since we have a public holiday coming up. The following things will be different this week:

1.       The Office Hours today and tomorrow will be online instead of in-person as usual.

2.       The lecture will be substituted by some videos about privacy that you can watch sometime during the week. So, there will be no lecture on Thursday. The videos are online already for you to watch.
Since these videos are already two years old, we want to point you to two more recent topics. If you want to, you can (voluntarily) have a look at the following links:

a.       https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/04/eu-digital-markets-acts-interoperability-rule-addresses-important-need-raises

b.       https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7dw8x/san-francisco-police-are-using-driverless-cars-as-mobile-surveillance-cameras

Best wishes,
Your Ethics-for-Nerds team

We wanted to remind you that tonight is the talk by Moritz Hardt (at 6:15 pm in the Günter Hotz Lecture Hall, E2 2) that we invite you to attend. His research is both interesting and very relevant to Ethics for Nerds. Also, this talk will be relevant for the exam, so we recommend to attend it, preferably in person such that you can ask Moritz Hardt questions. Even though the talk is also recorded, a recoding will (obviously) not give you this opportunity. If you cannot attend in person, you can also watch a live stream here.

We hope to see many of you tonight! :)

Best wishes,
Your Ethics-for-Nerds team

1. Someone pointed out that one piece of information was missing in the case description in the assignment. Thanks for letting us know! We uploaded a new version that contains the additional sentence “Juan knows all of the above and is justified in his expectations.” Please take that into account!

If you already completed the assignment, you will not have to redo it, though. Just email your solutions to Ursela to let us know such that we can correct your assignment properly.

2. Also, we wanted to let you know that the lectures will not only be recorded and uploaded but will also usually be streamed live in MS Teams. Unfortunately, online interaction during the lecture is limited as we often will not be able to keep an eye on the chat while giving a lecture. There are still plenty of office hours you can come to, though, if you have any questions!

Best wishes,
The Ethics-for-Nerds team

The grouping phase is over now. Thanks for entering your groups in the dcms! :)

If you have a group but missed the deadline for entering it, you still have time to do that until Monday evening.

If you have not found a group yet but still need one, you can write an email to Ursela until Monday evening. We will then try to find a group for you. Remember: you need a group to get the exam admission.

Best wishes
Your Ethics-for-Nerds Team

The lecture materials for this week are online now. There are three important things you need to do now:

1. Watch the lecture if you were not present. You can find it on the Materials page. (If you want to, you can skip the part where the poll starts. Instead, just look at the slides and make up your own mind on the questions posed there.)

2. Form a team if you have not already done so and enter this team in the dcms. If you want more information on this, check the Course Information page. Utilize the forum for finding team members. The deadline for group completion is April 22. Remember: you need a discussion group if you want to get the exam admission! If you have trouble finding a team, write us an email.

3. Prepare for the Hands-On Session next week by watching the videos that are linked on the Materials page.

If you have any questions or encounter any problems, please get in touch! Also, make sure to check out the page on Course Information.

Best wishes,
Your Ethics for Nerds team