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I found the ‘memory cheat code’ for ChatGPT — and it fixed my worst problem with AI
One simple prompt stopped ChatGPT from “forgetting” everything mid-conversation — and it completely changed how I use it
Arts and entertainment throughout the region
A listing of arts and entertainment events throughout the region.
DGPT Returns to CBS Sports with Big Easy Open Special Airing April 11 - Disc Golf Pro Tour
Tune in at 5:30 PM ET to relive all of the excitement from the MVP Big Easy Open presented by Flight Factory
Can sports media really change the way you look at sports?
While stats are helpful, very rarely do numbers tell the full story.
Maricopa County confirms first heat-related death of 2026
Health officials have confirmed that a person has died from heat-related complications, the first in the Phoenix metro in 2026.
Adyen tool speeds business payments
Financial operations at global enterprises remain “stubbornly complex,” as treasury teams juggle multiple banking and payment systems, the company said.
Green Bay area high school sports results for Thursday, April 9
High school baseball, softball, soccer, and track and field teams were in action.
OpenAI has quietly launched its ads manager as it races to build out its ads business
The AI platform launched the ads manager within its ChatGPT ads pilot advertisers last week, and also lowered the barrier to joining the test.
China’s Huatai Is Seeking to Start Securities Business in Japan
Huatai Securities Co., one of China’s largest brokerages, is preparing to start a securities business in Japan as a revival in the country’s financial markets draws firms from around the world.
‘Blaming the conduct of companies may provide some comfort’
Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
Laptops Are About to Get Very Exciting Again... Thanks to Nvidia
Nvidia is about to throw another wrench into laptops led by Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm.
Google bakes NotebookLM, its research tool, into Gemini
Google has fully integrated NotebookLM, its AI-powered research tool, into the Gemini app.
Pick of the stats: Southampton v Derby County
BBC Sport highlights some of the key statistics and facts for the Championship match between Southampton and Derby County
Cleveland Browns NFL Draft Profile: DE Keldric Faulk, Auburn
A young player with room to reach his potential is catnip to Browns GM Andrew Berry.
Prepare your business for summer energy demand
Spring is the ideal time to evaluate your facility’s energy use, identify opportunities for improvement and take steps to reduce costs before peak demand arrives.
Gen Alpha drives shift toward AI-powered entertainment discovery
Gracenote has released a new report examining how artificial intelligence is reshaping the way audiences ... Read More
Patients Are Using Chatbots to Fight Medical Bills, With Mixed Results
While chatbots like Claude and ChatGPT can help narrow the information divide between patients and providers, they can also dispense flawed advice.
Green Bay area high school sports results for Tuesday, April 7
High school softball, baseball and girls soccer teams were in action.
DA identifies man killed by Boston Police after alleged sword attack, mental health crisis
A 29-year-old Boston man has been identified as the person shot and killed by police over the weekend after he allegedly stabbed first responders with a sword during a mental health crisis.
NVIDIA DLSS 5 — Everything We Know So Far About NVIDIA’s Latest Neural Rendering Technology
NVIDIA's DLSS 5 is set to launch Fall 2026, offering real-time neural rendering for photoreal graphics on RTX 50 Series GPUs.
Apple is Reportedly Facing a 'Massive Dilemma' With the MacBook Neo
The all-new MacBook Neo has been such a hit that Apple is facing a "massive dilemma," according to Taiwan-based tech columnist and former Bloomberg reporter Tim Culpan. In the iPhone 16 Pro models, the A18 Pro chip has a 6-core GPU. During the chip manufacturing process, however, sometimes a CPU or GPU core can turn out to be faulty.
Alex Jones Calls for Trump’s Removal After Panicking About Failing Health
The former stooge has reached the end with Donald Trump.
The Blogs: The Difference Between Ideological “Research” and Evidence-Based Science
From the blog of Monique Dietvorst at The Times of Israel
Think Twice Before Asking ChatGPT About Your Health
Obsessively Googling symptoms is bad. Going down an AI rabbit hole may be worse.
Colorado football makes top five for 2027 Texas edge rusher
Three-star 2027 edge rusher James Harris Jr. has narrowed his college choices to five, including the Colorado Buffaloes.
Governor Spanberger signs bills to spur business investment and jobs
Governor Abigail Spanberger has signed bipartisan legislation her office says will grow Virginia’s economy.
Arteta on key fitness news, doubters and hunger
Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta has been speaking to the media before Tuesday's Champions League game against Sporting CP at Estadio Jose Alvalade (kick-off 20:00 BST). On the latest team news, Arteta confirmed defender Gabriel is fit after coming off with a knock in the defeat to Southampton in the FA Cup.
Do You Have Questions About a No-Bid Federal Contract? Tell Us Here.
The government is supposed to let many vendors compete for contracts, to get the best deal for taxpayers. We are looking at cases where it did not.
Apple Sued by Three YouTube Channels
Three established YouTube channels have sued Apple, alleging that the company violated the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by unlawfully accessing and scraping millions of copyrighted videos from YouTube to train its AI models.
Scientists may have found a way to keep your bones strong for life
Scientists have identified a little-known receptor, GPR133, as a powerful regulator of bone strength. By activating it with a newly discovered compound called AP503, they were able to boost bone density in mice and counteract osteoporosis-like damage. The finding opens the door to a new kind of treatment that could not only prevent bone loss but also rebuild weakened bones, offering fresh hope for millions affected by osteoporosis, especially aging populations.
I’m an AI power user — this 7-line ‘critical thinking’ prompt finally stops chatbots from being a ‘Yes-Man’
Tired of ChatGPT or Gemini just nodding along? This 'critical thinking' prompt forces AI to challenge your assumptions and make your decisions sharper
Bengals News (4/6): Taking Andrew Whitworth’s advice
Andrew Whitworth cares enough to want to help.
Trump, 79, Spotted Wearing Band-Aids After Health Concerns
Trump wore two Band-Aids while stepping out Sunday amid speculation about his health.
Bhatti: Republicans must restore, strengthen health care after gutting it
Michigan doctors worry about healthcare cuts by Trump and Republicans, impacting Medicaid and low-income families.
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro Disappoints In CPU Performance Despite Moving To 2nm Process; New GPU & AI Upgrades Could Make Up For It
A tipsterclaims that the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro will offer lackluster CPU performance but its GPU and AI capabilities could cover up
4 Clever Uses For The Thunderbolt Port On Your PC
Many modern laptops and PCs now support Thunderbolt, which looks like a regular USB-C port but can support high-speed external drives, eGPUs, and more.
Ben Shelton suffers another early exit at ATP Houston 250
Ben Shelton suffered another upset loss in Houston, falling as the top seed in the quarter-finals. He's still alive in doubles action, however.
AMD or Nvidia eGPUs can work on Apple Silicon Macs, but not for graphic acceleration
Apple has signed a driver for AMD or Nvidia eGPUs connected to Apple Silicon but there are some big caveats, and it won't improve your graphics. Here's what they're for.
NVIDIA's Neural Texture Compression Cuts VRAM Use From 6.5 GB to 970 MB
NVIDIA has released more details about its Neural Texture Compression (NTC) technology, which significantly reduces GPU VRAM usage by up to seven times. In a technology demo presented during one of the GTC 2026 sessions, NVIDIA revealed that its Neural Texture Compression can reduce VRAM usage from ...
Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham
It's back, Albuquerque! The New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science reopens today, April 4th after eight months of renovations! Expect a revamped lobby, the brand-new Animal Armor traveling...
Apple CarPlay Just Got Three Popular iPhone Apps
Apple's CarPlay system for accessing iPhone apps on a vehicle's dashboard screen received three popular apps this week: ChatGPT, Google Meet, and Audiomack. CarPlay Ultra in an Aston Martin In addition, WhatsApp is beta testing a revamped CarPlay app that will improve upon the basic Siri-based functionality that was previously available. Make sure you have the latest version of each app and they will automatically appear on CarPlay.
Google's Gemma 4 Runs Frontier AI On A Single GPU
Google's Gemma 4 open models deliver frontier AI performance on a single Nvidia GPU, with Apache 2.0 licensing and native support for agentic workflows.
R&B world rocked by legend’s death at 86: ‘We lost a giant’
He was a legend who was known for playing with other legends.
AMD Rolls Out Gemma 4 Model Support Across Full Range of GPUs & CPUs
AMD has rolled out official support for Google's Gemma 4 across its full range of GPUs & CPUs, offering support for the compact AI model.
Arts and entertainment throughout the region
A listing of arts and entertainment events throughout the region.
ChatGPT's New Internet Browser Can Run 80% of a 1-Person Business — Here's How Entrepreneurs Are Using It
You're not prompting anymore. You're delegating.
Gemma 4 and what makes an open model succeed
Having written a lot of model release blog posts, there’s something much harder about reviewing open models when they drop relative to closed models, especially in 2026. In recent years, there were so few open models, so when Llama 3 was released most people were still doing research on Llama 2 and super happy to get an update. When Qwen 3 was released, the Llama 4 fiasco had just gone down, and a whole research community was emerging to study RL on Qwen 2.5 — it was a no brainer to upgrade. Today, when an open model releases, it’s competing with Qwen 3.5, Kimi K2.5, GLM 5, MiniMax M2.5, GPT-OSS, Arcee Large, Nemotron 3, Olmo 3, and others. The space is populated, but still feels full of hidden opportunity. The potential of open models feels like a dark matter, a potential we know is huge, but few clear recipes and examples for how to unlock it are out there. Agentic AI, OpenClaw, and everything brewing in that space is going to spur mass experimentation in open models to complement the likes of Claude and Codex, not replace them. Especially with open models, the benchmarks at release are an extremely incomplete story. In some ways this is exciting, as new open models have a much higher variance and ability to surprise, but it also points at some structural reasons that make building businesses and great AI experiences around open models harder than the closed alternatives. When a new Claude Opus or GPT drops, spending a few hours with them in my agentic workflows is genuinely a good vibe test. For open models, putting them through this test is a category error. Something else to be said about open models in the era of agents is that they get out of the debate of integration, harnesses, and tools and let us see close to the ground on what exactly is the ability of just a model. Of course, we can’t test some things like search abilities without some tool, but being able to measure exactly the pace of progress of the model alone is a welcome simplification to a systematically opaque AI space. Share The list of factors I’d use to assess a new open-weight model I’m considering investing in includes: Model performance (and size) — how this model performs on benchmarks I care about and how it compares to other models of a similar size. Country of origin — some businesses care deeply about provenance, and if a model was built in China or not. Model license — if a model needs legal approval for use, uptake will be slower at mid-sized and large companies. Tooling at release — many models release with half-broken, or at least substantially slower, implementations in popular software like vLLM, Transformers, SGLANG, etc due to pushing the envelope of architectures or tools. Model fine-tunability — how easy or hard it is to modify the given model to your use-case when you actually try and use it. The core problem is that some of these are immediately available at release, e.g. general performance, license, origin, etc. but others such as tooling take day(s) to week(s) to stabilize, and others are open research questions — with no group systematically monitoring fine-tunability. In the early era of open models, the days of Llama 2 or 3 and Qwen pre v3.5, the architectures were fairly simple and the models tended to work out of the box. Some of this was due to the extremely hard work of the Llama, Qwen, Mistral, etc. developer teams. Some is due to the new models being genuinely harder to work with. When it comes to something like Qwen 3.5 or Nemotron 3, with hybrid models (either gated delta net or mamba layers), the tooling is very rough at release. Things you would expect to “just work” often don’t. I’ve been following this area closely since we released Olmo Hybrid with a similar architecture, and Qwen 3.5 is just starting to work well in the various open-source tools that need to all play nice together for RL research. That’s 1.5 months after the release date! This is just to start really investing more into understanding the behavior of the models. Of course, others started working on these models sooner by investing more engineering resources or relying on partially closed software. The fully open and distributed ecosystem takes a long time to get going on some new models. All of this is lead-in for the most important question for open models — how easy is it to adapt to specific use-cases? This is a different problem for different model sizes. Large MoE open-weight models may be used by entities like Cursor who need complex capabilities in their domain, e.g. Composer 2 trained on Kimi K2.5. Other applications can be built on much smaller models, such as Chroma’s Context-1 model for agentic search, built on GPT-OSS 20B. The question of “which models are fine-tunable” is largely background knowledge known by engineers across the industry. There should be a thriving research area here to support the open ecosystem model. The first step is to understand characteristics of different base and post-trained models to understand what they look like. The second step is to tune pretraining recipes for open models so they’re more flexible. Interconnects AI is a reader-supported publication. Consider becoming a subscriber. Subscribe For The ATOM Project and other Interconnects endeavors, we’ve put in substantial effort to measuring adoption trends in the open ecosystem. Everything takes a long time to unfold after a model is first publicly available — and adaptability is why. What we know for sure now, when Qwen has been going from strength to strength with its releases, is that technical staff across the industry has gotten comfortable working with Qwen models. Countless research methods and datasets were made to work with Qwen. It’ll take patience for any other model family to get to this point — a patience I’m not sure many open model builders have. This takes us to Gemma 4, Google’s latest open models. Gemma 3 was released more than a year ago, in March of 2025, and is a bit underrated. Gemma 4 comes in 4 sizes for now, with a bigger, MoE model of over 100B total parameters rumored but not released yet. The models we have today come in sizes of ~5B dense, 8B dense, 26B total 4B active MoE, and 31B dense. I’m most excited that they’re finally adopting a standard Apache 2.0 open source license. This’ll massively boost adoption. The standard of better licenses for strong open-weight LLMs was set by mostly Chinese open model labs in the last 1-2 years, and now U.S. companies are following suit. I will personally be so happy if the horrible Llama licenses and Gemma terms of service were an ~18-month transient dynamic of the industry being nervous about releasing strong open models. The Gemma 4 scores look very solid, the small models have incredible benchmark scores (especially in general domains like LMArena) and the 31B model rivals the recent Qwen 3.5 27B, which is the leading member of that class. The ~30B size range is an important one, as it’s accessible both to researchers and to enterprises looking to deploy the model in real use-cases. Where the 7B model scale is the default for tinkering and research, a 30B model is the default for seeing if an open model can unlock substantial value in your specific workflow — a good mix of intelligence, low price, tractability for downstream training, etc. This takes us back to the above adoption criteria I mentioned for open models and the bigger question — do I think Gemma 4 will be an overwhelming success? Previous Gemma models have been plagued by tooling issues and poorer performance when being finetuned. Gemma 4’s success is going to be entirely determined by ease of use, to a point where a 5-10% swing on benchmarks wouldn’t matter at all. It’s strong enough, small enough, with the right license, and from the U.S., so many companies are going to slot it in. I’m cautiously optimistic that Gemma 4 is going to work better here. Winds are shifting for open models built in America. We saw GPT-OSS go through a bumpy launch to become an overwhelming success. There’s a collective energy around the likes of Reflection, Arcee, Nemotron, Gemma, Olmo, and peers that show substantial demand for building new stacks around open models. There’s capital to be spent on AI stacks across the economy by those who want more ownership of everything, including the model. After launching The ATOM Project 240 days ago, the conversation is shifting into the next stage. Summer of 2025 was a crisis moment where the U.S. AI scene realized it can’t wait and figure out open models after building AGI. The two markets will capture different areas and proceed in parallel. Now that more companies in the U.S. are releasing strong models, we need to improve the ecosystem so that these models are easy to use, understand, and build value around. It’s the hard work to build another inflection point in these adoption plots I’ve been updating consistently, but that’s the work to be done. Join me in it. More data coming soon! Here’s a sneak peek:
Caesars Entertainment the Latest to Offer All-Inclusive Packages for Las Vegas Hotels
Caesars Entertainment is offering its guests summer value options with the launch of its Inclusive Summer Package, a bundled hotel experience at Harrah’s L | The package includes accommodations, taxes, resort fees, two meals per day at dining outlets, bottomless drinks, High Roller Observation Wheel tickets and free self-parking.
Emplify Health, Titletown district announce partnership, naming rights
The football field in the Titletown district will have a name after Emplify Health and the Packers announced a new partnership.
Austin weighs allowing front-yard businesses to help residents launch dreams from home
Austin is considering a pilot program to allow more home-based and “front yard” businesses, aiming to lower startup costs and help residents launch small ventures within their neighborhoods.
Cal Poly student Parker Jones calls out professors' slowness on AI
This Cal Poly computer science student says professors lag on AI as students already use tools like ChatGPT for learning, not cheating, in class.
'Like two heavyweights throwing haymakers at each other'
Thirty years on from Liverpool beating Newcastle 4-3 in one of the Premier League's greatest ever matches, former Reds player Jason McAteer, former Magpies defender Steve Howey, the Anfield Wrap's Ian Ryan and the Athletic's George Caulkin join Alistair Bruce-Ball on BBC Radio 5 Live's Football Daily to reflect on a true classic. "A game like that kind of takes a life of its own", recalled McAteer.
New Rowhammer attacks give complete control of machines running Nvidia GPUs
Both GDDRHammer and GeForge hammer GPU memory in ways that compromise the CPU.
Mount Sinai to integrate OpenEvidence AI enterprise-wide
By embedding OpenEvidence directly into its Epic electronic health records, the New York health system aims to change how its clinicians access health data at the point of care to improve patient outcomes.
QB Kirk Cousins reportedly signs with Raiders ahead of team likely taking Fernando Mendoza with No. 1 pick
Yagan raises $100M for consumer AI investments
It’s the fourth fund for Chicago venture capital firm Corazon Capital.
Publicis sharpens sports marketing focus with 160over90 acquisition
Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun described sports as the firm’s “next big bet” as it tries to bring cohesion to an increasingly valuable but fragmented market.
Reds pitcher incredibly enters class of Jacob Misiorowski
Cincinnati Reds reliever Graham Ashcraft sees a major surge in his slider's velocity, joining elite class with Brewers star Misiorowski.
Sony's new PlayStation handheld rumored to top Xbox Series S, Steam Deck 2 may arrive (much) later
KeplerL2: Sony handheld GPU is ahead of Xbox Series S Sony’s rumored next-generation handheld may launch before Steam Deck 2, according to new comments
Science center prepares for a month full of events after Artemis II launch
Hours before the Artemis II launch, the Great Lakes Science Center was filled with people eager to learn about space exploration.
Marvel Rivals References ‘No Kings’ Anti-Trump Rally In New Map
The new Lower Manhattan map draws a line between Trump and Kingpin
PDX launches year two of the pop-up program; two local businesses open up shop
Two new local businesses have opened up shop at Portland International Airport as part of the PDX pop-up program.
Ask Hackaday: Using CoPilot? Are You Entertained?
There’s a great debate these days about what the current crop of AI chatbots should and shouldn’t do for you. We aren’t wise enough to know the answer, but we were interested in h…
FactCheck.org Nominated for 30th Annual Webby Awards in News & Politics | The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania
FactCheck.org has been nominated in the 30th Annual Webby Awards for best news and politics website or mobile site.
Green Bay area high school sports results for Tuesday, March 31
High school baseball, soccer, and track and field teams were in action.
Why is gaming becoming so expensive? The answer is found in AI
We are paying more for a PlayStation so that idiots can use ChatGPT to mislead people on dating apps – something is rotten in the state of gaming
Microsoft Warns of WhatsApp-Delivered VBS Malware Hijacking Windows via UAC Bypass
WhatsApp VBS campaign began February 2026, abusing AWS and UAC bypass to gain persistent remote access.
New SAMMYs director has ideas on how Syracuse artists can thrive in cutthroat industry
The Syracuse Area Music Awards has new leadership after 35 years.
📸 Italy, historic humiliation! 📰 Front pages 🫣 Abroad: Disaster
Italy lose on penalties in Bosnia and fail to book their place at the World Cup in the United States. What had seemed impossible has become reality.Watch the entire Serie BKT live on OneFootball for j...
‘Culture is moving at the speed of swipe’: Why E.l.f. Beauty considers itself an entertainment company as much as a beauty brand
With consumers turning more and more to platforms like TikTok Shop and ChatGPT to do their shopping, the beauty giant is hoping to stay ahead of a fast-evolving digital sphere.
Wordle today: The answer and hints for April 1, 2026
Here are some tips and tricks to help you find the answer to "Wordle" #1747.
Cavs at Lakers open gamethread
The Cavaliers will take on LeBron James for the final time this season.
Android Developer Verification Rollout Begins Ahead of September Enforcement
Google expands Android developer verification globally after September rollout, adding authentication and delays to sideloading to deter malware.
TFT patch 16.8
It’s our final patch before this set becomes the stuff of legend and lore.
Intel Wildcat Lake Lineup And Specifications Leaked: Six SKUs, 1/2+4-Core Configuration, And Up To 35W TDP
Intel's Wildcat Lake features a 1/2 P-Core + 4-LP-E Core design, 15-35W TDP, up to 4.8 GHz, and dual Xe3 iGPU cores with 9-21 AI TOPs.
Flash Promos & Origins Reprint Updates
Learn about Flash Promos for stores, and updates on Origins and Proving Grounds reprints.
NVIDIA DLSS 4.5 Dynamic Multi-Frame Generation and 6x Mode Officially Arrive
NVIDIA has finally launched its long-teased Dynamic Multi Frame Generation (MFG) and Multi Frame Generation 6x mode today through a new NVIDIA app beta update. This marks the full public release of NVIDIA's DLSS 4.5 technology suite, which enables the GPU to generate up to five additional frames fol...
The CISO Gap: Why Every Business Needs Cybersecurity Leadership
This week in cybersecurity from the editors at Cybercrime Magazine
McCormick buys Unilever food business in $45B deal
The transaction creates a global spice and condiments giant with a portfolio that includes Hellman's mayonnaise and Frank's Red Hot.
Zero Wrestling? Holloway’s Career ‘Done’ After UFC 326 Defeat
Arman Tsarukyan isn’t worried about fellow Lightweight contender Max Holloway. One month ago, perhaps that wasn’t the case. Like Tsarukyan, Holloway was chasing down a dance with Ilia Topuria, and the former BMF kingpin wasn’t far off from earning his first UFC Lightweight title shot. Unfortunately for the “Blessed” Hawaiian, he came up rather short […]
I put ChatGPT vs Gemini through 7 real-world tests — the results weren't what I expected
The second round of AI Madness gets exciting with two top AI assistants facing off in real world challenges
Bo Nix and teammates watched the Nuggets’ win last night
Bo Nix and several Broncos teammates watched the Nuggets win, and Marvin Mims attended Denver Summit's record-breaking home opener on Saturday.
Riftbound Core Rules: Unleashed Patch Notes
Learn all about the updates to Riftbound’s rules which arrive with Unleashed.
Announcing Riftbound's First Bans
Effective March 31, 2026, four cards and three battlefields will be banned in constructed.
German firms trapped between U.S. and China, study finds
German companies are so deeply tied to both the United States and China that they cannot decouple from either without severe economic costs, according to a study by the University of Sussex and King's College London seen by Reuters on Monday.
New Political Group to Push Trump’s A.I. Agenda in Midterms
The group, Innovation Council Action, says it plans to spend at least $100 million. It will be led by a former administration official.
Eagles jersey number updates: Riq Woolen, Hollywood Brown, and more
Very important #JerseyNumberAnalytics news!
iOS 27 Rumored to Feature All-New Siri App With 'Extensions' Feature
In his Power On newsletter today, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman discussed Apple's upcoming AI plans in more detail. As he reported last week, this will apparently include a Siri app with a so-called "Extensions" feature across iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27. With the Siri app, the report said that iPhone, iPad, and Mac users would be able to interact with Apple's assistant in both text and voice modes.
Bearman Escapes Major Injury After 50-g Crash
Haas F1 driver walks away from high-speed impact at Japan GP as closing-speed concerns resurface under new rules.
Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao fight could be in jeopardy
Floyd Mayweather still has plans to spend time in the ring in the coming months, but whether it will be with Manny Pacquiao appears questionable.
Hingham Schools Eye Business Curriculum Expansion as Class Size Concerns Mount
HINGHAM - March 23, 2026 - The Hingham School Committee moved to modernize its high school offerings Monday night, reviewing a comprehensive plan to expand the “small but mighty” Business Department while simultaneously grappling with data that places Hingham as an outlier in elementary class sizes. Director of Social Studies Andy Hoey presented a two-year program review that highlighted the department’s success in community partnerships but warned that high student demand is testing current staffing limits. Meanwhile, committee Chair Jen Benham presented independent research showing Hingham is the only benchmark district with second-grade classes hitting a 25-student cap, sparking a directive for the Policy Subcommittee to review class-size standards. Editors note: South Shore News is going paid in April, subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss a story. Reach out for group or organizational pricing. Subscribe The Full Story The meeting opened with a look into the future of Hingham High School’s (HHS) curriculum. Andy Hoey, who oversees the Business Department, presented the first formal program review for the department since 2009. [15:09] Hoey characterized the department as a vital elective hub that currently serves between 14% and 27% of the HHS student body in any given year. [31:31] “We are very proud of our business department here at Hingham High School... while we’re very proud of it, we are always striving to make improvements and enhancements.” [15:55] — Andy Hoey, Director of Social Studies A key highlight of the presentation was the announcement of a new AP Business with Personal Finance course launching next year, pending enrollment. [20:08] The review team found that while the program is “well-aligned” to national standards, it remains a high-school-only offering. Hoey outlined an action plan to explore “vertical articulation,” potentially introducing business or financial literacy units at the middle school level to fill a “gap” identified between fifth and eighth grade. [41:48] However, the department faces “smoke and mirrors” regarding student GPA, according to Hoey. Currently, most business courses are “unleveled” and do not count toward a student’s GPA, which survey data suggests may deter some students from enrolling. [28:15] The committee discussed the possibility of offering Honors or College Prep (CP) credit for advanced courses, such as investing or marketing, to better reflect their academic rigor. [38:27] The discussion took a sharp turn toward elementary education during an enrollment update. Superintendent Dr. Katie Roberts noted a net gain of four students mid-year, but it was Jen Benham’s “rabbit hole” data analysis that caught the committee’s attention. [50:35] Benham researched 13 benchmark towns—representing 34 elementary schools—and found that Hingham was the only district with a second-grade section reaching 25 students this year. [51:36] Benham’s findings suggested that while many districts lack formal class-size policies, Hingham’s current cap of 25 for second grade may be too high. “I think if we could at least have 23 at a cap for grade two,” Benham suggested, noting the importance of that grade level for literacy development. [53:09], [54:55] Dr. Roberts cautioned that smaller classes require more staff, which is a significant hurdle following a budget season where nine general education positions were cut across the district. [55:56] The committee also finalized the 2025 Town Report, which was updated to be more “student-centered” and highlight staff early in the document. [11:12] Additionally, a series of food service policies were approved to align with Massachusetts’ universal free school meal mandate, including new protocols for meal modifications due to allergies or religious needs. [59:23] Share Why It Matters The meeting underscored a tension between Hingham’s desire to offer elite, specialized programming and the foundational pressure of class sizes. The expansion of the Business Department—including potential Microsoft certifications and AP courses—aims to prepare students for a “real world” where credit scores and financial literacy are paramount. [46:20] However, the revelation that Hingham’s second-grade classes are larger than those in all neighboring benchmark towns suggests a potential strain on early education that could impact long-term student performance if not addressed by the Policy Subcommittee. Official Minutes & Data Key Motions & Votes Motion: To approve the Hingham Public Schools 2025 Town Report. [13:16] Vote: Unanimous (7-0) ([01:13:28]) Motion: To approve the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) for summer counselor work regarding course placement. [57:33] Vote: Unanimous (7-0) ([57:50]) Motion: To approve Policy EFBA (School Food and Nutrition/Meal Modifications). [01:00:32] Vote: Unanimous (7-0) ([01:00:44]) Motion: To approve Policy EFC (Universal Free School Meals). [01:00:54] Vote: Unanimous (7-0) ([01:01:07]) Public Comment No members of the public spoke during the meeting or via the remote link. [01:02:30] What’s Next The Policy Subcommittee will take up the review of elementary class-size caps over the next year to determine if the Grade 2 limit should be lowered from 25 to 23. [52:18] The Business Department will monitor enrollment for the new AP Business course and continue exploring dual-enrollment partnerships with Quincy College. [38:13] Source Video: Harbor Media South Shore News is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe
I’ve been using ChatGPT as my own personal Spotify DJ — here’s how I did it
Can ChatGPT capture the vibe of a human-made playlist?
Oliver Bearman health update after monster 50G Japanese GP crash
Oliver Bearman was taken to the medical centre following a huge crash in the Japanese Grand Prix.
How one business owner is using AI during tax season
Small business owner Kyle Ray uses a handful of AI and software tools. For tax questions, though, he turns to ChatGPT.