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Submission + - Google To 6-Year-Olds: Don't Be a 'Goofus', Get Permission Before Using Content 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Last month, a Google-funded special edition of Highlights for Children based on Google’s Be Internet Awesome curriculum was created and 1.25 million copies of the print magazine were distributed to children, schools, and other organizations as part of a new partnership between Google and Highlights, the children's publication that targets kids aged 6-12.

A Google.org blog post calls out the special issue's Goofus and Gallant cartoon feature in which always-does-the-wrong-thing "Goofus promised Kayden he wouldn't share the silly photo, but he shares it anyway", while always-does-the-right-thing "Gallant asks others if it's OK to share their photos." Also called out is a Don't Fall for Fake puzzle, which Google explains is provided so "kids can learn to discern between what's real and what's fake online."

Submission + - DuckDB Swims Through JSON Data Like a jq Duck, But With SQL

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Among the amazing features of the in-process analytical database DuckDB, writes Paul Gross in DuckDB as the New jq, is that it has many data importers included without requiring extra dependencies. This means it can natively read and parse JSON as a database table, among many other formats. "Once I learned DuckDB could read JSON files directly into memory," Gross explains, "I realized that I could use it for many of the things where I’m currently using jq. In contrast to the complicated and custom jq syntax, I’m very familiar with SQL and use it almost daily."

The stark difference of the two programming approaches to the same problem — terse-but-cryptic jq vs. more-straightforward-to-most SQL — also raises some interesting questions: Will the use of Generative AI coding assistants more firmly entrench the status quo of the existing programming paradigms on whose codebases it's been trained? Or could it help bootstrap the acceptance of new, more approachable programming paradigms? Had something like ChatGPT been around back in the Programming Windows 95 days, might people have been content to use Copilot to generate reams of difficult-to-maintain-and-enhance Windows C code using models trained on the existing codebases instead of exploring easier approaches to Windows programming like Visual BASIC?

Submission + - Universities Have a Computer-Science Problem

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "Last year," Ian Bogost writes in Universities Have a Computer-Science Problem, "18 percent of Stanford University seniors graduated with a degree in computer science, more than double the proportion of just a decade earlier. Over the same period at MIT, that rate went up from 23 percent to 42 percent. These increases are common everywhere: The average number of undergraduate CS majors at universities in the U.S. and Canada tripled in the decade after 2005, and it keeps growing. Students’ interest in CS is intellectual—culture moves through computation these days—but it is also professional. Young people hope to access the wealth, power, and influence of the technology sector. That ambition has created both enormous administrative strain and a competition for prestige."

"Another approach has gained in popularity," Bogost notes. "Universities are consolidating the formal study of CS into a new administrative structure: the college of computing. [...] When they elevate computing to the status of a college, with departments and a budget, they are declaring it a higher-order domain of knowledge and practice, akin to law or engineering. That decision will inform a fundamental question: whether computing ought to be seen as a superfield that lords over all others, or just a servant of other domains, subordinated to their interests and control. This is, by no happenstance, also the basic question about computing in our society writ large."

Bogost concludes: "I used to think computing education might be stuck in a nesting-doll version of the engineer’s fallacy, in which CS departments have been asked to train more software engineers without considering whether more software engineers are really what the world needs. Now I worry that they have a bigger problem to address: how to make computer people care about everything else as much as they care about computers."

Submission + - Indiana Becomes 9th State to Make CS a High School Graduation Requirement

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Last October, tech-backed nonprofit Code.org publicly called out Indiana in its 2023 State of Computer Science Education report, advising the Hoosier state it needed to heed Code.org's new policy recommendation and "adopt a graduation requirement for all high school students in computer science."

Having already joined 49 other Governors who signed a Code.org-organized compact calling for increased K-12 CS education in his state after coming under pressure from hundreds of the nation's tech, business, and nonprofit leaders, Indiana Governor Eric J. Holcomb apparently didn't need much convincing. "We must prepare our students for a digitally driven world by requiring Computer Science to graduate from high school," Holcomb proclaimed in his January State of the State Address. Two months later — following Microsoft-applauded testimony for legislation to make it so by Code.org partners College Board and Nextech (the Indiana Code.org Regional Partner which is also paid by the Indiana Dept. of Education to prepare educators to teach K-12 CS, including Code.org's curriculum) — Holcomb on Wednesday signed House Bill 1243 into law, making CS a HS graduation requirement. The IndyStar reports students beginning with the Class of 2029 will be required to take a computer science class that must include instruction in algorithms and programming, computing systems, data and analysis, impacts of computing and networks and the internet.

The new law is not Holcomb's first foray into K-12 CS education. Back in 2017, Holcomb and Indiana struck a deal giving Infosys (a big Code.org donor) the largest state incentive package ever — $31M to bring 2,000 tech employees to Central Indiana — that also promised to make Indiana kids more CS savvy through the Infosys Foundation USA, headed at the time by Vandana Sikka, a Code.org Board member and wife of Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka. Following the announcement of the now-stalled deal, Holcomb led a delegation to Silicon Valley where he and Indiana University (IU) President Michael McRobbie joined Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi and Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka on a Thought Leader panel at the Infosys Confluence 2017 conference to discuss Preparing America for Tomorrow. At the accompanying Infosys Crossroads 2017 CS education conference, speakers included Sikka's wife Vandana, McRobbie's wife Laurie Burns McRobbie, Nextech President and co-CEO Karen Jung, Code.org execs, and additional IU educators. Later that year, IU 'First Lady' Laurie Burns McRobbie announced that Indiana would offer the IU Bloomington campus as a venue for Infosys Foundation USA's inaugural Pathfinders Summer Institute, a national event for K-12 teacher education in CS that offered professional development from Code.org and Nextech, as well as an unusual circumvent-your-school's-approval-and-name-your-own-stipend funding arrangement for teachers via an Infosys partnership with the NSF and DonorsChoose that was unveiled at the White House.

And that, Schoolhouse Rock Fans, is one more example of how Microsoft's National Talent Strategy is becoming Code.org-celebrated K-12 CS state laws!

Comment Re:Holy Run On Sentence!! (Score 1) 14

"Last year, three of its board members - V Ravishankar of Sequoia Capital (now Peak XV Partners), Vivian Wu of Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and Russell Dreisenstock of Prosus - resigned, leaving just Mr Raveendran, his wife Divya Gokulnath and brother Riju Raveendran on the board."

Comment Re:Holy Run On Sentence!! (Score 1) 14

Oops, Copilot rewrite: "On Wednesday, the tech-backed nonprofit Code.org launched a legal offensive in its ongoing dispute over $3 million in outstanding licensing fees. These fees relate to the utilization of Code.org's free K-12 computer science curriculum by WhiteHat Jr., an edtech company specializing in coding education. Notably, WhiteHat Jr. has a controversial history and was acquired by Byju's for a staggering $300 million in 2020. Byju's, in turn, secured a $50 million investment from Mark Zuckerberg's venture firm and prominently highlights this connection on its investors page."

Submission + - Code.org Tells Court Zuckerberg-Tied BYJU'S Undermines Mission to Teach Kids CS

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Tech-backed nonprofit Code.org on Wednesday fired the latest salvo in its legal battle over $3 million in unpaid licensing fees for the use of Code.org's free [for non-commercial purposes] K-12 computer science curriculum by WhiteHat Jr., the learn-to-code edtech company with a controversial past that was bought for $300M in 2020 by Byju's, another edtech firm that received a $50M investment from Mark Zuckerberg's venture firm that still touts its ties to Zuckerberg on its Investors page.

In a filing in support of a motion for default judgement, Code.org founder and CEO Hadi Partovi wrote: "Whitehat’s continued use of Code.org’s platform and content without payment following Code.org’s termination of the Agreement has caused, and is continuing to cause, irreparable injury to Code.org, because it undermines Code.org’s charitable and nonprofit purpose of expanding access to computer science in schools and increasing participation by young women and students from other underrepresented groups and because it jeopardizes Code.org’s status as an organization described in Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986. As a Section 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization, Code.org may not use its assets to benefit for-profit entities without receiving fair compensation."

According to the [proposed] default judgement, "Code.org is awarded the principal amount sued for of $3,000,000, along with attorneys’ fees, costs, and expenses in an amount to be determined following Code.org’s submission of an application, together with pre-judgment interest of $216,001.16, from May 26, 2023 to March 13, 2024, and any additional pre-judgment interest that may accrue until the date of judgment, calculated at the rate of 9% per annum pursuant to CPLR 5001 and 5004, plus any post-judgment interest at the statutory rate, for a total judgment in the amount of $[TBD]."

Submission + - Campaign Site Touts Trump as the K-12 Computer Science Education President

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "President Joe Biden included his administration’s K-12 education priorities in a State of the Union address focused on American resilience Thursday," reports EducationWeek. "Biden echoed his past support for raising teacher pay and increasing access to early childhood education, and he highlighted his administration’s efforts to promote tutoring, summer learning, and career and technical education. 'To remain the strongest economy in the world we need the best education system in the world,' Biden said."

The Trump campaign countered that message Thursday with a news release on Improving Education and Protecting Parents' Rights, arguing that "Joe Biden's Education Department is more focused on social justice indoctrination than teaching students. President Donald J. Trump protected the rights of parents and ensured children have every opportunity to receive the best education possible." The press release boasts that President Trump "allocated no less than $200 million each year in grants to prioritize women and minorities in [K-12] STEM and computer science education," a reference to a 2017 Presidential memorandum that Microsoft President Brad Smith later credited to a deal struck with Trump's daughter Ivanka, a Presidential advisor ("She said she would work to secure $1 billion of federal support over five years if the tech sector would pledge $300 million during the same time," Smith explained in his 2019 book Tools and Weapons).

Interestingly, Hillary Clinton branded herself as the K-12 CS presidential candidate in her unsuccessful 2016 campaign against Trump, vowing to "provide every student in America an opportunity to learn computer science" and to "engage the private sector and nonprofits to train up to 50,000 computer science teachers in the next decade."

So, are reports that computer science wins elections greatly exaggerated?

Comment Re:kWh/day considered nonsense (Score 2) 68

by EmagGeek (#64293942) Attached to: Amazon Pays $650 Million For Nuclear-Powered Data Center

False. Large datacenters and distributed virtualization platforms modulate cycle availability to maintain relatively constant power consumption. Lower priority tasks are often paused, or given higher priority, depending upon the overall power load.

There is a lot of science thrown at load modulation because of the way power is billed. For commercial and industrial customers, electricity is billed based on both average and peak demand, and the latter is tremendously more expensive than the former, so it is important to keep peak demand low.

Incidentally, this is why EV charging networks will all fail eventually, because they will never turn a profit. I'll give you one example: an EV charger on Dominion Energy in Virginia... a single 75kWh charging session at 150kW will cost the EV charging company approximately $26,800 in peak demand for that billing cycle, and generate approximately $35 in top-line revenue.

So, you can bet your ass that datacenters are going to deploy whatever means are necessary to manage their peak demand, including priority modulation.

Submission + - Black Girls Code and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Year of 2022

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "The year 2020," notes an IUPUI Women’s Philanthropy Institute report, "was marked by upheaval across all areas of life due to the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting economic woes, and a renewed racial justice movement in response to the murder of George Floyd—and philanthropy was no exception, especially philanthropy devoted to women and girls." Such was the case at Black Girls Code, the nonprofit founded in 2011 by electrical engineer Kimberly Bryant that provides computer programming education to nurture careers in tech for girls of color, where contributions and grants surged to $23.7 million in 2020 (from $4.6M in 2019) and $16.9M in 2021, including a $3 million donation from MacKenzie Scott (Jeff Bezos's ex-wife).

But what goes up must come down, including charitable giving in 2022. A newly-available IRS 990 filing reveals that Black Girls Code saw net income fall to a negative $5.2 million in 2022. Not only that, but legal expenses for 2022 were $3.9 million, 57% of the nonprofit's $6.7 million in contributions and grants. News reports and court records show that Black Girls Code was involved in at least two since-settled lawsuits in 2022 — one over events surrounding the termination of its founder and CEO and the other a trademark dispute — that resulted in the organization temporarily losing control of its own website and organization name. Under new leadership, Black Girls Code is currently doing some rebranding ("STEM has always been our core, and now, with the inclusion of Art, we’re transforming STEM into STEAM").

Of the three most successful learn-to-code K-12 CS nonprofits that emerged more than a decade ago, Black Girls Code was the 'David' compared to 'Goliaths' Code.org ($33M revenue in 2002) and Girls Who Code ($27M revenue in 2002), whose founders enjoyed support from billionaire tech leaders and deep-pocketed tech giants pretty much from the get-go. In 2013, Black Girls Code managed to edge out newcomer Code.org (whose Board at the time included Microsoft President Brad Smith) to win the top $50,000 prize in a Microsoft Azure-sponsored popularity contest for technology education nonprofits. Interestingly, as the Microsoft contest's voting period came to a close in 2013, Internet Archive captures show that Code.org wordsmithed its mission statement (adding "increasing participation by women and underrepresented students of color" to "Code.org is a non-profit dedicated to growing computer science education"), essentially incorporating and expanding Black Girl Code's own mission statement ("to provide young and pre-teen girls of color opportunities to learn in-demand skills."). Hey, what's that old Microsoft saying? "Embrace, extend, and extinguish"?

Comment Re:A history trove (Score 3, Informative) 25

by theodp (#64286600) Attached to: 'Communications of the ACM' Is Now Open Access

In the past, I've found ACM articles useful primarily in three ways: 1. An independent source of research to help confirm or refute claims of the benefits of "hot" technology (Generative AI, for instance), 2. An roundup and explanation of some of the research/theory behind techniques employed in software from both a user and developer perspective, 3. An early look a promising technology currently in the R&D stages. I'd imagine academic types find ACM publications (reading and publishing) much more valuable than the rest of us as far as advancing their careers goes.
 
That being said, with the shift in breakthrough technologies from more independent and open university and college research CS labs to tech giants and startups, as well as the Open Access fees the ACM plans to charge universities/colleges and paper authors to help maintain their revenue stream ($66 million in 2022), one wonders what kind of content ACM publications will offer in the future.

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