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Submission + - UK Replacing Narrowly Focused CS GCSE in Pivot to AI Literacy for Schoolkids

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: The UK Department for Education announced this week that it is "replacing the narrowly focused computer science GCSE with a broader, future-facing computing GCSE [General Certificate of Secondary Education] and exploring a new qualification in data science and AI for 16–18-year-olds." The move aims to correct the unintended consequences of a shift made more than a decade ago from the existing ICT (Information and Communications Technology) curriculum, which focused on basic digital skills, to a more rigorous Computer Science curriculum at the behest of major tech firms and advocacy groups like Google, Microsoft, and the British Computer Society, who pushed for a curriculum overhaul to address concerns about the UK’s programming talent pipeline (a similar U.S. talent pipeline crisis was also declared around the same time).

From the Government Response to the Curriculum and Assessment Review: "We will rebalance the computing curriculum as the Review suggests, to ensure pupils develop essential digital literacy whilst retaining important computer science content. Through the reformed curriculum, pupils will know from a young age how computers can be trained using data and they will learn essential digital skills such as AI literacy."

The UK pivot from rigorous CS to AI literacy comes as tech-backed nonprofit Code.org is orchestrating a similar move in the U.S., pivoting from its original 2013 mission calling for rigorous CS for U.S. K-12 students to a new mission that embraces AI literacy. Code.org next month will replace its flagship Hour of Code event with a new Hour of AI "designed to bring AI education into the mainstream" that's supported by AI giants and Code.org donors Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. In September, Code.org pledged to the White House at an AI Education Task Force meeting led by First Lady Melania Trump and attended by U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and Google CEO Sundar Pichai (OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was spotted in the audience) that it will engage 25 million learners in the new Hour of AI this school year, build AI pathways in 25 states, and launch a free high school AI course for 400,000 students by 2028.

Submission + - World's Largest Cargo Sailboat Completes Historic First Atlantic Crossing (marineinsight.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: The world’s largest cargo sailboat, Neoliner Origin, completed its first transatlantic voyage on 30 October despite damage to one of its sails during the journey.

The 136-metre-long vessel had to rely partly on its auxiliary motor and its remaining sail after the aft sail was damaged in a storm shortly after departure.

The French-built roll-on/roll-off (RoRo) cargo ship, which has two semi-rigid sails, first stopped at Saint Pierre and Miquelon, a French overseas territory near Canada, before continuing its journey to Baltimore in the United States.

Neoline, the company behind the project, said the damage reduced the vessel’s ability to perform fully on wind power. The company’s CEO, Jean Zanuttini, said the crossing was a valuable experience in handling large sail surfaces across the North Atlantic, especially during late-season storms. He added that despite the difficulties, the ship showed strong resilience by reaching its destination with only a short delay in Saint Pierre.

The Neoliner Origin is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 to 90 per cent compared to conventional diesel-powered cargo ships. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), global shipping produces about 3 per cent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.

Submission + - You Can Thank This Ohio Klansman for Expanding Your Freedom of Speech (reason.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: On a Sunday evening in June 1964, about 20 men gathered at a farm in Ohio for a Ku Klux Klan rally. The event featured a cross burning, some stray racist and antisemitic remarks, and a short, desultory speech by a TV repairman named Clarence Brandenburg. The meeting was so small and inconspicuous that no one aside from the participants would have noticed it if Brandenburg had not invited a local television station to document his publicity stunt. But thanks to footage shot by a cameraman at Cincinnati's NBC affiliate, the rally triggered a police investigation that resulted in criminal charges against Brandenburg.

Five years later, that case produced a Supreme Court ruling that still reverberates in debates about the limits of free speech. The Court's 1969 decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio established a new, stricter constitutional test for government restrictions on provocative rhetoric.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: how to get people to our 2600 meeting?

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Years ago, we had a large and exciting group at Houston 2600: hobbyists of all sorts, each with their own interests and active projects or at least fascinations. Then COVID-19 hit and people stopped coming. Now, it seems the audience are staying home, and the only people sporadically showing up are interested in talking about the latest hacking tools to use for their future careers in computer security, or a group of wannabe hackers who seem to have no curiosity about anything other than money. Where are the hobbyists, and how do we get them to join us and share some excitement about technology? Or did Big Tech and social media finally manage to kill that?

Submission + - Bombshell report exposes how Meta relied on scam ad profits to fund AI (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Documents showed that internally, Meta was hesitant to abruptly remove accounts, even those considered some of the “scammiest scammers,” out of concern that a drop in revenue could diminish resources needed for artificial intelligence growth.

Instead of promptly removing bad actors, Meta allowed “high value accounts” to “accrue more than 500 strikes without Meta shutting them down,” Reuters reported. The more strikes a bad actor accrued, the more Meta could charge to run ads, as Meta’s documents showed the company “penalized” scammers by charging higher ad rates. Meanwhile, Meta acknowledged in documents that its systems helped scammers target users most likely to click on their ads.

“Users who click on scam ads are likely to see more of them because of Meta’s ad-personalization system, which tries to deliver ads based on a user’s interests,” Reuters reported.

Internally, Meta estimates that users across its apps in total encounter 15 billion “high risk” scam ads a day. That’s on top of 22 billion organic scam attempts that Meta users are exposed to daily, a 2024 document showed. Last year, the company projected that about $16 billion, which represents about 10 percent of its revenue, would come from scam ads.

Submission + - Magika 1.0 goes stable as Google rebuilds its file detection tool in Rust (googleblog.com)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: Google has released Magika 1.0, a stable version of its AI-based file type detection tool, and rebuilt the entire engine in Rust for speed and memory safety. The system now recognizes more than 200 file types, up from about 100, and is better at distinguishing look-alike formats such as JSON vs JSONL, TSV vs CSV, C vs C++, and JavaScript vs TypeScript. The team used a 3TB training dataset and even relied on Gemini to generate synthetic samples for rare file types, allowing Magika to handle formats that donâ(TM)t have large, publicly available corpora. The tool supports Python and TypeScript integrations and offers a native Rust command-line client.

Under the hood, Magika uses ONNX Runtime for inference and Tokio for parallel processing, allowing it to scan around 1,000 files per second on a modern laptop core and scale further with more CPU cores. Google says this makes Magika suitable for security workflows, automated analysis pipelines, and general developer tooling. Installation is a single curl or PowerShell command, and the project remains fully open source.

Submission + - UPS MD-11 Lost No. 1 Engine On Takeoff, NTSB Confirms (aviationweek.com)

Submitted by echo123
echo123 writes: The UPS Boeing MD-11 that crashed while taking off from Louisville International Airport Nov. 4 lost its No. 1 engine before the aircraft cleared the airport perimeter, the NTSB said in its first briefing on the accident.

“We have viewed airport CCTV security coverage, which shows the left engine detaching from the wing during the takeoff roll,” NTSB Board Member Todd Inman told reporters during a Nov. 5 briefing.

Photos of the airfield taken after the accident scene show what appear to be a heavily damaged GE Aerospace CF6-80C2 engine. Parts of the nacelle, including the inlet and fan cowl, are also visible in photos and appear to have detached during the accident sequence.

“We do believe that that is the engine from the left side of the plane,” Inman said. “It is actually on the airfield, so it’s not off the airport property.”

The engine appears to have come to rest on the right side of Runway 17 Right (17R), the aircraft’s departure runway, and an adjacent taxiway. The engine is about 8,700 ft. from the Runway 17R departure end, Aviation Week analysis of publicly shared images show.

“That correlates with the video that we’ve seen of it detaching from the airplane while it is in flight,” Inman added. “We also know that fire was occurring during that time, so we’re analyzing that.”

Comment Re:All jokes aside (Score 1) 46

by OtisSnerd (#65775270) Attached to: Kodak Quietly Begins Directly Selling Kodak Gold and Ultramax Film Again
My mother-in-law was shooting Kodachrome all the way back in 1945. Her father bought her an Argus C3 'Brick' in the early '40s, and that camera took decent photos. Sadly, the camera is long gone, and no one remembers what happened to it.

I scanned all of those slides with a decent film scanner, a Plustek 7600i. While some of them have world-class vignetting, that doesn't detract from how good most of them are.

Submission + - The world's tallest chip defies the limits of computing: goodbye to Moore's Law? (elpais.com) 1

Submitted by dbialac
dbialac writes: Building chips up instead of smaller may be a solution to the problems encountered with modern semiconductors.

Xiaohang Li, a researcher at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia, and his team have designed a chip with 41 vertical layers of semiconductors and insulating materials, approximately ten times higher than any previously manufactured chip. The work, recently published in the journal Nature Electronics, not only represents a technical milestone but also opens the door to a new generation of flexible, efficient, and sustainable electronic devices. “Having six or more layers of transistors stacked vertically allows us to increase circuit density without making the devices smaller laterally,” Li explains. “With six layers, we can integrate 600% more logic functions in the same area than with a single layer, achieving higher performance and lower power consumption.”

Submission + - Sam Altman says 'enough' to questions about OpenAI's revenue (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently said that the company is doing “well more” than $13 billion in annual revenue — and he sounded a little testy when pressed on how it will pay for its massive spending commitments.

“First of all, we’re doing well more revenue than that. Second of all, Brad, if you want to sell your shares, I’ll find you a buyer,” Altman said, prompting laughs from Nadella. “I just — enough. I think there are a lot of people who would love to buy OpenAI shares.”

Altman acknowledged that there are ways the company “might screw it up” — for example by failing to get access to enough computing resources — but he said that “revenue is growing steeply.”

At the same time, he denied reports that OpenAI plans to go public next year.

“No no no, we don’t have anything that specific,” Altman said. “I’m a realist, I assume it will happen someday, but I don’t know why people write these reports. We don’t have a date in mind, we don’t have a board decision to do this or anything like that. I just assume it’s where things will eventually go.”

Submission + - Bank of America faces lawsuit over alleged unpaid computer boot-up time (hcamag.com)

Submitted by Joe_Dragon
Joe_Dragon writes: Bank of America is facing allegations that hundreds of hourly workers performed up to 30 minutes of unpaid computer setup work daily for years.

A former Business Analyst filed a class action lawsuit in federal court on October 23, claiming the banking giant systematically shortchanged remote employees who had to boot up complex computer systems before their paid shifts began.

Tava Martin, who worked both remotely and at the company's Jacksonville facility, says the financial institution required her and fellow hourly workers to log into multiple security systems, download spreadsheets, and connect to virtual private networks—all before the clock started ticking on their workday.

The process wasn't quick. According to the filing in the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, employees needed 15 to 30 minutes each morning just to get their systems running. When technical problems occurred, it took even longer.

Here's how it worked: Workers turned on their computers, waited for Windows to load, grabbed their cell phones to request a security token for the company's VPN, waited for that token to arrive, logged into the network, opened required web applications with separate passwords, and downloaded the Excel files they needed for the day. Only then could they start taking calls from business customers about regulatory reporting requirements.

The lawsuit says Bank of America enforced a strict "phone ready" policy. Employees had to be prepared to handle calls the moment their scheduled shifts began. Anyone who clocked in but wasn't immediately available to take or make calls for too long risked poor performance scores and possible disciplinary action, up to and including termination.

Yet the company allegedly discouraged workers from reporting any time outside their scheduled hours. Martin's paystubs routinely showed exactly 40 hours per week, or exactly 32 hours when she missed a day—suggesting the bank paid for scheduled time rather than actual work performed.

The unpaid work didn't stop at startup. During unpaid lunch breaks, many systems would automatically disconnect or otherwise lose connection, forcing employees to repeat portions of the login process—approximately three to five minutes of uncompensated time on most days, sometimes longer when a complete reboot was required. After shifts ended, workers had to log out of all programs and shut down their computers securely, adding another two to three minutes.

Martin earned $46.17 per hour through a third-party staffing agency, though Bank of America controlled her schedule, training, and employment conditions. Like many of her colleagues, she regularly worked full-time hours, meaning the uncompensated startup and shutdown time should have been paid at the overtime rate of one and a half times her regular wage.

The lawsuit points to 2008 guidance from the Department of Labor that specifically addresses call centers under the Fair Labor Standards Act. That guidance explicitly states that an example of the first principal activity of the day for call center workers includes starting computers to download work instructions and applications. It also requires employers to keep daily or weekly records of all hours worked, including time spent in pre-shift and post-shift activities.

The filing suggests Bank of America either didn't bother to determine whether the computer time was compensable or knew it was but failed to pay for it anyway. The lawsuit notes the company has faced factually similar cases from other employees about time spent loading and logging into computer systems.

For the week of March 11 through March 17, 2024, for example, Martin was paid for 40 regular hours but no overtime. With unpaid pre-shift, meal-period, and post-shift time of at least 20 minutes per shift over five shifts, she should have received an additional 100 minutes at her overtime rate of $69.25 per hour. Similar calculations apply to other pay periods cited in the complaint.

Business Analysts were interviewed by company hiring managers and assigned to Bank of America managers upon hire. The bank provided supervisors who oversaw their daily performance and gave them training and technical support. The company controlled work schedules and retained the ability to discipline and terminate employees. The positions were hourly, non-exempt jobs with rigid schedules requiring at least eight hours per day, on average five days per week, and up to 40 hours or more weekly.

Martin seeks to represent all current and former remote hourly Business Analysts who worked for the bank during the three years before conditional certification through judgment. She estimates the group includes hundreds, if not thousands, of workers who performed essentially the same tasks using the same or similar computer programs under the same timekeeping policies.

Many Business Analysts, including Martin, were employed through third-party staffing agencies but were required to comply with all Bank of America employee handbook policies, including those covering attendance, timekeeping, and overtime.

The case remains in early stages, with no court ruling yet on whether it will proceed as a class action or on the merits of the allegations.

Submission + - China Achieved Thorium-Uranium Conversion within Molten Salt Reactor (scmp.com)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: South China Morning Post, citing Chinese state media, reported that an experimental reactor developed in the Gobi Desert by the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics has achieved thorium-to-uranium fuel conversion, paving the way for an almost endless supply of nuclear energy. It is the first time in the world that scientists have been able to acquire experimental data on thorium operations from inside a molten salt reactor according to a report by Science and Technology Daily. Thorium is much more abundant and accessible than uranium and has enormous energy potential. One mine tailings site in Inner Mongolia is estimated to hold enough of the element to power China entirely for more than 1,000 years. At the heart of the breakthrough is a process known as in-core thorium-to-uranium conversion that transforms naturally occurring thorium-232 into uranium-233 – a fissile isotope capable of sustaining nuclear chain reactions within the reactor itself. Thorium (Th-232) is not itself fissile and so is not directly usable in a thermal neutron reactor. Thorium fuels therefore need a fissile material as a ‘driver’ so that a chain reaction (and thus supply of surplus neutrons) can be maintained. The only fissile driver options are U-233, U-235 or Pu-239. (None of these is easy to supply) In the 1960s the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (USA) designed and built a demonstration MSR using U-233, derived externally from thorium as the main fissile driver.

Submission + - AMD Will Continue Game Optimization Support For Older Radeon GPU's After All (tomshardware.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After a turbulent weekend of updates and clarifications, AMD has published an entire web page to assuage user backlash and reaffirm its commitment to continued support for its RDNA 1 and RDNA 2-based drives, following a spate of confusion surrounding its recent decision to put Radeon RX 5000 and 6000 series cards in "maintenance mode." This comes after AMD had to deny that the RX 7900 cards were losing USB-C power supply moving forward, even though the drive changelog said something quite different.

Just last week, AMD released a new driver update for its graphics cards, and it went anything but smoothly. First, the wrong drivers were uploaded, and even after that was corrected, several glaring errors in the release notes required clarification. AMD was forced to correct claims about its RX 7900 cards, but at the time clarified that, indeed, RX 5000 and 6000 graphics cards were entering "Maintenance Mode," despite some RX 6000 cards being only around four years old. Now, though, AMD has either rolled back that decision or someone higher up the food chain has made a new call, as game optimizations are back on the menu for RDNA 1 and RDNA 2 GPUs.

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