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Submission + - Amid AI Bans, Microsoft & OpenAI Plan a 'Joyful' Hour of AI for Millions of

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Earlier this month on the heels of announced AI moratoriums by the nation's two largest K-12 school districts (NYC & LA), tech-backed nonprofit CodeAI named OpenAI the 'Lead Partner' for the 2026 Hour of AI, which last year replaced the Hour of Code (RIP, 2013-2024) as the premier event for the nation's K-12 schoolchildren during December's CS Education Week. In August, as it launched ChatGPT for Teens, OpenAI announced a new signature partnership with CodeAI to 'prepare the first AI generation', explaining that 'through the Hour of AI, OpenAI and CodeAI will introduce millions of students to the basics of using AI thoughtfully and responsibly.'

The updated Hour of AI website also listed OpenAI investor and partner Microsoft as one of two 'Supporters' for the Hour of AI. Now, Microsoft is calling all K-12 teachers around the globe to register for What's working now: Making AI literacy joyful for every learner, a Nov. 17th Microsoft Teams webinar at which it will unveil its Minecraft-branded 'Hour of AI experience.'

From the invite: "Discover how AI literacy can be engaging, approachable, and joyful for students. Join Microsoft Elevate for Educators and Minecraft Education to see the new Minecraft Education Hour of AI experience in action and hear practical ideas from educators bringing AI learning into their schools and classrooms." The speakers include the EMEA Marketing Lead for the $4B Microsoft Elevate AI education program, the Head of Marketing for Microsoft Minecraft Education, and a Sr. Learning Content Developer from Microsoft-backed CodeAI.

Submission + - An AI Disconnect

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Jordyn Holman of the NY Times writes: When it comes to artificial intelligence, chief executives and their work forces aren’t seeing eye to eye. Corporate leaders, increasingly in earnings calls and interviews, tout productivity gains and say they are doing right by their workers as they roll out the technology. But workers are much more concerned about being supplanted, and they don’t trust their company’s executives.

A survey from the Milken Institute-Harris Poll Listening Project recently found that more than two-thirds of business leaders expect they will be better off financially in five years because of A.I., while just 27 percent of the U.S. work force felt the same way — a whopping 41 point gap. Workers also see less A.I. transformation than leadership does. Nearly three-fourths of leaders say A.I. has significantly changed the way work is done, compared with 58 percent of entry and midlevel employees, according to a report released this month from the Wharton School.

“We have corner offices and cubicles, driving the same economy, but living in completely different realities,” John Gerzema, C.E.O. of the Harris Poll, said in an email. “There is a gulf in hope between what leaders think A.I. could bring to companies and what employees feel it is taking away from them.” What might be worse is that C.E.O.s don’t seem to recognize the disconnect, or that they’re losing the trust of their workers.

Submission + - Microsoft: Nice Pension You Got There. Be a Shame If Something Happened to It. 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "Last week, I spoke to Microsoft employees about our immigration program," wrote Microsoft President Brad Smith in a Tuesday LinkedIn post (Microsoft was recently suspended from the Green Card program). "In the spirit of transparency and public interest, we are sharing this more broadly."

In the accompanying video, Smith begins: "Hi, everybody. Yes, there was an announcement last week by the administration, and yes, it's really causing us to do a lot of work to focus on what we need to do to really preserve our ability to succeed and protect the people who work here."

Smith concludes by suggesting that what's bad for Microsoft is also bad for U.S. workers' pensions and 401K's: "We contribute to communities across the United States — not just in our jobs, not just in our philanthropy — but perhaps most importantly, we create wealth in every community across this country. [...] Microsoft has $1.2 trillion dollars of stock held by pension funds and index funds in the United States. What does that mean? If you're an employee in the United States who benefits from a pension, let's say you work for the government. You could be a school bus driver or a teacher, a firefighter, or a police officer. You are better off today because of the wealth we have created. If you work for a labor organization, a union that has a pension fund, you could be a carpenter or electrician, a welder or a plumber or a pipe fitter. The same is true for you. In fact, the truth of the matter is you would be hard pressed to find any institution in the history of the United States that has created more wealth for more people across the United States — millions and millions of people."

Submission + - IN Secretary of Education Joins Board of Tech-Backed AI/CS Curriculum Provider

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Amid pushback against K-12 AI — including AI moratoriums in the nation's largest school districts (NYC and LA) — tech-backed nonprofit CodeAI issued a press release Friday announcing that Katie Jenner, Indiana Secretary of Education, Joins CodeAI Board of Directors ("The state chief behind one of the country's most ambitious efforts to make AI education foundational brings state-level policy leadership to CodeAI's next chapter.").

From the press release: "Today, CodeAI [known as Code.org before an AI pivot] is proud to welcome one of the country's most effective architects of building the foundations for AI education: Katie Jenner, Indiana Secretary of Education, has joined CodeAI's Board of Directors. AI is already reshaping how students learn, work, and make decisions — often faster than schools can respond. Preparing young people for that world takes more than access to new tools. It takes leaders who can build the policy foundations that let an entire state move. Dr. Jenner's appointment reflects CodeAI's future. As a state chief, she hasn't just advocated for change — she has built the conditions for it, setting the standards, requirements, and accountability that give educators across Indiana the ability to make the AI education foundational for their students. She’s cleared the policy barriers so that teachers throughout the state can build the classrooms students need, and so that every student can develop the digital fluency to understand, direct, question, and create with the technology shaping their lives. [...] Her perspective will help guide CodeAI as the organization scales its work nationally — ensuring that understanding the technology shaping our world doesn't become a privilege of zip code, but a foundation available to every student."

In 2024, Indiana became the 9th state to make CS a high school graduation requirement after Jenner and Code.org rallied support for the legislation. Helping in that effort was Nextech, an Indiana nonprofit that launched in 2015 as an early Code.org regional partner with a "mission to help cultivate tech talent in Indiana by focusing on K-12 students," including introducing Code.org's curriculum into Indiana's classrooms. Following passage of the legislation, Code.org produced a new Indiana-specific Computing Foundations for a Digital Age: Indiana (AI Foundations) course, a pared-down semester-long version of its year-long curriculum that enables Indiana middle and high school kids to fulfill their CS graduation requirement. Nextech and Code.org offer support for the course, and stipends and travel reimbursement are available for teachers who attend in-person professional development for the course. With Jenner's support, Indiana schools were also early adopters of the Khanmigo AI chatbot tutor, participating in a widely-publicized pilot with CodeAI partners Khan Academy and OpenAI.

So, is Indiana's Secretary of Education joining tech-backed CodeAI's Board cause for celebration, or does it raise concerns about the kind of 'corporate capture' of K-12 classrooms explored in Coding Kids: Big Tech's Battle to Remake Public Schools?

Submission + - Who Killed Grace Hopper?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: In Grace Hopper Confab’s Sudden Cancellation Raises Alarm for Women in Tech, the Washington Post's Jeff Green and Emily Flitter write:

"The cancellation of this year’s Grace Hopper Celebration [just GHC in Anaheim; a press release FAQ explains GHC India in Bangalore is still taking place], one of the largest gatherings of women in technology, is the latest example of how the retreat from diversity initiatives is reshaping opportunities for women in tech. For three decades, the conference has drawn tens of thousands of attendees looking for jobs, mentors and professional connections, and provided a platform for tech giants eager to prove their commitment to advancing women. But organizers canceled this month’s event – scheduled to begin Oct. 27 in Anaheim, California – after sponsorships and registrations fell short of what was needed to cover costs. [...] This year’s lineup of sponsors had included heavy-hitters such as Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Nvidia Corp. and Bank of America Corp. It wasn’t immediately clear what led to the shortfall, and organizers declined to comment beyond their statement."

So, any guesses as to 'Who Killed Grace Hopper?' Covid? Mass tech layoffs? AI? Cancelled DEI efforts? Unsustainable cost/funding model? Bad job market (especially early-career), non-AI cost-cutting (including travel and conferences), unwanted male "gate crashers"? All of the above? Other?

Submission + - 25 Years Later, a Palm OS Developer Opens His Development Archive (github.com)

Submitted by ardiri
ardiri writes: Palm OS developer Aaron Ardiri (slashdot.org/~ardiri) has released approximately 1 GB of historical Palm OS development resources, accumulated during the early days of handheld computing and preserved on hard drive backups for more than 25 years. The collection includes historical SDKs, developer conference presentations, technical documentation, programming examples, limited source code, and development utilities. ROM images, commercial applications, and simulator binaries have deliberately been excluded.

Ardiri previously published the source code for his Palm OS and VTOS projects, including work exploring the capabilities of early handheld devices. This latest release expands those preservation efforts beyond his own software, making a broader collection of development resources available to the retrocomputing community. The archive is available at https://github.com/ardiri/dev-... and is intended for historical preservation, education, and research, particularly as enthusiasts continue working to maintain, emulate, and revive the platform (available at https://www.ardiri.com./

Ardiri has also written an auto-biography and shas started explored the engineering principles behind these systems in his books, including Inside the Machine, which examines computer architecture from fundamental logic through modern computing systems. At a time when much of the early mobile development ecosystem has disappeared into defunct websites and aging backups, this collection offers another opportunity to preserve the tools and knowledge that helped define an important era of personal computing.

Comment Google AI Studio-Generated Playground Shooters (Score 2) 32

My attempt at using Google AI to vibe code a simple basketball-themed elementary school math game took an interesting turn. After asking Google to generate four free-throw shooters for the game, Google AI not only gave me kids who took free throw shots at a playground (with kids in the stands) but also came up with an additional twist of its own. Once the kids released the basketball, they immediately took out a gun and kept firing rounds repeatedly across the court. Tried to prompt Google AI to remove the guns and gunfire but it fell on deaf ears because I got flagged for violating Google's rules and had to manually delete the trigger-happy free throw-shooting kids Google AI had generated to get back in Google's good graces before it would listen to my further prompts! In the end, I was unable to coax a decent game out of it despite a number of attempts. Hoping a promised Unity partnership will improve the game's generated characters, scenery, and physics. It did generate a nice-looking splash screen for the game and some impressive looking 3-D game characters, but none of that made its way into the game (which was about vintage Dr.J Vs Larry Bird One on One-caliber, so perhaps I missed some kind of option/setting.

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