Jeff Archambeault (Slashdot reader #41,488) writes: Amateur Radio and computing worlds mourn the death of another pioneer.

From Phil Karn, KA9Q on the the 44Net mailing list:

I have very sad news. My good friend, Brian Kantor, WB6CYT suddenly passed away this week at his home in San Diego, California. Brian retired only two years ago after 47 years of service on the staff at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). Way back in the mid 1980s, Brian and I founded AMPRnet, the TCP/IP over amateur radio network. He continued to manage it until his passing.

Brian recently created and served as chair and CEO of Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC), a charitable foundation funded by the sale of unused AMPRnet IPv4 addresses. ARDC promotes STEM education and amateur radio digital development through scholarships and by funding the development of open source hardware and software.

Brian will be sorely missed and impossible to replace. Memorial arrangements will be announced when known.
Brian Rogers, N1URO, author of URONode packet software added:

Brian was an interesting yet friendly character unlike anything you'd imagine for someone of his status. He invented things such as eMail (smtp) and usenet (nntp) along with half of the VPN services of ipip. In doing so, he not only helped the amateur community world wide but also the general public globally.

One would think that he wouldn't be an approachable type of person however nothing could be farther from the truth. He was very approachable and would try to offer anyone a hand if he could.

The world has no idea who they're going to miss as someone of his statue is simply irreplace-able!

theodp writes: This week, Apple unveiled its Hour of Code and Computer Science Education Week plans which, predictably, call for the nation's kids to learn coding the Apple way (vs. the Google, Microsoft or Amazon way!). "The new [Swift-focused] Everyone Can Code curriculum," explains the Apple Newsroom, "integrates Apple's Everyone Can Create project guides to help students express what they learn through drawing, music, video and photos." And it appears that Tim Cook may no longer be content with waiting until kids are in 4th grade before requiring them to start coding. From the press release: "Preschool-age kids can try creative pre-coding activities in the new Coding Lab with the Helpsters, a team of vibrant monsters who love to solve problems and are featured in the new live-action preschool series, available now on Apple TV+, from the makers of Sesame Street." Today at Apple adds: "Kids aged 3 to 5 will get hands-on with iPad and Apple Pencil to learn fun precoding activities that teach them how to solve everyday problems like finding a shoe or helping their parents."

dryriver writes: Everybody seems to think these days that kids desperately need to learn how to code when they turn six years old. But this ignores a glaring fact -- the biggest shortage in the future labor market is not people who can code competently in Python, Java or C++, it is people who can actually discover or invent completely new and better ways of doing things, whether this is in CS, Physics, Chemistry, Biology or other fields. If you look at the history of great inventors, the last truly gifted, driven and prolific non-corporate inventor is widely regarded to be Nikola Tesla, who had around 700 patents to his name by the time he died. After Tesla, most new products, techniques and inventions have come out of corporate, government or similar structures, not from a good old-fashioned, dedicated, driven, independent-minded, one-person inventor who feverishly dreams up new things and new possibilities and works for the betterment of humanity.

How do you teach inventing to kids? By teaching them the methods of Genrikh Altshuller, for example. Seriously, does teaching five to seven year olds 50-year-old CS/coding concepts and techniques do more for society than teaching kids to rebel against convention, think outside the box, turn convention upside down and beat their own path towards solving a thorny problem? Why does society want to create an army of code monkeys versus an army of kids who learn how to invent new things from a young age? Or don't we want little Nikola Teslas in the 21st Century, because that creates "uncertainty" and "risk to established ways of doing things?"

"They survived!" reports a local CBS news station, revisiting nearly two dozen students at Adelphi University who went a full week without their cell phones. schwit1 shares their report: It was part of a college course intended to break the powerful addiction of smartphones... an Adelphi University course called "Life Unplugged" where students did the unthinkable one week ago -- handed over their smartphones. "I'm freaking out, I could probably cry right now," one student said. It was a bold experiment to recognize today's compulsive relationships with ever present devices. Seven days later, "who's excited they're getting their phones back today?" Professor Donna Freitas asked.

Gone were the nerves and the shakes. "Everything is perfect right now. I'm having a lot better relationships... it's a stress free environment no pressure about social media," Jacob Dannenberg said.

"I think it's really refreshing and relaxing... I was able to fall asleep a lot easier," student Adrianna Cigliano.

They managed to find their way, even without GPS for a week. "I just had to take the same route everywhere," one student joked. They were also more productive. "Doing homework was 100 percent easier. I got it done faster, I was in the zone," Cigliano said.

Prof. Freitas says it's important for everyone to assess their addiction. "Are the conveniences worth it because the drawback are pretty significant," Freitas said. "The face that no one can focus, that my students can't sleep... They feel bad about themselves because of social media, the list goes on and on."
Their reunions with the phones "went sour quickly as endless notifications piled up," the article notes. "Oh my God this is so bad...!" they quote one student as saying.

"I just want to shut it off now....!"

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: In years past, Microsoft's wildly popular Minecraft-themed Hour of Code tutorials were browser-based, pretty much allowing schoolchildren to participate regardless of whether their schools used PCs, Macs or Chromebooks. "Computer science is a foundation for every student," Microsoft explained on a web page about the Hour of Code, adding that "a quality computer science education should be available to every child, not just a lucky few."

But that was then, and this is now.

"The new Minecraft Hour of Code tutorial," explains a new announcement at Microsoft-sponsored Code.org, "is now available in Minecraft: Education Edition for Windows, Mac, and iPad." So, when will the Chromebook version be available? Silly Rabbit, the 2019 Minecraft Hour of Code is for Windows and Apple kids! From the Minecraft 2019 Hour of Code Lesson FAQ:

Q. Does the Hour of Code Lesson work on Chromebooks?

A. The Hour of Code Lesson is not compatible with Chromebooks. If your class has Chromebooks and would like to do a Minecraft Hour of Code lesson, we recommend using one of the [old] Minecraft tutorials on Code.org."

Yes, but that means schoolkids with Chromebooks won't be exposed to the teased AI for Good concepts introduced in the 2019 Minecraft tutorial, which seems at odds with Microsoft's professed focus on democratizing AI and putting AI developer tools in the hands of "every public sector organization around the world."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Meetings at work should be seen as a form of "therapy" rather than about decision-making, say researchers. Academics from the University of Malmo in Sweden say meetings provide an outlet for people at work to show off their status or to express frustration. Professor Patrik Hall says they are becoming increasingly frequent -- as more managerial and "strategy" jobs generate more meetings. But he says despite there being more meetings "few decisions are made." Prof Hall has investigated an apparent contradiction in how people can have a low opinion of work meetings, yet their numbers keep increasing.

The political scientist says the rise in meetings reflects changes in the workforce -- with fewer people doing and making things and an increase in those involved in "meetings-intense" roles such as strategists, advisers, consultants and managers. "People don't do concrete things any more," he says. Instead he says there has been a rise of managerial roles, which are often not very well defined, and where "the hierarchy is not that clear." [...] Meetings can "arouse feelings of meaninglessness," he says. But he argues that is often missing their point. Once in a meeting -- particularly long ones -- their function can become "almost therapeutic." Prof Hall goes on to suggest booking rooms for shorter periods, as he says meetings will expand to fill whatever time is given to them. He also says that "equality" of participants is important, otherwise a "power struggle" will emerge when the meetings are dominated by different levels of status.

A new government agency report found that U.S. workers are failing to improve the skills needed to succeed in an increasingly global economy. Bloomberg reports: The National Center for Education Statistics asked 3,300 respondents ages 16-to-65 to read simple passages and solve basic math problems. What the researchers found is that literacy, numeracy and digital problem-solving ability in the U.S. have stagnated over the past few years. Some 19% of the test-takers ranked at the lowest of three levels for literacy and 24% lacked basic digital problem-solving abilities. Meanwhile, a shocking 29% performed at the lowest level for numeracy, the same as findings from the previous study conducted in 2012-2014. Almost one in three couldn't correctly answer "how much gas is in a 24-gallon tank if the gas gauge reads three-quarters full."

There were a few bright spots among the research. Latino adults saw their overall scores improve in both literacy and digital problem solving. Some 35% ranked at the highest of three levels for the latter, up from 24% during the 2012-2014 survey period. In addition, high school graduation rates climbed 2 percentage-points to 14%, while the percentage of people with more than a high school diploma jumped 3 percentage-points to 48%.

Singularity University, a Silicon Valley institute offering education on futurism, is reckoning with its own uncertain future. The chief executive officer is stepping down, and the organization plans to eliminate staff. From a report: The changes were outlined in an email Tuesday reviewed by Bloomberg that was sent to faculty by Erik Anderson, the executive chairman. They mark an extended decline for the company, which has in recent years lost an annual grant from Google and faced allegations of sexual assault, embezzlement and discrimination. Rob Nail, who ran Singularity for the last eight years, is leaving to pursue new career opportunities, Anderson wrote in the email. Singularity is conducting a CEO search, said a spokesman. The announcement of job cuts was made in line with U.S. labor law, which requires 60-day notice for companies with more than 100 employees, the spokesman said. Singularity declined to specify how many jobs would be affected, but a person familiar with the matter put the total at about 60. This person said many of those workers were informed of the news while attending a Singularity summit in Athens that ended Tuesday. Singularity, which takes its name from the notion that humans will someday merge with machines, was introduced in 2009 during a TED Talk by futurist Ray Kurzweil. The group operates for profit but with a mandate for social responsibility. Many alumni of its programs credit the organization with teaching them about cutting-edge concepts and helping them think more expansively.

In an interview about the 16-inch MacBook Pro, Apple senior vice president Phil Schiller made a direct attack on Chromebooks. When asked about the growth of Chrome OS in the education sector, Schiller attributes the success of Chromebooks to their being "cheap." He said: Kids who are really into learning and want to learn will have better success. It's not hard to understand why kids aren't engaged in a classroom without applying technology in a way that inspires them. You need to have these cutting-edge learning tools to help kids really achieve their best results. Yet Chromebooks don't do that. Chromebooks have gotten to the classroom because, frankly, they're cheap testing tools for required testing. If all you want to do is test kids, well, maybe a cheap notebook will do that. But they're not going to succeed.

UCLA's new mobile surgical lab is a zero-emission, all-electric vehicle that will move back and forth between two UCLA campuses, collecting, sterilizing and repairing surgical instruments for the medical staff there. TechCrunch reports: Why is that even needed? The usual process is sending out surgical instruments for this kind of service by a third-party, and it's handled in a dedicated facility at a significant annual cost. UCLA Health Center estimates that it can save as much as $750,000 per year using the EV lab from Winnebago instead. The traveling lab can operate for around eight hours, including round-trips between the two hospital campuses, or for a total distance traveled of between 85 and 125 miles on a single charge of its battery, depending on usage. It also offers "the same level of performance, productivity and compliance" as a lab in a fixed-location building, according to Winnebago.

theodp writes: Q. What's the difference between Andrew Carnegie and Google? A. Andrew Carnegie used his wealth to help build libraries, while Google's using its wealth to get libraries to help build its brands. "In advance of Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek)," announced the American Library Association (ALA), "an annual event to get students excited about coding, ALA will be awarding $300 mini-grants to school and public libraries that facilitate a program for youth during Computer Science Education Week, December 9-15, 2019, using Google's CS First Hour of Code activity. This year, youth can use their imagination to turn a real-life hero into a superhero using code. Code Your Hero is an activity that honors the everyday heroes in our students' lives who use their powers to better their communities. Libraries Ready to Code is an initiative of the American Library Association (ALA) and sponsored by Google, which aims to ensure libraries have the resources, capacity, and inspiration to embrace activities that promote computational thinking (CT) and coding among our nation's youth."

Last month, the ALA announced it had received a $2 million Google.org grant to develop library entrepreneurship centers. In advance of last December's CSEdWeek, Google announced a $1 million sponsorship to the ALA, creating a pool of micro-funds that local libraries could access to bring digital skills training to their community in conjunction with the Libraries Lead with Digital Skills and Libraries Ready to Code ALA-Google joint initiatives.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The world's people face "untold suffering due to the climate crisis" unless there are major transformations to global society, according to a stark warning from more than 11,000 scientists. "We declare clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency," it states. "To secure a sustainable future, we must change how we live. [This] entails major transformations in the ways our global society functions and interacts with natural ecosystems." There is no time to lose, the scientists say: "The climate crisis has arrived and is accelerating faster than most scientists expected. It is more severe than anticipated, threatening natural ecosystems and the fate of humanity."

The statement is published in the journal BioScience on the 40th anniversary of the first world climate conference, which was held in Geneva in 1979. The statement was a collaboration of dozens of scientists and endorsed by further 11,000 from 153 nations. The scientists say the urgent changes needed include ending population growth, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, halting forest destruction and slashing meat eating. Prof William Ripple, of Oregon State University and the lead author of the statement, said he was driven to initiate it by the increase in extreme weather he was seeing. A key aim of the warning is to set out a full range of "vital sign" indicators of the causes and effects of climate breakdown, rather than only carbon emissions and surface temperature rise. "A broader set of indicators should be monitored, including human population growth, meat consumption, tree-cover loss, energy consumption, fossil-fuel subsidies and annual economic losses to extreme weather events," said co-author Thomas Newsome, of the University of Sydney. Other "profoundly troubling signs from human activities" selected by the scientists include booming air passenger numbers and world GDP growth.

The scientists did identify some positive signs, including decreasing global birth rates, increasing solar and wind power and fossil fuel divestment, and a falling rate of destruction in the Amazon. They also listed a series of actions people can do to help the "climate crisis":

- Use energy far more efficiently and apply strong carbon taxes to cut fossil fuel use
- Stabilize global population -- currently growing by 200,000 people a day -- using ethical approaches such as longer education for girls
- End the destruction of nature and restore forests and mangroves to absorb CO2
- Eat mostly plants and less meat, and reduce food waste
- Shift economic goals away from GDP growth

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: Code.org's tech sponsors haven't been shy when it comes to using the annual Hour of Code as an infomercial of sorts, and it seems unlikely 2019 will be any different. For this year's event, Google is not only offering Code Your Hero, a one-hour coding activity for kids from Google CS First, it's also asking educators to sing the praises of Google CS First in the already-underway Code Your Hero Social Media Teacher Contest. From the Code Your Hero Official Rules:

"The Code Your Hero Social Media Teacher Contest (the "Contest") is a skill contest where entrants must submit an essay that describes what teachers like best about using CS First for Hour of Code. [...] To enter the Contest, visit the Contest website located at TBD ('Contest Site') during the Contest Period and follow the instructions for submitting an entry that consists of screenshots or photos of students' saved work in Scratch (requires CS First account registration for teachers and students) and brief description of why CS First was helpful in the classroom. Entries are posted to social media using both of these hashtags: '#csfirsthourofcode' and '#codeyourhero' to qualify."

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: To make good on the proposal that snagged it a share of the Amazon HQ2 prize last year, the State of Virginia pledged to produce an additional 25K-35K grads annually with computer science or closely related degrees. And while university leaders in the Greater Washington DC area appear to be on the same page with Amazon when it comes to filling the region's ever-growing demand for tech talent, the Washington Business Journal reports there's an understanding that as universities in the region grow their faculty to meet the demands of Amazon, the schools will likely also have to compete with Amazon for those same educators.

At a panel discussion on the future of Amazon HQ2 and education, interim president of George Mason University Anne Holton noted that the local schools are all going to be competing for faculty talent ("It's going to be elbows out"). Turning to Ardine Williams, VP of workforce development at Amazon, Holton added, "We are jostling with you for the new people too."

So, if the people who are qualified to educate the next generation of STEM students for Amazon can also get paid more to work for Amazon, is professor poaching history likely to repeat itself?

Gaggle monitors the work and communications of almost 5 million students in the U.S., and schools are paying big money for its services. Hundreds of company documents unveil a sprawling surveillance industrial complex that targets kids who can't opt out. Caroline Haskins writes via BuzzFeed News: Using a combination of in-house artificial intelligence and human content moderators paid about $10 an hour, Gaggle polices schools for suspicious or harmful content and images, which it says can help prevent gun violence and student suicides. It plugs into two of the biggest software suites around, Google's G Suite and Microsoft 365, and tracks everything, including notifications that may float in from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts linked to a school email address. Gaggle touts itself as a tantalizingly simple solution to a diverse set of horrors. It claims to have saved hundreds of lives from suicide during the 2018-19 school year. The company, which is based in Bloomington, Illinois, also markets itself as a tool that can detect threats of violence.

But hundreds of pages of newly revealed Gaggle documentation and content moderation policies, as well as invoices and student incident reports from 17 school districts around the country obtained via public records requests, show that Gaggle is subjecting young lives to relentless inspection, and charging the schools that use it upward of $60,000. And it's not at all clear whether Gaggle is as effective in saving lives as it claims, or that its brand of relentless surveillance is without long-term consequences for the students it promises to protect. [...] [S]tudent surveillance services like Gaggle raise questions about how much monitoring is too much, and what rights minors have to control the ways that they're watched by adults. "My sense about this particular suite of products and services is that it's a solution in search of a problem," said Sarah Roberts, a UCLA professor and a scholar in digital content moderation, "which is to say that the only way that the logic of it works is if we first accept that our children ought to be captured within a digital system, basically, from the time they're sentient until further notice."

While Gaggle claims that its tool promotes a sense of "digital citizenship," BuzzFeed News says the newly revealed documents show that students often don't understand that their work and communications are being surveilled until they violate the rules.

Alaina Gassler, a 14-year-old inventor from West Grove, Pennsylvania, came up with a clever way to eliminate the blind spot created by the thick pillars on the side of a car's windshield. All it requires is some relatively inexpensive and readily available tech available at an electronics store. Gizmodo reports: Her solution involves installing an outward-facing webcam on the outside of a vehicle's windshield pillar, and then projecting a live feed from that camera onto the inside of that pillar. Custom 3D-printed parts allowed her to perfectly align the projected image so that it seamlessly blends with what a driver sees through the passenger window and the windshield, essentially making the pillar invisible.

Gassler's invention isn't quite ready to be installed in vehicles across the country just yet, but the technologies already exist that would allow it to be implemented in cars without serving as a distraction to the driver. Short-throw projectors could be installed at the base of the passenger side windshield pillar to create the image without having to worry about the passenger blocking the beam. And many cars have already replaced side mirrors with cameras, or include nearly invisible cameras in the rear for safely backing up, so adding one more on the side of the pillar would presumably be trivial. Gassler won the top prize for her invention at this year's Society for Science and the Public's Broadcom MASTERS (Math, Applied Science, Technology, and Engineering for Rising Stars) science and engineering competition.

The streaming giant is having to navigate different political and moral landscapes, and calls for government oversight, as it seeks subscribers worldwide. From a report: In September, Netflix released a trailer for the "Breaking Bad" sequel "El Camino." In it, a character sits in a car, lights a cigarette and holds it out the window, its orange tip glowing. The next day, Netflix Turkey released its own version. In it, the character sparks a lighter and puts his hand out of the window. But there's a difference: The cigarette has been edited out. It wasn't the first time Netflix had censored one of its trailers here. In January, the streaming giant edited one for "Sex Education," a series about a teenage sex therapist, to blur a character's hands so you couldn't see the raised middle fingers. These changes may seem small, but they are a sign of Netflix trying to get ahead of regulation it could soon face in Turkey.

[...] In Turkey, and in other countries, Netflix must navigate different political and moral landscapes, and calls for censorship, as it expands worldwide. Its 2018 annual report lists both "censorship" and "the need to adapt our content and users interfaces for specific cultural and language differences" as business risks. India is another country where Netflix has been embroiled in debates around regulation and censorship. In 2017, the company offered viewers "Angry Indian Goddesses," a movie that had been released in Indian theaters in a censored form to avoid offending religious sensibilities.ï Netflix, which is not subject to India's movie theater code, initially showed the censored version anyway, to avoid a backlash from religious viewers. But complaints came instead from viewers who wanted to see the movie uncut. Netflix made that version available and released a statement: "Our members reached out to us and we listened."

dryriver writes: In talking to people who are doing software development or other tech work, many told me that they found their tech education at university lacking in various ways. Some were taught outdated software, programming languages, methods, techniques or approaches. Others had problems with academia hostile to new ideas or creative problem solving. Some didn't get enough recognition for the coursework they did at university. Others couldn't get into top-tier universities when they were finishing high school aged 17 or 18 and got a second-rate tech education at a lower-quality academic institution as a result. So to the question: How was the quality of your tech education at university? Was the curriculum up to date? Were you taught the right things? Was academia open to new ideas and new ways of doing things? Did your education prepare you well for real life tech work in a non-academic environment?

"Whereas the fossil fuel industry employs about 900,000 people in the U.S., green economy jobs -- those associated with non-oil energy -- number about 9.5 million," writes long-time Slashdot reader DavidHumus, citing a new study by two researchers at University College London.

On Ars Technica the study's authors shared their analysis of America's emerging green economy: According to new data, by 2016 it was generating more than $1.3 trillion in annual revenue and employed approximately 9.5 million people -- making it the largest green market in the world. It has been growing rapidly, too -- between 2013 and 2016, both the industry's value and employment figures grew by 20%... Our study estimates that revenue in the global green economy was $7.87 trillion in 2016. At $1.3 trillion, the U.S. made up 16.5% of the global market -- the largest in the world.

Our analysis also suggests that in the U.S., nearly ten times more people were employed in the green economy and its supply chains (9.5 million) than employed directly in the fossil fuel industry (roughly 1 million) -- that is, miners, electricity grid workers, infrastructure manufacturers, and construction workers. This wide gap comes despite the U.S. fossil fuel industry receiving huge subsidies, estimated at $649 billion in 2015 alone.

theodp writes: It'll be interesting to see how Microsoft employees wary of empowering the military react to Wednesday's news of an Intel and Microsoft-led alliance that aims to enlist an army of JROTC high school students to fight the war for CS talent, with support from U.S. lawmakers. From the press release: Today, at the 2019 CSforALL Summit, leaders representing CSforALL and Air Force Junior ROTC announced JROTC-CS, an innovative new initiative that could dramatically increase the number of U.S. high school students taking an Advanced Placement computer science course, particularly among underrepresented populations like minority and female students. This public-private partnership is supported by an Advisory Consortium of industry and education organizations including founding members Intel Corporation, Microsoft, Capital One, Lockheed Martin, Snap Inc., the Air Force Association's Cyberpatriot, and the College Board. More than 500,000 cadets at 3,400 high schools across the U.S. and abroad participate in JROTC programs administered by each of the military services. Only 32% of these cadets have access to Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science Principles in their school, according to 2018-19 College Board data. The JROTC-CS initiative seeks to access this untapped human resource to address the national talent shortage in computing and cybersecurity and increase career opportunities for JROTC cadets, who are a highly diverse population — more than half are minority students and 40% are female. Additionally, JROTC is strongly represented in schools serving economically disadvantaged communities. [...] The JROTC-CS initiative is designed to complement the innovative, bi-partisan JROTC Cyber Training Act passed by the U.S. House of Representatives as part of the 2020 House National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on July 12.