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An anonymous reader shares a report: For the past several years, America has been using its young people as lab rats in a sweeping, if not exactly thought-out, education experiment. Schools across the country have been lowering standards and removing penalties for failure. The results are coming into focus. Five years ago, about 30 incoming freshmen at UC San Diego arrived with math skills below high-school level. Now, according to a recent report from UC San Diego faculty and administrators, that number is more than 900 -- and most of those students don't fully meet middle-school math standards. Many students struggle with fractions and simple algebra problems. Last year, the university, which admits fewer than 30 percent of undergraduate applicants, launched a remedial-math course that focuses entirely on concepts taught in elementary and middle school. (According to the report, more than 60 percent of students who took the previous version of the course couldn't divide a fraction by two.) One of the course's tutors noted that students faced more issues with "logical thinking" than with math facts per se. They didn't know how to begin solving word problems. The university's problems are extreme, but they are not unique. Over the past five years, all of the other University of California campuses, including UC Berkeley and UCLA, have seen the number of first-years who are unprepared for precalculus double or triple. George Mason University, in Virginia, revamped its remedial-math summer program in 2023 after students began arriving at their calculus course unable to do algebra, the math-department chair, Maria Emelianenko, told me. "We call it quantitative literacy, just knowing which fraction is larger or smaller, that the slope is positive when it is going up," Janine Wilson, the chair of the undergraduate economics program at UC Davis, told me. "Things like that are just kind of in our bones when we are college ready. We are just seeing many folks without that capability." Part of what's happening here is that as more students choose STEM majors, more of them are being funneled into introductory math courses during their freshman year. But the national trend is very clear: America's students are getting much worse at math. The decline started about a decade ago and sharply accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic. The average eighth grader's math skills, which rose steadily from 1990 to 2013, are now a full school year behind where they were in 2013, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the gold standard for tracking academic achievement. Students in the bottom tenth percentile have fallen even further behind. Only the top 10 percent have recovered to 2013 levels.

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Linux 6.19 Slated To Land "mm/cid" Rewrite That Has Very Positive Performance Potential  Phoronix

An anonymous reader writes: U.S. wireless carrier Verizon said Thursday it will cut more than 13,000 jobs in its largest single layoff as it works to shrink costs and restructure operations. Verizon also said it plans to convert 179 corporate-owned retail stores into franchised operations and close one store. Verizon's new CEO, Dan Schulman, said in a note to employees the company would reduce its workforce by more than 13,000 employees across the organization, and significantly reduce outsourced and other outside labor expenses. Related: Delayed September report shows U.S. added 119,000 jobs, more than expected; unemployment rate at 4.4%

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AirPods’ best features come to Android and Linux with free app  The Verge

Our new Gemini app feature allows you to verify Google AI images and determine whether content was created or edited by AI.Our new Gemini app feature allows you to verify Google AI images and determine whether content was created or edited by AI.

Here are some tips for writing more effective prompts for image generation and editing in Gemini using Nano Banana Pro.Here are some tips for writing more effective prompts for image generation and editing in Gemini using Nano Banana Pro.

Nano Banana Pro, or Gemini 3 Pro Image, is our most advanced image generation and editing model.Nano Banana Pro, or Gemini 3 Pro Image, is our most advanced image generation and editing model.

Nano Banana Pro is our new image generation and editing model from Google DeepMind.Nano Banana Pro is our new image generation and editing model from Google DeepMind.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A Microsoft executive is questioning why more people aren't impressed with AI, a week after the company touted the evolution of Windows into an "agentic OS," which immediately triggered backlash. "Jeez there so many cynics! It cracks me up when I hear people call AI underwhelming," tweeted Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO for Microsoft's AI group. Suleyman added that he grew up playing the old-school 2D Snake game on a Nokia phone. "The fact that people are unimpressed that we can have a fluent conversation with a super smart AI that can generate any image/video is mindblowing to me," he wrote.

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Tsundere Botnet Abusing Popular Node.js and Cryptocurrency Packages to Attack Windows, Linux, and macOS Users  CyberSecurityNews

OpenAI won't say who audits its books. The company, which projects to hit an ARR of $20 billion this year and is valued at $500 billion, has committed to spending about $1.4 trillion on data centers over the next decade. It accounts for roughly two-thirds of unfulfilled contracts at Oracle and two-fifths at CoreWeave. Microsoft alone holds around $375 billion in unfulfilled contracts with OpenAI. Reuters reported the company may target a $1 trillion valuation for a potential IPO in coming years. Most companies at this scale use one of the Big Four accounting firms: Deloitte, EY, KPMG or PwC. OpenAI declined to comment to Financial Times. A person close to the organization told the publication the company has "an industry standard audit with one of the Big Four firms." The company's latest Form 990 filing lists Fontanello, Duffield, & Otake -- a small San Francisco accountancy firm -- as the paid preparer. The form does say an independent accountant audited the statements. Michael Burry, last night: "Can anyone name [OpenAI's] auditor?"

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Action1 Expands to Linux, Delivering a Unified Cross-Platform Solution for Autonomous Endpoint Management and Patching  PR Newswire

Westinghouse has partnered with Google Cloud to develop a custom AI-powered platform.Westinghouse has partnered with Google Cloud to develop a custom AI-powered platform.

Firefox 147 Will Support The XDG Base Directory Specification  Phoronix

5 pioneering Linux distros that quietly faded into history  How-To Geek

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: The White House is preparing to issue an executive order as soon as Friday that tells the Department of Justice and other federal agencies to prevent states from regulating artificial intelligence, according to four people familiar with the matter and a leaked draft of the order obtained by POLITICO. The draft document, confirmed as authentic by three people familiar with the matter, would create an "AI Litigation Task Force" at the DOJ whose "sole responsibility" would be to challenge state AI laws. Government lawyers would be directed to challenge state laws on the grounds that they unconstitutionally regulate interstate commerce, are preempted by existing federal regulations or otherwise at the attorney general's discretion. The task force would consult with administration officials, including the special adviser for AI and crypto -- a role currently occupied by tech investor David Sacks. The executive order, in the draft obtained by POLITICO, would also empower Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to publish a review of "onerous" state AI laws within 90 days and restrict federal broadband funds to states whose AI laws are found to be objectionable. It would direct the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether state AI laws that "require alterations to the truthful outputs of AI models" are blocked by the FTC Act. And it would order the Federal Communications Commission to begin work on a reporting and disclosure standard for AI models that would preempt conflicting state laws.

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We’re partnering with the cloud gaming platform NVIDIA GeForce NOW to launch an all-new way to play, built exclusively for Chromebook users: the GeForce NOW Fast Pass.Wi…

Linux 6.19 Nova Driver Landing Boot42 Support For Next-Gen NVIDIA GPUs  Phoronix

Systemd 259 release candidate flexes musl support – with long list of caveats  theregister.com

Canadian librarian Ian Linkletter has ended a five-year legal battle with ed-tech firm Proctorio after being sued for sharing public YouTube help videos that exposed how the company's remote-proctoring AI works. Ars Technica reports: ... Together, the videos, the help center screenshot, and another screenshot showing course material describing how Proctorio works were enough for Proctorio to take Linkletter to court. The ed tech company promptly filed a lawsuit and obtained a temporary injunction by spuriously claiming that Linkletter shared private YouTube videos containing confidential information. Because the YouTube videos -- which were public but "unlisted" when Linkletter shared them -- had been removed, Linkletter did not have to delete the seven tweets that initially caught Proctorio's attention, but the injunction required that he remove two tweets, including the screenshots. In the five years since, the legal fight dragged on, with no end in sight until last week, as Canadian courts tangled with copyright allegations that tested a recently passed law intended to shield Canadian rights to free expression, the Protection of Public Participation Act. To fund his defense, Linkletter said in a blog announcing the settlement that he invested his life savings "ten times over." Additionally, about 900 GoFundMe supporters and thousands of members of the Association of Administrative and Professional Staff at UBC contributed tens of thousands more. For the last year of the battle, a law firm, Norton Rose Fulbright, agreed to represent him on a pro bono basis, which Linkletter said âoewas a huge relief to me, as it meant I could defend myself all the way if Proctorio chose to proceed with the litigation." The terms of the settlement remain confidential, but both Linkletter and Proctorio confirmed that no money was exchanged. For Proctorio, the settlement made permanent the injunction that restricted Linkletter from posting the company's help center or instructional materials. But it doesn't stop Linkletter from remaining the company's biggest critic, as "there are no other restrictions on my freedom of expression," Linkletter's blog noted. "I've won my life back!" Linkletter wrote, while reassuring his supporters that he's "fine" with how things ended. "It doesn't take much imagination to understand why Proctorio is a nightmare for students," Linkletter wrote. "I can say everything that matters about Proctorio using public information."

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