Feed aggregator
How Do You Teach Computer Science in the Age of AI?
"A computer science degree used to be a golden ticket to the promised land of jobs," a college senior tells the New York Times. But "That's no longer the case."
The article notes that in the last three years there's been a 65% drop from companies seeking workers with two years of experience or less (according to an analysis by technology research/education organization CompTIA), with tech companies "relying more on AI for some aspects of coding, eliminating some entry-level work."
So what do college professors teach when AI "is coming fastest and most forcefully to computer science"?
Computer science programs at universities across the country are now scrambling to understand the implications of the technological transformation, grappling with what to keep teaching in the AI era. Ideas range from less emphasis on mastering programming languages to focusing on hybrid courses designed to inject computing into every profession, as educators ponder what the tech jobs of the future will look like in an AI economy... Some educators now believe the discipline could broaden to become more like a liberal arts degree, with a greater emphasis on critical thinking and communication skills.
The National Science Foundation is funding a program, Level Up AI, to bring together university and community college educators and researchers to move toward a shared vision of the essentials of AI education. The 18-month project, run by the Computing Research Association, a research and education nonprofit, in partnership with New Mexico State University, is organising conferences and roundtables and producing white papers to share resources and best practices. The NSF-backed initiative was created because of "a sense of urgency that we need a lot more computing students — and more people — who know about AI in the workforce," said Mary Lou Maher, a computer scientist and a director of the Computing Research Association.
The future of computer science education, Maher said, is likely to focus less on coding and more on computational thinking and AI literacy. Computational thinking involves breaking down problems into smaller tasks, developing step-by-step solutions and using data to reach evidence-based conclusions. AI literacy is an understanding — at varying depths for students at different levels — of how AI works, how to use it responsibly and how it is affecting society. Nurturing informed skepticism, she said, should be a goal.
The article raises other possibilities. Experts also suggest the possibility of "a burst of technology democratization as chatbot-style tools are used by people in fields from medicine to marketing to create their own programs, tailored for their industry, fed by industry-specific data sets." Stanford CS professor Alex Aiken even argues that "The growth in software engineering jobs may decline, but the total number of people involved in programming will increase."
Last year, Carnegie Mellon actually endorsed using AI for its introductory CS courses. The dean of the school's undergraduate programs believes that coursework "should include instruction in the traditional basics of computing and AI principles, followed by plenty of hands-on experience designing software using the new tools."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
KDE Plasma 6.4 Has Landed in OpenBSD
OpenBSD Journal writes:
Yes, you read that right: KDE 6.4.0 Plasma is now in OpenBSD packages... The news was announced 2025-07-04 via a fediverse post and of course the commit message itself, where the description reads....
"[I]n 6.4 the KDE Kwin team split kwin into kwin-x11 and kwin (wayland). This seems to be the sign that X11 is no longer of interest and we are focussing on Wayland. As we currently only support X11, kwin-x11 has been added as a runtime dependency to kwin. So nobody should have to install anything later. This ports update also includes Aurorae; a theme engine for KWin window decorations."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
UK Scientists Achieve First Commercial Tritium Production
Interesting Engineering reports:
Astral Systems, a UK-based private commercial fusion company, has claimed to have become the first firm to successfully breed tritium, a vital fusion fuel, using its own operational fusion reactor. This achievement, made with the University of Bristol, addresses a significant hurdle in the development of fusion energy....
Scientists from Astral Systems and the University of Bristol produced and detected tritium in real-time from an experimental lithium breeder blanket within Astral's multi-state fusion reactors. "There's a global race to find new ways to develop more tritium than what exists in today's world — a huge barrier is bringing fusion energy to reality," said Talmon Firestone, CEO and co-founder of Astral Systems. "This collaboration with the University of Bristol marks a leap forward in the search for viable, greater-than-replacement tritium breeding technologies. Using our multi-state fusion technology, we are the first private fusion company to use our reactors as a neutron source to produce fusion fuel."
Astral Systems' approach uses its Multi-State Fusion (MSF) technology. The company states this will commercialize fusion power with better performance, efficiency, and lower costs than traditional reactors. Their reactor design, the result of 25 years of engineering and over 15 years of runtime, incorporates recent understandings of stellar physics. A core innovation is lattice confinement fusion (LCF), a concept first discovered by NASA in 2020. This allows Astral's reactor to achieve solid-state fuel densities 400 million times higher than those in plasma. The company's reactors are designed to induce two distinct fusion reactions simultaneously from a single power input, with fusion occurring in both plasma and a solid-state lattice.
The article includes this quote from professor Tom Scott, who led the University of Bristol's team, supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering and UK Atomic Energy Authority. "This landmark moment clearly demonstrates a potential path to scalable tritium production in the future and the capability of Multi-State Fusion to produce isotopes in general."
And there's also this prediction from the company's web site:
"As we progress the fusion rate of our technology, aiming to exceed 10 trillion DT fusions per second per system, we unlock a wide range of applications and capabilities, such as large-scale medical isotope production, fusion neutron materials damage testing, transmutation of existing nuclear waste stores, space applications, hybrid fusion-fission power systems, and beyond."
"Scientists everywhere are racing to develop this practically limitless form of energy," write a climate news site called The Cooldown. (Since in theory nuclear fusion "has an energy output four times higher than that of fission, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.")
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot for sharing the news.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Microsoft Open Sources Copilot Chat for VS Code on GitHub
"Microsoft has released the source code for the GitHub Copilot Chat extension for VS Code under the MIT license," reports BleepingComputer.
This provides the community access to the full implementation of the chat-based coding assistant, including the implementation of "agent mode," what contextual data is sent to large language models (LLMs), and the design of system prompts. The GitHub repository hosting the code also details telemetry collection mechanisms, addressing long-standing questions about data transparency in AI-assisted coding tools...
As the VS Code team explained previously, shifts in AI tooling landscape like the rapid growth of the open-source AI ecosystem and a more level playing field for all have reduced the need for secrecy around prompt engineering and UI design. At the same time, increased targeting of development tools by malicious actors has increased the need for crowdsourcing contributions to rapidly pinpoint problems and develop effective fixes. Essentially, openness is now considered superior from a security perspective.
"If you've been hesitant to adopt AI tools because you don't trust the black box behind them, this move opensources-github-copilot-chat-vscode/offers something rare these days: transparency," writes Slashdot reader BrianFagioli"
Now that the extension is open source, developers can audit how agent mode actually works. You can also dig into how it manages your data, customize its behavior, or build entirely new tools on top of it. This could be especially useful in enterprise environments where compliance and control are non negotiable.
It is worth pointing out that the backend models powering Copilot remain closed source. So no, you won't be able to self host the whole experience or train your own Copilot. But everything running locally in VS Code is now fair game. Microsoft says it is planning to eventually merge inline code completions into the same open source package too, which would make Copilot Chat the new hub for both chat and suggestions.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A Common Assumption About Aging May Be Wrong, Study Suggests
"Some of our basic assumptions about the biological process of aging might be wrong," reports the New York Times — citing new research on a small Indigenous population in the Bolivian Amazon. [Alternate URL here.]
Scientists have long believed that long-term, low-grade inflammation — also known as "inflammaging" — is a universal hallmark of getting older. But this new data raises the question of whether inflammation is directly linked to aging at all, or if it's linked to a person's lifestyle or environment instead. The study, which was published Monday, found that people in two nonindustrialized areas experienced a different kind of inflammation throughout their lives than more urban people — likely tied to infections from bacteria, viruses and parasites rather than the precursors of chronic disease. Their inflammation also didn't appear to increase with age.
Scientists compared inflammation signals in existing data sets from four distinct populations in Italy, Singapore, Bolivia and Malaysia; because they didn't collect the blood samples directly, they couldn't make exact apples-to-apples comparisons. But if validated in larger studies, the findings could suggest that diet, lifestyle and environment influence inflammation more than aging itself, said Alan Cohen, an author of the paper and an associate professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University. "Inflammaging may not be a direct product of aging, but rather a response to industrialized conditions," he said, adding that this was a warning to experts like him that they might be overestimating its pervasiveness globally.
"How we understand inflammation and aging health is based almost entirely on research in high-income countries like the U.S.," said Thomas McDade, a biological anthropologist at Northwestern University. But a broader look shows that there's much more global variation in aging than scientists previously thought, he added... McDade, who has previously studied inflammation in the Tsimane group, speculated that populations in nonindustrialized regions might be exposed to certain microbes in water, food, soil and domestic animals earlier in their lives, bolstering their immune response later in life.
More from The Independent:
Chronic inflammation is thought to speed up the ageing process and contribute to various health conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, arthritis, cancer, heart disease, and Type 2 diabetes... However, other experts shared a word of caution before jumping to conclusions from the study. Vishwa Deep Dixit, director of the Yale Center for Research on Aging, told the New York Times it's not surprising that people less exposed to pollution would see lower rates of chronic disease.
Aurelia Santoro, an associate professor at the University of Bologna, also cautioned about the results, according to the Times. "While they had lower rates of chronic disease, the two Indigenous populations tended to have life spans shorter than those of people in industrialized regions, meaning they may simply not have lived long enough to develop inflammaging, Santoro said."
And Bimal Desai, a professor of pharmacology who studies inflammation at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, told the Times that the study "sparks valuable discussion" but needs more follow-up "before we rewrite the inflammaging narrative."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
XBOW's AI-Powered Pentester Grabs Top Rank on HackerOne, Raises $75M to Grow Platform
We're living in a new world now — one where it's an AI-powered penetration tester that "now tops an eminent US security industry leaderboard that ranks red teamers based on reputation." CSO Online reports:
On HackerOne, which connects organizations with ethical hackers to participate in their bug bounty programs, "Xbow" scored notably higher than 99 other hackers in identifying and reporting enterprise software vulnerabilities. It's a first in bug bounty history, according to the company that operates the eponymous bot...
Xbow is a fully autonomous AI-driven penetration tester (pentester) that requires no human input, but, its creators said, "operates much like a human pentester" that can scale rapidly and complete comprehensive penetration tests in just a few hours. According to its website, it passes 75% of web security benchmarks, accurately finding and exploiting vulnerabilities.
Xbow submitted nearly 1,060 vulnerabilities to HackerOne, including remote code execution, information disclosures, cache poisoning, SQL injection, XML external entities, path traversal, server-side request forgery (SSRF), cross-site scripting, and secret exposure. The company said it also identified a previously unknown vulnerability in Palo Alto's GlobalProtect VPN platform that impacted more than 2,000 hosts. Of the vulnerabilities Xbow submitted over the last 90 days, 54 were classified as critical, 242 as high and 524 as medium in severity. The company's bug bounty programs have resolved 130 vulnerabilities, and 303 are classified as triaged.
Notably, though, roughly 45% of the vulnerabilities it found are still awaiting resolution, highlighting the "volume and impact of the submissions across live targets," Nico Waisman, Xbow's head of security, wrote in a blog post this week... To further hone the technology, the company developed "validators," — automated peer reviewers that confirm each uncovered vulnerability, Waisman explained.
"As attackers adopt AI to automate and accelerate exploitation, defenders must meet them with even more capable systems," XBOW's CEO said this week, as the company raised $75 million in Series B funding to grow its platform, bringing its total funding to $117 million. Help Net Security reports:
With the new funding, XBOW plans to grow its engineering team and expand its go-to-market efforts. The product is now generally available, and the company says it is working with large banks, tech firms, and other organizations that helped shape the platform during its early testing phase. XBOW's long-term goal is to help security teams stay ahead of adversaries using advanced automation. As attackers increasingly turn to AI, the company argues that defenders will need equally capable systems to match their speed and sophistication.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
HPE Acquires Juniper Networks for $14B After Settling Antitrust Case
This week Hewlett-Packard Enterprise settled its antitrust case with America's Justice Department, "paving the way for its acquisition of rival kit maker Juniper Networks," reported Telecoms.com:
Under the agreement, HPE has agreed to divest its Instant On unit, which sells a range of enterprise-grade Wi-Fi networking equipment for campus and branch deployments. It has also agreed to license Juniper's Mist AIOps source code — a software suite that enables AI-based network automation and management. HPE can live with that, since its primary motivation for buying Juniper is to improve its prospects in an IT networking market dominated by Cisco, where others like Arista and increasingly Nokia and Nvidia are also trying to make inroads.
And after receiving regulatory clearance, HPE "very quickly closed the deal..." reports The Motley Fool. "In the press release heralding the news, the buyer wrote that it "doubles the size of HPE's networking business and provides customers with a comprehensive portfolio of networking solutions."
Investors were obviously happy about this, as according to data compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence the company's stock price ballooned by nearly 16% across the week, largely on the news.... The Justice Department had alleged, in a lawsuit filed in January, that an HPE/Juniper tie-up would essentially result in a duopoly in networking equipment. It claimed that a beefed-up HPE and networking incumbent Cisco would hold more than 70% combined of the domestic market.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Why Do Killer Whales Keep Handing Us Fish? Scientists Unpack the Mystery
Science Daily reports:
Wild orcas across four continents have repeatedly floated fish and other prey to astonished swimmers and boaters, hinting that the ocean's top predator likes to make friends. Researchers cataloged 34 such gifts over 20 years, noting the whales often lingered expectantly — and sometimes tried again — after humans declined their offerings, suggesting a curious, relationship-building motive...
"Orcas often share food with each other — it's a prosocial activity and a way that they build relationships with each other," said study lead author Jared Towers, of Bay Cetology in British Columbia, Canada. "That they also share with humans may show their interest in relating to us as well."
The complete research was published in the Journal of Comparative Psychology. Its title? "Testing the Waters: Attempts by Wild Killer Whales (Orcinus orca) to Provision People (Homo sapiens)."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Why My Kids' First PC Will Run Linux - How-To Geek
Why My Kids' First PC Will Run Linux How-To Geek
Categories: Linux
Download of the day: GIMP 3.0 is FINALLY Here!
Wow! After years of hard work and countless commits, we have finally reached a huge milestone: GIMP 3.0 is officially released! I am excited as I write this and can't wait to share some incredible new features and improvements in this release. GIMP 2.10 was released in 2018, and the first development version of GIMP 3.0 came out in 2020. GIMP 3.0 released on 16/March/2025. Let us explore how to download and install GIMP 3.0, as well as the new features in this version.
Love this? sudo share_on: Twitter - Facebook - LinkedIn - Whatsapp - Reddit
The post Download of the day: GIMP 3.0 is FINALLY Here! appeared first on nixCraft.
2025-03-18T03:45:26Z
2025-03-18T03:45:26Z
Vivek Gite
How to list upgradeable packages on FreeBSD using pkg
Here is a quick list of all upgradeable packages on FreeBSD using pkg command. This is equivalent to apt list --upgradable command on my Debian or Ubuntu Linux system.
Love this? sudo share_on: Twitter - Facebook - LinkedIn - Whatsapp - Reddit
The post How to list upgradeable packages on FreeBSD using pkg appeared first on nixCraft.
2025-03-16T20:25:39Z
2025-03-16T20:25:39Z
Vivek Gite
Ubuntu to Explore Rust-Based “uutils” as Potential GNU Core Utilities Replacement
In a move that has sparked significant discussion within the Ubuntu Linux fan-base and community, Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, has announced its intention to explore the potential replacement of GNU Core Utilities with the Rust-based "uutils" project. They plan to introduce new changes in Ubuntu Linux 25.10, eventually changing it to Ubuntu version 26.04 LTS release in 2026 as Ubuntu is testing Rust 'uutils' to overhaul its core utilities potentially. Let us find out the pros and cons and what this means for you as an Ubuntu Linux user, IT pro, or developer.
Love this? sudo share_on: Twitter - Facebook - LinkedIn - Whatsapp - Reddit
The post Ubuntu to Explore Rust-Based “uutils” as Potential GNU Core Utilities Replacement appeared first on nixCraft.
2025-03-16T12:17:36Z
2025-03-16T12:17:36Z
Vivek Gite
How to install KSH on FreeBSD
Installing KSH (KornShell) on FreeBSD can be done with either FreeBSD ports or the pkg command. The ports collection will download the KSH source code, compile it, and install it on the system. The pkg method is easier, and it will download a pre-compiled binary package. Hence, it is recommended for all users. KornShell (KSH) has a long history, and many older Unix systems and scripts rely on it. As a result, KSH remains relevant for maintaining and supporting legacy infrastructure. Large enterprises, especially those with established Unix-based systems, continue to use KSH for scripting and system administration tasks. Some industries where KSH is still commonly used include finance and telecommunications. While Bash has become the dominant shell in many Linux distributions, KSH still holds a significant presence in Unix-like environments, particularly in legacy systems. Therefore, installing KSH and practicing with it is worthwhile if you plan to work in such environments.
Love this? sudo share_on: Twitter - Facebook - LinkedIn - Whatsapp - Reddit
The post How to install KSH on FreeBSD appeared first on nixCraft.
2025-03-03T23:50:59Z
2025-03-03T23:50:59Z
Vivek Gite
Linux Sed Tutorial: Learn Text Editing with Syntax & Examples
Sed is an acronym for "stream editor." A stream refers to a source or destination for bytes. In other words, sed can read its input from standard input (stdin), apply the specified edits to the stream, and automatically output the results to standard output (stdout). Sed syntax allows an input file to be specified on the command line. However, the syntax does not directly support output file specification; this can be achieved through output redirection or editing files in place while making a backup of the original copy optionally. Sed is one of the most powerful tools on Linux and Unix-like systems. Learning it is worthwhile, so in this tutorial, we will start with the sed command syntax and examples.
Love this? sudo share_on: Twitter - Facebook - LinkedIn - Whatsapp - Reddit
The post Linux Sed Tutorial: Learn Text Editing with Syntax & Examples appeared first on nixCraft.
2025-03-03T09:47:07Z
2025-03-03T09:47:07Z
Vivek Gite
How to tell if FreeBSD needs a Reboot using kernel version check
Keeping your FreeBSD server or workstation updated is crucial for security and stability. However, after applying updates, especially kernel updates, you might wonder, "Do I need to reboot my system?" Let's simplify this process and provide a straightforward method for determining whether a reboot is necessary using the CLI, shell script, and ansible playbook.
Love this? sudo share_on: Twitter - Facebook - LinkedIn - Whatsapp - Reddit
The post How to tell if FreeBSD needs a Reboot using kernel version check appeared first on nixCraft.
2025-02-23T22:07:23Z
2025-02-23T22:07:23Z
Vivek Gite
Critical Rsync Vulnerability Requires Immediate Patching on Linux and Unix systems
Rsync is a opensource command-line tool in Linux, macOS, *BSD and Unix-like systems that synchronizes files and directories. It is a popular tool for sending or receiving files, making backups, or setting up mirrors. It minimizes data copied by transferring only the changed parts of files, making it faster and more bandwidth-efficient than traditional copying methods provided by tools like sftp or ftp-ssl. Rsync versions 3.3.0 and below has been found with SIX serious vulnerabilities. Attackers could exploit these to leak your data, corrupt your files, or even take over your system. There is a heap-based buffer overflow with a CVSS score of 9.8 that needs to be addressed on both the client and server sides of rsync package. Apart from that info leak via uninitialized stack contents defeats ASLR protection and rsync server can make client write files outside of destination directory using symbolic links.
Love this? sudo share_on: Twitter - Facebook - LinkedIn - Whatsapp - Reddit
The post Critical Rsync Vulnerability Requires Immediate Patching on Linux and Unix systems appeared first on nixCraft.
2025-01-15T18:04:24Z
2025-01-15T18:04:24Z
Vivek Gite
