China signaled its push to regulate sweeping parts of the economy, which has jolted markets, will be deep and sustained over the next five years. From a report: In a statement late Wednesday published by the State Council, China said it will "actively" work on legislation in areas including national security, technological innovation as well as anti-monopoly, in order to improve the legal framework "much-needed for governing the country." Law enforcement will be strengthened in sectors ranging from food and drugs to education tutoring where people's immediate interests are at stake, the council said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Oregon Live: For the next five years, an Oregon high school diploma will be no guarantee that the student who earned it can read, write or do math at a high school level. Gov. Kate Brown had demurred earlier this summer regarding whether she supported the plan passed by the Legislature to drop the requirement that students demonstrate they have achieved those essential skills. But on July 14, the governor signed Senate Bill 744 into law. Through a spokesperson, the governor declined again Friday to comment on the law and why she supported suspending the proficiency requirements. Charles Boyle, the governor's deputy communications director, said the governor's staff notified legislative staff the same day the governor signed the bill.

Boyle said in an emailed statement that suspending the reading, writing and math proficiency requirements while the state develops new graduation standards will benefit "Oregon's Black, Latino, Latina, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color." "Leaders from those communities have advocated time and again for equitable graduation standards, along with expanded learning opportunities and supports," Boyle wrote. The requirement that students demonstrate freshman- to sophomore-level skills in reading, writing and, particularly, math led many high schools to create workshop-style courses to help students strengthen their skills and create evidence of mastery. Most of those courses have been discontinued since the skills requirement was paused during the pandemic before lawmakers killed it entirely. The state's four-year graduation rate is 82.6%, up more than 10 points from six years ago. However, it still lags behind the national graduation rate averages, which is 85 percent.

Oregon's graduation rates currently rank nearly last in the country. But it's complicated because states use different methodologies to calculate their graduation rates, making some states appear better than others.

The UK's leading funding agency has announced that all research it funds must be freely available for anyone to read.

Long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger shared this report from Science: The policy by the funder, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), will expand on existing rules covering all research papers produced from its £8 billion in annual funding... About three-quarters of papers recently published from U.K. universities are open access, and UKRI's current policy gives scholars two routes to comply: Pay journals for "gold" open access, which makes a paper free to read on the publisher's website, or choose the "green" route, which allows them to deposit a near-final version of the paper on a public repository, after a waiting period of up to 1 year.

Publishers have insisted that an embargo period is necessary to prevent the free papers from peeling away their subscribers. But starting in April 2022, that yearlong delay will no longer be permitted.
The funder's executive champion for open research succinctly explained their rationale.

"Publicly funded research should be available for public use by the taxpayer."

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: Just ahead of the new school year, Microsoft and its nonprofit partner Code.org took to Twitter to recruit teens for Microsoft's inaugural MakeCode Insiders Program. Microsoft MakeCode is a code platform that allows kids to write programs for a wide variety of applications even if they have little or no previous coding experience; there's also a College Board-endorsed MakeCode AP CS curriculum, which can earn high school students college credit...

MakeCode Insiders, Microsoft adds, will be recognized for completing key milestones with badges, including MakeCode Influencer ("This badge is earned when a MakeCode Wizard is chosen to represent our product to teens on social media."). MakeCode Influencers, Microsoft explains, "are teens who have graduated from the Insiders program and are selected to represent MakeCode on social media in various forms...

Insider applications are due today, kids!
This is Microsoft's first time running the "Insider" program, and the guidebook promises the larger program's Insiders "will focus on MakeCode Arcade, a coding editor for retro-style video games, offering feedback and ideas that will inform product decision."

According to a survey from Consultancy Accenture, young people born in the 90s are less likely to be getting their information about tech careers from school and teachers than social media, TV series and film. ZDNet reports: Social media ranks top for information sources about career aspirations (31%), beating out parents by a small margin (29%) and teachers by a larger margin (24%). Gen Z are more likely to learn about a future in the tech sector from TV and film (27%) than from school (19%). Accenture surveyed 1,000 UK-based 16-21-year-olds on their career aspirations and their long-term options. It found that 44% of young women said they had good digital skills, but only 40% of young men said they did. Despite this, less than a quarter of young people are confident in securing a technology job.

Shaheen Sayed, Accenture's technology lead in the UK & Ireland, said: "If the digital native generation is not turning to technology as a career option, then we have a huge pipeline problem for the technology profession. Young people know technology is completely redefining the world right now -- but their lack of confidence in securing a tech job indicates a worrying disconnect between young people, particularly girls, and a changing jobs market." Those interviewed who were interested in tech jobs said they would most likely choose jobs in AI, data analytics, and cybersecurity. Which makes sense to an extent, given that these are the top three subjects in online tech media at present.

"It's striking that young people are influenced more by digital channels than their connections at home and school when choosing their next steps," said Sayed. "Careers advice will need to meet young people where they are at and paint an engaging picture of the skills required for the economy today. Developing the next generation of tech talent requires more than having coding on the curriculum. Technology moves quickly and subjects must evolve to equip young people with the digital skills that will drive economic growth. Employers are looking for people to work with technologies, like AI, as they tackle global challenges like climate change and become more competitive."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Cybersecurity at eight federal agencies is so poor that four of them earned grades of D, three got Cs, and only one received a B in a report issued Tuesday by a US Senate Committee. "It is clear that the data entrusted to these eight key agencies remains at risk," the 47-page report stated. "As hackers, both state-sponsored and otherwise, become increasingly sophisticated and persistent, Congress and the executive branch cannot continue to allow PII and national security secrets to remain vulnerable."

The report, issued by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, comes two years after a separate report found systemic failures by the same eight federal agencies in complying with federal cybersecurity standards. The earlier report (PDF) found that during the decade spanning 2008 to 2018, the agencies failed to properly protect personally identifiable information, maintain a list of all hardware and software used on agency networks, and install vendor-supplied security patches in a timely manner. The 2019 report also highlighted that the agencies were operating legacy systems that were costly to maintain and hard to secure. All eight agencies -- including the Social Security Administration and the Departments of Homeland Security, State, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Agriculture, Health and Human Services, and Education -- failed to protect sensitive information they stored or maintained.

Tuesday's report, titled Federal Cybersecurity: America's Data Still at Risk, analyzed security practices by the same agencies for 2020. It found that only one agency had earned a grade of B for its cybersecurity practices last year. "What this report finds is stark," the authors wrote. "Inspectors general identified many of the same issues that have plagued Federal agencies for more than a decade. Seven agencies made minimal improvements, and only DHS managed to employ an effective cybersecurity regime for 2020. As such, this report finds that these seven Federal agencies still have not met the basic cybersecurity standards necessary to protect America's sensitive data." State Department systems, the auditors found, frequently operated without the required authorizations, ran software (including Microsoft Windows) that was no longer supported, and failed to install security patches in a timely manner. The department's user management system came under particular criticism because officials couldn't provide documentation of user access agreements for 60 percent of sample employees that had access to the department's classified network. "This network contains data which if disclosed to an unauthorized person could cause 'grave damage' to national security," the auditors write. "Perhaps more troubling, State failed to shut off thousands of accounts after extended periods of inactivity on both its classified and sensitive but unclassified networks. According to the Inspector General, some accounts remained active as long as 152 days after employees quit, retired, or were fired. Former employees or hackers could use those unexpired credentials to gain access to State's sensitive and classified information, while appearing to be an authorized user. The Inspector General warned that without resolving issues in this category, 'the risk of unauthorized access is significantly increased.'"

Ars Technica adds that the Social Security Administration "suffered many of the same shortcomings, including a lack of authorization for many systems, use of unsupported systems, failure to Compile an Accurate and Comprehensive IT Asset Inventory, and Failure to Provide for the Adequate Protection of PII."

Apple Wallet is expanding access to its contactless student IDs, a feature it first debuted in 2018. A number of U.S. universities are adopting the new format for the first time. Apple Wallet student IDs will also arrive in Canada later this fall. The Verge reports: The University of New Brunswick and Sheridan College will be the first two Canadian schools to use Apple Wallet IDs. The new US roster includes Auburn, Northern Arizona University, University of Maine, and New Mexico State University, in addition to "many more colleges across the country." The University of Alabama, one of the program's early adopters, will also be the first school to issue exclusively mobile student IDs (to students with eligible devices) this fall. (Those with Android phones can use the digital cards through Google Pay.) Apple claims that "tens of thousands of college students" will have access to the feature during this upcoming school year.

In theory, the virtual student ID should offer all the functionality of a regular student ID -- holders can access restricted areas of campus or pay for amenities like food and laundry by placing their iPhone or Apple Watch near a physical reader. Transaction history isn't shared with Apple or stored on Apple's servers.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: [Miami has] launched its own cryptocurrency, MiamiCoin, which claims to allow city citizens to earn Bitcoin "in their sleep." On Tuesday, Okcoin was the first crypto exchange to list MiamiCoin. The idea is to fill the city's coffers via speculation. People can mine the coin (which is less difficult and thus less energy intensive than mining Bitcoin or Ethereum), and revenue from the coin will be diverted to the city's treasury. As investors buy the coin, its value will ideally continue to go up, and that cash will be used to fund infrastructure projects or events in the city.

MiamiCoin, which is listed as $MIA on exchanges, is the product of CityCoins, a project that "gives communities the power to improve their cities, while providing crypto rewards to individual contributors and city governments alike." MiamiCoin is the first CityCoin to be released, though a cryptocurrency for San Francisco is on the way, too, according to the website. The project works hand-in-hand with the Miami government.

Bitcoin comes into all of this because the blockchain MiamiCoin runs on, Stacks, is built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. So, MiamiCoin miners are rewarded with small amounts of Bitcoin by inadvertently contributing to the Bitcoin blockchain. Mayor Francis Suarez, who previously invited persecuted Chinese Bitcoin miners to Miami after the country cracked down on the industry, said that the coin could earn the city "millions of dollars" in an interview last week. Suarez told Fox Business that the funds could be used to help "eliminate homelessness completely" and "increasing our police force." Despite emphatically not being Bitcoin and having complex layers of mechanics, Suarez said that MiamiCoin was "like a Bitcoin." Not all Bitcoiners agree with that sentiment. "Miami would be better off converting long term treasury holdings to Bitcoin. While MiamiCoin's novelty will likely generate some traction after its launch, I think it will fade away. All the while Bitcoin will continue to grow faster than the internet itself," said Brady Swenson, Head of Education at Swan Bitcoin, an app that automates Bitcoin purchases, and the host of podcasts Swan Signal Live and Citizen Bitcoin. "MiamiCoin will not benefit from Bitcoin's global network effect, nor accrue the corresponding exponential gains in purchasing power."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The number of people applying for admission to law school this fall surged nearly 13%, making it the largest year-over-year percentage increase since 2002, according to the latest data from the Law School Admission Council. And they were an impressive bunch. The number of people applying with LSAT scores in the highest band of 175 to 180 more than doubled from 732 last year to 1,487 this year. In total, 71,048 people applied to American Bar Association-accredited law schools this cycle, up from 62,964 at this point in 2020. That's still significantly lower than the historic high of 100,601 applicants in 2004, but it's by far the largest national applicant pool of the past decade.

Experts attribute the crush of applications to a number of factors, particularly the slowdown in the entry-level job market caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Law school and other graduate programs historically become more popular when jobs are tougher to come by in slow economies. Law school applicants shot up nearly 18% in 2002, amid the bursting of the so-called dot-com bubble. The number of people applying also climbed nearly 4% in 2009, amid the Great Recession. But current events separate from the economy also prompted more people to consider a law degree this cycle [...]. The death of George Floyd, the national reckoning over systemic racism and inequality, and the death of iconic U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg all focused attention on the rule of law and the role lawyers play in pushing for a more equitable society. Election years also tend to yield more law school applicants.

"Dallas-based Texas Instruments' latest generation of calculators is getting a modern-day update with the addition of programming language Python," reports the Dallas Morning News: The goal is to expand students' ability to explore science, technology, engineering and math through the device that's all-but-required in the nation's high schools and colleges...

Though most of the company's $14 billion in annual revenue comes from semiconductors, its graphing calculator remains its most recognized consumer product. This latest TI-84 model, priced between $120 to $160 depending on the retailer, was made to accommodate the increasing importance of programming in the modern world.
Judging by photos in their press release, an "alpha" key maps the calculator's keys to the letters of the alphabet (indicated with yellow letters above each key). One page on its web site also mentions "Menu selections" that "help students with discovery and syntax." (And the site confirms the calculator will "display expressions, symbols and fractions just as you write them.")

There's even a file manager that "gives quick access to Python programs you have saved on your calculator. From here, you can create, edit, run and manage your files." And one page also mentions something called TI Connect CE software application, which "connects your computer and graphing calculator so they can talk to each other. Use it to transfer data, update your operating system, download calculator software applications or take screenshots of your graphing calculator."

I'm sure Slashdot's readers have some fond memories of their first calculator. But these new models have a full-color screen and a rechargeable battery that can last up to a month on a single charge. And Texas Instruments seems to think they could even replace computers in the classroom. "By adding Python to the calculators many students are already familiar with and use in class, we are making programming more accessible and approachable for all students," their press release argues, "eliminating the need for teachers to reserve separate computer labs to teach these important skills.

China's unprecedented crackdown on its technology industry has turned Tencent Holdings from a market darling into the world's biggest stock loser this month. From a report: The Chinese Internet giant had tumbled 23% in July as of Wednesday, set for its worst month ever after erasing about $170 billion of market value. That marks the fastest evaporation of shareholder wealth worldwide during this period, Bloomberg data shows. Nine of the top 10 losers in shareholder value this month are Chinese companies, including Meituan and Alibaba Group Holding. Tencent's shares rebounded by 7.1% on Thursday morning, tracking broader gains in Chinese stocks after Beijing intensified efforts to alleviate concerns about its crackdown on the private education industry. The Shenzhen-based firm is one of the key casualties of an official campaign that targets some of the nation's tech behemoths considered posing a potential threat to China's data security and financial stability. The selloff in its shares intensified earlier this week after Beijing broadened the regulatory clampdown to include other once high-flying industries such as private education.

China ordered Tencent Holdings and 13 other developers to rectify problems related to pop-ups within their apps, adding to a wide-ranging crackdown on the country's tech sector. From a report: The companies must address the "harassing" pop-up windows, which could contain misleading information or divert users away from the apps, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said in a statement on Wednesday. The 14 services, including an e-books app by Tencent's QQ and a video platform by Le.com, will have to fix the problems by Aug. 3. "Failure to abide by regulations" will not be tolerated and will be "penalized" accordingly, said the ministry.

Pop-ups, often used for advertising, are just the latest targets in a series of government crackdowns that have ranged from antitrust to data security, as Beijing seeks to rein in the tech giants' influence over most of everyday life. The crackdown has stepped into high gear in recent days after regulators announced their toughest-ever curbs on the online education sector and issued edicts governing food delivery, fueling a rout in Chinese tech stocks. The statement by MIIT comes days after the regulator announced a six-month crackdown on illegal online activities. The ministry on Monday said it will take steps to root out violations involving pop-ups, data collection and storage as well as the blocking of external links. Other regulators including the Cyberspace Administration of China have also pledged to tighten restrictions on misleading and explicit content used for marketing purposes. The watchdog said such material will be subject to harsher oversight, issuing fines against companies like Tencent, Kuaishou Technology and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. for offensive content.

storagedude writes: Alan Paller, founder of the cybersecurity training SANS Technology Institute, has launched an initiative aimed at finding and developing cybersecurity talent at the community college and high school level — through a game developed by their CTO James Lyne. A similar game was already the basis of a UK government program that has reached 250,000 students, and Paller hopes the U.S. will adopt a similar model to help ease the chronic shortage of cybersecurity talent. And Paller's own Cyber Talent Institute (or CTI) has already reached 29,000 students, largely through state-level partnerships.

But playing the game isn't the same as becoming a career-ready cybersecurity pro. By tapping high schools and community colleges, the group hopes to "discover and train a diverse new generation of 25,000 cyber stars by the year 2025," Paller told eSecurity Planet. "SANS is an organization that finds people who are already in the field and makes them better. What CTI is doing is going down a step in the pipeline, to the students, to find the talent earlier, so that we don't lose them. Because the way the education system works, only a few people seem to go into cybersecurity. We wanted to change that.

"You did an article earlier this month about looking in different places for talent, looking for people who are already working. That's the purpose of CTI. To reach out to students. It's to go beyond the pipeline that we automatically come into cybersecurity through math, computer science, and networking and open the funnel much wider. Find people who have not already found technology, but who have three characteristics that seem to make superstars — tenacity, curiosity, and love of learning new things. They don't mind being faced with new problems. They like them. And what the game does is find those people. So CTI is just moving to earlier in the pipeline."

fahrbot-bot shares a report from Live Science: Human society is on track for a collapse in the next two decades if there isn't a serious shift in global priorities, according to a new reassessment of a 1970s report, Vice reported. In that report -- published in the bestselling book "The Limits to Growth" (1972) -- a team of MIT scientists argued that industrial civilization was bound to collapse if corporations and governments continued to pursue continuous economic growth, no matter the costs. The researchers forecasted 12 possible scenarios for the future, most of which predicted a point where natural resources would become so scarce that further economic growth would become impossible, and personal welfare would plummet.

The report's most infamous scenario -- the Business as Usual (BAU) scenario -- predicted that the world's economic growth would peak around the 2040s, then take a sharp downturn, along with the global population, food availability and natural resources. This imminent "collapse" wouldn't be the end of the human race, but rather a societal turning point that would see standards of living drop around the world for decades, the team wrote.

So, what's the outlook for society now, nearly half a century after the MIT researchers shared their prognostications? Gaya Herrington, a sustainability and dynamic system analysis researcher at the consulting firm KPMG, decided to find out. [...] Herrington found that the current state of the world -- measured through 10 different variables, including population, fertility rates, pollution levels, food production and industrial output -- aligned extremely closely with two of the scenarios proposed in 1972, namely the BAU scenario and one called Comprehensive Technology (CT), in which technological advancements help reduce pollution and increase food supplies, even as natural resources run out. While the CT scenario results in less of a shock to the global population and personal welfare, the lack of natural resources still leads to a point where economic growth sharply declines -- in other words, a sudden collapse of industrial society. "The good news is that it's not too late to avoid both of these scenarios and put society on track for an alternative -- the Stabilized World (SW) scenario," the report notes. "This path begins as the BAU and CT routes do, with population, pollution and economic growth rising in tandem while natural resources decline. The difference comes when humans decide to deliberately limit economic growth on their own, before a lack of resources forces them to."

"The SW scenario assumes that in addition to the technological solutions, global societal priorities change," Herrington wrote. "A change in values and policies translates into, amongst other things, low desired family size, perfect birth control availability, and a deliberate choice to limit industrial output and prioritize health and education services." After this shift of values occurs, industrial growth and global population begin to level out. "Food availability continues to rise to meet the needs of the global population; pollution declines and all but disappears; and the depletion of natural resources begins to level out, too," adds Live Science. "Societal collapse is avoided entirely."

China is considering asking companies that offer tutoring on the school curriculum to go non-profit, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter, as part of a sweeping set of constraints that could decimate the country's $100 billion education tech industry. Shares sank. From a report: In rules currently being mulled, the platforms will likely no longer be allowed to raise capital or go public, the people said, asking to not be identified because the information is not public. Listed firms will also probably no longer be allowed to invest in or acquire education firms teaching school subjects while foreign capital will also be barred from the sector, one of the people said. Local regulators will stop approving new after-school education firms seeking to offer tutoring on China's compulsory syllabus and require extra scrutiny of existing online platforms, the people said. Vacation and weekend tutoring on school subjects will also be banned, they said. Changes may still occur as the rules haven't been published.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Interesting Engineering: [Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Kolkata] along with those at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur decided to focus on developing something that is harder than conventional self-healing material, as reported by The Telegraph India. The researchers used a piezoelectric organic material, which converts mechanical energy to electrical energy and vice versa, to make needle-shaped crystals that aren't more than 2 mm long or 0.2 mm wide, according to the experimental results which were published in the journal Science. Due to their molecular arrangement in the specially designed crystals, a strong attractive force developed between two surfaces. Every time a fracture occurred, the attractive forces joined the pieces back again, without needing an external stimulus such as heat or others that most self-healing materials would need.

"Our self-healing material is 10 times harder than others, and it has a well-ordered internal crystalline structure, that is favored in most electronics and optical applications," lead researcher Professor Chilla Malla Reddy of IISER said. "I can imagine applications for an everyday device," said Bhanu Bhushan Khatua, a member of the team from IIT Kharagpur." Such materials could be used for mobile phone screens that will repair themselves if they fall and develop cracks."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: China's tech tycoons are discovering their charitable side as they come under mounting regulatory scrutiny from Beijing. In the latest example, Xiaomi co-founder Lei Jun handed over $2.2 billion of shares in the smartphone maker to two foundations, according to filings to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. That came after Meituan's Wang Xing and ByteDance's Zhang Yiming gave away parts of their fortune to charitable causes last month. The moves come as a crackdown on technology companies has intensified since November, when Jack Ma's Ant Group was forced to pull its giant initial public offering. It's a new era for the country's billionaires as China tightens regulations in areas from financial services and internet platforms to data security and overseas listings.

At the same time, the Chinese public is becoming increasingly concerned about inequality. In a speech in October, President Xi Jinping said the country's development was "unbalanced" and "common prosperity" should be the ultimate goal. "It's likely much more than coincidence that China's tech billionaires have begun to evince a strong charitable urge," said Brock Silvers, chief investment officer at Hong Kong-based private equity firm Kaiyuan Capital. "It could stem from deep patriotic feelings or Buddhist inclinations, but it appears to be strongly correlated to Beijing's recent regulatory crackdowns."

In June, Meituan founder Wang donated a $2.3 billion stake in the food delivery giant to his own philanthropic foundation. That came after China's antitrust watchdog announced an investigation into the company, and the billionaire posted a classical poem online that some saw as a veiled criticism of Beijing. That same month, ByteDance founder Zhang, China's fourth-richest person with a net worth of $44.5 billion, gave about $77 million of his own wealth to an education fund in his hometown. And in April, Tencent's Pony Ma, the second-richest with $56.7 billion, pledged to set aside $7.7 billion of the company's money toward curing societal ills and lifting China's countryside out of poverty.

Florida's fired Department of Health data manager Rebekah Jones lost access to her 400,000 followers on Twitter last month — which she'd been using to criticize Florida governor Ron DeSantis for downplaying the severity of the state's Covid-19 crisis. Then Jones announced she'd be running for Congress. "This also means, under Desantis' recently signed social media law, I get to fine Twitter $250K per day until my account is restored starting July 1."

Orlando Weekly reports: After a media frenzy, Jones deleted the post. She said she was attempting to point out Gov. Ron DeSantis's "hypocrisy" in writing a law that allowed political candidates to sue media companies that ban them, while still celebrating her Twitter suspension...

The bit became real when she filed to run as an Independent in Florida's 1st congressional district on June 25...

On her campaign website, she lists eight issues on her platform: protecting Florida's environmental systems, promoting government transparency, fighting for media accountability in disinformation, giving access to representatives, ensuring the district's veterans are taken care of, scrutinizing restrictive voting laws, funding science and research, and boosting support for all levels of education. Jones says there's still room for other issues on her platform, after she talks to more residents.
Jones' GoFundMe account ("DefendScience") now directs visitors to her official campaign site if they want to make campaign contributions. (And the GoFundMe page also notes that her campaign has been endorsed by 90-year-old Daniel Ellsberg, the famous whistleblower who in 1971 leaked the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret government study on the Vietnam War.)

But the last six weeks have been a wild ride for the data scientist:

• Last month Florida's Inspector General granted official whistleblower status to Jones.
• Six days later Twitter told Slashdot they'd "permanently suspended" Jones' account "for violations of the Twitter Rules on spam and platform manipulation."
• When Jones then created a new Twitter account for her campaign, "it was suspended within a day of its creation," Orlando Weekly reports.
• Jones created a new account on Instagram named "insubordinatescientist". Yet since June 16th Instagram has also marked it as "unavailable," saying the link "may be broken, or the page may have been removed." (Since June 16th Instagram has not responded to Slashdot's request for an explanation.)
• Jones' GoFundMe page now refers visitors to an entirely different Instagram page.

Yesterday the official coronavirus coordinator for the White House reported that one in five of America's Covid-19 cases this week have come from Florida.

David Nield shares the findings of a new study via ScienceAlert: Researchers tasked 42 adult volunteers with learning the Arabic alphabet from scratch: some through writing it out on paper, some through typing it out on a keyboard, and some through watching and responding to video instructions. Those in the handwriting group not only learned the unfamiliar letters more quickly, but they were also better able to apply their new knowledge in other areas -- by using the letters to make new words and to recognize words they hadn't seen before, for example. While writing, typing, and visual learning were effective at teaching participants to recognize Arabic letters -- learners made very few mistakes after six exercise sessions -- on average, the writing group needed fewer sessions to get to a good standard.

Researchers then tested the groups to see how the learning could be generalized. In every follow-up test, using skills they hadn't been trained on, the writing group performed the best: naming letters, writing letters, spelling words, and reading words. The research shows that the benefits of teaching through handwriting go beyond better penmanship: There are also advantages in other areas of language learning. It seems as though the knowledge gets more firmly embedded through writing. The research has been published in Psychological Science.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: You may have noticed recently that an Uber ride is more expensive than it used to be. As ride-hail companies Uber and Lyft hike prices to record heights during the COVID-19 pandemic, much commentary has settled on explaining this as a consequence of a "labor shortage" largely motivated by a lack of proper financial incentives. Drivers, the story goes, saw the new cash bonuses offered by companies to lure workers back as insufficient. Some, perhaps, decided they were not worth the risk of getting infected with COVID-19 or one of its budding variants, while other analyses suggested drivers were content with living on stimulus funds rather than money from driving. At the same time, the firms began curtailing subsidies that kept prices low enough to attract riders and work towards monopoly. Together, this has left us with a sudden and massive spike in ride-hail prices; Gridwise, a ride-hail driver assistance app, estimated that Uber has increased its prices by 79 percent since the second quarter of 2019.

While Uber and Lyft are reportedly thinking about offering new perks such as education, career, and expense programs, analysts admit these don't strike at core problems with the gig economy that were driving workers away before COVID-19 hit and are making it difficult to attract them now. In conversations with Motherboard, former and current ride-hail drivers pointed to a major factor for not returning: how horrible it is to work for Uber and Lyft. For some workers, this realization came long before the pandemic reared its head, and for others, the crisis hammered it home. Motherboard has changed some drivers' names or granted them anonymity out of their fear of retaliation. "If I kept driving, something was going to break," said Maurice, a former driver in New York who spent four years working for Uber and Lyft before the pandemic. "I already go nights without eating or sleeping. My back hurt, my joints hurt, my neck hurt, I felt like a donkey. Like a slave driving all the time."

"I've been driving for six years. Uber has taken at least 10,000 pounds in commission from me each year! They take 20 percent of my earnings, then offer me 200 pounds," Ramana Prai, a London-based Uber driver, told Motherboard. "I don't understand how they can take 60,000 pounds from me, then offer nothing when I'm in need. How can I provide for my partner and two kids with this? My employer has let me down."

"I woke up every day asking how long I could keep it up, I just didn't feel like a person," Yona, who worked for Lyft in California for the past six years until the pandemic, told Motherboard. "I got two kids, my mother, my sister, I couldn't see them. And I was doing all this for them but I could barely support them, barely supported myself."

"I was making even less than my sister and I was probably less safe too," Yona's sister, Destiny, told Motherboard. "She got out back in the spring, I hopped on and was coming back negative some days. I tried UberEats and DoorDash to see if that was any better, but stopped after a friend was almost robbed on a delivery. Okay, so the options are get covid or get robbed, then guess what: I'm doing none of them."

Motherboard argues that the degrading working conditions, as well as the poor pay, "are structurally necessary for ride-hail companies. They were necessary to attract and retain customers with artificially low prices, to burn through drivers at high rates that frustrate labor organizing, and bolster the narrative of gig work as temporary, transient, and convenient. It's no wonder, then, that drivers aren't coming back."