A new product wants to upgrade the act of taking notes in a spiral-bound notebook — with the resuable "Rocketbook Wave Smart Notebook": You can write on it using any Pilot Frixion pen, marker, or highlighter, and once you're done, you can scan the notes, doodles, and drawings into the Rocketbook app to store them in a cloud. Used up all of its pages? No problem. Make sure you've scanned all your notes, and then throw your notebook into the microwave. Yes, the microwave. Throwing it into the microwave will erase everything you've written from the notebook.

To avoid getting into the science of it, let's just call it magic.

The notebook's pages are designed with grids, so it's perfect for either writing or drawing, and they actually feel like real paper, so you'll still feel the joy of handwriting. That's really a thing. Ask anyone who journals. Inside the app, you can use the smart search to quickly find something in your notes, according to date or a search term.

theodp writes: Amazon on Monday issued a press release noting it will provide Computer Science Education for 550,000+ K-12 students annually across 5,000+ schools nationwide amid the COVID-19 pandemic. "Amazon Future Engineer coursework can be done virtually to help ensure students stay on track and continue to prepare for the jobs of the future," Amazon explained. Amazon Future Engineer also launched the Amazon Cyber Robotics Challenge, a virtual coding competition that teaches students in grade 4+ the basics of CS in the context of a real-life industry challenge -- "code an Amazon Hercules robot to deliver your friend's birthday present on time." Another case of life imitating 'The Simpsons' (screenshots: Amazon vs Simpsons)?

Apple today introduced a redesigned iPad Air that looks more like an iPad Pro, as well as an updated 8th-generation, entry-level iPad. MacRumors reports on the new iPad Air: Apple today introduced a redesigned iPad Air with slimmer bezels, paving the way for an all-screen design similar to recent iPad Pro models. In addition, the new iPad Air is the first Apple device with Touch ID built into the power button. The new iPad Air is powered by the new 5nm-based, six-core A14 Bionic chip for up to 40 percent faster performance and up to 30 percent faster graphics than the previous-generation iPad Air.

The device features a fully laminated 10.9-inch Liquid Retina display with True Tone, P3 wide color support, and an anti-reflective coating. Following in the footsteps of the iPad Pro, the new iPad Air features a USB-C port instead of a Lightning connector. The device also features the same 12-megapixel rear camera used in the iPad Pro for higher-resolution photos and 4K video recording. The new iPad Air will be available starting in October on Apple.com and the Apple Store app in 30 countries and regions. Wi-Fi models will start at $599, while cellular models will start at $729, with 64GB and 256GB storage capacities available. There will be five colors to choose from, including silver, space gray, rose gold, green, and sky blue. 9to5Mac reports on the 8th-generation iPad: Apple today announced the 8th-generation iPad, featuring an A12 chip compared to the previous-generation's A10 processor. The design of the new entry-level iPad is largely the same as its predecessor. The jump from A10 to A12 means Apple's cheapest iPad will feature the Neural Engine for the first time. Apple says the A12 chip offers more than twice the performance of the top selling Windows laptop, 6x faster than the top-selling Android tablet and 6x faster than the best-selling Chromebook. The 8th-generation iPad keeps the same price as the 7th-gen: that's $329 for general sale and $299 for education.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: Fifty-eight years after Roger Ebert reported on the PLATO system's potential to deliver online learning to homebound students in a 1962 News-Gazette article, Bloomberg Technology's Emily Chang takes a look at the nationwide struggle to shift to remote learning, interviewing McKinsey Education Practice Manager Emma Dorn, Khan Academy founder Sal Khan, and former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. For the long-term, all three seem hopeful that EdTech and "anywhere learning" will ultimately help promote mastery-based learning and equity, but expressed fears that remote learning will actually exacerbate achievement gaps in the short-term due to issues stemming from a lack of preparedness, broadband and device access, school resources, and support at home.

"Ninety percent of high-income students are logging into remote learning where only sixty percent of low-income students are," lamented Dorn, who called the current situation a "vast education experiment" and warned that lost learning could lead to an annual GDP loss of $270 billion. Khan also warned that an education catastrophe is not far off: "The reality is in the coming year, middle class children, upper middle class children are probably going to do fine, they're going to be engaged, there might even be some silver linings where their parents are getting more engaged than ever, finding them extra supports. While I would say 20 or 30 percent of the population is going to be a really difficult scenario."

Also concerned about the "COVID Slide" and learning loss for the most vulnerable and marginal was Duncan ("There's a small percent of children who I think will actually learn better in this situation, but there are many, many children who are falling behind"). However, Duncan expressed higher hopes for "anywhere learning" in the long-term.

"The idea of kids just learning, you know, in a bricks and mortar building nine months out of the year, you know, five days a week, six hours a day, that doesn't make sense. Kids have to be able to learn anything they want, anytime, anywhere. Find their passion, find their genius...

"We have to make access to devices and to broadband to the internet as ubiquitous as water and electricity and we have to really empower kids. We have to fund. We should have done this, you know, five years ago or ten years ago, but now we have to do it."

Facebook is getting back to its roots as a college-focused social network. The company announced today the launch of a new social networking platform, Facebook Campus, which offers college students a private place to connect with classmates, join groups, discover upcoming campus events, get updates from their school's administration and chat with other students from their dorm, clubs or any other campus group. From a report: The new platform requires a school email address (@.edu) to join and will live within a dedicated section of the Facebook app. It will be accessible from a tab at the bottom of the screen or from the "More" menu alongside sections like Watch, Dating, Gaming, News, Marketplace and others. "We wanted to create a product where it was easy for classmates to meet each other, foster new relationships and also easily start conversations," explains Facebook Campus Product Manager Charmaine Hung. "And we really think that Campus is more relevant than ever right now. With COVID-19, we see that many students aren't returning to campus in the fall. Now, classes are being held online and students are trying to react to this new normal of what it's like to connect to clubs and organizations that you care about, when you're not together," she added.

Eighty-four online-only, open-access (OA) journals in the sciences, and nearly 100 more in the social sciences and humanities, have disappeared from the internet over the past 2 decades as publishers stopped maintaining them, potentially depriving scholars of useful research findings, a study has found. From a report: An additional 900 journals published only online also may be at risk of vanishing because they are inactive, says a preprint posted on 3 September on the arXiv server. The number of OA journals tripled from 2009 to 2019, and on average the vanished titles operated for nearly 10 years before going dark, which "might imply that a large number ... is yet to vanish," the authors write. The study didn't identify examples of prominent journals or articles that were lost, nor collect data on the journals' impact factors and citation rates to the articles. About half of the journals were published by research institutions or scholarly societies; none of the societies are large players in the natural sciences. None of the now-dark journals was produced by a large commercial publisher.

Officials from the city of Hartford, Connecticut, were forced to postpone the first day of the new school calendar year after a ransomware infection impacted the city's IT network. From a report: According to a statement published by Hartford Public Schools, the school district serving the city of Hartford, the ransomware attack impacted several of the school's internal IT systems, causing a prolonged outage. IT staff have been working to restore services, but these were not completed in time for the first day of the new school year, scheduled for today, Sept. 8. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, in-person schooling has been suspended since the spring. In the city of Hartford, today marked not only the first day of the new 2020 school year but also the first day of in-person attendance in months. According to the district's school re-opening plan, today, PreK-Grade 2, Grade 6, and Grade 9 students were supposed to have the first school classes in months.

Dev & Gear created a long list of YouTube channels that offer technical videos to help you learn web development from scratch or just improve your skills. Some of the channels listed include: LearnCode.academy, Dev Ed, Traversy Media, Codecourse, and Wes Bos.

Is your favorite YouTube channel for web development and programming included on the list? If not, let us know what it is in a comment.

New submitter fx4m writes: Historic Lick Observatory in California survived the current massive wildfires, but the nearby, much smaller Hidden Hill Observatory, run my the Tri-Valley Stargazers Astronomy Club, was not so lucky. The building, large amateur-built telescope, accessories, and electronics were all completely destroyed. Much of the assets of the science public outreach and education based non-profit organization went up in smoke. A description of the observatory, its history, and sad pictures of the destruction can be found at the link, with more information at their GoFundMe page.

Monica Chin, reporting for The Verge: On Monday, Dana Simmons came downstairs to find her 12-year-old son, Lazare, in tears. He'd completed the first assignment for his seventh-grade history class on Edgenuity, an online platform for virtual learning. He'd received a 50 out of 100. That wasn't on a practice test -- it was his real grade. "He was like, I'm gonna have to get a 100 on all the rest of this to make up for this," said Simmons in a phone interview with The Verge. "He was totally dejected." At first, Simmons tried to console her son. "I was like well, you know, some teachers grade really harshly at the beginning," said Simmons, who is a history professor herself. Then, Lazare clarified that he'd received his grade less than a second after submitting his answers. A teacher couldn't have read his response in that time, Simmons knew -- her son was being graded by an algorithm. Simmons watched Lazare complete more assignments. She looked at the correct answers, which Edgenuity revealed at the end. She surmised that Edgenuity's AI was scanning for specific keywords that it expected to see in students' answers. And she decided to game it.

Now, for every short-answer question, Lazare writes two long sentences followed by a disjointed list of keywords -- anything that seems relevant to the question. "The questions are things like... 'What was the advantage of Constantinople's location for the power of the Byzantine empire,'" Simmons says. "So you go through, okay, what are the possible keywords that are associated with this? Wealth, caravan, ship, India, China, Middle East, he just threw all of those words in." "I wanted to game it because I felt like it was an easy way to get a good grade," Lazare told The Verge. He usually digs the keywords out of the article or video the question is based on. Apparently, that "word salad" is enough to get a perfect grade on any short-answer question in an Edgenuity test. Edgenuity didn't respond to repeated requests for comment.

Apple on Wednesday highlighted the estimated number of US jobs created by its iOS app ecosystem. It comes as the company battles Fortnite developer Epic over App Store commission rates, which can be as high as 30%. From a report: The iOS app economy has created almost 300,000 new jobs since April 2019 and supports more than 2.1 million US jobs across all 50 states,Apple estimated in a blog post that cited research by Washington DC-based think tank Progressive Policy Institute. Most of these jobs are concentrated in states on the East and West Coasts, as well as Texas, while the Midwest has the fewest. Apps have proven critical for Americans adapting to life during the coronavirus pandemic, Apple said, whether it's ordering food remotely, stay-at-home education or telehealth. As a result, it noted that developers' jobs have remained sustainable even as many Americans lose their jobs.

Beginning today, Animal Crossing: New Horizons players can add official Biden-Harris campaign signs to their island yards. Engadget reports: At the moment, there are four sign designs -- the official Biden-Harris logo, the Team Joe logo, a "Joe" Pride logo and an image of red, white and blue aviators. To add the signs to their yards, players will scan QR codes through the Nintendo Switch Online app. The campaign has also sent the signs to a handful of gaming influencers, who will share them throughout the day tomorrow. Campaign staffer Christian Tom said this is just the beginning. The team is planning more "digital swag," voter education tools and organizing efforts for Animal Crossing and other platforms. That makes sense considering Animal Crossing's popularity -- the game has sold more than 22 million units.

Machine learning "can even bring ancient statues to life, transforming the chipped stone busts of long-dead Roman emperors into photorealistic faces you could imagine walking past on the street," reports the Verge, citing a new project by a film-industry VR specialist.

Slashdot reader shirappu summarizes their report: Daniel Voshart's work on creating life-life images of Roman emperors from their statues started as a quarantine project and quickly got out of hand. His portraits of the emperors (a collection of 54 as of July) are created using generative adversarial networks, which are fed images of the emperors from statues, coins, and paintings. These are then edited and tweaked based on historical descriptions, and reworked in PhotoShop, where Voshart says he can "avoid falling down the path into uncanny valley."

Voshart has written about the process himself here.
The Verge writes: To help, he says he sometimes fed high-res images of celebrities into the GAN to heighten the realism. There's a touch of Daniel Craig in his Augustus, for example, while to create the portrait of Maximinus Thrax he fed in images of the wrestler André the Giant... The process, as he describes it, is almost alchemical, relying on a careful mix of inputs to create the finished product...

What's more, his work is already enticing academics, who have praised the portraits for giving the emperors new depth and realism. .. As a sort of thank you to his advisers, Voshart has even used a picture of one USC assistant professor who looks quite a bit like the emperor Numerian to create the ancient ruler's portrait.

The White House today detailed the establishment of 12 new research institutes focused on AI and quantum information science. Agencies including the National Science Foundation (NSF), U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) have committed to investing tens of millions of dollars in centers intended to serve as nodes for AI and quantum computing study. From a report: Laments over the AI talent shortage in the U.S. have become a familiar refrain. While higher education enrollment in AI-relevant fields like computer science has risen rapidly in recent years, few colleges have been able to meet student demand, due to a lack of staffing. In June, the Trump administration imposed a ban on U.S. entry for workers on certain visas -- including for high-skilled H-1B visa holders, an estimated 35% of whom have an AI-related degree -- through the end of the year. And Trump has toyed with the idea of suspending the Optional Practical Training program, which allows international students to work for up to three years in the U.S. after they graduate.

This week's announcement might be perceived as an effort to shift attention from immigration toward domestic progress. However, it should be noted that $1 billion falls on the conservative side of the AI investment spectrum. When U.S. Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios revealed last September that U.S. government agencies requested nearly $1 billion in nondefense AI research spending for the fiscal year ending in September 2020, representatives from Intel, Nvidia, and IEEE said the U.S. would need to set aside more for AI R&D.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Growing up in a greener urban environment boosts children's intelligence and lowers levels of difficult behavior, a study has found. The analysis of more than 600 children aged 10-15 showed a 3% increase in the greenness of their neighborhood raised their IQ score by an average of 2.6 points. The effect was seen in both richer and poorer areas. There is already significant evidence that green spaces improve various aspects of children's cognitive development but this is the first research to examine IQ. The cause is uncertain but may be linked to lower stress levels, more play and social contact or a quieter environment. The increase in IQ points was particularly significant for those children at the lower end of the spectrum, where small increases could make a big difference, the researchers said.

The study, published in the journal Plos Medicine, used satellite images to measure the level of greenness in neighborhoods, including parks, gardens, street trees and all other vegetation. The average IQ score was 105 but the scientists found 4% of children in areas with low levels of greenery scored below 80, while no children scored below 80 in areas with more greenery. The benefits of more greenery that were recorded in urban areas were not replicated in suburban or rural areas. [T]his may be because those places had enough greenness for all children living there to benefit. Behavioral difficulties such as poor attention and aggressiveness were also measured in the children using a standard rating scale, and the average score was 46. In this case, a 3% rise in greenery resulted in a two-point reduction in behavioral problems, in line with previous studies.

theodp writes: That was then: Lamenting a dire shortage of U.S. computer science grads, tech investors Ali and Hadi Partovi launched Code.org in 2013 with backing from the world's largest tech firms to push coding into America's K-12 classrooms.

This is now: CS graduation can wait. Bloomberg News' Ellen Huet reports that some Silicon Valley startups, hungry for young talent, are making lemonade from COVID-19 lemons, presenting pandemic-weary CS students with an alternative to school: remote gap-year internships aimed specifically at young people looking for alternatives to a dismal school year.

Huet writes: "Dozens of Silicon Valley startups are looking to hire fall interns, according to a list assembled by startup accelerator Y Combinator. This month, venture firm Neo organized a virtual career fair for 120 students and a range of startups (including Code.org), hoping to match pairs for internships during the upcoming academic year. And venture firm Contrary Capital is offering to invest $100,000 in five teams of entrepreneurs if they take a gap year from school to build a company. Such arrangements allow interns to get paid and learn on the job, while avoiding paying tens of thousands of dollars for Zoom University. It also means that companies willing to improvise on hiring and gamble on younger workers may get new access to fresh talent. Ali Partovi, Neo's chief executive officer, said the firm surveyed 120 students who are part of its mentorship programs and found that 46% of them are interested in taking a gap semester and 21% are interested in taking a gap year."

So, is now a good time for CS majors to turn on, tune in, drop out?

Two million truckers move 70% of America's goods. But hundreds of thousands of their jobs could be disrupted away, reports Jon Wertheim on the CBS news show 60 Minutes, in "a high-stakes, high-speed race pitting the usual suspects — Google and Tesla and other global tech firms — against small start-ups smelling opportunity."

One of those startups is TuSimple, and their company's chief product officer points out that an AI driving system never gets distracted or falls asleep at the wheel: Chuck Price has unshakable confidence in the reliability of the technology; as do some of the biggest names in shipping: UPS, Amazon and the U.S. Postal Service ship freight with TuSimple trucks. All in, each unit costs more than a quarter million dollars. Not a great expense, considering it's designed to eliminate the annual salary of a driver; currently around $45,000. Another savings: the driverless truck can get coast-to-coast in two days, not four, stopping only to refuel — though a human still has to do that...

Jon Wertheim: How far are we from being able to pick up the specific cars that are passing us? "Oh, that's Joe from New Jersey with six points on his license.

Chuck Price: We can read license plates. So if there was an accessible database for something like that, we could...

Test Driver Maureen Fitzgerald: This truck is scanning mirrors, looking 1,000 meters out. It's processing all the things that my brain could never do and it can react 15 times faster than I could.

Most of her two million fellow truckers are less enthusiastic. Automated trucking threatens to jack-knife an entire $800 billion industry. Trucking is among the most common jobs for American's without a college education.... Sam Loesche represents 600,000 truckers for the teamsters. He's concerned that federal, state and local governments have only limited access to the driverless technology.

Sam Loesche: A lot of this information, understandably, is proprietary. Tech companies wanna keep, you know, their algorithms and their safety data — secret until they can kinda get it right. The problem is that, in the meantime, they're testing this technology on public roads. They're testing it next to you as you drive down the road...

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp shared this report from Bloomberg News: To many college students, the prospect of a year of school during a pandemic — with virtual classes, restricted movements and no parties — is a huge bummer. Some Silicon Valley startups, hungry for young talent, see it as an opportunity. Over the past few months, several companies have presented an alternative to school: a remote internship, aimed specifically at young people looking for alternatives to a dismal school year.

Dozens of Silicon Valley startups are looking to hire fall interns, according to a list assembled by startup accelerator Y Combinator. This month, venture firm Neo organized a virtual career fair for 120 students and a range of startups, hoping to match pairs for internships during the upcoming academic year. And venture firm Contrary Capital is offering to invest $100,000 in five teams of entrepreneurs if they take a gap year from school to build a company. Such arrangements allow interns to get paid and learn on the job, while avoiding paying tens of thousands of dollars for Zoom University. It also means that companies willing to improvise on hiring and gamble on younger workers may get new access to fresh talent.

Ali Partovi, Neo's chief executive officer, said the firm surveyed 120 students who are part of its mentorship programs and found that 46% of them are interested in taking a gap semester and 21% are interested in taking a gap year... Nimbler startups willing to experiment could gain access to star students who might otherwise have wound up in summer jobs at giants like Facebook, Alphabet or Apple, managers say. "Usually you would fight to get on the radar with people, and here people are reaching out," said Emmanuel Straschnov, the co-CEO of Bubble, an app design service. Compared with regular recruiting, he said, "It's like night and day."

The ultimate payoff isn't just the student labor. "With recruiting you always play the long game," said Nick Schrock, CEO of Elementl, a developer tools startup that's planning to hire three gap-year workers this fall. "A great intern who has a great network can often yield compounded returns later down the line."

Students are assessing the trade-offs critically, and trying to decide if what they're getting from schools is worth the cost, especially if classes happen virtually.

schwit1 shares a report from Inc: Google recently made a huge announcement that could change the future of work and higher education: It's launching a selection of professional courses that teach candidates how to perform in-demand jobs. These courses, which the company is calling Google Career Certificates, teach foundational skills that can help job-seekers immediately find employment. However, instead of taking years to finish like a traditional university degree, these courses are designed to be completed in about six months.

Google didn't say exactly how much the new courses would cost. But a similar program Google offers on online learning platform Coursera, the Google IT Support Professional Certificate, costs $49 for each month a student is enrolled. (At that price, a six-month course would cost just under $300 -- less than many university students spend on textbooks in one semester alone.) Additionally, Google said it would fund 100,000 needs-based scholarships in support of the new programs. "College degrees are out of reach for many Americans, and you shouldn't need a college diploma to have economic security," writes Kent Walker, senior vice president of global affairs at Google. "We need new, accessible job-training solutions--from enhanced vocational programs to online education -- to help America recover and rebuild."

"In our own hiring, we will now treat these new career certificates as the equivalent of a four-year degree for related roles," adds Walker in a tweet. "The new Google Career Certificates build on our existing programs to create pathways into IT support careers for people without college degrees," Walker explains. "Launched in 2018, the Google IT Certificate program has become the single most popular certificate on Coursera, and thousands of people have found new jobs and increased their earnings after completing the course."

Schools and universities across the United States are split on whether to open for the fall semester, thanks to the ongoing pandemic. From a report: Albion College, a small liberal arts school in Michigan, said in June it would allow its nearly 1,500 students to return to campus for the new academic year starting in August. Lectures would be limited in size and the semester would finish by Thanksgiving rather than December. The school said it would test both staff and students upon their arrival to campus and throughout the academic year. But less than two weeks before students began arriving on campus, the school announced it would require them to download and install a contact-tracing app called Aura, which it says will help it tackle any coronavirus outbreak on campus.

There's a catch. The app is designed to track students' real-time locations around the clock, and there is no way to opt out. The Aura app lets the school know when a student tests positive for COVID-19. It also comes with a contact-tracing feature that alerts students when they have come into close proximity with a person who tested positive for the virus. But the feature requires constant access to the student's real-time location, which the college says is necessary to track the spread of any exposure. The school's mandatory use of the app sparked privacy concerns and prompted parents to launch a petition to make using the app optional.