How do AI tools impact college students? 231 students in an object-oriented programming class participated in a study at Estonia's University of Tartu (conducted by an associate professor of informatics and a recently graduated master's student). They were asked how frequently they used AI tools and for what purposes. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, and Spearman's rank correlation analysis was performed to examine the strength of the relationships. The results showed that students mainly used AI assistance for solving programming tasks — for example, debugging code and understanding examples. A surprising finding, however, was that more frequent use of chatbots correlated with lower academic results. One possible explanation is that struggling students were more likely to turn to AI. Nevertheless, the finding suggests that unguided use of AI and over-reliance on it may in fact hinder learning. The researchers say their report provides "quantitative evidence that frequent AI use does not necessarily translate into better academic outcomes in programming courses." Other results from the survey: 47 respondents (20.3%) never used AI assistants in this course. Only 3.9% of the students reported using AI assistants weekly, "suggesting that reliance on such tools is still relatively low." "Few students feared plagiarism, suggesting students don't link AI use to it — raising academic concerns."

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The blog OMG Ubuntu notes that Microsoft Copilot chatbot support has been added in the latest Firefox Nightly builds. "Firefox's sidebar already offers access to popular chatbots, including OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, Le Chat's Mistral and Google's Gemini. It previously offered HuggingChat too." As the testing bed for features Mozilla wants to add to stable builds (though not all make it — eh, rounded bottom window corners?), this is something you can expect to find in a future stable update... Copilot in Firefox offers the same features as other chatbots: text prompts, upload files or images, generate images, support for entering voice prompts (for those who fancy their voice patterns being analysed and trained on). And like those other chatbots, there are usage limits, privacy policies, and (for some) account creation needed. In testing, Copilot would only generate half a summary for a webpage, telling me it was too long to produce without me signing in/up for an account. On a related note, Mozilla has updated stable builds to let third-party chatbots summarise web pages when browsing (in-app callout alerts users to the 'new' feature). Users yet to enable chatbots are subtly nudged to do so each time they right-click on web page. [Between "Take Screenshot" and "View Page Source" there's a menu option for "Ask an AI Chatbot."] Despite making noise about its own (sluggish, but getting faster) on-device AI features that are privacy-orientated, Mozilla is bullish on the need for external chatbots. The article suggests Firefox wants to keep up with Edge and Chrome (which can "infuse first-party AI features directly.") But it adds that Firefox's nightly build is also testing some non-AI features, like new task and timer widgets on Firefox's New Tab page. And "In Firefox Labs, there are is an option to enable JPEG XL support, a super-optimised version of JPEG that is gaining traction (despite Google's intransigence). Other Firefox news: There's good news "for users still clinging to Windows 7," writes the Register. Support for Firefox Extended Support Release 115 "is being extended until March 2026." Google "can keep paying companies like Mozilla to make Google the default search engine, as long as these deals aren't exclusive anymore," reports the blog It's FOSS News. (The judge wrote that "Cutting off payments from Google almost certainly will impose substantial — in some cases, crippling — downstream harms to distribution partners..." according to CNBC — especially since the non-profit Mozilla Foundation gets most of its annual revenue from its Google's search deal.) Don't forget you can now search your tabs, bookmarks and browsing history right from the address bar with keywords like @bookmarks, @tabs, and @history. (And @actions pulls up a list of actions like "Open private window" or "Restart Firefox").

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In July 791 professional coders were surveyed by Fastly about their use of AI coding tools, reports InfoWorld. The results? "About a third of senior developers (10+ years of experience) say over half their shipped code is AI-generated," Fastly writes, "nearly two and a half times the rate reported by junior developers (0-2 years of experience), at 13%." "AI will bench test code and find errors much faster than a human, repairing them seamlessly. This has been the case many times," one senior developer said... Senior developers were also more likely to say they invest time fixing AI-generated code. Just under 30% of seniors reported editing AI output enough to offset most of the time savings, compared to 17% of juniors. Even so, 59% of seniors say AI tools help them ship faster overall, compared to 49% of juniors. Just over 50% of junior developers say AI makes them moderately faster. By contrast, only 39% of more senior developers say the same. But senior devs are more likely to report significant speed gains: 26% say AI makes them a lot faster, double the 13% of junior devs who agree. One reason for this gap may be that senior developers are simply better equipped to catch and correct AI's mistakes... Nearly 1 in 3 developers (28%) say they frequently have to fix or edit AI-generated code enough that it offsets most of the time savings. Only 14% say they rarely need to make changes. And yet, over half of developers still feel faster with AI tools like Copilot, Gemini, or Claude. Fastly's survey isn't alone in calling AI productivity gains into question. A recent randomized controlled trial (RCT) of experienced open-source developers found something even more striking: when developers used AI tools, they took 19% longer to complete their tasks. This disconnect may come down to psychology. AI coding often feels smooth... but the early speed gains are often followed by cycles of editing, testing, and reworking that eat into any gains. This pattern is echoed both in conversations we've had with Fastly developers and in many of the comments we received in our survey... Yet, AI still seems to improve developer job satisfaction. Nearly 80% of developers say AI tools make coding more enjoyable... Enjoyment doesn't equal efficiency, but in a profession wrestling with burnout and backlogs, that morale boost might still count for something. Fastly quotes one developer who said their AI tool "saves time by using boilerplate code, but it also needs manual fixes for inefficiencies, which keep productivity in check." The study also found the practice of green coding "goes up sharply with experience. Just over 56% of junior developers say they actively consider energy use in their work, while nearly 80% among mid- and senior-level engineers consider this when coding."

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