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Submission + - University of California Math Professors Push for Return of SAT/ACT Math Testing (kpbs.org)

Submitted by Koreantoast
Koreantoast writes: News sources are reporting that faculty members in the University of California system are calling for a return to standardized testing for applications to STEM majors. From KPBS:

Hundreds of University of California faculty members are calling on the university system to require standardized math test scores from applicants to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) majors.

Nearly 1,000 faculty members have signed the open letter. More than 200 of them are from UC San Diego.

The UC Board of Regents voted to eliminate the requirement in 2020. In their letter, the faculty call it “a temporary measure that has now become a permanent vulnerability...”

“We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields,” the letter reads.

Faculty have reported that students being admitted are unprepared for even basic classes: one faculty report last year saying that the number of students placed in classes to remediate elementary and middle-school math before they could take precalculus increased to 8.5% from 0.5% between 2020 and 2025. Several universities which dropped testing requirements in 2020 have already reinstituted testing over the last several years including MIT, Dartmouth, and Yale.

Submission + - A Network of Knockoff Apparel Stores Exposed 330,000 Customer Credit Cards (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: If you recently made a purchase from an overseas online store selling knockoff clothes and goods, there’s a chance your credit card number and personal information were exposed. Since January 6, a database containing hundreds of thousands of unencrypted credit card numbers and corresponding cardholders’ information was spilling onto the open web. At the time it was pulled offline on Tuesday, the database had about 330,000 credit card numbers, cardholder names, and full billing addresses — and rising in real-time as customers placed new orders. The data contained all the information that a criminal would need to make fraudulent transactions and purchases using a cardholder’s information.

The credit card numbers belong to customers who made purchases through a network of near-identical online stores claiming to sell designer goods and apparel. But the stores had the same security problem in common: Any time a customer made a purchase, their credit card data and billing information was saved in a database, which was left exposed to the internet without a password. Anyone who knew the IP address of the database could access reams of unencrypted financial data. Anurag Sen, a good-faith security researcher, found the exposed credit card records and asked TechCrunch for help in reporting it to its owner. Sen has a respectable track record of scanning the internet looking for exposed servers and inadvertently published data, and reporting it to companies to get their systems secured.

But in this case, Sen wasn’t the first person to discover the spilling data. According to a ransom note left behind on the exposed database, someone else had found the spilling data and, instead of trying to identify the owner and responsibly reporting the spill, the unnamed person instead claimed to have taken a copy of the entire database’s contents of credit card data and would return it in exchange for a small sum of cryptocurrency. A review of the data by TechCrunch shows most of the credit card numbers are owned by cardholders in the United States. [...] Internet records showed that the database was operated by a customer of Tencent, whose cloud services were used to host the database. TechCrunch contacted Tencent about its customer’s database leaking credit card information, and the company responded quickly. The customer’s database went offline a short time later.

Submission + - Even Reality TV Hosts Are Being Replaced By Robots (vice.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: MILF Manor is a reality TV show made to be dissected on the internet. Everything, from its ripped-from-30-Rock title to the Oedipal set-up of mothers and their sons thrown into the same “dating pool,” is so patently outrageous that it boomerangs back into normalcy—of course these mothers need to participate in a blindfolded contest to identify their sons by their abs alone. But MILF Manor’s most understated quirk is the one that sticks out to me: There’s no tanned, vaguely handsome man with veneers and a dress shirt directing the festivities. Instead, contestants receive alerts and directions via text, on iPhones in magenta cases that seem to be provided by the producers. Like more and more reality TV competition shows, there’s no actual host.

By my estimation, Netflix’s The Circle kicked the trend off in 2020. Its contestants, who compete to create the most lovable social media presence in physical isolation, receive prompts and challenges from a big-screen TV in their living quarters. Pressure Cooker, a more recent offering from the streaming giant, is a cooking competition show where the host is replaced by a kitchen ticket printer: Competitions receive challenge instructions and the results of game-ending votes in the same way chefs take orders from their diners. The Button, a YouTube speed dating series by the production company Cut, goes a step further with the introduction of a large talking button that cracks jokes and prompts daters to ask each other cringe-worthy questions until one of them presses it, ending the date and sending in another option.

Why axe the role of host when it’s been a staple of the formula for so long? It could be a sign of the recession. Reality TV competition shows are famously among the cheapest television to produce, but if I’ve learned anything about business, it’s that executives have never met a corner they’re not dying to cut. It could also be that the role of reality TV host is not attracting the same iconic cultural figures it once was, when the subgenre exploded in popularity in the early 2000s. [...] At the core, though, I believe there’s something more insidious at play: Robots are once again stealing jobs from red-blooded human workers. Only this time, instead of factory linemen or fast food cashiers, these laborers are C-List comedians and guys who are incredibly symmetrical but not quite hot. (Again, Jeff Probst, I am not talking about you!) Sure, I know machine intelligence doesn’t experience emotion—yet!—and I know that all of these robo-hosts are likely operated by producers—for now! But isn’t toying with people in a high-stress, high-stakes situation, the exact job description of a reality competition host, the absolute dream gig for a robot? Seems a little too perfect.

Submission + - Supreme Court Allows Reddit Mods To Anonymously Defend Section 230 (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Over the past few days, dozens of tech companies have filed briefs in support of Google in a Supreme Court case that tests online platforms’ liability for recommending content. Obvious stakeholders like Meta and Twitter, alongside popular platforms like Craigslist, Etsy, Wikipedia, Roblox, and Tripadvisor, urged the court to uphold Section 230 immunity in the case or risk muddying the paths users rely on to connect with each other and discover information online. Out of all these briefs, however, Reddit’s was perhaps the most persuasive (PDF). The platform argued on behalf of everyday Internet users, whom it claims could be buried in “frivolous” lawsuits for frequenting Reddit, if Section 230 is weakened by the court. Unlike other companies that hire content moderators, the content that Reddit displays is “primarily driven by humans—not by centralized algorithms.” Because of this, Reddit’s brief paints a picture of trolls suing not major social media companies, but individuals who get no compensation for their work recommending content in communities. That legal threat extends to both volunteer content moderators, Reddit argued, as well as more casual users who collect Reddit “karma” by upvoting and downvoting posts to help surface the most engaging content in their communities.

“Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act famously protects Internet platforms from liability, yet what’s missing from the discussion is that it crucially protects Internet users—everyday people—when they participate in moderation like removing unwanted content from their communities, or users upvoting and downvoting posts,” a Reddit spokesperson told Ars. Reddit argues in the brief that such frivolous lawsuits have been lobbed against Reddit users and the company in the past, and Section 230 protections historically have consistently allowed Reddit users to “quickly and inexpensively” avoid litigation. [...]

The Supreme Court will have to weigh whether Reddit's arguments are valid. To help make its case defending Section 230 immunity protections for recommending content, Reddit received special permission from the Supreme Court to include anonymous comments from Reddit mods in its brief. This, Reddit’s spokesperson notes, is “a significant departure from normal Supreme Court procedure.” The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit defending online privacy, championed the court’s decision to allow moderators to contribute comments anonymously.

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