🔗 Articles: Tuesday 23.Apr.2024
WashPo: Pro-Palestinian protesters arrested at Yale, NYU as campus protests spread
Columbia University canceled in-person classes, police arrested dozens of protesters at Yale and New York universities, and pro-Palestinian demonstrators set up encampments at other colleges Monday as tensions flared again on campuses across the country over the Israel-Gaza war.
Students at many schools are escalating protests over the war, living in tents on campus, disrupting university events, and risking and provoking arrest, leading to a growing sense of chaos and crackdown at colleges in the waning days of the academic year. College leaders are facing intense scrutiny over whether they are doing enough to protect students, faculty and staff against alleged antisemitism and other bias since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and resulting war — even as they confront scathing criticism from those who say they’re denying students’ right to speak out and censoring political protests.
WashPo: Brown University will require SAT scores again
The Ivy League school will continue to offer early decision and legacy preferences in admissions.
WashPo: Brown University will require SAT scores again
Brown University will again require that applicants submit standardized-test scores, university officials announced Tuesday, making it the third Ivy League school to reinstate that pre-pandemic admission norm in recent weeks.
The school will continue to give an advantage to applicants whose parents attended or work at Brown, and will still allow students to apply early, if they choose.
Like officials at Yale University and Dartmouth College, both of which recently announced they would resume requiring standardized tests from applicants, officials at Brown said research indicated that SAT and ACT scores are highly predictive of students’ academic performance in college. Brown Provost Francis J. Doyle III, who co-chaired a committee studying admissions policies, said in an interview Tuesday that removing the testing requirement made it more difficult for admissions officers to assess whether Brown hopefuls were likely to thrive at the school. He said reinstating the requirement will make the admissions office more “effective.”
Australian prime minister labels Elon Musk ‘an arrogant billionaire who thinks he is above the law’
Australia’s prime minister has labelled X’s owner, Elon Musk, an “arrogant billionaire who thinks he is above the law” as the rift deepens between Australia and the tech platform over the removal of videos of a violent stabbing in a Sydney church.
On Monday evening in an urgent last-minute federal court hearing, the court ordered a two-day injunction against X to hide posts globally containing the footage of the alleged stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel on 15 April. The eSafety commissioner had previously directed X to remove the posts, but X had only blocked them from access in Australia pending a legal challenge.
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The United Australia Party senator Ralph Babet posted two versions of the video on both X and Facebook on Monday. One video was posted on its own, while the other was embedded within his commentary about the attack.
iPhone in Canada: Apple iPhone Sales in China Slumped 19% During Q1 2024
Apple saw iPhone sales in China drop 19.1% year-over-year during the first quarter of 2024, according to data from market tracker Counterpoint Research.
The Chinese smartphone market as a whole rebounded, growing 1.9% year-over-year and 4.6% quarter-over-quarter. “Q1 2024 was the most competitive quarter ever, with only 3% points separating the top six players in terms of market share,” said Counterpoint Senior Analyst Mengmeng Zhang.
Verge: Amazon makes checking for its AI watermarks available for all Bedrock users.
People using Amazon’s AI library can check if an image was made with Amazon’s Titan Image Generator, which is now publicly available. Right now, the platform will only check Amazon’s own watermarks and not other developers.
9to5Mac: Protect against iPhone password reset attacks: How-to
One of the latest attacks on iPhone sees malicious parties abuse the Apple ID password reset system to inundate users with iOS prompts to take over their accounts. Here’s how you can protect against iPhone password reset attacks (often called “MFA bombing”).
We’ve recently heard about Apple users being targeted with MFA bombing (also called MFA fatigue or push bombing). It’s not a new attack, but it can be a convincing scam as it pushes official iOS password reset prompts to victims.
As detailed by Krebs on Security (via Parth Patel), attackers abusing this vulnerability appear to be doing so through an Apple user’s phone number which can bomb your iPhone and other Apple devices with 100+ MFA (multi-factor authentication) system prompts to reset your Apple ID password.
Ars Technica: Apple’s next product event happens on May 7, and it’s probably iPads
Reports point to a new OLED iPad Pro with M3 and a big-screened iPad Air.
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The new iPads would be Apple’s first in well over a year–the company didn’t announce a single new tablet through the entirety of 2023, the first year without an iPad since the original tablet was announced back in 2010.
Ars Technica: NASA officially greenlights $3.35 billion mission to Saturn’s moon Titan
NASA has formally approved the robotic Dragonfly mission for full development, committing to a revolutionary project to explore Saturn’s largest moon with a quadcopter drone.
Ars Technica: After 48 years, Zilog is killing the classic standalone Z80 microprocessor chip
Last week, chip manufacturer Zilog announced that after 48 years on the market, its line of standalone DIP (dual inline package) Z80 CPUs is coming to an end, ceasing sales on June 14, 2024. The 8-bit Z80 architecture debuted in 1976 and powered a small-business-PC revolution in conjunction with CP/M, also serving as the heart of the Nintendo Game Boy, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the Radio Shack TRS-80, the Pac-Man arcade game, and the TI-83 graphing calculator in various forms.
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Zilog will continue to manufacture the eZ80 microcontroller family, which was introduced in 2001 as a faster version of the Z80 series and comes in different physical package configurations (pin layouts).
CNN: How Johnson came to embrace Ukraine aid and defy his right flank
On Tuesday, Johnson sat in his office as members streamed in to voice their complaints and level their demands. By nighttime, he was wrestling how to proceed. Feeling the weight of his future and knowing history was watching him, Johnson, a devout Christian, turned to prayer.
“He was torn between trying to save his job and do the right thing,” House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul, a top Ukraine advocate who was with Johnson the night before the legislation was released, told CNN. “He prayed over it.”
Well, that and an important briefing…
And more recently, Johnson received a key intelligence briefing from CIA Director Bill Burns, who painted a picture of the dire situation on the battlefield in Ukraine and the global consequences of inaction, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the situation. The briefing left a lasting impression, and Johnson became increasingly convinced the fate of Western democracy was on his shoulders, sources close to him said.
*WashP*o: Rooftop solar panels are flooding California’s grid. That’s a problem.
In sunny California, solar panels are everywhere. They sit in dry, desert landscapes in the Central Valley and are scattered over rooftops in Los Angeles’s urban center. By last count, the state had nearly 47 gigawatts of solar power installed — enough to power 13.9 million homes and provide over a quarter of the Golden State’s electricity.
But now, the state and its grid operator are grappling with a strange reality: There is so much solar on the grid that, on sunny spring days when there’s not as much demand, electricity prices go negative. Gigawatts of solar are “curtailed” — essentially, thrown away.
A better problem to have than climate change!
Kottke: Cool Art: Naja Tepe’s Pottery
In the spirit of recommending things I truly love, I wanted to highlight the pottery of Northern California artist Naja Tepe. I’ve ordered from her twice now, and her work is fabulous. I love her strawberry-themed items, but the crescent moon on the plate in her most recent Instagram post (upper right in the composite above) made me want to have everything it appears on, too. Great for gifts. I don’t think my mom reads this site, so I will therefore reveal that I got her a Naja Tepe item for her birthday this year.
Last Updated: 23.Apr.2024 22:54 EDT