An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A math professor at the University of California, Berkeley, criticizing a "severe" math deficiency among students in an op-ed for the San Francisco Standard, admitted to using artificial intelligence to help edit the piece. The Standard published a 2,000-word piece by Zvezdelina Stankova last week, in which the professor said some of her math students were "five to eight years" behind and lacked a "middle school" education on fractions and basic algebra. Stankova said the UC system's test-blind admissions were to blame, suggesting that students who weren't sufficiently prepared for the rigor of Berkeley's mathematics program were admitted because a longstanding benchmark like the SAT had disappeared.

Over the weekend, journalists at Berkeley's student newspaper, the Daily Californian, noticed the op-ed's language sounded like AI. According to Berkeley sophomore Francis Luo, they ran it through AI-detection software Pangram, which claimed 33% of the op-ed had been generated or assisted by AI. In response, Stankova admitted she had used AI software to "help edit the piece" but that the article was "the result of several hundred person-hours of intensive human work, of which about 80 hours are my own."

Stankova said by email she had used AI to locate "numerous documents and articles related to the initiative" but that "all analysis is the result of the team members." When asked about their AI usage policy, the Standard -- which published the op-ed -- shared this statement by email: "While AI may assist, our expectation is that humans are behind every article we publish and take responsibility for every word. Our understanding in working with the author of this op ed was -- and continues to be -- that this piece reflects her and her colleagues' extensive original analysis, research and expertise." Should the op-ed have been entirely written without artificial assistance or is the use of AI a distraction from the argument at hand? That's the question at the heart of the debate playing out online.

According to the op-ed, Stankova and her peers found that the number of students with a "severe deficit" in their readiness for a calculus I class had tripled after the University of California adopted test-blind admissions. Some students were allegedly five to eight years behind and struggling with basic algebra and fractions, among other concepts.

Much of that decline, Stankova argues, is from the removal of standardized tests like the SAT and ACT, which served as important benchmarks for identifying whether applicants were prepared for Berkeley-level coursework.

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Security researcher Jeremiah Fowler found that people-search service ClarityCheck left more than 9 million image files accessible in an unsecured Amazon S3 bucket, despite advertising its reverse-image search as "private and secure." A separate misconfiguration also exposed email addresses, phone numbers, and other personal information. Wired reports: Overall, according to findings from independent security researcher Jeremiah Fowler, the exposed ClarityCheck database contained roughly 450 GB of images, including what appeared to be profile images, screenshots, and other photographs of adults, teenagers, and children. All of the images were stored in an unsecured Amazon S3 bucket, with files in folders named "faces" and "profiles," which could be accessed by anyone online through a URL included in the company's publicly available website code.

ClarityCheck is one of a number of so-called people-finder tools that have appeared online in recent years. These websites broadly claim to be able to search the web, public records, and other databases to identify individuals. ClarityCheck's website says it can run searches on phone numbers, email addresses, vehicle identification numbers, and names. Its photo-search page says it can help "identify anyone in a photo" and find social media profiles "in seconds." While ClarityCheck secured the giant image database after WIRED contacted the company in July, Fowler warns that it was seemingly exposed for months, and his initial efforts to flag the problem to the company were unsuccessful. Accidental data exposures create risk for any personal information, but particularly for sensitive and unchangeable biometric data like face images.

[...] In addition to the face data, ClarityCheck had also misconfigured its APIs such that its website URLs could be manipulated to reveal data about people simply by entering names; anyone using any consumer browser could have done this. Entering a name into one of the URLs would return multiple potential email addresses, physical addresses, and phone numbers for people with that name. After WIRED contacted the company, the URLs were secured. The ClarityCheck spokesperson said in the statement that the details displayed were "sourced from publicly available information and licensed third-party data providers." A spokesperson for ClarityCheck said in a statement: "Once this was drawn to the attention of the appropriate teams, we acted immediately to restrict access." The company disputed any characterization that the data was "exposed," saying that an "ordinary member of the public" would not have come across it.

"We do not accept that data in the temporary storage location was 'publicly exposed,' which implies large-scale public access," the spokesperson says. "Access required knowledge of a specific, unindexed URL that was not discoverable through ordinary use of the ClarityCheck service or a general web search."

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Bloomberg reports that YouTube is offering major creators millions of dollars to keep some content exclusive to its platform as Netflix increasingly signs YouTube-native talent to non-exclusive deals. YouTube has also warned that creators who simultaneously publish on Netflix could lose marketing support, event opportunities, and access to revenue from certain brand campaigns. Quartz reports: Bloomberg described two categories of payment: funding directed at specific programs, and a portion of the revenue YouTube brings in through large advertiser partnerships. No agreements have been finalized, but YouTube is close to deals with several partners, citing people familiar with the negotiations who declined to be identified. Creators who sign with Netflix face consequences. YouTube has warned creators that those who simultaneously publish videos on Netflix risk being sidelined from the platform's marketing campaigns and events, and would lose access to a share of proceeds from certain major brand deals.

Netflix has been signing YouTube creators to non-exclusive deals that allow them to post the same content on both platforms simultaneously. Creators including Alan Chikin Chow and Nick DiGiovanni have already signed such agreements, and Netflix remains in active conversations with dozens of other channels and programs, including the celebrity talk show Hot Ones. Netflix's pitch is straightforward: creators receive a substantial additional payday for content they have already produced, and their work reaches an audience that numbers more than 325 million subscribers.

YouTube Chief Executive Officer Neal Mohan had previously held that creators who work with competitors tend to drive viewers back to YouTube. But Bloomberg reported that Mohan and his team decided in recent weeks that the growing number of creators posting simultaneously on both platforms had become a problem that needed to be addressed. The concern is that when a video runs on both platforms simultaneously, YouTube's ability to convince advertisers of that video's exclusive value is undermined.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission last week eliminated the gigabit speed goal established during the Biden administration and declared that current levels of broadband deployment in the US are acceptable. Though fiber networks have routinely offered such speeds for years, the FCC said the gigabit speed goal is not "technologically neutral," suggesting that it isn't fair to other, slower technologies.

In 2024, the FCC raised its broadband benchmark to 100Mbps downstream and 20Mbps upstream, setting the new standard by which to judge whether deployment is reasonable and timely. The FCC at the time also set a long-term speed goal of 1Gbps download speeds paired with 500Mbps upload speeds, saying it would use the goal "as a guidepost for evaluating our efforts to encourage deployment." Republican Brendan Carr, who is now the FCC chairman, never liked that long-term goal. He proposed abolishing it last year, and the change was finalized on August 14 in the FCC's latest broadband deployment report. The reports are mandated by Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act.

"As part of our return to following the plain language of Section 706, we adopt our proposal from the Notice [of Inquiry] to abolish without replacement the long-term goal of 1,000/500 Mbps established in the 2024 Report," the order said. "A long-term goal is not mentioned in Section 706 and could appear to violate our obligation to conduct our analysis in a technologically neutral manner. At present, it is impossible to predict long-term technological developments and the evolution of consumer preferences." The FCC said that comments submitted by cable industry group NCTA and wireless industry group CTIA "support our reasoning for abolishing the long-term goal." Last year, the Brendan Carr-led FCC said (PDF) that the gigabit goal "may be unreasonably prejudicial to technologies such as satellite and fixed wireless that presently do not support such speeds." However, last week's report contradicts that stance.

"We disagree with commenters arguing that our concern about technological neutrality merely serves to accommodate technologies that may currently offer slower speeds," the FCC said. "At present, we do not know the nature of future consumer preferences and, considering that the goal is not required by the statute and does not serve any positive purpose (as discussed herein), we believe it prudent to abolish it."

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Woody Johnson has been appointed to Aston Martin’s Board of Directors as Vice Chairman.

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Bewoners van de Statensingel in Rotterdam klagen over een vieze geur. Door een gesprongen rioolpersleiding is rioolwater in de singel terechtgekomen. Het waterschap neemt samen met de gemeente maatregelen om verdere verspreiding tegen te gaan. Er wordt geadviseerd contact met het water te vermijden.

De Rotterdamse wijk Feijenoord bestaat 200 jaar. Om dat te vieren staat er vanaf vrijdag tien dagen lang een reuzenrad op De Kaai, het voormalige Unilever-terrein en zijn er tal van activiteiten. Het feest moet bewoners bij elkaar brengen, maar op straat blijkt lang niet iedereen iets met het jubileum te hebben.

SEOUL (ANP/RTR) - Noord-Korea heeft volgens het Zuid-Koreaanse leger meer dan tien ballistische korteafstandraketten afgevuurd in de richting van de Japanse Zee. Zuid-Korea is volgens het leger "waakzaam en heeft een ferm defensiebeleid samen met de Verenigde Staten. Provocaties kunnen snel worden beantwoord", volgens het leger.

De Noord-Koreaanse raketproeven komen terwijl de Amerikaanse president Donald Trump kortgeleden suggereerde dat er weer een dialoog zou kunnen zijn met de Noord-Koreaanse dictator Kim Jong-un. In de eerste ambtstermijn van Trump ontmoette hij Kim in 2018 en in 2019.

NEW YORK (ANP/RTR) - Carlos Alcaraz keert na een afwezigheid van meer dan vier maanden terug op de tennisbaan. De 23-jarige Spanjaard is hersteld van een polsblessure en doet mee aan de US Open, waar hij vanaf 30 augustus zijn titel verdedigt.

Alcaraz wilde aanvankelijk vorige week zijn rentree maken bij het toernooi van Cincinnati, maar hij koos ervoor om zijn pols meer tijd te geven om te herstellen. Alcaraz voerde de afgelopen weken zijn trainingsintensiteit geleidelijk op en trainde met de Deen Holger Rune in Murcia om de blessure op hogere intensiteit te testen.

Zevenvoudig grandslamwinnaar Alcaraz won in 2022 op de US Open zijn eerste grandslamtitel en werd toen de jongste speler die de nummer 1-positie op de ATP-ranglijst bereikte.