Stanford doubles down on legacy admissions, ditching Cal Grant funds to keep donor perks alive

Stanford To Continue Legacy Admissions And Withdraw From Cal Grants. - Stanford will maintain legacy admissions for Fall 2026 despite California’s AB 1780 banning such preferences in private universities receiving state funds.\n. - To comply, Stanford plans to exit the Cal Grant program and replace that aid with private funding internally.\n. - AB 1780 requires annual reporting on compliance and legacy admit statistics but no financial penalties.\n. - Legacy advantages largely favor white applicants and wealthy families, raising concerns about fairness and racial equity, especially after Supreme Court rulings against race-conscious admissions.\n. - Stanford defends the move citing the financial importance of alumni and donor contributions and commits to ongoing analysis while public universities in California have abandoned legacy preferences.. . Debian 13 "trixie" Released: Universal OS Advances. - Debian 13 “trixie” released August 9, 2025, after over two years of development with 5 years of security and long-term support.\n. - Supports seven architectures including new riscv64; drops regular support for i386 and last release for armel.\n. - Contains ~70,000 packages with 14,100 additions and 45,000 updates; Linux kernel 6.12 (LTS), GNOME 48, KDE Plasma 6.3, GCC 14.2 among key updates.\n. - Introduces progress toward fully reproducible builds and improved installation options like live images with Calamares and standard installer support.\n. - Enhancements include speech synthesis, btrfs rescue improvements, and secure boot support, targeting robustness for desktops, servers, and cloud environments.. . Did California's Fast Food Minimum Wage Reduce Employment?. - Study finds California’s $20 fast food minimum wage (April 2024) caused a 2.7-3.2% drop in fast food employment relative to other states, equating to about 18,000 lost jobs.\n. - Uses QCEW data and controls for pre-policy trends and employment in other industries to isolate effect.\n. - Highlights ongoing debate in labor economics about trade-offs between wage increases and employment levels.\n. - Invites nuanced discussion on policy impacts beyond raw numbers, including automation and socio-economic consequences.\n. . CSS-Only Dynamic Sky Simulation for HTML Day 2025. - Web service created that simulates current sky colors at the user’s approximate location using only CSS gradients, updating every minute without client-side JavaScript.\n. - Simulates atmospheric conditions via absorption and scattering coefficients for realistic yet minimalist rendering.\n. - Source code available on GitHub; utilizes Cloudflare IP geolocation to determine latitude and longitude.\n. - Raises discussion on realism versus simplicity in UI design, supported by server-side computation and modern web infrastructure.. . Rethinking Tech Hiring: An Engineer’s Critique. - Critiques common tech hiring practices (LeetCode-style, take-homes) emphasizing wasted time, lack of differentiation, and susceptibility to AI shortcuts.\n. - Argues interviews must reflect real work, respect candidates’ time, and distinguish senior from junior engineers.\n. - Advocates for code review-based interviews reversing usual time asymmetry, revealing collaboration, design judgment, and interpersonal skills.\n. - Stresses hiring as a collaborative process, including meeting future managers to assess cultural fit and leadership.\n. - Warns disrespecting candidates drives away top talent, urging humane, efficient, and insightful evaluation methods....