Student Deployed Rogue Course Scheduler.
Also; Hiring Frozen, DKIM Key is a Dollar Store Item.

The University’s Preferred Spreadsheet Process Must Be Maintained

A university student’s commendable attempt to introduce workflow efficiency has been tragically shut down by the Office of Academic Affairs. JD Kaim, the student who developed HuskySwap, a site that automated the arduous task of course-swapping, was forced to cease and desist or face disciplinary action; which is to say, they threatened to expel him. The project, which successfully reduced a nightmarish, manual "waitlist shuffle" into a simple digital transaction, was apparently a threat to the institution’s long-standing tradition of bureaucratic friction.

The core problem is that a third-party tool was introduced without the proper four-to-six week procurement review, five executive sign-offs, and an annual audit on whether the site’s use of AJAX constitutes an unacceptable security risk. The university, like any large enterprise, runs on the idea that if a process is slow and painful, it must be inherently more secure; or at least, that is what they tell the IT department when we ask for more budget. A successful, helpful external tool just makes everyone in the existing chain of command look bad, and we simply cannot have that.

Software Engineers Finally Achieved "Max Headcount"

In a move that surprised no one who has attended a quarterly earnings call, Salesforce is apparently not going to hire any new software engineers in 2025. Marc Benioff, Co-Founder and CEO, informed employees that the company is effectively at "max headcount" for the year; which is corporate speak for "The current budget will only cover the existing salaries and our next five yacht maintenance cycles."

This does not mean the company is suffering; it merely means they have reached peak optimization for the current fiscal period. All those job postings you saw for the last six months, they were not real; they were simply aspirational placeholders. The existing engineers will now be informed that they have the wonderful opportunity to take on the workload of the engineers who would have been hired. It is a win-win for everyone; except for the engineers, who were hoping for a raise instead of "The Spirit of the Growth Mindset."

DKIM 512-Bit Key Security is Priced Like a Bad Sandwich

Good news for spammers and bad actors; Digital security has never been cheaper. A new report details how a 512-bit DKIM RSA key, the mechanism meant to prove an email is actually from who it says it is, can be cracked for less than $8 in the cloud. Apparently, the integrity of your corporate email infrastructure is valued at roughly two Starbucks lattes; or one exceptionally poorly secured lunch.

The fact is that 512-bit keys have been deprecated since before the current interns were born, but the tech world’s adherence to legacy systems means these keys are still floating around, like old magnetic stripe cards or a printer that actually still works. The issue is less about the cracking and more about the fact that an eight-dollar vulnerability can still exist in a system that is supposed to be protecting trillions of dollars of financial transactions; but hey, we all use passwords like "Password123" too.

Briefs

• Compliance Violation: Facebook is censoring stories about the pornographic ads on its own platform. Mark Zuckerberg’s system tried to monetize everything and found that its ad approval algorithm is perhaps too benevolent towards questionable content.
• Feature Creep: Apple's new AI feature rewords scam messages to make them look more legit. Apparently, the AI was told to "improve user communication" and decided to apply the principles of clarity and polish to phishing attempts.
• Over-Engineering: An intriguing write-up details building an Operating System in 1,000 Lines. This should serve as a stark warning to all teams currently deploying microservices that require 1,000 lines of YAML just to exist.