The Shattered Mirror, Part Two: The Underwhelming Recommendation for Open Licensing at the CBC
Michael Geist, 2017/02/08

Michael Geist has authored a two-part review of The Shattered Mirror: News, Democracy and Trust in the Digital Age (108 page PDF), released by the Public Policy Forum in January (part one, part two). The report itself is a mixed bag, on the one had seeking to strengthen revenue for news media (partially by extending copyright), and on the other hand seeking to address local needs (partially by helping CBC reduce reliance on advertising). Geist's first article attacks (quite rightly) the recommendations on copyright. And in his second posts he applauds opening CBC content under Creative Commons but wonders why the authors would recommend the "no-derivatives" clause, which would prevent people from making anything new with CBC content.

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The Path to Prosperity
Advisory Council on Economic Growth, 2017/02/08

The Canadian Government's Advisory Council on Economic Growth has released a set of five papers under the heading of 'The Path to Prosperity'. Here they are:

• The Path to Prosperity: Executive Summary (PDF 356 KB)
• Unlocking Innovation to Drive Scale and Growth (PDF 697 KB)
• Building a Highly Skilled and Resilient Canadian Workforce through the FutureSkills Lab (PDF 1.04 MB)
• Unleashing the Growth Potential of Key Sectors (PDF 1.4 MB)
• Positioning Canada as a Global Trading Hub (PDF 730 KB)
• Tapping Economic Potential through Broader Workforce Participation (PDF 506 KB)

The second (FutureSkills Lab) and Fifth (Workforce Participation) have the greatest impact on education and training. The latter is the 'skills gap' argument for 2017, with a focus on reskilling and workforce integration. The former would "solicit, select, and co-finance innovative pilot programs in skills and competency development. I can think of a few things I'd propose for such a program.

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The Security Impact of HTTPS Interception
Zakir Durumeric, et.al., 2017/02/08

The state of web security is, um, awful. Specifically, with respect to HTTPS, here's what this pointed study reports: "we find more than an order of magnitude more interception than previously estimated, ranging from 4–11%." This was determined by studying different browsers, e-commerce sites, and content distribution networks. But worse, software installed by corporations to increase security may be making the network more vulnerable. "62% of traffic that traverses a network middlebox has reduced security and 58% of middlebox connections have severe vulnerabilities. We investigated popular antivirus and corporate proxies, finding that nearly all reduce connection security and that many introduce vulnerabilities." Via O'Reilly.

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Announcing the new CC Search, now in Beta
Creative Commons, 2017/02/08

Creative Commons has launched a new search service. "The new CC Search harnesses the power of open repositories, allowing users to search across a variety of open content through a single interface. The prototype of this tool focuses on photos as its first media and uses open APIs in order to index the available works.... we selected the Rijksmuseum, Flickr, 500px, the New York Public Library as our initial sources." The beta, I think, needs to be refined - none of my 36K Creative-Commons licensed photos on Flickr appear to be findable.

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CLOs, Move From Conduit to Curator
Greg Pryor, Chief Learning Officer, 2017/02/08

A CLO is a 'Chief Learning Officer' and the point of this article is to suggest that CLOs shift their role from being a 'conduit' of knowledge and information to being a 'curator'. This is a three step process:

• Personalize employee learning experiences - "deliver content in a way that’s personalized and similar to the content employees view on their personal devices; think Netflix and Facebook."
• Enable the (l)earning curve - encourage learners "who are always ready to learn and evolve to meet new challenges"
• Crowdsource employee knowledge - "have learning technology in place that can capture and store employee knowledge on the business"

Of course none of these is nearly as simple as the quick one-paragraph form suggests. And I thin k the process involves far more than mere curation.

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