OLDaily

Lacktribution: Be Like Everyone Else
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, 2019/09/30

Here's Alan Levine: "did you know that the liberating world of 'use any photo you want w/o the hassle of attribution' is such a bucket of questionable slime? And that Google, with all of their algorithmic prowess, gives more favorable results to sites that lift photos than to the ones where the originals exist?" Of course I knew all this was going to happen; I predicted it fifteen years ago, which is why I warned about the use of licenses that allow commercial use of photos and resources. Moreover, while I definitely agree that photos and resources should be attribute authorship (and I have some 30K posts doing just that) I have never agreed with the idea that each attribution should also be an advertisement for Creative Commons. Image: Mighty Free.

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Blockchain is the next step in democratizing education
Alex Kaplan, Fiorella Garcia, IBM Blockchain Blog, 2019/09/30

I think we've learned to take IBM's pronouncements with a grain of salt. Still, the gist of this short post is similar to other pronouncements that have been made regarding blockchain and education, "proposing a world in which learners and educators work collaboratively instead of through a traditionally isolated approach." The key appears to lie in credentials and identities. "Students are becoming lifelong learners and turning to stackable credentials, the concept of building towards a degree through the accumulation of varying certifications and short-term courses. This, however, has given a rise to challenges in the tracking of disparate methods of acquiring skills. Blockchain provides a logical solution," say the authors. But I disagree. Because GIGO.

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A New Wireless Standard: What Is Amazon Sidewalk?
Josh Hendrickson, How-To Geek, 2019/09/30

To me what's most interesting and significant about this announcement isn't the standard itself - it uses the same wavelength as the old cordless phones and is the latest in a long line of slightly longer-range wireless standards. "By relying on low bandwidth 900 MHz spectrum, it has longer range and better building penetration than Wi-Fi and Bluetooth." See here. No, rather, it's that instead of coming through the usual standardization process, Sidewalk is coming through an individual corporation. Here's Amazon's announcement.

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Credential Engine Counts More than 738,000 Unique Credentials in the U.S.
Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology, 2019/09/30

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the U.S. had more distinct credentials than all other countries combined, depending on how they're counted. The U.S. education ecosystem seems to uniquely proliferate "high school diplomas, postsecondary degrees and certificates, registered apprenticeships, certifications, licenses, alternative degree programs and skills training bootcamps." That said, the purpose of Credential Engine's report (36 page PDF) - to build a transparent credential marketplace - is probably a good one.

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Potentials of Fog Computing in Higher Education
Arumugam Raman, International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 2019/09/30

This is a short paper that introduces fog computing to the world of educational technology. What is fog computing? It's like cloud computing, but closer to the end user, and tied more directly with the internet of things (IoT). In this way, it's similar to edge computing. "With Fog Computing, multiple users, gadgets such as automobiles, wearable gizmos, sensing units, wise gadgets, and organization can accept one another utilizing their very own Fog facilities," writes Raman. "Also, various mobile phones can additionally connect directly to every other. The information does not have to be transferred to the Cloud and even the base terminal." The result is much less latency, especially for VR applications that depend on the IoT.

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Apple managed to decimate ad blockers on Safari with little backlash
Fabrizio Bulleri, Reclaim The Net, 2019/09/30

Apple has quietly managed to disable uBlock Origin and numerous other extensions while consolidating all Safari add-ons in its App Store. What this means is that Safari users no longer have an effective way to block web advertising. It was part of an overall plan to eliminate user-designed Javascript extensions in Safari. Google has indicated a desire to do the same with Chrome with depreciations to the  webRequest API. The move also reflects a debate on which style of adblock lists to use, with the newer version now used by Safari (and presumably in the works for Chrome) blocking at the domain level only, rendering ineffective against (for example) Facebook advertisements. More on Reddit.

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