OLDaily

Welcome to Online Learning Daily, your best source for news and commentary about learning technology, new media, and related topics.

Bikepacking - Rimouski
Stephen Downes, YouTube, 2024/07/26

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You my have noticed that the publishing schedule this week and next is a bit erratic. That's because I'm out on another cycling tour, this time from my home near Ottawa to Rimouski, Quebec, 800 km down the St. Lawrence River. At least, that's my objective. I'm currently writing from Magog, Quebec, but I'm about to get back on the bike. Anyhow, this link will take you to a YouTube playlist of daily videos from my tour, following in the footsteps of the many hiking and bikepacking vloggers who have gone before me (and whose work I am of course drawing upon).

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AI models collapse when trained on recursively generated data
Ilia Shumailov, et al., Nature, 2024/07/26

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I think this is well-known and well established, but here's an official source: "We find that indiscriminate use of model-generated content in training causes irreversible defects in the resulting models, in which tails of the original content distribution disappear. We refer to this effect as 'model collapse'." It's a bit like photocopying the same image over and over again - eventually you just end up with static.

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Flipboard Brings Local News to the Fediverse
Carl Sullivan, Flipboard, 2024/07/26

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Flipbord hasn't been relevant in any to me for years, but if they're bringing local news to the fediverse, they are suddenly relevant again. They write, "As part of our commitment to local news, Flipboard is bringing 63 regional and community titles to the fediverse." More, please.

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Image resize and quality comparison
Simon Willison, 2024/07/26

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What's neat isn't just the tool (which I could use to handle those awful webp images) but also that it was basically created by AI.

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We publish six to eight or so short posts every weekday linking to the best, most interesting and most important pieces of content in the field. Read more about what we cover. We also list papers and articles by Stephen Downes and his presentations from around the world.

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