OLDaily

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

FediForum Has Been Canceled - We Distribute
Sean Tilley, We Distribute, 2025/04/01

---

The cancellation of FediForum as a result of two-year old anti-trans statements by one of the organizers is representative of the cultural conflict roiling the western world right now. It's particularly relevant here given the trans-positive origins of the fediverse. For my own part, it's hard for me to understand the hate some people feel for diverse and different people, including trans people, and I wish we could learn to live in an inclusive and equitable society. The whole concept of the fediverse is something like 'live and let live' and  'to each their own' and it's a concept I embrace, especially when compared with what we see in places like Twitter and Facebook.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post][Share]

It’s time to examine neural coding from the message’s point of view
Daniel Graham, The Transmitter, 2025/04/01

---

By 'messages' we refer "not to individual spikes but rather to patterns of excitations - comprising spikes, their timing and their spread across the wider network." The animation at the top of this article offers a good example of a 'message' as the sequence of activations (signified by red coloured neurons) spreading out from the original signal. Characteristic input produces characteristic messages in a given connectome. "Message fingerprints—namely spiking patterns—showed up in specific neurons in a specific order, again and again." It's still early days - "we don't yet have an accepted definition of what constitutes a message." But I suggest that what's being called a 'message' here is sometimes a sensory experience - in other words, consciousness.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post][Share]

The Mediocrity of Modern Google
Om Malik, On my Om, 2025/04/01

---

I've been researching freeze-dried food for my upcoming bikepacking trips. Because of recent events, I want to ensure I'm buying from Canadian suppliers. I got a list of providers from Google and then searched on each to check its web page. But Google clutters the results with lists of 'in stock' products at Amazon instead, so I added the '-ai' flag to my search request to knock out the AI. AI fail, right? But then I asked ChatGPT for a list of Canadian freeze-dried food companies and got a good list, with descriptions and links to the right websites. The lesson here is two-fold: Google search is becoming useless, and is not helped by AI, but if I adapt my own practices, AI generates better results. All of which sort of validates Om Malik's point here.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post][Share]

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.

There are many ways to read OLDaily; pick whatever works best for you:

• Read in your web browser on this web page, updated weekdays
• Receive a daily or weekly email newsletter by subscribing here
• Subscribe to the RSS feed using your favourite feed reader
• Follow @OLDaily@mastodon.social on Mastodon or elsewhere in the fediverse
• Follow @OLDaily on Twitter
• Integrate the open API using the JSON feed