Academia Is Enshittifying. AI Made It Faster. #oldaily https://www.downes.ca/post/79288 Discussion of the recent paper that was retracted, by a member of the editorial board of the journal that carried the paper. "The question ‘why was this paper retracted’ has an answer. The question ‘why does the system keep producing papers like this’ does not, because answering it would require redesigning the system. It’s easier to just retract the paper.".

College credit for this? #oldaily https://www.downes.ca/post/79287 I'm going to ignore the left-right dichotomy Hollis Robbins assumes in this critique of social scinces, bcause it's not that. But there is a valid criticism at the heart of this. "An entire field of study is broken even as credentials in it keep getting granted. (D)efenders of a wronged student seem not to want to touch the possibility that the credential she was working toward wasn’t substantial.

Grade Inflation Is Not the Problem #oldaily https://www.downes.ca/post/79286 I've always wondered about complaints about grade inflation.

25 Years of OLDaily #oldaily https://www.downes.ca/post/79284 I was introduced to a thing called the 'internet' in a pub in Edmonton after a softball game in 1988 or so. We philosophy students had gathered there after losing another game and some of the others (Ishy and Jeff, to be specific) to me about a 'MUD' they had been playing on. I took to it like a duck to water.

From Signals to Infrastructure: Strengthening the Commons for the AI Era #oldaily https://www.downes.ca/post/79283 This is another update from Creative Commons signaling their shift from helping people access open content to helping copyright holders put conditions on access to their formerly open content.

Announcing a New Guide to Strengthening Coordination and Connections in Out-of-School Time #oldaily https://www.downes.ca/post/79282 Throughout my time as a student, from an early age to graduate school, my most powerful learning experiences occurred in what we call here "out-of-school time (OST) programs." I did a lot, some on my own, others based in the community: sports programs, Boy Scouts (and camp), Army Cadets, debating and public speaking, student newspaper. And so much more.

What’s a Package Manager? #oldaily https://www.downes.ca/post/79281 If you develop software, you know what package managers are. They are services you can run in your development environment to find and install pre-packaged bundles of software designed for a specific purpose. For example, if I'm creating a web application, I might want to use React, which is a collection of web interface functions.

Floci #oldaily https://www.downes.ca/post/79280 If you always wanted to use Amazon Web Services (AWS) but didn't want to pay Amazon money, this is the tool for you: Floci, "A free, open-source local AWS emulator. No account. No feature gates." Now to be clear, I haven't tried to set this up, much less try to make it work in any serious way (and tbh I use Amazon pretty minimally as well - just S3 to store files and SES to send this newsletter by email).

The Castlereagh Statement #oldaily https://www.downes.ca/post/79279 Though it recognizes that "our education and training systems were not designed for an AI-driven society," I regard the Castlereagh Statement - a declaration signed by an Australian 'Coalition of the willing' - to be at its heart a very conservative document (36 page PDF).

Adding DID to RSS and Atom Feeds #oldaily https://www.downes.ca/post/79278 In my work developing CList I want to enable content and messaging federation - so that people can follow and talk to each other - without being dependent on a specific platform. So I want people to be able to create and use DIDs to help them find and follow each other. But how?.