Stephen Downes

This article relates two developments that herald an intriguing prospect. First: "Last month, Google launched its Earth AI platform. As described in an explanatory paper, this approach is built upon foundation models across three key domains - Planet-scale Imagery, Population, and Environment." Second: "In May, Microsoft scientists unveiled Aurora, a large-scale foundation model trained on more than one million hours of diverse geophysical data.. as described in a paper published in Nature." These portend a global perspective: "machine and Earth intelligences might one day merge into what Gilman calls 'planetary sapience'."

One thing I meant to add to my fediverse talk this week, but forgot, was that the next few months and (maybe) years will see the development of a proliferation of new fediverse clients (this was to be inserted right after the 'AI built this' slides). Anyhow, here's the latest. To quote Laurens Hof, "UK activist group Media Revolution has launched Mo-Me, a new fediverse client, in collaboration with the Newsmast Foundation... Mo-Me is fundamentally a fediverse client, that has been integrated with Newsmast's channel.org to give users extra feeds (channels) to access. You can log in with your existing Mastodon account, or create an account on the Mo-Me server." Integrations like this sparkle for me.

We all agree, I think, that old student data should be deleted when a contract expires. The problem, though, is how the law has been implemented. "For Wall, the stakes are more than procedural. Florida law requires her to certify proper data disposal within 90 days. That deadline passed months ago with the vendor she has been dealing with, through no fault of her own." Why is the educator legally responsible, when it is only the company that is actually able to delete the data? Also, note this little tidbit near the end: "many districts skip legal review for low-cost or free tools. 'Teachers signing up for free products do not get reviewed.'" So, um, no free products?  

This is the archived site of a paywalled 404 Media article describing how the American F.B.I. is trying to find out who is running the archive site this archive is on. "The subpoena, which was posted on X by archive.today on October 30, was sent by the FBI to Tucows, a popular Canadian domain registrar." I would think the FBI would subpoena services that are actually within its jurisdiction, but that's just me. Here's the archive of the original news article, in German, where the story surfaced. 

I'm not really sure what to make of this, even after spending a half hour or so reading everything on the site along with some associated links, such as the Society for Decision Education, Decision Education Foundation and podcast. Here's what the website says: "Decision Education prepares students to flourish in our ever-changing world. It';s about teaching students how to think, not what to think." Here are some tools, which all appear pretty basic. Maybe it's real, maybe it's corporate, maybe it's political - I really can't tell, so I just pass it on.

I referenced this in my presentation yesterday. Decentralized communities are "communities where decision-making, content creation, and governance are distributed among members rather than controlled by a central authority." As they say, "Decentralised communities are not a trend - they're a response to a deeper shift in how people connect, collaborate, and build trust online. They reflect a growing desire for autonomy, ownership, and collective agency."