Stephen Downes

Services around the world that depend on PHP (that would include things like WordPress and Pixelfed) are either offline or being repaired today as a result of a new and critical PHP vulnerability. Here's the official announcement. I have one website running on PHP, my leftish.media blog. I checked and there isn't a patched PHP Docker container available yet, so I set a reminder to check tomorrow. Anyhow, this page has information about the vulnerability and, more importantly, what you need to recover from it.

The Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF) universal distributed ID (DID) resolver has been shot down, with users now being directed to a second tier of providers, including especially GoDiddy, who created the DIF's reference implementation, and thisDID, by GoPlausible. "Both deployments are deployed and funded by DIF members, who maintain the respective reference implementations they are based on through DIF." This might be thought of as a maturation of the specification, though of course there are risks that it will be commercialized and enclosed. See also the DIF Identifiers & Discovery Working Group.

Doug Belshaw links to and discusses the idea to the 'scenius'. The linked article notes, "Culture isn't created by outliers. Most new movements and leaps forward in culture usually come from groups of creatives encouraging each other; competing with and arguing with each other; reacting for or against each others' work." Belshaw comments, "there's a new article out by Drs Helen DeWaard, Verena Roberts, Leo Havemann, and Gabi Witthaus entitled Disputatio in the Digital Agora: Opening the Doctorate Through Dialogue. I wonder what would have happened had my own doctoral studies eveolved in the open, among a community of interested people. That wasn't an option back then, and my pursuit of connectionist knowledge in a philosophical sense was a solitary struggle that was ultimately unsuccessful in landing me the title and the degree.

"If personal AI tutors seem too good to be true," writes  Mia Travers-Hayward, "that's because they are. This vision is built on a lie. Tech won't save our school systems. AI tutors can't substitute the care of a human teacher." I have two things I need to say about this (you can read the argument and supporting evidence for yourself). First, it is way too early to be talking about what AI can or cannot do in education. Second, the whole concept of 'AI tutors' is based on some sort of direct instruction fantasy model, and this is not how education in the future will play out. Will people still need care in the future? Sure. Will they need to get it from teachers? Debatable.

This is a great visualization of some basic principles of graph theory using the 'six degrees of Kevin Bacon' as an example. This is "a game where players try to connect any actor to Kevin Bacon in fewer than six steps, where each step links two actors who co-starred in a film." But Kevin Bacon isn't the most connected actor; he's not even close. Who is? Who's next? Via Alan Levine.

Ben Werdmiller writes, "When people see AI as a more competent, trustworthy, and preferable source of input than a colleague, they replace human interactions that otherwise would have built or maintained trust." My response, only partly in jest, was that "Maybe the colleagues should try being better colleagues?" I am reminded of the time a couple years ago a manager suggested that a colleague help me with my coding and server setup and the response was, "Just use Claude." People are pulled in multiple directions and don't always have time and inclination to help with your project. The 'team', meanwhile, is a way of getting you to help with their projects, and to put yours on the backburner. Anyhow, here's the HBR article Werdmuller is discussing.