OLDaily

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

Clippy
Felix Rieseberg, GitHub, 2025/05/08

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This is fun. "Clippy let's you run a variety of large language models (LLMs) locally on your computer while sticking with a user interface of the 1990s. Through Llama.cpp, it supports models in the popular GGUF format, which is to say most publicly available models. It comes with one-click installation support for Google's Gemma3, Meta's Llama 3.2, Microsoft's Phi-4, and Qwen's Qwen3." I haven't tried it - I don't actually want Clippy on my computer - but if you missed Clippy in its prime, this will take you back. Via the Register.

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Grappling With Systems Collapse: How Social Sector Leaders Can Respond
Liz Ruedy, Tom Glaisyer, Rachel Reichenbach, SSIR, 2025/05/08

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Food for thought. The argument offered here suggests that when the existing social system is headed for inevitable collapse (perhaps accelerated by a disruptive dragon king event such as a government operating outside the bounds of the constitution) the only useful response by change-makers is a 'creative' response "thinking about our political and governing systems in terms that rebuild trust and community, connect to a sense of agency and participation that goes beyond elections, and centers individual and collective well-being." Other measures (the article offers examples ranging from protecting the marginalized, resisting unlawful orders, or strikes and protests) intended to protect the existing system do not bring about productive results. This reads like a "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" moment, but without the insight that there should not be a Caesar.

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MCP: What It Is and Why It Matters--Part 1
Addy Osmani, O'Reilly Media, 2025/05/08

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The real value of this article is the image (from The New Stack) making it clearer than a thousand words exactly what model context protocol (MCP) does in the world of AI. "In a nutshell, MCP is like giving your AI assistant a universal remote control to operate all your digital devices and services. Instead of being stuck in its own world, your AI can now reach out and press the buttons of other applications safely and intelligently."

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Things from the 1980s
TikTok, 2025/05/08

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I saw this on the morning news: a two part (part one, part two) TikTok video where a father asks his 16-year old daughter about terms from the 1980s. Unsurprisingly, she doesn't know what they mean. But what I found interesting were her responses, where she shared what she thought they meant. It was exactly the same sort of response as we get from ChatGPT when we ask it a term it doesn't know (like "You can't lick a badger twice"). Human hallucination tricks! People argue that AI hallucinations are evidence that they don't think the same way humans do; I think hallucinations are evidence that the way AI and humans think is more similar than you think.

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Cursor
2025/05/08

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I was surprised yesterday when instead of the usual audience of zero people my livestream of 'Stephen Follows Instructions' attracted dozens. The fame! 'Stephen Follows Instructions' is a series where I try to follow instructions for various software products and services. In this episode I was trying to learn Typescript. Anyhow, in the chat participants mentioned several AI coding assistants. This link, Cursor, is one. Another two were Windsurf and Bubble. Of course I'll be trying these out, though it should be noted that pricing ranges from $US 15-30 per month. So I will likely continue to just use VS Code, which doesn't cost me anything.

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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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