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Canvas Credentials 101
Instructure, 2025/06/18

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Doug Belshaw summarizes, "Instructure acquired Badgr a few years ago and renamed it to 'Canvas Credentials'. They're now instituting pay-to-play for badge issuing, but there are plenty of alternatives, including those listed here." The image provided by Philippe Petitqueux on LinkedIn seems to confirm this, although there are no press releases or statements yet on the Instructure website. Free issuers will no longer be allowed to be created June 30, and the whole free issuer system shuts down December 31. This yet another reminder not to trust platforms for any critical functions.

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In praise of reminders
Clark Quinn, Learnlets, 2025/06/18

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I pretty much depend on reminders. No, it's not because I forget dates and appointments and such; I can retain this knowledge pretty effectively in my head or on a notepad. No, it's because I tend to become overly focused on what I'm doing (especially if I'm writing or coding) and lose all track of what's going on around me. A qualify reminder will break me out of that with enough time to spare to allow a quick break. Reminder systems, though, are notoriously fickle for me because I don't have a single source of data - my work and personal calendars, for example, are completely separate. If I'm on the wrong system when the reminder comes in, it's easy to miss. And the software can be flakey - my Thunderbird email client, for example, is constantly tooting reminders at me long after the event has passed.

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Our society is in the thrall of dumb management, and functions as such
Doug Belshaw, Thought Shrapnal, 2025/06/18

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Doug Belshaw summarizes Ed Zitron's recent article (covered here), does me the favour of introducing me to Guy Debord (the Society of the Spectacle) and gets to what's wrong with Zitron: "I think that writers such as Zitron have a duty to spell out the kind of utopia that he thinks we should be striving for. As with other techno-critics, it's all very well pointing out how terrible things and people are, but if this is what you are doing, you need to be explicit about your position. What do you stand for?" In our media space, however, criticizing the system is what gets the clicks.

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Why Centralized AI Is Not Our Inevitable Future
Alex Komoroske, TechDirt, 2025/06/18

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Yes, let's ask this question before we roll out the technology, not after (the way we did for social media): "When your AI assistant is funded by keeping you engaged rather than helping you flourish, whose interests does it really serve?" Right, exactly. We'll get the AI equivalent of clickbait, which nobody wants. What's the alternative? "Every person deserves a Private Intelligence that works only for them, with no ulterior motives or conflicts of interest. Your AI should be like having your own personal cloud—as private as running software on your own device." Of course, people have been saying similar things for decades now. And yet we keep getting centralized tech, not personal tech. Via Apostolos K.

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