OLDaily

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

OpenAI: Introducing study mode
Simon Willison, Simon Willison's Weblog, 2025/08/25

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ChatGPT launched a 'study mode' feature in July which they say is a set of "custom system instructions we've written in collaboration with teachers, scientists, and pedagogy experts to reflect a core set of behaviors that support deeper learning including." In this post, Simon Willison reveals the (surprisingly short) prompt.

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XSLT removal will break multiple government and regulatory sites across the world
Dmitrii 'Mamut' Dimandt, GitHub, 2025/08/25

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Some time in August some companies (read: Google) proposed the removal of the XML stylesheet language, or XSLT, from the HTML specification. There was a slightly delayed reaction (it was, after all, August) but then people began to push back. This post in the HTML 'issues' section (now 'closed') raises some of them, and lists a variety of places where XSLT is used. Of particular note: "There's no public record for the decision. The only publicly available discussion you linked to clearly states that the numbers are not low enough, people will object to this decision, and that the discussion should be postponed. There's no investigation into the long tail of web sites, of how many exactly would be broken etc."

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Introduction to AT Protocol
Kuba Suder, MacKuba, 2025/08/25

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This is a long and detailed overview of Bluesky's ATmosphere Protocol (ATProto) including the types of servers involved and how they interoperate. Many of the individual bits have already been discussed in OLDaily before, including several of the documents listed at the end of the article, but it's worth seeing it all put together. I've commented before that ATProto is impressive in its ambition, and in theory a distributed fediverse is supported. But it might be like so much of the technology we've seen over the years: overbuilt for its intended purpose, and ultimately undermined by the voracious appetites of its VC backers. Still, in many ways it's a work of art and I invite readers to admire it.

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The Day AI Analyzed My Entire Knowledge System: MCP + Obsidian in Action
W. Ian O'Byrne, 2025/08/25

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I had an interesting conversation with Ian O'Byrne after he posted this item on using an AI to analyze all his notes on Obsidian. "Instead of generic advice, I got a systematic analysis of my actual knowledge system, complete with specific examples, quantified insights, and actionable recommendations." What I thought might be interesting would be to see the AI compare and contrast two separate sets of notes from different people. "Imagine what an AI would reveal if it analysed yours and Will Richardson's notes side-by-side."

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JavaScript Calendar
2025/08/25

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This item, via Alan Levine, is mostly for myself, as it offers a nice base to allow me to add a calendar function to CList (I really need a new name for the application - any suggestions?). What's attractive is that there's a plain vanilla Javascript version, which allows me to continue my approach of now requiring any large framework in the application code.

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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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