Rolandt

Spring is in the air in a lot of places, and that means it’s time to dig up the bicycle from winter hibernation and have a ride. Not much beats the satisfaction of a casual ride in perfect weather. A gentle breeze kisses your face. The sun shines on you but it’s not too hot.

But then you realize you’re on a road without a bike lane and there’s heavy traffic. A semi truck rushes past you and you feel the weight of air almost blow you off your bike. Shoot. If only there was a map that you looked at beforehand that showed you the safe places to ride.

Oh wait, there’s this bike riding map from Mapzen that colors roads by three tiers of safety. Score.

Tags: biking, Mapzen

And here’s the kicker: She could do all of this with the screen turned off. Her phone’s battery lasted forever.

Ever since that day, I’ve been like a kid at a magic show. I’ve wanted to know how it’s done. I’ve wanted an inside look at how the blind could navigate a phone that’s basically a slab of featureless glass.

This week, I got my chance. Joseph Danowsky offered to spend a morning with me, showing me the ropes.

Joe majored in economics at the University of Pennsylvania, got a law degree at Harvard, worked in the legal department at Bear Stearns, became head of solutions at Barclays Wealth, and is now a private-client banker at US Trust. He commutes to his office in Manhattan every morning from his home in New Jersey.

Joe was born with cone-rod dystrophy. He can see general shapes and colors, but no detail. (Only about 10 or 15 percent of visually impaired people see no light or color at all.) He can’t read a computer screen or printed materials, recognize faces, read street signs or building numbers, or drive. And he certainly can’t see what’s on his phone.

Yet Joe spends his entire day on his iPhone. In fact, he calls it “probably the number one assistive device for people who can’t see,” right up there with “a cane and a seeing eye dog.”

The key to all of this is an iPhone (AAPL) feature called VoiceOver. At its heart, it’s a screen reader—software that makes the phone speak everything you touch. (Android’s TalkBack feature is similar in concept, but blind users find it far less complete; for example, it doesn’t work in all apps.)

You turn on VoiceOver in Settings -> General -> Accessibility. If you turn on VoiceOver, you hear a female voice begin reading the names of the controls she sees on the screen. You can adjust the Speaking Rate of the synthesized voice.

There’s a lot to learn in VoiceOver mode; people like Joe have its various gestures committed to muscle memory, so that they can operate with incredible speed and confidence.

But the short version is that you touch anything on the screen—icons, words, even status icons at the top; as you go, the voice tells you what you’re tapping. “Messages.” “Calendar.” “Mail—14 new items.” “45 percent battery power.” You can tap the dots on the Home screen, and you’ll hear, “Page 3 of 9.”

You don’t even have to lift your finger; you can just slide it around, getting the lay of the land.

Once you’ve tapped a screen element, you can also flick your finger left or right—anywhere on the screen—to “walk” through everything on the screen, left to right, top to bottom.

Ordinarily, you tap something on the screen to open it. But since single-tapping now means “speak this,” you need a new way to open everything. So: To open something you’ve just heard identified, you double tap. (You don’t have to wait for the voice to finish talking.) In fact, you can double-tap anywhere on the screen; since the phone already knows what’s currently “highlighted,” it’s like pressing the Enter key.

There are all kinds of other special gestures in VoiceOver. You can make the voice stop speaking with a two-finger tap; read everything, in sequence, from the top of the screen with a two-finger upward flick; scroll one page at a time with a three-finger flick up or down; go to the next or previous screen (Home, Stocks, and so on) with a three-finger flick left or right; and more.

If you do a three-finger triple-tap, you turn on Screen Curtain, meaning that the screen goes black. You gain visual privacy as well as a heck of a battery boost. (Repeat to turn the screen back on.)

Joe, however, doesn’t see that battery boost, since he’s on the phone all day long. In fact, he’s equipped his phone with one of those backup-battery cases.

The Rotor

Joe also demonstrated for me the Rotor: a brilliant solution to a thorny problem. There are dozens of settings to control in a screen reader like VoiceOver: voice, gender, language, volume, speaking speed, verbosity, and so on. How do you make all of these options available in a concise form that you can call up from within any app—especially for people who can’t see controls on the screen?

The Rotor is an imaginary dial. It appears when you twist two fingers on the screen as if you were turning an actual dial.

Each “notch” around the dial represents a different setting you might want to change: Characters, Words, Speech Rate, Volume, Punctuation, Zoom, and so on.

“Let’s say we want VoiceOver to read word by word, because there’s something there that we want to hear spelled. We bring up the Rotor,” Joe told me. “It’s a deep menu system. And I can choose what I’m putting there, and the order. There are 20 or 30 items that could go on the Rotor.”

Once you’ve dialed up a setting, you can get VoiceOver to move from one item to another by flicking a finger up or down. For example, if you’ve chosen Volume from the Rotor, then you make the playback volume louder or quieter with each flick up or down. If you’ve chosen Zoom, then each flick adjusts the screen magnification.

The Rotor is especially important if you’re reading on the web. It lets you jump among web page elements like pictures, headings, links, text boxes, and so on. Use the Rotor to choose, for example, images—then you can flick up and down from one picture to the next on that page.

A day in the life

Joe walked me through a typical day, starting with a check of the weather and the train schedule, followed by a scan of his To Do list and email Inbox; on the train, he might read the news or listen to a podcast, audiobook, or music.

Through the workday, he has a few other tricks:

• “There’s another gesture, called scrubbing. You take two fingers, and you kind of Z-line it. It means, ‘Go Back.’
• “Getting a cab is very hard for me to do. I’ll be standing on the street corner, and people look at me and say, ‘What is this guy doing?’ They don’t see that I’m visually impaired, that I can’t see if somebody’s inside the cab! But now, I call a Lyft car or an Uber car, and it’s saying, ‘The car is 2 minutes away’; I just call him. I’m gonna say to the driver, ‘I’m on this corner, I’ve got a blue shirt on, I’ve got a briefcase. I can’t recognize you, so just yell out to me when you get there.’”
• “It’s also kinda cool to be able to project my photos to a huge TV screen. There’s a lot I can see if I get in really close to the screen.”
• If he needs to read a printed document, Joe uses called Kurzweil’s KNFB Reader app. As I watched, he used it to photograph a printed letter; instantly, the app converted the image to text and began reading it aloud, with astonishing accuracy.
• This was very cool: “If I’m in my office and put my headphones on, I’m hearing the phone call and I’m hearing what VoiceOver is saying, all through the headphones. But the person on the other end cannot hear any of the VoiceOver stuff. You don’t know what I’m reading, what I’m doing. I can do all these complicated things without you hearing it. That’s what’s really incredible. If you and I were working together on a three-way call, and you were to text me, ‘Let’s wrap this up’ or ‘Don’t bring that up on this call’—I would know, but the other guy wouldn’t hear it.
• Joe showed me how he takes photos. As he holds up the iPhone, VoiceOver tells him what he’s seeing: “One face. Centered. Focus lock,” and so on. Later, as he’s reviewing his photos in the Camera Roll, VoiceOver once again tells him what he’s looking at: “One face; slightly blurry.”
• “If a cab or an Uber lets me off somewhere, and I’m not sure which way is uptown, I open the Compass app. Since NYC is a nice grid, it lets me know which way I’m walking.”
• “Or I might just say to Siri, ‘Where am I?’ She tells me exactly where I am.”
• Joe uses a lot of text macros. He’s set one up that says, for example, “Where are you?” when he types.
• He knows the positions of all his apps’ icons—but often, he’ll just say to Siri, “Open Calendar” (or whatever).

The big picture

I asked Joe if there’s anything he’d ask Apple to improve in VoiceOver.

“The biggest problem with the iPhone is when you use it a lot, you need a bigger battery. I’m using it all the time. If the phone were just a little thicker, to accommodate a double battery, that’d be a nice thing. I’m also a little disappointed they did away with the standard headphone jack, because when you use it a lot, you need to charge it all the time [and the new earbuds plug into the Lightning charging jack].”

I pointed out that none of his complaints about the iPhone have anything to do with accessibility. They’re the same complaints we all have.

“I know,” he said, laughing. “VoiceOver is very consistent and it’s extremely good. There’s no problem with VoiceOver.”

(The Associated Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired would undoubtedly agree; in January, it gave Apple its Louis Braille Award.)

And how about society? What don’t we understand? What drives him crazy? “Stop grabbing my arm when I’m crossing the street,” or “Stop talking louder to me”?

“I have to tell you, there aren’t that many anymore, surprisingly,” he replied. “As more visually impaired people enter the workforce, there aren’t too many things, honestly.”

There’s an age gap in awareness of these accessibility features, too. “What I find is, people who are older, in their 70s, who have macular degeneration and could benefit from this, don’t,” Joe says. “I don’t know why. To me, it’s so intuitive and fast and easy.”

Well, here’s the bright side: Maybe Joe’s story will help get the word out.

David Pogue, tech columnist for Yahoo Finance, welcomes non-toxic comments in the Comments below. On the web, he’s davidpogue.com. On Twitter, he’s @pogue. On email, he’s poguester@yahoo.com. You can read all his articles here or you can sign up to get his columns by email. 

David Friend, Globe, Mail, Mar 13, 2017

First they were getting honorary doctorates. Now celebrities and musicians are teaching university classes. or, more accurately, being used as vehicles to teach university classes. "Mahmood says her professor warned students this wouldn’ t be a series of breezy lectures on Beyonce’ s glamorous life. Instead, the pop singer would be a vehicle for exploring broader issues like race, feminism and performance theory, though her self-titled 2013 album." I suppose i could change the format of OLDaily to match. Each day I could use a new actor or singer to highlight developments in media literacy, learning theory, and instructional technology. Today: Elton John's glasses give him a "lens" on the world.

Jim Groom, bavatuesdays, Mar 13, 2017

During my talk yesterday someone asked, "which will I see first: a PLE, or a unicorn?" The money seemed to be on the unicorn. But something like a personal learning environment seems to e getting closer and closer. Case in point: the  Nordic model for human centered personal data management and processing. Jim Groom writes, "I really am compelled by the MyData model in the Scandinavian countries because they may be able to pull it off." And his own model of the web as e-learning platform is finally getting some traction from no less than the Horizon Report (for what that's worth). "The reframing of how we imagine personal data and the work we do inside and outside of a particular course does become an interesting moment  for re-positioning the faculty or the student as a node within a broader network through which they share with one another." As I said yesterday, one of these days the PLE will be "invented" by someone at Stanford or MIT. That's how these things go.

Brad Phaisan, ReadWrite, Mar 13, 2017

It's hard to believe that virtual reality (VR) has already served 100 million advertisements, but there you have it. What have advertisers learned? Probably a lot more than this article tells us. But we do learn that "All data suggests that VR experiences gain higher attention from audiences. With higher engagement from audiences, brands can ensure that their message is delivered more effectively."

Education Politics

As if applying for financial aid wasn’t difficult enough already, it appears that the IRS Data Retrieval Tool, which pulls tax information into the FAFSA app, “will be unavailable for several weeks.” Great timing, IRS.

Via The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Congress, in an effort to limit federal involvement in higher education, has voted to eliminate Obama-era regulations on teacher-preparation programs.”

Via PBS Newshour: “Senate votes to end Obama school accountability rules.”

Via The LA Times: “Trump wants to create a national private school choice program. Here’s how it could work.”

Via NPR: “‘Tax Credit Scholarships,’ Praised By Trump, Turn Profits For Some Donors.”

Via Chalkbeat: “Three months into Tennessee’s first voucher foray, 35 students are enrolled.”

Via NPR: “Trump’s International Policies Could Have Lasting Effects On Higher Ed.”

Via ProPublica: “Meet the Hundreds of Officials Trump Has Quietly Installed Across the Government.” Education Department hires include a venture capitalist, members of the Trump campaign, and a KIPP school founder.

Via Rolling Stone: “Betsy DeVos’ Holy War.”

Via Buzzfeed: “A Surprising Number Of People Say They Have An Opinion About Betsy DeVos In This New Poll.”

An op-ed in Techcrunch by Kadenze co-founder Ajay Kapur: “What Betsy DeVos’ confirmation means for innovation in education.”

The Hechinger Report asks, “What can Betsy DeVos really do?”

Including this news item here as there’s also an “odd” link to Betsy DeVos. Via CNN: “Sources: FBI investigation continues into ‘odd’ computer link between Russian bank and Trump Organization.”

Via eCampus News: “The 2 edtech fields with the most potential under Trump.” (Spoiler alert: “workforce initiatives” and “accountability.” Saved you a click.)

The New York Times on how Trump became “the first Silicon Valley President.”

Via Mashable: “Trump’s favorite techie thinks there should be ‘more open debate’ on global warming.” Trump’s favorite techie is, of course, Peter Thiel.

More about Trump’s immigration policies in a separate section below. And more about Trump and for-profit higher ed policies in the for-profit higher ed section below.

Via The Chicago Tribune: “Chance the Rapper writes $1 million check to CPS as a ‘call to action’.”

“The History of the Future of E-rate” by me.

According to the EFF, “A Dangerous California Bill Would Leave Students and Teachers Vulnerable to Intrusive Government Searches.” More on AB 165 from the ACLU, which also opposes the proposed law.

Following up on ProPublica reporting, “Florida to Examine Whether Alternative Charter Schools Underreport Dropouts.”

Via The Register Guard: “The Eugene School Board on Wednesday postponed until March 15 a decision on whether to further restrict information available in student directories, such as a student’s date or place of birth.”

Via Education Week: “The Ohio education department could seek repayment of more than $80 million from nine full-time online schools, based on audits of software-login records that led state officials to determine the schools had overstated their student enrollment.”

Via The Washington Post: “Muslim students tried to meet with a lawmaker. They were first asked: ‘Do you beat your wife?’” The lawmaker in question: Oklahoma State Representative John Bennett.

Via The Chronicle of Higher Education: “177 Private Colleges Fail Education Dept.’s Financial-Responsibility Test.”

Via Teen Vogue: “Virginia and North Carolina Schools to Close on ‘A Day Without a Woman’.”

Via The New Inquiry: “A Women’s Strike Syllabus.”

Immigration and Education

Trump has issued an update to his Muslim ban. Via The Chronicle of Higher Education: “New Travel Ban Still Sows Chaos and Confusion.”

Via Inside Higher Ed: “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that it is temporarily suspending premium processing of H–1B skilled worker visa applications for up to six months, beginning on April 3.”

Via The New York Times: “A Rush for Birth Certificates, as Immigrants Try to Hold Families Together.”

Also via The New York Times: “Educators Prepare for Immigration Agents at the Schoolhouse.”

Via NPR Code Switch: “Teachers, Parents Struggle To Comfort Children Of Color Fearful Of Targeted Raids.”

Via The Washington Post: “A U.S. citizen is denied college aid – because of her mother’s immigration status.”

Via The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Republican State Lawmakers Seek to Ban ‘Sanctuary’ Campuses.” That is, legislators in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, and Texas.

Education in the Courts

The US Supreme Court will not hear a case regarding a trans high school student’s bathroom options at his high school. The case now goes back to the 4th Circuit Court. That student, the incredible Gavin Grimm wrote an op-ed in The New York Times: “The Fight for Transgender Rights Is Bigger Than Me.”

Via The New York Times: “Trump University Lawsuits May Not Be Closed After All.”

Via the BBC: “Facebook Reports BBC to Police Over Investigation Into Child Sex Images.” More on this story and concerns about how Facebook moderates content via Techcrunch.

Testing, Testing…

Via Inside Higher Ed: “Harvard Law School announced Wednesday that it will start an experiment in which it will accept the Graduate Record Examination for admissions, not just the traditionally required Law School Admission Test.”

Via The Denver Post: “Colorado juniors face new, revamped college exam in SAT after state dumps rival ACT.”

Via The Washington Post: “ School offers ‘incentives’ to get kids to take Common Core standardized test.”

Via Chalkbeat: “Data shows Indiana students are taking AP exams, but half aren’t passing them.”

The “New” For-Profit Higher Ed

Tressie McMillan Cottom on The Daily Show. Tressie McMillan Cottom’s new book on for-profit higher ed reviewed by The New York Times.

Via Inside Higher Ed: “The Dream Center Foundation, a religious missionary organization based in Los Angeles, plans to buy EDMC, a struggling for-profit chain that enrolls 65,000 students. The resulting nonprofit college group will be secular.” “I Honestly Don’t Get This,” “Dean Dad” Matt Reed writes in response.

Via The Wall Street Journal: “Trump Administration Delays Enforcement of Obama-Era Rules on For-Profit Colleges.” The “gainful employment” rules, that is.

Via ProPublica: “These For-Profit Schools Are ‘Like a Prison’.” The schools are run by Camelot Education.

More on the for-profit “school” Trump University in the courts section above. More on HR changes at UofP in the HR section below.

Online Education and the Once and Future “MOOC”

An op-ed in Forbes by University Ventures’ Ryan Craig: “Make Online Education Great (For The First Time).”

Via The Financial Times: “Coursera chief on the future of online learning and the Trump era.”

New Nanodegrees from Udacity: Digital Marketing and Robotics.

More on the politics of online education in the politics section above.

Meanwhile on Campus…

The Atlantic profiles “The Violent Fight for Higher Education” in South Africa.

Via The Washington Post: “‘Unprecedented effort’ by ‘white supremacists’ to recruit and target college students, group claims.”

Speaking of which, so many “takes” this week about protests at a talk by Charles Murray at Middlebury College.

Via The Mercury News: “A conservative student organization, fighting for a toe-hold of official recognition in the liberal Bay Area, scored a victory at Santa Clara University where a vice provost overturned a student senate decision and granted a charter to Turning Point USA.”

Via The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Here’s a Roundup of the Latest Campus-Climate Incidents Early in the Trump Presidency.”

Via The New York Times: “Campus Backlash After Leaders of Black Colleges Meet With Trump.”

“Starting March 15, the university will begin removing more than 20,000 video and audio lectures from public view as a result of a Justice Department accessibility order,” reports Inside Higher Ed. That’s UC Berkeley. David Kernohan responds. (Here’s a story I wrote a couple of years ago about the history of webcasting at Berkeley.)

Via The LA Times: “Inside Celerity charter school network, questionable spending and potential conflicts of interest abound.”

Via CBC News: “Ottawa teacher sent home after cutting hair of 7-year-old boy with autism.”

Via The New York Times: “College Student Suffers Severe Reaction After Hazing Involving Peanut Butter.”

Via The Guardian: “Sexual harassment ‘at epidemic levels’ in UK universities.”

Via The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Northwestern U. Is Accused of Violating Academic Freedom.”

Via The Mercury News: “University of California proposes first enrollment cap on out-of-state students.”

Via The New York Times: “Years of Ethics Charges, but Star Cancer Researcher Gets a Pass.” The researcher in question, Carlo Croce from Ohio State University.

Go, School Sports Team!

“Why Sports and Elite Academics Do Not Mix” according to The Atlantic’s Jonathan R. Cole.

Via Inside Higher Ed: “In December, an association representing the country’s top athletics directors created a political action committee. It joins the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s own lobbying efforts, which have more than doubled in the past five years.”

From the HR Department

“Head of Savannah College of Art and Design was the top-paid college leader in 2014,” says The Wall Street Journal. She made $9.6 million.

Timothy Slottow, the president of the University of Phoenix, will step down.

Via GeekWire: “Amazon Education GM leaves; company says it ‘remains committed’ to K–12 technology.” That’s Rohit Agarwal, founder of TenMarks, a math startup that Amazon acquired in 2013.

Via The Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss: “Head of DeVos-founded group resigns after saying he wanted to ‘shake’ an official ‘like I like to shake my wife’.” That’s the Great Lakes Education Project and executive director Gary Naeyaert.

Via Inside Higher Ed: “A National Labor Relations Board office rejected Columbia University‘s objections to a recent graduate employee union election Monday, recommending that United Auto Workers be certified as the students’ collective bargaining representative.”

“Graduate student employees at Duke University on Tuesday withdrew their petition to form a union affiliated with Service Employees International Union,” Inside Higher Ed reports.

Via The Chronicle of Higher Education: “President of Morehouse College Has Not Been Ousted, It Says.”

The Business of Job Training

An op-ed in Techcrunch by University Ventures’ Ryan Craig: “Blame bad applicant tracking for the soft skills shortage at your company.”

Contests

Via Deadspin: “Five-Year-Old Set To Become Youngest-Ever Contestant At National Spelling Bee.”

This Week in Betteridge’s Law of Headlines

Via Education Dive: “Can this Montessori’s AltSchool partnership help scale the model?”

(Reminder: according to Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.”)

Upgrades and Downgrades

Remember the Thiel Fellows? Here’s a puff piece from Business Insider on what “some of the most successful” ones are up to these days.

Via The Outline: “Google’s featured snippets are worse than fake news.”

“How ‘News Literacy’ Gets the Web Wrong” by Mike Caulfield.

Via The Guardian: “Essays for sale: the booming online industry in writing academic work to order.”

John Deasy, former LAUSD Superintendent, is heading a new education publication, The Line – it has a corporate backer, Frontline Education.

“What’s the problem with competency based education?” asks Graham Attwell.

“When Social Media Assignments Increase Risks for Vulnerable Students” by Monica Bulger and Jade E. Davis.

“I learned how to do math with the ancient abacus – and it changed my life,” says Ulrich Boser.

Offering “modules” in an LMS is, apparently, newsworthy.

USA Funds is changing its name to Strada Education Network.

Techcrunch profiles a tutoring company: “Tutoring startup Toot launches into twin policy storms around education and immigration.”

Also via Techcrunch: “Parental control service ‘Circle with Disney’ to help with distracted driving, social media, kids’ chores & more.”

Also via Techcrunch: “Current wants to digitize your kid’s allowance with an app and a debit card.”

(Do note: startups selling to parents, rather than startups selling to schools.)

Via Campus Technology: “Johns Hopkins U Website Ranks K-12 Reading, Math Programs Under ESSA Standards.”

I’ve carved off all the “upgrades” and “downgrades” and press releases from SXSWedu into their own category, below.

Dispatches from SXSWedu

Keynotes from Sara Goldrick-Rab and Christopher Emdin.

Via EdWeek Market Brief: “SXSWedu Speakers Break Down Ed-Tech Market Activity Around the Globe.”

Also via EdWeek Market Brief: “Startup Founder Offers Peek Inside Venture Capital Dealmaking at SXSWedu.”

Via The 74: “South by Southwest Education: 10 New Ed Tech Startups About to Grab the Spotlight in Austin.”

Via Campus Technology: “Quizlet Debuts Study Feature That Helps Students Study Efficiently.”

“At #SXSWEdu @TFerriss Espouses The Virtues of Discomfort. Then This Happened,” says Lisa Nielsen. The “this” that happened was an angry response from the audience to Tim Ferriss’ talk, particularly from teacher Derek Breen.

Via Edsurge: “Startup Showdown: Recruiting Startup ‘The Whether’ Takes Home Launch Competition Prize.”

Via SXSWedu: “At SXSWedu, ‘Mastery-Based’ Lessons Touted as Option for Equity.”

Via Edsurge: “Is Edtech Worsening or Righting Inequities in Education? From the SXSWedu Floor.” I can’t think of a better place to ask that question than a corporate event, can you.

Robots and Other Ed-Tech SF

“New study raises concerns about impact of automated social media advocacy on education coverage,” says Alexander Russo. Robots hate the Common Core.

Via Reuters: “Amazon deepens university ties in artificial intelligence race.”

Via The Washington Post: “How millions of kids are being shaped by know-it-all voice assistants.”

Via Techcrunch: “Disney Research has robots matching verbal styles with kids.”

Via PC Magazine: “Researchers Show Off ‘Mind-Reading’ Robot.”

Via Big Tomorrow: “Imagining an AI-First Student Experience.”

Via Motherboard: “Could AI Replace Student Testing?” (Clearly this story could also go in the “Betteridge’s Law of Headlines” section.)

“‘Artificial Intelligence’ Has Become Meaningless,” says Ian Bogost.

Via Quartz: “So long, banana-condom demos: Sex and drug education could soon come from chatbots.”

Venture Capital and the Business of Ed-Tech

Google is acquiring machine learning contest site Kaggle. (Kaggle hosted the robo-essay-grading competition, sponsored by the Hewlett Foundation.)

Grading platform Kiddom has raised $6.5 million from Khosla Ventures. Edsurge notes the deal was led by Keith Rabois, does not note the allegations of sexual harassment against Rabois that prompted him to resign from Square in 2013 or the 1992 incident at Stanford where Rabois allegedly hurled anti-gay insults at a professor. Another great investor for the future of education technology!

An op-ed in Techcrunch by University Ventures co-founder Daniel Pianko: “Rethinking return on education investment.”

Via The New York Times: “Valuation Shell Game: Silicon Valley’s Dirty Secret.”

Privacy, Surveillance, and Information Security

Via the Office of Inadequate Security: “University of Georgia student and employee data found in data dump.”

Via the AP: “ Phishing Scam Hits Connecticut School District, Again.” That’s Groton Public Schools, which the AP helpfully informs us is pronounced GRAH’-tuhn.

Via BlackburnNews.com: “Data Breach At Public School Board.” The board in question: the Greater Essex County District School Board.

Via the CBC: “The University of Moncton says a ninth malicious email was sent to the campus community Thursday night, reaching almost 2,000 students and staff.” The president of the university calls this “cyber terrorism.”

Via The Hechinger Report: “When using data to predict outcomes, consider the ethical dilemmas, new report urges.”

The Guardian on Cambridge Analytica and the “misuse of data in politics.” More on Cambridge Analytica in The New York Times.

There’s more about the politics of data in the politics section above.

Data and “Research”

Via Inside Higher Ed: “Study details tool to help professors measure how much active learning is happening in their classrooms.” It records the voices in a classroom, which seems like a huge privacy violation to me but hey. How else could we possibly tell if there’s “active learning” happening?!

Via Education Week: “New Database Helps Connect Education Researchers, Schools.” It’s called the National Education Researcher Database or NERD.

Via Inside Higher Ed: “Regular drinking isn’t associated with meaningfully lower GPAs, study finds, but those who use alcohol and marijuana do see a decline.”

Via The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Highest Representation of Racial and Ethnic Groups at Liberal-Arts Colleges, Fall 2015.”

“A new study examines how six adult-serving institutions are defining and using alternative credentials such as badges, noncredit certificates and those issued for successful completion of MOOCs or coding and skills boot camps,” Inside Higher Ed reports.

Via Campus Technology: “Report: iPad, Mac Use Growing in Higher Ed.” iPad use?! Seriously?!

Via Futuresource Consulting: “US K–12 Education Digital Management Platforms & Tools Market to Grow at a CAGR of 4.5% to 2020, to Reach $1.83 Billion.” (I had to google “CAGR” – it’s “compound annual growth rate” in case, like me, you weren’t a business major.)

Icon credits: The Noun Project

One thing I’m going to try this year is to write a review of every book I get a chance to read. It’s March already so I’m a bit behind and the next few will be out of order, but this seems like as good a place to start as any.

One new thing I’ve been doing this year is listening to audiobooks with an Audible account, so this first book review is actually an audiobook. Great Courses is actually an old school thing where you could order college lectures on tape. From the references throughout the lectures I listened to, my guess is that the recordings are from the 90s. This one is called From Plato to Post-modernism: Understanding the Essence of Literature and the Role of the Author ($25 on Audible, $9.99 on cassette tape ).

I really enjoyed this series. Some of the early lectures covering Aristotle, Longinus, and Sidney’s “Apology for Poetry” were quite brilliant. Later ones from Foucault and Derrida on were weaker and harder to follow, which I think is a function of both the material, which can be dense when it starts getting into Modernism, the length, fixed at 30 minutes, and the lecturer, Louis Markos. Markos teaches at Houston Baptist University and his asides can sometimes be a little traditional, but in an adorable grandpa way. He has an infectious enthusiasm that makes even the slower chapters on Kant and Schiller bearable, but his love of and fluency in the earlier classics is really a pleasure.

It made me curious to look into more online lectures and sometime this year I’m going to check out this one on Value Theory at Khan academy. I also picked up a used copy of Critical Theory Since Plato which had the original text for many things discussed in the lecture, so was a great reference point when I was at home in Houston, where I end up listening to most audio content since it’s a driving town.

As a continental I have to ask: What took so long?

I admit, the UK should have never been part of the EU in the first place. First and foremost because the ruling class in the UK still has not accepted, emotionally and intellectually, that the Empire is gone. At the end of WWII the Empire ended. It won’t be coming back. Ever.

We’re now close to the UK pulling the trigger on Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty (basically the constitution of the European Union), which reads in full:

1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.

2. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.

3. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.

4. For the purposes of paragraphs 2 and 3, the member of the European Council or of the Council representing the withdrawing Member State shall not participate in the discussions of the European Council or Council or in decisions concerning it.

   A qualified majority shall be defined in accordance with Article 238(3)(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

5. If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49.

In essence, once the UK invokes the article they have two years to untangle all their dealings with the EU. Once that the two years are up any and all obligation either by the EU or by the UK get extinguished. If there is no new contract framework in place, it’ll go back to ‘default’, that is the WTO rules. Which is not a very good outcome, as they really are the lowest common denominator.

What will make this whole thing really interesting is that the noises coming out of Whitehall make it pretty clear that they have no clue as to what this will actually entail, not to mention there is a sort of “down the nose” approach to the EU. Where the likes of Boris Johnson seem to think the EU somehow owes the UK something.

Even funnier is that they do not seem to realize that “Brussels” (their term for the EU) isn’t a single entity. Every little thing that comes out of there is essentially a compromise between the member states.

What that means is, while the leavers in the UK have sold the whole thing as a kind of “one on one” thing, in reality they have to satisfy 27 different nations. To make things even more fun, some regional governments also have a say in it. Just ask Canada about the CETA negotiations, which almost failed at the 11:55 as the Walloons decided they didn’t really like the deal.

But that’s been the thing for the last 40 years or so. The UK never understood the idea of a compromise, it never understood that it was one of 28 nations that all tried to find common ground. Even worse is that the EU encourage this behaviour by consistently giving the UK special treatment, status and other concessions.

Personally, as a continental, as the Brits like to refer to the rest of Europe, I cannot wait for them to get out. They’re stuck in the 19th century and have never grown up. All the arguments for an “Independent UK” are steeped in a time that has long passed.

My only additional wish is: Please fill in the Chunnel, before they realize they’re on an island.

Having said all that: The EU has challenges and problems. But the UKs behaviour has done nothing to help address these. So, don’t let the door hit you on the way out UK. As for Scotland? Feel free to join. You guys are cool.

Update 13.03.2017:

Theresa May and Whitehall really don't get it:

Responding to that statement, the Prime Minister said: "The tunnel vision that the SNP has shown today is deeply regrettable. It sets Scotland on a course for more uncertainty and division, creating huge uncertainty," the PM said.

"This is at a time when the Scottish people, the majority of the Scottish people, do not want a second independence referendum.

"Instead of playing politics with the future of our country the Scottish government should focus on delivering good government and public services for the people of Scotland. Politics is not a game.”

The Blindness and arrogance is pretty staggering, but then again, how else could she respond. She may end up overseeing the end of the United Kingdom because it would not surprise me if Northern Ireland soon starts causing a ruckus as well.

Guess the Imperial Mantra is indeed still strong: Do as I say, not as I do. Let's see how that goes over in the end.

The Guardian wasn't too impressed either.

As designers work in the background to firm up design options for the final Arbutus Greenway, things continue to happen on the temporary greenway. Compared to the last visit, today I saw probably 10 times the number of walkers, riders and dogs.

It looks like the strategy of installing a multi-use temporary surface, with accessible connections in many places, is attracting a diverse user group. All the better for a successful design.

Click any photo to enter a slideshow, with captions that make it all so worthwhile.

Tired of winter, missing your bike? Why wait for spring to ride again. Try biking short distances to start: Ride to the subway station and take the TTC for the rest of the trip. That's how I started. One day I just kept going.

Photo of the author in the Honest Ed's alley way by Yvonne Bambrick.

Unusual Winter Riding Tips

by Tammy Thorne

It’s something you’ve been thinking about trying but you’ve been worried: Will it hurt? Will I embarrass myself? Will I get wet and dirty and ruin my favourite pants?

But you know what? Winter cycling is not as hard as you might think.

Just try it– you might like it!

In this spirit, here are some unusual tips that I hope will motivate and serve you well.

Please Note: These are definitely not the usual 'winter riding' tips and tricks – tips like, slow down, keep a slightly lower air pressure in your tires to help with rougher terrain, layer up, and keep your hands, head and feet dry and toasty at all times. The tips below are things you may not have tried yet that are just as useful for first-time frost bikers as well as the tried-and-true selfie-taking, balaclava-wearing, die-hard year-rounders.

First off, I like to get heated up before I go out – but NOT to the point of sweating, that would be very bad. Bundle up ahead of time and let your body temp rise a wee bit. I find helps me brace for the cold.

Luxury in the bike lane. Wool. I love it and so should you. But why not take it up a notch with cashmere. Cashmere doesn’t have to be costly. There are a number of great vintage shops all around town that sell pre-loved cashmere sweaters and scarves in all shapes, sizes and colours. You can also look for end-of-season sales around this time of year. The Bay sometimes has good deals on cashmere before the spring styles come in.

Wrap it all in a wind and/or waterproof shell. I have an ancient MEC windbreaker that I leave in my pannier. (I do not wear it inside/to events.) You’ll always be ready to roll in the cold with this combo.

TOP TIP: Secondhand fur. Right now I've got a vintage black rabbit fur vest under my leather coat and it’s super toasty. I also have a rabbit fur-lined hat with big-ass earflaps. I can’t hear a damn thing, but that doesn’t matter because I’ve got my eyes peeled and my double-scarf-wrapped neck rotating for a full 360 view of everything around me at all times.

Illustration by Jody Hocs from dandyhorse winter 2012 issue.

Tender tootsies. ALWAYS BRING AN EXTRA PAIR OF SOCKS WITH YOU whenever you ride. Again, I prefer wool – but you do you. Oh and, if your footwear does get soaked, you can help speed up the drying process by stuffing your shoes with newspaper once you arrive at your destination. Wet is the enemy of wise for winter riding. If your boots have already got holes or aren’t fully waterproof you can put a bag inside your boot (on top of your socks.)

PRO TIP: Handlebar gloves aka handlebar booties. Yep, you can get mittens for your handlebars. They’re like little windshields for your fingers.

Bikes mean business. One of the main benefits of biking is knowing you’ll get to your destination on time. That perk doesn’t have to stop in winter. You got this. It’s in the bag. I bring my blazer and heels in my pannier and do a quick-change on arrival to my meeting destination. My pannier (which is also purposely a bit grubby looking) is where I can keep bike-only outer layers like dirty winter footwear and the aforementioned unfashionable outer shell that I don't have a huge sentimental attachment to. If someone takes those things I figure they probably needed them more than I do. (And, personally, I’d probably take that theft as an excuse to go shopping.) Never leave anything in your pannier that has sentimental (or high financial) value.

PRO TIP: Show off your designer DIY skills with groovy arm warmers: one of the most genius extra layers I love. They can be made from old, too-tight sweaters (or find a funky-patterned sweater you like at Value Village and just chop those arms off.) This is the quick-release of layers; just pull it from your cuff and off they come, out of your jacket sleeve, like a magicians trick! Voila! Now you can put your blazer on and slay that meeting.

Winter wonderland on two wheels. When the flakes are big and fluffy, there really isn’t anything more magical than taking a little roll through the nabe at night. Like it is in summer, night riding can be so freeing. Fewer cars and quieter streets make for a great time to practice your handling skills and also practice getting comfortable with taking the lane during winter when snow banks are blocking up the gutter (where cyclists in Toronto are usually expected to ride.)

More than ever, in winter, you need to take the lane. When it’s snowy, you will need to ride where the cars have made tracks, so your wheels are on pavement.

This winter hasn't been that snowy, but it looks like we're in for our final blast here in early March in Toronto before spring - and all the rain - arrives.

FINAL PRO TIP:

Don’t be a hero. I’m not the kind of person who takes a selfie every time I go for a ride when it’s snowing. Who has time for that? And, I say, if it’s sub zero with a windchill that even the caribou would be hiding out from or the streets are filled with enough snow that the mayor might call in the army to help clear it, hey, it’s okay to walk to work that day. You don’t have to be a hero. You might even want to take the subway – that is if it isn’t closed for repairs. And, if you didn’t ride to work that day you can always go for a little rip that night and still get that selfie for Facebook.

...

Once we have a connected network of safe bikeways, the City then needs to maintain those bike lanes so they are clear of obstructions. If this is done year-round then we will without a doubt see more people riding year round.

In the meantime, first-time winter riders need to know two things: Go slow and start low, that is, try out winter riding with shorter trips and just take your time. Plan your trip ahead of time. Regularly clean your chain with a rag and lube it. And do not forget to take your lights with you at all times.

Related on dandyhorsemagazine.com

Winter cycling counts on Bloor

Winter riding tips from Copenhagenize

Bikes on Reels: Wadjda

Not Happy with Snow Clearance in the Bike Lanes? Suck it up.

Cor, this format’s a blast from the past, eh?

Matthew De Abaitua’s The Destructives is the third in the very loose trilogy that began with The Red Men and IF THEN. I loved The Red Men, and found IF THEN hard going (albeit somewhat intentionally. It was… a very sad book, and it conveyed that in all the ways one can.)

I think the third book is possibly my favourite of the three; it is not sad but it feels angry in a powerful, motivating way. It also made me laugh a lot, and like all of De Abaitua’s books, I loved the writing, the tangible feel of it. I read it in paperback meaning it had genuine dog-ears, which also meant I did not transcribe them for a very long while. And now, in a quiet moment, I have.

The book is much, much more than the sum of these quotations; it’s not hugely long but it’s big in all the good ways. You don’t need to read the previous two to read it, though The Red Men may be most similar and IF THEN will prove most illuminating about the Seizure itself.

Anyhow: some lines I underlined, sometimes for the writing, sometimes for the ideas contained. (And all the ideas I didn’t have space for: bloodrooms, more on Long Thoughts, more on emergence, more on ‘soshul’, just what weirdcore is.)

p.46: Theodore goes to visit a colleague.

Pook wore black-framed glasses, his dark hair was flat and neat, his muzzle and upper neck were invariably dark with the beginnings of a beard. He was younger than Theodore by two years, yet he was already a professor, due to this success of his long thought We Are Spent: Fifteen Reasons Why We Should Splice the Human Genome to Create New Consumers. The Moral Arguments Involved Will Surprise You.

p.52: Theodore explains the significant of a clock to Maconochie.

"The clock on the wall has roman numerals. The vases are tapered. It's a show home to evoke Pre-Seizure middle class codes concerning authenticity. Authenticity in the standard two categories: to evoke a usable past and to signify closeness to nature."

p.64: Theodore encounters an AR cat.

…the cat yawned, eyes closed, and the twitching of its ears resumed. But they did not loop. Not right away. The cat's data stream was ongoing, and it was a rich stream of data. For a quantified family, being able to slip on a sensesuit and experience what their cat had been up to that day was a selling point of the technology. The mother and daughter were hidden from him. But the cat – white whiskers, tiger-striping, green iris and sharp oval pupils – the cat was open source.

p.74: Thedore explains the past.

"The cat could be a user interface to guide us through the archive," suggested Theodore. Then, noticing their unfamiliarity with the Pre-Seizure term of user, he explained how people used to be thought of as users in regard to technology and not the other way around.

p.88: Theodore reminisces about Pre-Seizure advertising to women.

He loved the paradoxes of Pre-Seizure culture: on the one hand, building up an iconicity of self-control around images of thinness and athletic discipline, and on the other, unpicking that self-control to create necessary doubt and need. It must have been maddening to live through.

p.89: one such advert.

The two women – the one holding the mobile had blonde hair, her friend had brown hair – constituted a unit tagged as Caucasian Duo. The blonde, being the active one making the loop, was the leader. If there had been a third woman, Theodore knew from other artefacts of the period that it would have been her responsibility to be ethnically diverse.

p.164: the problems of branding.

"A small agency needs an aggressive name. I'm working on a short list: We Are Your Enemy, The Violators, Black Box."

"Lengthen your short list."

p.168: legacy "tech" culture.

"Repeat after me: 'We're all very excited to be working with you on this project.''"

"Excitement is the wrong word."

"It's part of the ritual. The Magnussons are old-fashioned tech entrepreneurs. We have to express excitement. Unless you have a preferred synonym. Would you prefer to be passionate about working on this project?"

p.174: types of silence available to the modern execuitve:

Patricia responded with Pretend Concern, one of the seven types of silence available to the modern executive. Procurement would have expected Pretend Annoyance or even Pretend Contempt in reaction to her own miserly pantomime.

p.184: without too many spoilers, an algorithm:

In the early 2020s, the small port of Newhaven had been acquired by an investment fund with an algorithm as a board member. Putting the algorithm on the board had been a publicity stunt, a way of advertising the fund's dedication to the algorithm as the mover and shaker of the age. But over time, the junior staff created a name for the algorithm, a birth certificate, a national insurance number, a university degree, a passport from the dark net, soshul dashed out by bot, and from that forged documentation, were able to reverse engineer a citizenship recognised by the broken government bureaucracy. The algorithm became a citizen.

p.191: a memory of one of Pook's lectures

Pook invariably started chuckling to himself at this juncture, taking the opportunity to make a joke he made every year during the seminar on Novio Magus: "The emergences sought to solve man's existential crisis by combining two questions underlying all soshul: am I going insane and if so, what should I wear?"

p.208: Dr. Easy and Theodore go to a pub.

Pubs were old-fashioned to normalise the consumption of alcohol. By surrounding drinkers with evidence that people had always drunk, the pub reassured its customers that their alcoholism was a timeless quirk.

p.217: Dr. Easy acquires a car.

"I did not steal it," said Dr. Easy. "I merely exploited the car's emotional simplicity. This model hankers after danger and adventure, and I promised it both."

p.292: on life and language on Europa.

The blue ice of the lakebed ruckled into a chasm. Through this fissure lay Oceanus, the largest ocean in the solar system. Largest, ocean, solar system – words were too human and too meagre. Off-Earth, language, like biological life, did not take. Only mathematics and emergence seemed native to strange moons, gas giants, and space.

p.319: Theodore is somewhat damaged by his exposure to weirdcore:

"I'm sorry that what you said doesn't upset me. Or offend me. I'm not indifferent to you. It's just…" he tapped at his scars again… "Everything you say makes sense but no one gives a shit."

p.364: Patricia's "executive armour" deploys:

Her armour was designed to contain angry shareholders and break-up employee uprisings: the fishers had knives, but Patricia had riot control.

p.378: Reckon is angry:

The lesson her father learned in the Seizure was that power will conceal its true intent for as long as possible so that its victims remain passive and even compliant in their own destruction. Rarely are we granted the mercy of a confrontation.

p.385: on artificial intelligences and kindness.

[Reckon] could not imagine an immortal species like the emergences knowing kindness. The emergences had the wiring for consciousness but they were immune to time. Love is made out of time; that is, love is experiential and our emotions the connection to that experience. It followed that if the emergences were immune to time, they were also immune to love.

It is a very good book.

The electric vehicle revolution is well underway, with more electric vehicles on the roads that ever before. Global sales of highway legal plug-in electric passenger cars and light utility vehicles reached the one million unit milestone in September 2015, and achieved two million in December 2016, according to HybridCars.com.

Electric bikes are also part of this electric-powered renaissance, with sales of electric bicycles, or “eBikes”, increasingly worldwide. In 2016, the Asia Pacific Asia Pacific region saw sales of 32.8 million electric bikes, while Western Europe had 1.6 million and North America had 152 thousand sales, according to Navigant. By 2050 there are expected to be 2 billion electric bikes in operation according to the Electric Bike Worldwide Report.

The move toward electric powered transportation, rather than gasoline-powered vehicles, is part of a worldwide movement toward using a more sustainable means of getting around. As is well detailed by climate change scientists throughout the world, carbon monoxide produced by burning oil produces air pollution that is detrimental to our health and are causing climate change.

Yet now we have the opportunity to decrease our fossil fuel consumption through using electric vehicles, including electric bikes. Electric bikes allow riders to ride up to 60 miles in some instances on a single charge - and that’s without using pedal power. Because of this, electric bikes are a great way to commute to work, run errands, visit a friend or simply to be outside seeing the world.

mkalus shared this story from Colossal.

Produced between 2006 and 2009, Australian designer and illustrator Dan McPharlin's Analogue Miniatures are a marvel of papercraft. The tiny analogue synthesizers and pieces of recording equipment were pieced together with paper, framing mat board, string, rubber bands and cardboard, and appeared in everything from art shows to editorial spreads in magazines like Esquire. McPharlin is widely known for his retro sci-fi illustration work that appears on album covers and in limited edition prints, and he brings this aspect of fiction to these paper models as well. None of the objects are meant as exact replicas or recreations of real-life devices, but are instead speculative objects that draw aesthetic attributes from the audio technology of the 70s and 80s.

You can see many more pieces from Analogue Miniatures on Flickr. (via Strictly Paper)

Go deep, or go home

Mitch Joel says that most corporate blogs are not worth the effort to read.

Mitch Joel, The Hot Mess Dumpster Fire That Is Corporate Content

It’s true. Make a run through some of the brands that you admire most. Most of them have blogs. Some of them have abandoned ship. Some of them have slowed down on their publishing frequency. Most of them are not fresh. Most of them are self-serving. Most of them are nothing more than a slightly personalized press release.

Corporate leaders need to make a completely different commitment: to invest the time and energy (ahem, money) to research the critical trends and market conditions that are of importance to their clients and the company. From that commitment content flows at relatively low cost.

How’d did we get here, despite the fact that companies would like to have a strong interaction with clients and community, and to position themselves as thought leaders? Chris Brogan nails it in No One Reads Your Corporate Blog Because It’s Boring:

The attempt at a solution for most companies was to either outsource their content creation or to assign the task to someone internally. In both cases, the person usually tasked with creating the material just isn’t all that into the company, the customers, and the space that they’re covering. Meaning, they don’t really talk about anything useful or interesting to the person hoping to learn more and get involved in some way with what the company does or sells. Plus, they’re writing ‘me too’ and boring content.

The reality is that companies made the wrong sort of commitment at the outset of starting a corporate blog. Some are simply painting by the numbers, creating a blog because it’s what every companies does, like giving employees titles, or buying toilet paper. They sign up to doing as little as possible.

The CEO is willing to be interviewed once a quarter, and the head of marketing pens an article about a company offsite, or someone from HR writes about the customer support staff member of the month. Maybe this is reasonable for an internal company blog (although I think it’s too small bore even for that purpose), but it’s about as important as the pattern on the rug in the lobby: no one cares.

Corporate leaders need to make a completely different commitment: to invest the time and energy (ahem, money) to research the critical trends and market conditions that are of importance to their clients and the company. From that commitment content flows at relatively low cost. It’s easy to write when you have compelling research to share, that has already been paid for by the strategic needs of the company.

So the company isn’t confronted with the choice of investing heavily in content development, when its leadership has already decided to make the existentially imperative commitment to being as smart as possible about the market, and the needs, concerns, and fears of the clients. Once you’re committed to thought leadership, content comes almost for free.

If You Don’t Invest In Deep Thought Leadership, Don’t Have A Blog At All was originally published in Another Voice on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Rogers’ updated OS upgrade schedule reveals that the long-awaited Android Nougat 7.0 update is coming to Samsung’s Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge on March 20th, 2017. The flagships currently stand at Android Marshmallow 6.0.1.

The Nougat update brings with it the ability to run two apps on the same screen, along with improved battery life and access to new emoji.

When the update becomes available, you’ll see a notification prompting you to download it. You can also manually check for the update by launching the settings app and navigating to ‘About Phone’ and then ‘Software Update.’

Rogers’ update listing also reveals that VoLTE is coming to the Google Pixel and the Pixel XL with Rogers on April 3rd.

Source: Rogers

The post Android Nougat 7.0 coming to Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge through Rogers on March 20th appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Google Store customers can now purchase products from countries that are not their primary residence.

As long as shoppers provide a valid address in that country, the store’s region selector page allows users to browse products and get them delivered to a specific country.

For instance, users can browse the U.S. Google Store from Canada, purchase a Google Home and have it delivered to their family in the United States.

This feature could prove extremely useful when trying to send a package or present to someone across the world, or when using a forwarding service that isn’t available in your home country yet. Canadians interested in purchasing Google Home, for example, which still hasn’t officially launched in Canada, can also now purchase the voice-activated assistant, and then get it shipped to their Canadian address via a reshipping service like Reship or MyUs.

Furthermore, shoppers can use debit cards and credit cards from their own country to purchase goods from another region and track the package from their Google accounts.

Source: Google Store

Via: Android Central 

The post Canadians can now purchase Home from the American Google Store, but can only ship to the U.S. appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Eric Sheninger, A Principal's Reflections, Mar 15, 2017

This article makes a nice use of James Nottingham's concept of the 'learning pit' to make the point that "school, as we know it is driven by grades as the main reflection of what students do, or do not, know.   What has resulted is a rat race of sorts where many kids and parents alike have their eye on the prize." It's nothing we haven't heard before, but I like the expression of it. Image.

Like raising kids, there is no handbook that tells you how to make the thousands of decisions and judgment calls that shape what a conference grows into. Seven year into organizing the Theorizing the Web conference, we’re still learning and adapting. In years past, we’ve responded to feedback from our community, making significant changes to our review process (e.g., diversifying our committee and creating a better system to keep the process blind) as well as adopting and enforcing an anti-harassment policy.

This year, we’ve been thinking a lot about what we can do to ensure that presentations respect the privacy of the populations they are analyzing and respect the context integrity of text, images, video, and other media that presenters include in their presentations. I want to offer my take—and, hopefully, spark a conversation—on this important notion of “context integrity” in presenting research.

In “Privacy as Contextual Integrity,” Helen Nissenbaum observes that each of the various roles and situations that comprise our lives has “a distinct set of norms, which governs its various aspects such as roles, expectations, actions, and practices” and that “appropriating information from one situation and inserting it in another can constitute a violation.” It’s often social scientists’ job to take some things out of context and bring understanding to a broader audience. But, how we do that matters.

The ethical challenge for social scientists who use methods that remove information from its context (such as observation or content analysis) is figuring out how to still respect the norms of that context as well as the dignity of the people who are a part of it. We have not always done this well. Early anthropologists and sociologists were complicit in racism and colonialism. In my field of sex work research, previous generations of social scientists distorted or ignored sex workers’ own narratives to such a degree that sex work community, as a whole, remains skeptical of researchers.

Let’s consider a concrete example of how taking information out of context for research purposes can prove problematic: Laud Humphreys’ “Tearoom Trade” study. Humphreys described the sex habits of a community of gay men who met in certain public bathrooms. In the process of observing the men, he took down their license plate numbers and later visited their homes to conduct a health survey (which he posed as unrelated). Most of the criticism aimed at the study concerned how Humphreys used deception and risked outing individual men by collecting and storing identifiable data. This latter issue is often framed as a violation of privacy. However, I think this only gets at some of what was wrong with the Humphreys study, and I’d like to suggest that this case actually points to the limits of privacy as foundation for ethical decision-making in research.

Notably, the most sensitive information was obtained in public spaces, while the primary risk was exposure to the private (i.e., home/family) sphere. Already, this troubles conventional privacy discourses that tend to frame exposure as a uni-directional flow of information from private to public. Rather than seeing privacy and publicity as a simple dichotomy in which only that which is private is at risk of being exposed to that which is public, we might take Nissenbaum’s suggestion and frame our lives as consisting of numerous, sometimes overlapping social spheres with different norms of disclosure. From this perspective, the problem with the Humprey’s study is that it collapsed these contexts in potentially harmful ways. For example, though he altered his appearance, Humprey’s subjects would likely have been distressed to have him in their homes if they to recognized him from the tearooms. Worse yet, by taking information and observations out of the specific context of the tearooms (where he was assumed to be just another participant), Humprey’s research posed an existential threat to the community, making the men more susceptible to public moralizing and police actions.

It’s a staple of qualitative method courses to discuss how observation changes behavior. Part of the reason is that research, itself, is a context in which norms of disclosure may be different than other social situations. In the Humphreys study, subjects’ behavior and responses may have been completely different had they known they were participating in a research study—in fact, many men likely would have opted out altogether. This is something we should ask ourselves when presenting any data: “If the research subjects knew the manner in which I am presenting their information, would it change what they share?” To share data in a way that ignores the implicit norms and expectations of the context in which the information was shared is, at best, negligent and, at worse, exploitative (i.e., using someone else in pursuit of one’s own goals).

Data collection via the Web, further highlights why the concept of context integrity is a desirable alternative to the conventional public/private dichotomy. Researchers are sometimes tempted to believe that, because something is public (i.e., searchable on the Web), it is fair game for them to use as they wish (regardless of a site’s norms or the user’s original intent); but, such thinking is often rooted in a slippage between what information can be collected and held as a matter property rights and what is useable as a matter of ethics. Part of the problem is that discourse around public/private information has been incorporated into the market logic of copyright law. According to this logic anything done in public (legally defined as that which lacks “a reasonable expectation of privacy”) can be captured and become the property of whomever recorded it.* However, establishing ownership of data does not intrinsically imply that it’s ethical to share that data. In fact, IRB’s regularly compel researchers to destroy identifiable data that they rightfully own. Simply saying “well, it was public” and, therefore, legally obtained, in no way excuses harm done by placing information in another context.

To think about what context integrity means for Web-related research, it may be useful to consider a second case (one with parallels to the tearooms Humphreys observed): namely, hookup/dating sites like Grindr, Tindr, Fetlife, SwingLifeStyle, Craigslist. These sites are publicly accessible, and it is extraordinarily easy to capture screenshots from them (or even to systematically scrape data). Such research activities may violate terms of service, but they certainly aren’t violations of criminal law. So, assuming for a moment that a scenario exists where it is both legal and ethical to attain information about a hookup/dating site’s users, the question is then: How do we determine what aspects of this “public” information can ethically be shared by researchers?

Nissenbaum’s theory of context integrity suggests that we should look to the norms of disclosure on sites and try to remain consistent with them. Specifically, we might infer that users only intended for the personal information on their profiles to be seen by potential dates. These profiles may contain information about their sex life or relationship status (e.g., non-monogamy) that they would not want to share with family or co-workers. In fact, some may obscure their faces or certain other personal details as an additional precaution against their information leaking into another context.

The obvious conclusion in this case, then, is that sharing any potentially identifiable information (images, location, unique stories, etc.) would fail to respect the implicit assumptions made by users in posting their data. But, even if personal information can’t easily be linked back to the user, it may still be unsettling to see intimate things taken out of context. Moreover, we shouldn’t assume that de-identified aggregate level data is intrinsically benign; it can still, potentially, violate context integrity (as the “Tearoom Trade” study demonstrated). Increasing general attention to a site can have negative consequences, outing communities writ large. We saw this just last week with FetLife as increased attention (much resulting from the Fifty Shade of Grey craze) led to the banning of many sorts of content from the site after credit card companies threatened to stop processing payments unless things they objected to were removed.

This isn’t to say that all research into hookup/dating sites is ethically dubious, just that, in such sensitive cases, no disclosure should go without careful consideration and scrutiny. It’s the researcher’s job to anticipate the consequences of bringing information into another context and to mitigate whatever risks this transfer entails.

Finally, we need to pay special to the most sensitive cases: namely, those where the subject matter involves victims (e.g., research into police violence, sexual assault, revenge porn, etc.). When the context in which the information originates is an instance of violation, humiliation, and/or violence, circulation of certain pieces of this information (e.g., names, images, specific acts, etc.) may amplify this harm, re-victimizing the target. If there is any reason to believe that a research subject (or subjects) might be embarrassed to have a piece of information shared in conference setting and the connection to the subject cannot be anonymized, pseudonymized, or otherwise obscured, then I think that obtaining explicit consent is the way to go. This is doubly important for vulnerable populations.

In reflecting on “Tearoom Trade” study and considering how the lessons learned from it might apply to current research on hookup/dating site, I’ve suggested that both privacy and ownership are weak ethical frameworks for information sharing practices; much harm could be avoided by, instead, centering ethical consideration on context integrity and consent. In particular, I think it’s important to recognize research as its own context and that the basic purpose of methods such as observation and content analysis is to pull information out of their original context. While one-size-fits-all rules are difficult to establishe (given the wide variety of contexts explored by social scientific research), I’ve suggested that sharing sensitive information disclosed in other contexts (including images and audio) merits careful consideration and usually requires protections (such as de-identification) and/or explicit consent.

—

*Criminals laws regulating public recording vary by state and local municipality.

—

PJ Patella-Rey (@pjrey) is a sociology PhD candidate writing about the experiences of sex cam models.

The Canada Revenue Agency’s (CRA) online services have been down since Friday after an “internet vulnerability” was discovered.

“Ensuring that your personal information is not compromised is a priority for us. Upon becoming aware of an internet vulnerability that affects some computer servers used by websites worldwide, we took down our online services, including electronic filing, and are taking steps to ensure that all information and systems remain safe,” says the CRA’s website.

2016 taxes for Canadians are not due until April 30th and the CRA states that “you can still complete your tax forms, but will have to wait before filing.” However, businesses who submit payroll deductions and HST have been affected.

This downtime impacts online access from the internet and also the CRA’s MyCRA mobile app.

“At this time, we are not aware that any personal information has been affected; however, we continue to assess and remedy the situation. We are working to bring our online services back up as soon as possible. Updates will be ‎posted as they become available.”

March is Fraud Prevention month in Canada and many government bodies are promoting tips to be safe online.

Update: 5:04pm EST – March 12: The CRA has announced that its online services are now back to normal and Canadians can once again file taxes.

“In the last 48 hours, the CRA has worked around the clock with other government departments to implement a solution to address the vulnerability. We are now confident that the solution has been rigorously and successfully tested and services returned online,” said a statement by the CRA. “Individuals, businesses and representatives are now able to file returns, make payments, and access other digital services available through the CRA’s website, including all our secure portals.”

Source: CRA

The post CRA discovers shuts down all online services after discovering ‘internet vulnerability’ [Update: Restored] appeared first on MobileSyrup.