Matt Edwards

From Thomas Rid at the Alperovitch Institute for Cybersecurity Studies: Last week brought two related features of artificial intelligence in education into sharp relief: the first is that all that talk about plagiarism and cheating and abuse is uninspiring and counterproductive. Yes, some unambitious students will use this new tool to cover subpar performance, and yes, we could talk about how to detect or disincentivize such behavior. The far more inspiring conversation is a different one: how can the most creative, the most ambitious, and the most brilliant students achieve even better results faster?...

While listening to the latest Stacktrace podcast today during an indoor bike training session (nothing like Apple Tech and a high heart rate!), the guys were discussing the latest rumors from Mark Gurman that broke a few days ago: A high-end configuration of the Mac Pro, a model with 48 CPU cores and 152 graphics cores, has been canceled. Instead, Apple plans to release a version with the M2 Ultra, making it unclear — beyond the machine’s expandability — why most users would buy it over the cheaper and smaller Mac Studio....

It appears I forgot to write a 2022 November Month in Biking post. Oops. Regardless, it’s the final day of the 2022nd year here and in the spirit of reflecting and resolutions and all that, I can dig up some stats1 across the entire year. 2,453 miles This is 22% more than last year where I eeked out a paltry 2,012 miles and only just crossed the 2k mark. Comparing to 2020 and 2019, though, it’s was not enough to beat out the 2,955 and 3,062 miles I pulled out those years, respectively....

Perhaps best to call it the “Last warning you’ll ever need to flee LastPass” breach. Best summary and take I’ve seen is from Wladimir Palant: Right before the holiday season, LastPass published an update on their breach. As people have speculated, this timing was likely not coincidental but rather intentional to keep the news coverage low. Security professionals weren’t amused, this holiday season became a very busy time for them. LastPass likely could have prevented this if they were more concerned about keeping their users secure than about saving their face....

Launched is a podcast by Charlie Chapman, where he interviews mobile app developers about their ideas and how they launched their products. Great show! I particularly enjoyed this episode, from last December 2021, with Ryan Jones the founder of Flighty and Weather Line. Both are great apps which I have used extensively. Ryan digs into how he transitioned from petroleum engineering to being an app creator, and the entire episode provides excellent content for anyone thinking of starting their own mobile app business....

I apologize in advance if you don’t give two hoots about social media conventions and norms. Saw this post by Taylor Lorenz over on Mastodon.social: Journalists will never stick around this app long term sadly unless it adds quote posting. We desperately need it to communicate effectively, build on each others ideas, and add crucial context to posts. These are things replies simply do not accomplish. Also quote posting or reblogging does not = harassment!...

Tough to do better than this article title “Do Not Use Services That Hate The Internet”: If posts in a social media app do not have URLs that can be linked to and viewed in an unauthenticated browser, or if there is no way to make a new post from a browser, then that program is not a part of the World Wide Web in any meaningful way. The web does not always have the prettiest solution....

Joint reporting by The Verge and The Markup: Major tax filing services such as H&R Block, TaxAct, and TaxSlayer have been quietly transmitting sensitive financial information to Facebook when Americans file their taxes online, The Markup has learned. The data, sent through widely used code called the Meta Pixel, includes not only information like names and email addresses but often even more detailed information, including data on users’ income, filing status, refund amounts, and dependents’ college scholarship amounts....

Here There be Risks From The Guardian a few days ago: But Mastodon’s model comes with its own risks. If the server you join disappears, you could lose everything, just like if your email provider shut down. A Mastodon server admin also has ultimate control over everything you do: if for some reason the owner of kpop.social doesn’t like that I boosted a toot from dolphin.town, they could remove it or even “defederate” the server, which would block all dolphin toots from the k-pop server completely....

Finished editing this over the last few nights. The footage is all from May 2022 and the trip we took. Really digging this Artlist.io service for finding fun backing tracks to put behind the footage. Still trying different video edits, cuts, and effects using DaVinci Resolve. Overall - I think I’m getting better at this? ;) Oh, and it was a lot of fun to relive these warm summer days while fall and winter roll on in to New Jersey....