The American Dream is Dead
Georges Abi-Heila, The Startup, 2018/05/30
Students have been encouraged to invest in education on the ground that it promises, ultimately, a better life. There is a basis in reality for this belief, but it's limited. "No matter what your educational background is, where you start has become increasingly important for where you end." The point of this article is to remind people (especially the rich) of the role good fortune played in their success, and to encourage them not to think that they are especially gifted or important, and to be less selfish and sanctimonious. More...

The Problem with "Learning Styles"
Cindi May, Scientific American, 2018/05/30
The difference between the study reported here and other studies on learning styles is that this one focuses on learning outside the classroom - in other words, self study. The result reported is that most students don't use the learning style they report preferring, and of those that do, there is no apparent benefit. More...

Towards a design philosophy for interoperable blockchain systems
Adrian Colyer, The Morning Paper, 2018/05/30
It's hard to dispute this proposition: "We believe the issue of survivability to be as important as that of privacy and security. As such, we believe that interoperability across blockchain systems will be a core requirement." There are numerous reasons why dependence on one single blockchain system might be a bad idea. More...

Watch the Rise and Fall of the British Empire in an Animated Time-Lapse Map
Josh Jones, Open Culture, 2018/05/30
These time-lapse maps are actually a sub-genre of YouTube history videos and I've been watching a lot of them recently. They cover everything from the fall of Bronze Age civilizations in the 1100s BCE to the Syrian War. More...

Implementation of an Intelligent Library System Based on WSN and RFID
Yuping Gao, International Journal of Online Engineering, 2018/05/25
This paper describes the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) to automate the process of finding, borrowing and returning books at the library. This would be an advance over scanning barcodes, which still require a lot of human intervention." More...

Blockchain technologies face a maturity problem
Dan Swinhoe, IDG Connect, 2018/05/25
The first problem is scalability, which shows up immediately in the amount of time it takes to verify that a transaction is authentic. Visa performs 40K transactions per second, while Ethereum and Bitcoin are capable of between 7-15 per second. You see the issue. The energy cost is another factor, "currently around 180 million KWh for just 200,000 transactions." More...

The Great Remake is Underway
Sunanna Chand, Ani Martinez, Remake Learning, 2018/05/25
This is a bold claim: " One of the biggest shifts in the history of education is underway across the country as rote memorization makes way for deeper learning, standardized tests are replaced by whole-student assessments, and lecture-style classrooms turn into collaborative hands-on learning spaces." More...

First Law of Robotics
Metafilter, 2018/05/25
The problem isn't with automated systems or artificial intelligence. The problem is with companies deploying such systems with the same due care and attention they pay to their customers needs and interests on a day-to-day basis. Case in point: Uber. More...

Hosting Futures
Jim Groom, bavatuesdays, 2018/05/25

I'm still in the mindset of "about what piloting a mashup of LAMP and Docker-container based hosting might look like." More...

Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women Launches Online Education Partnership with Coursera
Goldman Sachs, 2018/05/23
This is a MOOC with what I think is the most unusual certification requirement I've ever seen: "Women business owners with at least three employees and $50,000 in annual revenue are eligible to receive a certificate upon completion." It's more of an entrance requirement than a certification plan, I think, but if you restricted entrance it wouldn't be a MOOC. The course is an expansion of a  Goldman Sachs program called 10000 Women, "a global initiative that fosters economic growth by providing women entrepreneurs around the world with a business and management education, mentoring and networking, and access to capital." More...