The YouTube stars heading for burnout: ‘The most fun job imaginable became deeply bleak’
Simon Parkin, The Guardian, 2018/09/10
I can sort of relate to this article, because I do most of my work on the internet, but I havern't had anything really go viral, and I don't depend on having thousands of views for my faily income (good thing, too). But all that plus a deeply impersonal algorithm that rewards constant and sustained production while providing little or no support against the difficulties of an online life have left a lot of internet stars (it's not just YouTibe and Twitch) depressed and burned out. More...

Official: Google Chrome 69 kills off the World Wide Web (in URLs)
Shaun Nichols, The Register, 2018/09/10
This, I think, is going to become a bigger issue, and it has a lot to do with the way the underlying structure of the web is beginning to change. On the surface, web browsers (specifically, Safari and Chrome) have begun to obscure the URL. The URL identifies the web site address of the page you're looking at (and usually, but not always, corresponds to a specific IP address, which is the site's numerical address). More...

How you can make a progressive web app in an hour
ryanwhocodes, freecodecamp, 2018/09/10
OK, I spent way more than an hour on this. Be warned. So, a progressive web app (PWA) is a web page that functions offline as well as online, and is typically used on a mobile device. It does this by means of a 'service worker' that manages a local cache of static resources and intercepts calls to remote servers to cache results and use the cache is the dynamic results aren't available. More...

'It's Like Amazon, But for Preschool'
Audrey Watters, Hack Education, 2018/09/14
The reason why we prefer government support rather than charity for critical infrastructure like roads, hospitals and schools is to ensure stability, access and public benefit. That's the opposite of what Jeff Bezos is proposing. As Audrey Watters writes, "There is no community, no public responsibility, no larger civic impulse for early childhood education here. It’s all about private schools offering private, individual benefits." I appreciate that Jeff Bezos wants to do good with the money he has accumulated. More...

Applying diSessa’s Knowledge in Pieces Framework to Understanding the Notional Machine
Mark Guzdial, Computing Education Research Blog, 2018/09/14
A few days ago I discussed the idea that you don't know something unless you have a conceptual understanding of it. This post caught my eye because it captures in some important ways the idea of knowledge as recognition and the role of relevant similarity. More...

The Future of Podcasting Is Educational
James McWilliams, Pacific Standard, 2018/09/14
Now we need to understand that the headline does not mean that 'the future of education is podcasts'. Though really valuable, podcasts play a niche role in the wider educational ecosystem. Having said that, education is definitely a primary application for podcast. More...

Is Scientific American a Trustworthy Periodical?
Justin Weinberg, Daily Nous, 2018/09/14
If Scientific American is publishing really low-quality articles on things we know about, asks the author, how trustworthy is its reporting on other subjects. And 'low-quality' isn't really a judgement call here: " imagine an article on football in which the author uses “touchdown” to refer to a kind of tackle, or wonders how a “field goal” is possible since the crossbar of the goal is not on the field but 10 feet above it, and you’ll get the idea of what has been going on." I don't tknow how (or whether it's even relevant) to judge Scientific American as a whole. More...

Can Cats Read Minds?
Ali Boyle, iAi News, 2018/09/11
I've thought a lot about the mental states. In the current case, we're not asking whether cats have ESP. Rather, if a cat does something, is it because the cat thinks we're thinking something, or is it simply reacting to behaviour. This article raises what is called 'the logical problem', because we can't change the evidence for our thinking something without also changing our behaviour. But it becomes odd and hard to explain a cat's actions without assuming they know what we're thinking. More...