Week of May 4 - May 10, 2026

Why the Canvas hack was inevitable

While the news focuses on the hack, I wish we’d talk about the decision-making that made this thing an inevitability.

Tags: person:Tim Klapdor, Canvas, LMS, cybersecurity

Added: 2026-05-10 09:36

Alternative Course Hosting - LTIC

wow. WOW. UBC is positioning their WordPress service as a safer and more reliable option than Canvas while the dust settles from the Great Instructure Hack of ‘26.

This kind of Institutional Plan B is brilliant.

This page covers options for hosting courses outside of the primary Learning Management System (LMS). Note to Summer 1 Instructors You will have received a Piazza Sign Up Link — Please sign up using the link in your email! Upcoming Workshops Available Tools While the primary LMS is unavailable, the following tools are available through […]

Tags: via:Ian Linkletter, UBC, WordPress, LMS, Canvas, cybersecurity

Added: 2026-05-09 21:42

The Worlds Left To Conquer — Ludicity

So when I kicked off the company, some traitorous part of me was hoping that it would be difficult, as horrible as that would be for me personally. If it was hard, yes, perhaps I’d have to go back to some miserable office and be beset on all sides by smiling imbeciles talking about innovation, but it would make sense. It simply can’t be that easy to be free of those structures. Surely there’s a reason for it that isn’t simply “Wow, we’re systematically producing people that are terrible at their jobs and they can’t even see it.”

Unfortunately, that really is most of the explanation.

Tags: person:Nikhil Suresh, consulting, technology

Added: 2026-05-09 21:07

Canvas is open source, but its cloud services ransomware attack really hurts

It’s “the biggest student data privacy disaster in history” - even though the core platform is open source.

Selected text

It’s also not clear that self-hosted infrastructure would be more resilient: a university could be subject to a ransomware attack with very little recourse. At the same time, the centralized nature of Canvas’s core offering means every institution that uses it, including over half of all US higher education institutions, were in a hard place right in the middle of final exam season. Access is coming back, but at the time of writing, it hasn’t been fully restored. It’s a hard lesson about the dangers of putting everything in the cloud.

Tags: person:Ben Werdmuller, Instructure, Canvas, cybersecurity

Added: 2026-05-09 21:05

Update on the Instructure (Canvas) Cybersecurity Incident | Office of the Provost and Vice-President (Academic)

official statements from UAlberta’s Provost regarding the Canvas hack.

Tags: UAlberta, Instructure, Canvas, cybersecurity

Added: 2026-05-09 13:46

What is reasoning anyway? A closer look at reasoning in LLMs

There is a remarkable degree of polarisation in current debate about the capacities of Large Language Models (LLMs). One example of this is the debate about reasoning. Some researchers see ample evidence of reasoning in these systems, while others maintain that these systems do not reason at all. This paper seeks to shed light on this debate by examining the divergent uses of the term reasoning across different disciplines. It provides a simple clarificatory framework for talking about behaviour that highlights key dimensions of variation in how ‘reasoning’ is used across psychology, philosophy and AI. This highlights not just the extent to which researchers are talking past each other, but also that common inferences about model capability that accompany classification decisions are, in fact, far less compelling than they might seem.

Tags: via:Tyson Kendon, AI, LLM, article

Added: 2026-05-09 10:31

(PDF) The case of Canvas: Longitudinal datafication through learning management systems

Abstract

The Canvas Learning Management System (LMS) is used in thousands of universities across the United States and internationally, with a strong and growing presence in K-12 and higher education markets. Analyzing the development of the Canvas LMS, we examine 1) ‘frictionless’ data transitions that bridge K12, higher education, and workforce data 2) integration of third party applications and interoperability or data-sharing across platforms 3) privacy and security vulnerabilities, and 4) predictive analytics and dataveillance. We conclude that institutions of higher education are currently ill-equipped to protect students and faculty required to use the Canvas Instructure LMS from data harvesting or exploitation. We challenge inevitability narratives and call for greater public awareness concerning the use of predictive analytics, impacts of algorithmic bias, need for algorithmic transparency, and enactment of ethical and legal protections for users who are required to use such software platforms.

Tags: via:Grant Potter, Instructure, Canvas, data, LMS, article

Added: 2026-05-09 08:23

taken. — Since You Arrived Vol. IV

What the page already knows about you, revealed as you read it. No input. No permission. No exception.

Tags: privacy, web, browser

Added: 2026-05-08 18:47

Several Canadian universities face security breach, student data leaked | Globalnews.ca

The U of T, UBC and U of A are amongst the major Canadian post-secondary institutions dealing with fallout from a cybersecurity incident involving a popular platform called Canvas.

Tags: Instructure, Canvas, cybersecurity

Added: 2026-05-08 18:20

On Responses to Instructure’s Value - D’Arcy Norman, PhD

I wrote this over 6 years ago…

There would be crowds of people with pitchforks and torches if they tried to repurpose data in a way that violated privacy of students. I hope.

Tags: Instructure, Canvas, person:D’Arcy Norman

Added: 2026-05-08 16:35

Chaos erupts as cyberattack disrupts learning platform Canvas amid finals - Ars Technica

Across the country, schools and colleges postpone year-end tests.

Tags: Ars Technica, Instructure, Canvas, cybersecurity

Added: 2026-05-08 12:58

Security | Trust Center | Instructure

Explore the Trust Center Security page to understand the measures and practices in place to protect your data and ensure the security of our services.

Tags: Instructure, Canvas, cybersecurity

Added: 2026-05-08 11:41

Security & Privacy Compliance | D2L

We take your data seriously, which is why we have several security certifications, audited by third parties. Find out more about our certifications.

Tags: D2L, cybersecurity

Added: 2026-05-08 11:41

The Canvas Hack Is a New Kind of Ransomware Debacle

This latest attack and the disruption it’s caused for schools across the country, however, are all too real—and represent a significant escalation from this particular ransomware gang. “It’s noteworthy that a tiny number of repeat offenders can escalate for years to reach this point,” says Nixon. “It speaks to the systemic international issue of cybercrime and the need for governments around the world to set geopolitics aside and cooperate to stop those who extort money and prey on kids.”

Tags: Wired, Instructure, Canvas, cybersecurity

Added: 2026-05-08 11:32

‘The Biggest Student Data Privacy Disaster in History’: Canvas Hack Shows the Danger of Centralized EdTech

Messages could include “medical circumstances, accessibility accommodations, disputes, sexual assault allegations,” and more.

Tags: person:Ian Linkletter, Instructure, Canvas, cybersecurity

Added: 2026-05-08 11:17

2026 Canvas security incident - Wikipedia

Despite Instructure’s claim that the situation had been resolved, on May 7, 2026, Canvas was hacked, having their web page replaced with a message by ShinyHunters—a criminal hacking group. ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for breaching Instructure and Canvas, threatening to release sensitive data unless ransom payment demands are fulfilled by May 12, 2026.

Tags: Wikipedia, via:Ian Linkletter, Instructure, cybersecurity, eep

Added: 2026-05-07 20:42

Canvas is down as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data | The Verge

Instructure’s learning management platform Canvas is down, after recently confirming a data breach and a ransom message from the ShinyHunters hacking group.

I downloaded the list of institutions - almost 9,000 schools (basically everyone that uses Canvas) with their data compromised. And the hackers are using the Internet Archive’s Wayback snapshot of a page with their PGP keys and what I assume are payment links - maybe as a way to get around IT firewalls that block sketchy domains etc. (I’m not going to link to that from here)

I’m curious about our vendor partners’ responses to this - Canvas got hit this time (and they kind of put a big target on their back with the ‘WE HAVE SOOO MUCH DATA ABOUT EVERYONE THIS IS AWESOME’ marketing), but there’s nothing preventing them from trying to hit other big platforms…

Tags: via:Ian Linkletter, cybersecurity, Canvas

Added: 2026-05-07 16:28

AI, Education, and What Comes Next · NAIT Engage 2026

Companion resource for AI, Education, and What Comes Next, Dr. Alec Couros’s keynote at NAIT Engage 2026. Built to extend the conversation past the closing slide

Tags: person:Alec Couros, AI, NAIT, keynote

Added: 2026-05-06 20:27

Ars Asks: Share your shell and show us your tricked-out terminals! - Ars Technica

A celebration of the tweaks and customizations that make life easier at the CLI.

Ain’t nothing more productive than tweaking my .zshrc file…

Tags: Terminal, command line, Bash, Ars Technica

Added: 2026-05-06 16:02

2026 Provincial Budgets | HESA

despite the big increase in spending this year, Ontario remains 10th out of 10 provinces on this metric, but is no only a hair’s breadth behind Alberta. If Ontario should pass Alberta next year, it would mean that Alberta, which for many years led the country on this metric, would have passed from first to last place among provinces in just 13 years

Tags: HESA, budget, Alberta, 🎉

Added: 2026-05-05 11:58

WKRP - 97.7, 106.7 & 94.5 The Oasis

WKRP - 97.7, 106.7 & 94.5 The Oasis - Where The Music Went - Music from the 1960s, 70s and early 80s

Baby, if you’ve ever wondered Wondered whatever became of me I’m living on the air in Cincinnati Cincinnati, WKRP!

In the musical desert that is local FM radio, we decided to be different. How? Most stations play the same few hundred songs over and over again. On WKRP, we play thousands of songs of the 60’s, 70’s & early 80’s - familiar songs that were huge hits but have just disappeared from the radio. Add to this the legend that is WKRP and we are, literally, The Oasis in a desert.

Tags: via:Scott Leslie, radio

Added: 2026-05-04 13:18

GitHub - JuliusBrussee/caveman: 🪨 why use many token when few token do trick — Claude Code skill that cuts 65% of tokens by talking like caveman · GitHub

🪨 why use many token when few token do trick — Claude Code skill that cuts 65% of tokens by talking like caveman - JuliusBrussee/caveman

Claims to cut down on the verbose prose spewed as output in Claude Code, reducing token usage.

Tags: Claude Code

Added: 2026-05-04 09:21

Claude Code Limits: 4 Fixes to Cut Your Bill (Without Changing Your Workflow)

From $1,389/mo to $200/mo on the same workflow. Anthropic fixed 3 bugs. The 4 root causes still on your side — with copy-paste templates.

I’ve been surprised at how quickly I seem to burn through session limits (especially when working on bigger things like Jellyboard). I’ve made some improvements on my own but will be trying some of these…

Tags: Claude Code, via:Stephen Downes

Added: 2026-05-04 08:05