Bookmarks: Week of Oct 26 - Nov 1, 2026

Google owner Alphabet loses $500bn in market value after profit disappoints Wall Street | Technology | The Guardian

theguardian.com

Net profit slid 25% from a year earlier to $26.2bn, well short of expectations, though revenue rose to $127.6bn

“Let’s kill our core product and replace it with AI, and invest $billions into making that happen at scale” followed shortly by “we just discovered that our core product was where most of our money came from.” It’s going to be brutal when this bubble finally bursts.

Tags: Google, AI, via:John Scalzi, Alphabet

AI Slop, with No Warranty: A Year of Vibe Coding in Higher Ed - BCcampus

bccampus.ca

D’Arcy and Brian share their approaches to “vibe coding” as a way to explore and test ideas with functional prototypes, not to replace conventional software development.

Tags: BCCampus, webinar, vibecoding, person:Brian Lamb, recording, video

AIIRS | AI Inherent Risk Scale

aiirs.ai

AIIRS provides a consistent and defensible basis for assessing the inherent risk associated with GenAI-assisted tasks.

Tags: AI, risk, via:Stephanie Verkoeyen

AI Kitchen & Tools – University of Toronto

ai.utoronto.ca

The AI Kitchen is an actively growing hub for the University of Toronto, offering access to secure AI tools, data and expertise to support teaching, learning, research and administration at U of T.

provides a way to see what tools are available, and whether seats are available.

Tags: via:Soroush Sabbaghan, University of Toronto, AI

EdTech’s Cybersecurity Reckoning

onedtech.philhillaa.com

The Canvas breach was an early marker of a new reality. PHP2Shell shows why EdTech’s move toward managed services will accelerate.

Phil suggests that we’re going to see even more consolidation and control over software hosted at universities.

Tags: edtech, cybersecurity, person:Phil Hill

Bloom’s: The Broken Staircase

hellostu.xyz

How generative AI turns Bloom’s Taxonomy on its head, why creation is no longer the peak of cognitive effort, and how learning design must adapt to protect the messy human thinking.

Tags: Bloom’s Taxonomy, AI, learning, person:Stuart Mackenzie, instructional design

Anthropic hacked to deliver remote access trojan to Claude developer laptops worldwide

doublepulsar.com

Yesterday, Anthropic were compromised and Cursor VS Code extension used by tens of millions of developers for Claude access was delivering a remote access trojan via an SSH reverse backdoor. The malware allowed hands on and automated remote access to developer laptops and desktops, in a supply chain attack.

what’s the worst that could happen when a vibe coded platform for vibecoding is compromised and sends automated updates that include malware to developers’ systems that have granted elevated privileges to the software? At least they’ll take it seriously and work on building trust.

Anthropic has not informed customers, and the malicious version was silently deleted without telling anybody.

oh.

Tags: vibecoding, cybersecurity, via:Alan Levine, person:Kevin Beaumont, Anthropic, Claude

Canada announces landmark investment in Cohere to scale secure, sovereign AI | Prime Minister of Canada

pm.gc.ca

To that end, the Prime Minister, Mark Carney, today announced the Government of Canada’s commitment to making an equity investment of up to $1.6 billion in Cohere. This is a commercial investment, announced alongside private investors, including NVIDIA, Bell, and Schwarz Group.

Tags: Cohere, Canada, AI, investment, Nvidia

Online Learning Leadership and Design

nmoer.pressbooks.pub

Online Learning Leadership and Design is a practical guide for anyone responsible for building or leading online learning programs. Each chapter takes a body of research and turns it into something you can actually use: quick overviews, activities, cases, and job aids you can bring straight into your own work. Chapters cover modality selection, change leadership, project management, open educational resources, learning science, interaction, generative AI, trauma-informed design, quality review, motivation, and instructional strategies, along with case studies showing how these ideas hold up in real programs. This book is written for Chief Learning Officers, Directors of Instructional Design, instructional designers, instructors moving a course online for the first time, and students in instructional design or educational technology programs who want a solid, practical foundation in designing and supporting high-quality online learning.

Tags: OER, open textbook, learning design, leadership, online learning, via:Stephanie Moore

Higher Ed Tech Trends From 19.5M Users: EdTech Top 40 | Instructure

instructure.com

How does the higher ed tech mix differ from K-12? Explore our EdTech Top 40 report and what the data shows about AI, content, and connection.

Tags: Instructure, LTI, edtech, via:Stephen Downes, digital learning strategy, EHR Trends

How To Make “Nothing” Look Extraordinary

youtube.com

In this video, we explore the cinematic visual language of legendary director and photographer Wim Wenders (Paris, Texas, The American Friend, Perfect Days).

What can cinema teach us about still images? Join me as we break down why you need to stop treating the environment as merely a background, and how place can become an emotional mirror for your subject.

Tags: video, photography, composition, person:Tatiana Hopper

Learning technology: support, service, or strategy? – David Hopkins / Education & Leadership

dontwasteyourtime.co.uk

Learning technology is often described as a support function of an institution’s digital education strategy. There are good reasons for this. Learning technologists help staff use institution…

Tags: person:David Hopkins, learning technologies, strategy, support

UCalgary students decry residential school denialism debate - LiveWire Calgary

livewirecalgary.com

University of Calgary students are calling on the school for answers after a controversial on-campus debate.

Tags: UCalgary, indigenous, protest

AI delivers ‘zero financial payoff’ to most companies, Apollo economist says | TechCrunch

techcrunch.com

“Despite massive investments and widespread hype around artificial intelligence, the technology has delivered zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech.”

Tags: via:Eric Likness, AI, bubble, TechCrunch