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Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

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Re: Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

#301

Post by dang »

DaSHacka wrote: post #292
strix_varius wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any internal data on where students are going instead?

You honestly don't wanna know If my peers are any indication, a whole lot of TikTok, Reels, Twitter, Discord, and other such mind-numbing platforms. The types of platforms I would consider 'substantive' (or, at least, more substantive than those platforms) are definitely on the way out. The few times friends have seen me browsing Hacker News or a certain Mongolian basket weaving form, the first thing they comment on…

This is actually reassuring. We don't need all your peers! We just need you and whatever smart cohort you're bonded with.

It's true that HN looks old - it looked old before you were born, probably - but (a) I have no idea how to change it, and (b) HN is a long bet on plain text. If the smartest young people lose interest in reading, I'm ok with HN dying for that reason. I just don't want it to die for any cheaper reason.

Re: Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

#302

Post by doctorpangloss »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #275
gruez wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As opposed to a screenshot of a website? Presumably the professor has a spreadsheet of all assignment grades that is submitted to the school?

> Presumably the professor has a spreadsheet of all assignment grades that is submitted to the school? This would undermine Canvas's lock-in.

i cannot believe how much benefit of the doubt people are giving canvas

ed tech is the WORST performing VC sector

the ONLY game in that town is vendor lock-in! are people joking?

c'mon, canvas is a huge piece of shit. the SaaSpocalypse is coming for them - it seems it is simply that LLMs will be used to exploit it first, rather than universities writing an open alternative they share with each other for free.

Re: Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

#303

Post by isityettime »

Gabriel54 wrote: post #264
isityettime wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? What makes Canvas accessible in a way that HTML and PDF files are not? It's true that PDF readers aren't the best for screenreaders, but surely you can just upload a .html copy as well.

Canvas has an easy way of checking if a pdf or other course material is accessible, so many universities are forcing faculty to put all their materials on Canvas. That way if a pdf or powerpoint is not compliant it is immediately flagged. The goal is to reach a "100% accessible" metric. Note that little of this really helps the students that it is supposed to help, because as you wisely point out, raw HTML is almost…

That really sucks. I'm visually impaired and many members of my family are/were blind. I think accessibility is really important, but it's so painful to me to feel like people's limited energy is being directed towards performative measures, useless rituals, vanity metrics, etc.

Nobody has infinite energy, and disabled people don't have infinite social capital. It's a shame when energy from that shared pool gets spent on things that don't really impact meeting people's access needs.

And the other thing is that everyone's access needs are different. It can certainly be useful to try to set a baseline or propagate common guidance. But the most important thing, especially in a university setting, is for instructors to be flexible and responsive and for classes (and non-teaching workloads) to be structured in a way (e.g., small enough) that supports that.

I think metrics like "100% accessible" might even be dangerous. It makes it easy for able-bodied people who aren't in direct contact with disabled stakeholders to pat themselves on the back without actually knowing what's going on.

Bleh. Good luck doing right by your disabled students and disabled colleagues, and good luck resisting the bullshit.

Re: Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

#304

Post by hunter2_ »

FloorEgg wrote: post #211
gchallen wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have not succeeded in forcing me, yet. But it's sad how many computing faculty apparently can't operate the basic online infrastructure needed to support their courses. Not that universities make it easy for us. And of course the other serious concern I have with Canvas is that they are likely using all the materials faculty upload to train their AI replacements. Many of my colleagues engage in dark humor about…

I'm sure the engineers at instructure are not capable of building systems that can do that. You give them too much credit.

If they're at the level you say, they just might install some AI gizmo like the Vercel employee was accused of, but really let it run amok with write permissions.

Re: Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

#305

Post by aaron695 »

blahedo wrote: post #176

Perspective from the trenches: I teach at a university that uses Canvas. We are in our final exams period right now. We got our first email (from Academic Affairs) notifying us that it was down at 5:17pm EDT this afternoon, with little info; followup emails were sent at 6:24 and 6:57 with more info, but mostly about how we would be compensating for it and not about what actually was going on (other than, "nationwide…

[dead]

Re: Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

#306

Post by boldi »

SeanAnderson wrote: post #285

https://status.instructure.com/ implies Canvas became available again about thirty minutes ago from the time of this post. Is this accurate? Or is this still an ongoing issue?

Canvas LMS is the core service that universities rely on. I assume they're trying to develop a fix and that's why the service is labeled "Under Maintenance". I'm a Berkeley student and can confirm that our instance (bcourses.berkeley.edu) is still down.

Re: Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

#307

Post by zephyreon »

dylan604 wrote: post #76
SoftTalker wrote: post #20

So many universities used to run homegrown or on-prem student systems. This is the downside of consolidating in the cloud. If the infrastructure is compromised, it affects everyone, not just isolated or single installations. I wonder how they are feeling about that decision now? I guess they can say "not our fault" so they might be feeling better than if it was a vulnerability in their own system.

Yeah, if they had spent the time and money to roll their own that got hacked, they'd be responsible. Now, they can just clap their hands and show them palms up to you like a black jack dealer and walk away from the table with no responsibility. Probably one of the biggest benefits of using a product instead of building your own.

You’d think this is how it works but universities and schools will still end up holding the bag at the end of the day, irrespective of who is responsible.

Re: Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

#309

Post by scratchyone »

auxiliarymoose wrote: post #32
bigfatkitten wrote: post #4

I use Canvas for some postgraduate studies, and my teenage daughter uses it at her high school. We already bond over how awful the Canvas UX is (and she has a bunch of Chrome extensions to improve it.) Now we’ve got something else to gripe over together.

It is open source, so you could send pull requests with improvements: https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms

https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is...

haha i went to go check and they haven't merged a PR since 2017

Re: Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

#310

Post by AuthAuth »

dang wrote: post #299
strix_varius wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any internal data on where students are going instead?

Not much, but I do ask the youngest founders what their friends read if they don't read HN, and the only consistent answer I hear is Twitter. (and btw, they do say "twitter")

Many of my sisters friends do everything entirely via tiktok. They look at what trends are popular and they target that fully on platform. This is for stuff like building niche targeted apps, selling beauty products/clothing brands, restaurants.
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