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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

#371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> setting this up is well beyond the capabilities of most students. Setting up custom email filters is beyond the capabilities of most students? What are they learning? Where will they be qualified to work?

Most graduates aren't really qualified to work anywhere that they couldn't have worked before going to college in the first place.

You mean graduates of US colleges? Not colleges in general. Or non-technical graduates of US colleges?

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

#372

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…

To my European ears this just sounds like a disaster like this waiting to happen. God bless the annoying privacy OSS advocates and bureaucrats, I guess.

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

#373

I remember circa 2010 a friend of mine at college was like “blackboard sucks, let’s build something new”. At the time I poo pood the idea and lo and behold canvas came out a year later. Outside looking in, they been crushing it.

How does canvas compare to Brightspace?

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

#374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> setting this up is well beyond the capabilities of most students. Setting up custom email filters is beyond the capabilities of most students? What are they learning? Where will they be qualified to work?

> Where will they be qualified to work? Going by a certain story 2 years ago, their concern should be that they're overqualified for Meta. It doesn't help that gmail, which is the only serious direct competition to outlook, straight up doesn't do "folders" and instead goes with markers. So you can't really just put a filter that drags all the 100 low-priority alerts in what would count as a first degree abstraction o…

If a CS graduate can't figure out some simple gmail labels and filters then they should not be awarded that degree. Plain and simple. It's not rocket science.

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

#375
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not much overlap between students and HN these days, though? I’m an extremely rare outlier afaik :) The administration has so far opened with one “Canvas said” and then an hour later one “Canvas is down indefinitely” email noting that they’re aware it’s serious. (Canvas is a glorified wiki for teaching students, with quizzes and such, for those unaware.)

> Not much overlap between students and HN these days, though? That's my biggest fear.

I'm an undergrad student in computer science and I come here regularly. Many of my friends do the same. Of course, that can't be extrapolated to students globally, but students who love what they do are not extinct!

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

#376
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> let classes that normally count for a grade just submit grades as pass-fail. Because what else can you do? Schedule a single exam and that's your grade for that subject? That's how it should work anyway, credits for work during semester (or worse attendance) are not needed to evaluate if someone learned the material, give them an exam and done.

That's just bad outdated practice. It leads to cramming and less remembering than of the demand is for students to do work and show learning and effort throughout the year.

It has been my observation that most of the better students were the ones who would not put in work during the semester/year and cram at the end.

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

#377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where will they be qualified to work? Going by a certain story 2 years ago, their concern should be that they're overqualified for Meta. It doesn't help that gmail, which is the only serious direct competition to outlook, straight up doesn't do "folders" and instead goes with markers. So you can't really just put a filter that drags all the 100 low-priority alerts in what would count as a first degree abstraction o…

If a CS graduate can't figure out some simple gmail labels and filters then they should not be awarded that degree. Plain and simple. It's not rocket science.

And there are no other students at any college other than CS students? I'm not sure why a biologist or a literature student would need to be au fait with Google's admittedly fairly unfriendly email management setup.

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

#378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Canvas is AGPL licensed. Moodle is GPL. Universities or anyone else can already contribute to big name LMS. Canvas is used by Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, CalTech, etc. If they each paid 10 FTE, they could set up a foundation that could govern the development of a top-tier LMS. Every tier-1 state institution could contribute 5 FTE. Even little JuCos could chip in an employee here and there. You'd pick up…

Why do they all pay for it then? Seems pretty universal in the UK too. Is it having the benefit of someone to blame when things go wrong?

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

#379
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When will countries start treating cyberattacks as an act of war? If the North Korean military came to America and robbed fort Knox of $200M in gold there would be retribution. But hack an American company for the same amount and the feds do nothing.

Ok, so we treat it as an act of war. Now what? Attack North Korea? Great, the entire city of Seoul gets shelled within five minutes of your attack and hundreds of thousands of innocent people die. It's very easy to play with lives that aren't yours.

You would be surprised how many people naively think "Why doesn't my country just open a war on X country and this Y problem will be solved forever" in their head they think war is just a flurry of bombardments and the other side (not theirs) is just destroyed to rubble and their country will have only minimal losses

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

#380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could also throw the CEOs of companies who don't properly secure their infrastructure and pay their security engineers enough in jail. A little justice on both ends.

Uh, who determines that the infrastructure wasn't properly secured? Who is willing to risk prison because some intern accidentally committed an API key or made a dumb mistake. Conversely, what's the chances that no one actually gets prosecuted regardless of how sloppy their security practices are?

When a great product is built it was the leadership and when a mistake was made it was always the employee that did it. Cool!
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