Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used LaTeX as a ugrad, it’s not that hard
It's not even standard in academia.
Depends on the discipline. I never hear of mathematicians using anything else.
Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data
651–660 of 690 posts
Re: Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data
#652Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just to be clear: E-mailing a student their grade is not "breaking the law". Not e-mailing a student their grade is not "being careful about following the law". It is just sheer laziness. A university may develop a policy of "we don't e-mail grades" for another reason, but FERPA is not a valid reason.
"Just to be clear": It's not "sheer laziness". I can almost guarantee you that Instructure would prefer to e-mail the grade itself, and probably had the code working somewhere before feedback from universities told them to remove it. There are absolutely cases where sending an e-mail to the wrong person is a violation of FERPA. Can you guarantee that your software will never be configured to accidentally e-mail someo…
Yes, I have written software that would email a student information that was in scope for FERPA.
It’s rather simple to restrict sending email to @student.uni.edu and then further force their email to match the username and email address that is synced from the SIS.
How much FERPA compliant software have you written?
Re: Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data
#653Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the lawyers in a straw-man imaginary world where they say a university can't e-mail any FERPA-covered data to a student (which includes such basic things as what times a student's classes are) don't contribute anything to society. But that's because they're just a figment of one person's imagination. Actual, real lawyers who work for or at real universities often do contribute quite a bit of valuable work. I…
That's great to hear. As I agreed elsewhere in the thread, their true purpose is exactly to shield other workers from this sort of nonsense FUD and make-work. Of course I presume it's also not a strawman because it's not in any way some unique thing to lawyers.
The general counsel at my last university job actually tended to cut through the red tape and excuses of “can’t do this due to legal”.
Lots of fun if a department had been stonewalling for “legal reasons” and she was summoned to a meeting.
Re: Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data
#654[dead]
Re: Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data
#655Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are still wrong. Just look at the code. As mentioned before, it's open source . Here I saved you a google search: https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms
"Look at the code" is not a reasonable response to "Is this app CRUD or not?" You've already been asked to provide specifics about which componenent(s) of Canvas are allegedly non-CRUD, and simply repeating your claim without answering the question does nothing to advance your case. It's a simple question. Since you claim to be an expert on Canvas, I'm sure that you can point me to the relevant features much faster t…
"I don't want to glance through the code, I'd rather you write me a detailed report on all the thousands of places where it deviates from crud" (not a direct quote) is not at all a reasonable ask.
And If you can't be bothered to take 2 minutes to click through some pages on GitHub, I don't believe you'd take the time to even read that report. So no, I'm not doing your research for you.
Edit: I will do this for you though. Here's Gemini's opinion[1]. It's quite accurate as well, and goes into reasonable high-level detail (though doesn't get into specific modules). I especially loved this quote:
> At its absolute lowest level, almost all web software boils down to pushing state to and from a database. But calling Canvas LMS "just a CRUD app" is a bit like calling a commercial airliner "just a metal tube with wings."
Re: Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data
#656Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Look at the code" is not a reasonable response to "Is this app CRUD or not?" You've already been asked to provide specifics about which componenent(s) of Canvas are allegedly non-CRUD, and simply repeating your claim without answering the question does nothing to advance your case. It's a simple question. Since you claim to be an expert on Canvas, I'm sure that you can point me to the relevant features much faster t…
"I don't want to glance through the code, I'd rather you write me a detailed report on all the thousands of places where it deviates from crud" (not a direct quote) is not at all a reasonable ask. And If you can't be bothered to take 2 minutes to click through some pages on GitHub, I don't believe you'd take the time to even read that report. So no, I'm not doing your research for you. Edit: I will do this for you th…
How reductionist and a straw man as well. No one here asked for a "detailed report." They asked you to name one (1) feature of an application that you claim to have intimate knowledge of; the original question was "What component in particular goes substantially beyond CRUD." It could take you one sentence. After multiple failures to pass that low bar, compounded by your total mischaracterization of the question and your citation of an obsequious LLM that also failed to provide any specifics, it's abundantly clear that you are unable to support your claim with facts and are not arguing in good faith. I won't waste my time further with your childish behavior.
Re: Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data
#657Earlier quoted context omitted.
Individuals can choose which laws to ignore, like when they jaywalk. Corporations, universities, etc. are very different. They create policies which are documented and which their employees are required to follow. They engage in risk analysis. "Part of being an adult" has nothing whatsoever to do with the laws and regulations that apply to organizations . You're making a severe category error.
Organizations are made of individuals who I assure you regularly ignore or don't even read the policies they are "required" to follow.
I don't know what world you live in. Everywhere I've ever worked, that gets you fired. Real quick.
Re: Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data
#658Earlier quoted context omitted.
Backups are definitely helpful in ransomwares, but before systems can be restored and brought back online, victim organizations still need to assess the scope of the breach, find the initial access vector, identify compromised accounts, and evict the threat actor. That can take time.
I’m not certain, but it appears you’re giving Instructure a pass here, as if this is the first time they were hacked. But, it’s the second, by the same group. As a parent of kids who are impacted by this, I’m not super concerned about the data being held for ransom, but I sure as fuck am concerned about how much it’s going to cost the district to move to another provider.
I don't have an opinion on Instructure (except as a parent generally hating the overall app-ization of education; fortunately our district switched away from Canvas a couple years ago), their cybersecurity posture, or this particular event. My only point is that even if backups exist, working through a ransomware attack often takes time.
Also, ransomware gangs often exfil the data and threaten to release it if the ransom is not paid--blackmail, of a sort. It depends on the company and the data set whether this is effective as a tactic. But when it is, backups don't help.
Re: Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data
#659Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Just to be clear": It's not "sheer laziness". I can almost guarantee you that Instructure would prefer to e-mail the grade itself, and probably had the code working somewhere before feedback from universities told them to remove it. There are absolutely cases where sending an e-mail to the wrong person is a violation of FERPA. Can you guarantee that your software will never be configured to accidentally e-mail someo…
Yes, I have written software that would email a student information that was in scope for FERPA. It’s rather simple to restrict sending email to @student.uni.edu and then further force their email to match the username and email address that is synced from the SIS. How much FERPA compliant software have you written?
That's great for you. I've been in meetings with lawyers around FERPA compliance.
You are right that if you are creating a custom tool you can create that restriction easily.
But if you are creating a learning management system where administrators can configure it a million different ways and the university lawyers want to make sure that administrators don't set it up the wrong way, it makes sense to have that safeguard.
You are looking at the wrong level here. This isn't a software coding issue around technology. This is a policy compliance issue around people. When you create tools you have to consider the possibility of those tools being misused by an employee and mitigate those risks when possible.
Re: Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data
#660I'm a student at Stanford — this is hitting the whole school hard. Unlike a lot of schools on the east coast that are affected (Brown, Harvard, MIT) we are on the quarter system so we're just ending Midterms right now. We're also lucky enough to have our CS department entirely independent from Canvas, but most of my humanities classes are not so lucky. One art history class is having us submit our midterm papers by u…
And what's your opinion on the em dash?
The fact that one of the em dashes has spaces around it, and the other does not, makes it more likely to be handwritten.
I personally love em-dashes and hate that they're a sign of AI writing now.