EdTech Situation Room Ep 369: Dogpile and Dark Arts

Welcome to episode 369 (“Dogpile and Dark Arts”) of the EdTech Situation Room from February 11, 2026, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week, Dr. Jason Neiffer (aicentrist.com) and Dr. Wesley Fryer (wesfryer.com) discuss the shadowy world of DDoS attacks by archive.today, the manipulation of Wikipedia narratives by bad actors, and the sunsetting of the CIA World Factbook. The conversation shifts to a live demo of Claude CoWork as a local folder-organizing agent, contrasting modern AI "agents" with the "Dogpile" search era of the past. They also explore "Digital Defense Against the Dark Arts" to help students and educators navigate AI-powered scams and misinformation. Our show was live-streamed and archived on YouTube Live via StreamYard.com and auto-archived to YouTube. We are now publishing from Substack too! Subscribe to us with your favorite podcast listening app, or directly on or https://www.youtube.com/@edtechSR. Follow our EdTechSR page on Facebook, mastodon.education/@edtechsr on Mastodon for updates, and join LIVE on Wednesday nights if you can. All show notes are available at edtechSR.com/links.

🔗 Links We Discussed

1. When Connection Is Engineered: Understanding The Anatomy Of An AI-Powered Romance Scam (The White Hatter, 10 Feb 2025)

2. Pro-Russian Narratives Target Wikipedia, Marking A Dangerous Trend For AI Chatbot Data (United24 Media, 22 Jan 2026)

3. Wikipedia Might Blacklist Archive.Today After Site Maintainer DDoSed A Blog (Ars Technica, 10 Feb 2026)

4. Archive.today Is Directing A DDOS Attack Against My Blog (Gyrovague, 01 Feb 2026)

5. Claude Cowork Available on Windows

6. Why Wikimedia Belongs In Education (Wikimedia UK, 06 Feb 2026)

7. The CIA World Factbook is dead. Here’s how I came to love it (NPR, 7 Feb 2026)

8. Apple News

9. Digital Defense Against the Dark Arts (by Wes)

10. AI Arena (formerly LM Arena)

11. CoWork by Claude

12. Jason’s Geek of the Week: OpenWork

13. Wes’ Geeks of the Week: Image prompt with Claude -> Image generate with Gemini - Super Bowl 2026 Ads - Ai Makes Far Side Cartoons

🧭 Links We Did NOT Discuss

1. AI’s Apocalyptic Jobs Prophecy Is About To Become Reality (The Telegraph, 05 Feb 2026)

2. Anthropic Insiders Afraid They’ve Crossed A Line (Futurism, 07 Feb 2026)

3. Grok Maker XAI Loses Another Co-Founder (Ars Technica, 11 Feb 2026)

4. OpenAI Releases New Deep Research Model

5. State Department To Purge Pre-Trump Social Media Posts (NPR, 07 Feb 2026)

6. Ghost: Blogs and newsletters on the Fediverse (Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse)

7. Google Recovers Deleted Nest Video In High-Profile Abduction Case (Ars Technica, 10 Feb 2026)

8. Upgraded Google Safety Tools Can Now Find And Remove More Of Your Personal Info (Ars Technica, 10 Feb 2026)

9. Google Makes It Easier To Remove Your Personal Data From Search (Ars Technica, 26 Feb 2025)

Episode 369 is also available on YouTube in two formats: Portrait mode optimized for mobile phones, and Landscape mode optimized for laptop / desktop computers! This Substack version (syndicated to other podcasting platforms) was edited using Descript.com to remove “filler words!”