November 2017 - nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

André Staltz - The Web began dying in 2014, here's how
by J.C. DE MARTIN Nov. 6, 2017

Nov. 6, 2017

https://staltz.com/the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.html (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Eugenics 2.0: We’re at the Dawn of Choosing Embryos by Health, Height, and More
by gabriele elia Nov. 6, 2017

Nov. 6, 2017

Il future previsto da Aldus Haxley si avvicina … e come spesso nella storia dell'umanità non siamo attrezzati per gestirlo, chissà cosa combineremo non oso pensare all'incrocio di tecnologia, diritto e potere economico che genererà ... g https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609204/eugenics-20-were-at-the-dawn-of-c… Eugenics 2.0: We’re at the Dawn of Choosing Embryos by Health, Height, and More Will you be among the first to pick your kids’ IQ? As machine learning unlocks predictions from DNA databases, scientists say parents could have choices never before possible. · by Antonio Regalado<https://www.technologyreview.com/profile/antonio-regalado/> · November 1, 2017 · 24<https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609204/eugenics-20-were-at-the-dawn-of-c…> · · · · Nathan Treff was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at 24. It’s a disease that runs in families, but it has complex causes. More than one gene is involved. And the environment plays a role too. So you don’t know who will get it. Treff’s grandfather had it, and lost a leg. But Treff’s three young kids are fine, so far. He’s crossing his fingers they won’t develop it later. Now Treff, an in vitro fertilization specialist, is working on a radical way to change the odds. Using a combination of computer models and DNA tests, the startup company he’s working with, Genomic Prediction<http://genomicprediction.com/>, thinks it has a way of predicting which IVF embryos in a laboratory dish would be most likely to develop type 1 diabetes or other complex diseases. Armed with such statistical scorecards, doctors and parents could huddle and choose to avoid embryos with failing grades. IVF clinics already test the DNA of embryos to spot rare diseases, like cystic fibrosis, caused by defects in a single gene. But these “preimplantation” tests are poised for a dramatic leap forward as it becomes possible to peer more deeply at an embryo’s genome and create broad statistical forecasts about the person it would become. The advance is occurring, say scientists, thanks to a growing flood of genetic data collected from large population studies. As statistical models known as predictors gobble up DNA and health information about hundreds of thousands of people, they’re getting more accurate at spotting the genetic patterns that foreshadow disease risk. But they have a controversial side, since the same techniques can be used to project the eventual height, weight, skin tone, and even intelligence of an IVF embryo. In addition to Treff, who is the company’s chief scientific officer, the founders of Genomic Prediction are Stephen Hsu, a physicist who is vice president for research at Michigan State University, and Laurent Tellier, a Danish bioinformatician who is CEO. Both Hsu and Tellier have been closely involved with a project in China that aims to sequence the genomes of mathematical geniuses, hoping to shed light on the genetic basis of IQ. Spotting outliers The company’s plans rely on a tidal wave of new knowledge showing how small genetic differences can add up to put one person, but not another, at high odds for diabetes, a neurotic personality, or a taller or shorter height. Already, such “polygenic risk scores” are used in direct-to-consumer gene tests, such as reports from 23andMe that tell customers their genetic chance of being overweight. For adults, risk scores are little more than a novelty or a source of health advice they can ignore. But if the same information is generated about an embryo, it could lead to existential consequences: who will be born, and who stays in a laboratory freezer. “I remind my partners, ‘You know, if my parents had this test, I wouldn’t be here,’” says Treff, a prize-winning expert on diagnostic technology who is the author of more than 90 scientific papers. Genomic Prediction was founded this year and has raised funds from venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, though it declines to say who they are. Tellier, whose inspiration is the science fiction film Gattaca, says the company plans to offer reports to IVF doctors and parents identifying “outliers”—those embryos whose genetic scores put them at the wrong end of a statistical curve for disorders such as diabetes, late-life osteoporosis, schizophrenia, and dwarfism, depending on whether models for those problems prove accurate. A days-old human embryo in an IVF clinic. Some cells can be removed to perform DNA tests. DALLASFERTILITY.COM The company’s concept, which it calls expanded preimplantation genetic testing, or ePGT, would effectively add a range of common disease risks to the menu of rare ones already available, which it also plans to test for. Its promotional material uses a picture of a mostly submerged iceberg to get the idea across. “We believe it will become a standard part of the IVF process,” says Tellier, just as a test for Down syndrome is a standard part of pregnancy. Some experts contacted by MIT Technology Review said they believed it’s premature to introduce polygenic scoring technology into IVF clinics—though perhaps not by very much. Matthew Rabinowitz, CEO of the prenatal-testing company Natera<https://www.natera.com/>, based in California, says he thinks predictions obtained today could be “largely misleading” because DNA models don’t function well enough. But Rabinowitz agrees that the technology is coming. “You are not going to stop the modeling in genetics, and you are not going to stop people from accessing it,” he says. “It’s going to get better and better.” Sharp questions Testing embryos for disease risks, including risks for diseases that develop only late in life, is considered ethically acceptable by U.S. fertility doctors. But the new DNA scoring models mean parents might be able to choose their kids on the basis of traits like IQ or adult weight. That’s because, just like type 1 diabetes, these traits are the result of complex genetic influences the predictor algorithms are designed to find. The model predicted people’s height from their DNA data to within three or four centimeters. “It’s the camel’s nose under the tent. Because if you are doing it for something more serious, then it’s trivially easy to look for anything else,” says Michelle Meyer<http://www.michellenmeyer.com/about.html>, a bioethicist at the Geisinger Health System who analyzes issues in reproductive genetics. “Here is the genomic dossier on each embryo. And you flip through the book.” Imagine picking the embryo most likely to get into Harvard like Mom, or to be tall like Dad. For Genomic Prediction, a tiny startup based out of a tech incubator in New Jersey, such questions will be especially sharply drawn. That is because of Hsu’s long-standing interest in genetic selection for superior intelligence. In 2014, Hsu authored an essay<http://nautil.us/issue/18/genius/super_intelligent-humans-are-coming> titled “Super-Intelligent Humans Are Coming,” in which he argued that selecting embryos for intelligence could boost the resulting child’s IQ by 15 points. Genomic Prediction says it will only report diseases—that is, identify those embryos it thinks would develop into people with serious medical problems. Even so, on his blog<http://infoproc.blogspot.com/> and in public statements, Hsu has for years been developing a vision that goes far beyond that. “Suppose I could tell you embryo four is going to be the tallest, embryo three is going to be the smartest, embryo two is going to be very antisocial. Suppose that level of granularity was available in the reports,” he told <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dn4LaowsGiA> the conservative radio and YouTube personality Stefan Molyneux this spring. “That is the near-term future that we as a civilization face. This is going to be here.” IVF specialist Nathan Treff is a cofounder of Genomic Prediction, which aims to “score” embryos for diseases like type 1 diabetes. GENOMICPREDICTION.COM Measuring height The fuel for the predictive models is a deluge of new data, most recently genetic readouts and medical records for 500,000 middle-aged Britons that were released in July by the U.K. Biobank<http://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/>, a national precision-medicine project in that country. The data trove included, for each volunteer, a map of about 800,000 single-nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs—points where their DNA differs slightly from another person’s. The release caused a pell-mell rush by geneticists to update their calculations about exactly how much of human disease, or even routine behaviors like bread consumption, these genetic differences could explain. Armed with the U.K. data, Hsu and Tellier claimed a breakthrough. For one easily measured trait, height, they used machine-learning techniques to create a predictor that behaved flawlessly. They reported<https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/09/18/190124>that the model could, for the most part, predict people’s height from their DNA data to within three or four centimeters. Height is currently the easiest trait to predict. It’s determined mostly by genes, and it’s always recorded in population databases. But Tellier says genetic databases are “rapidly approaching” the size needed to make accurate predictions about other human features, including risk for diseases whose true causes aren’t even known. Tellier says Genomic Prediction will zero in on disease traits for which the predictors already perform fairly well, or will soon. Those include autoimmune disorders like the illness Treff suffers from. In those conditions, a smaller set of genes dominates the predictions, sometimes making them more reliable. Sign up for the Chain Letter Blockchains, cryptocurrencies, and why they matter. Inizio modulo Sign Up Fine modulo Manage your newsletter preferences<https://www.technologyreview.com/newsletters/preferences/> A report from Germany in 2014, for instance, found it was possible to distinguish fairly accurately, from a polygenic DNA score alone, between a person with type 1 diabetes and a person without it. While the scores aren’t perfectly accurate, consider how they might influence a prospective parent. On average, children of a man with type 1 diabetes have a one in 17 chance of developing the ailment. Picking the best of several embryos made in an IVF clinic, even with an error-prone predictor, could lower the odds. In the case of height, Genomic Prediction hopes to use the model to help identify embryos that would grow into adults shorter than 4'10", the medical definition of dwarfism, says Tellier. There are many physical and psychological disadvantages to being so short. Eventually the company could also have the ability to identify intellectual problems, such as embryos with a predicted IQ of less than 70. The company doesn’t intend to give out raw trait scores to parents, only to flag embryos likely to be abnormal. That is because the product has to be “ethically defensible,” says Hsu: “We would only reveal the negative outlier state. We don’t report, ‘This guy is going to be in the NBA.’” Some scientists doubt the scores will prove useful at picking better people from IVF dishes. Even if they’re accurate on the average, for individuals there’s no guarantee of pinpoint precision. What’s more, environment has as big an impact on most traits as genes do. “There is a high probability that you will get it wrong—that would be my concern,” says Manuel Rivas, a professor at Stanford University who studies the genetics of Crohn’s disease. “If someone is using that information to make decisions about embryos, I don’t know what to make of it.” “We’ve seen such a crazy change in the number of people we are able to study.” Efforts to introduce this type of statistical scoring into reproduction have, in the past, drawn criticism. In 2013, 23andMe provoked outrage when it won a patent on<https://www.huffingtonpost.com/dov-fox/23andmes-designer-baby-pa_b_4042165.…> the idea of drop-down menus parents could use to pick sperm or egg donors—say, to try to get a specific eye color. The company, funded by Google, quickly backpedaled. But since then, polygenic scores have become a routine aspect of novelty DNA tests. A company called HumanCode<https://www.humancode.com/babyglimpse/> sells a $199 test online that uses SNP scores to tell two people about how tall their kids might be. In the dairy cattle industry, polygenic tests are widely used to rate young animals for how much milk they’ll produce. “At a broad level, our understanding of complex traits has evolved. It’s not that there are a few genes contributing to complex traits; it’s tens, or thousands, or even all genes,” says Meyer, the Geisinger professor. “That has led to polygenic risk scores. It’s many variants, each with small contributions of their own, but which have a significant contribution together. You add them up.” In his predictor for height, Hsu eventually made use of 20,000 variants to guess how tall each person was. Measuring embryos Around the world, a million couples undergo IVF each year; in the U.S., test-tube babies account for 1 percent of births. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD, has been part of the technology since the 1990s. In that procedure, a few cells are plucked from a days-old embryo growing in a laboratory so they can be tested. Until now, doctors have used PGD to detect embryos with major abnormalities, such as missing chromosomes, as well as those with “single gene” defects. Parents who carry the defective gene that causes Huntington’s disease, for instance, can use embryo tests to avoid having a child with the fatal brain ailment. Physicist Stephen Hsu developed a genetic “predictor” that uses machine learning to estimate height, to within three centimeters, from a person’s DNA. MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY The obstacle to polygenic tests has been that with so few cells, it’s been difficult to get the broad, accurate view of an embryo’s genome necessary to perform the needed calculations. “It’s very hard to make reliable measurements on that little DNA,” says Rabinowitz, the Natera CEO. Tellier says Genomic Prediction has developed an improved method for analyzing embryonic DNA, which he says will first be used to improve on traditional PGD, combing many single-gene tests into one. Tellier says the same technique is what will permit it to collect polygenic scores on embryos, although the company did not describe the method in detail. But other scientists have already demonstrated ways to overcome the accuracy barrier. In 2015, a team led by Rabinowitz and Jay Shendure of the University of Washington did it<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26019723> by sequencing in detail the genomes of two parents undergoing IVF. That let them infer the embryo’s genome sequence, even though the embryo test itself was no more accurate than before. When the babies were born, they found they’d been right. “We do have the technology to reconstruct the genome of an embryo and create a polygenic model,” says Rabinowitz, whose publicly traded company is worth about $600 million, and who says he has been mulling whether to enter the embryo-scoring business. “The problem is that the models have not quite been ready for prime time.” That’s because despite Hsu’s success with height, the scoring algorithms have significant limitations. One is that they’re built using data mostly from Northern Europeans. That means they may not be useful for people from Asia or Africa, where the pattern of SNPs is different, or for people of mixed ancestry. Even their performance for specific families of European background can’t be taken for granted unless the procedure is carefully tested in a clinical study, something that’s never been done, says Akash Kumar, a Stanford resident physician who was lead author of the Natera study. Recommended for You 1. Is Technology About to Decimate White-Collar Work?<https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609337/is-technology-about-to-decimate-w…> 2. Despite More Tech Tools for Working Remotely, Commutes Are Here to Stay<https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/609346/despite-more-tech-tool…> 3. There May Be a Way to Use Your Keyboard in VR<https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/609324/there-may-be-a-way-to-…> 4. Google Researchers Have a New Alternative to Traditional Neural Networks<https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/609297/google-researchers-hav…> 5. A Renewable-Energy Champion Is Suing His Scientific Critics<https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/609308/a-renewable-energy-cha…> Kumar, who treats young patients with rare disorders, says the genetic predictors raise some “big issues.” One is that the sheer amount of genetic data becoming available could make it temptingly easy to assess nonmedical traits. “We’ve seen such a crazy change in the number of people we are able to study,” he says. “Not many have schizophrenia, but they all have a height and a body-mass index. So the number of people you can use to build the trait models is much larger. It’s a very unique place to be, thinking what we should do with this technology.” Smarter kids This week, Genomic Prediction manned a booth at the annual meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. That organization, which represents fertility doctors and scientists, has previously said it thinks testing embryos for late-life conditions, like Alzheimer’s, would be “ethically justified<http://www.asrm.org/globalassets/asrm/asrm-content/news-and-publications/et…>.” It cited, among other reasons, the “reproductive liberty” of parents. “There will be some future debate over whether this should be legal, or made illegal. Countries will have referendums on it.” The society has been more ambivalent about choosing the sex of embryos (something that conventional PGD allows), leaving it to the discretion of doctors. Combined, the society’s positions seem to open the door to any kind of measurement, perhaps so long as the test is justified for a medical reason. Hsu has previously said he thinks intelligence is “the most interesting phenotype,” or trait, of all. But when he tried his predictor to see what it could say about how far along in school the 500,000 British subjects from the U.K. Biobank had gotten (years of schooling is a proxy for IQ), he found that DNA couldn’t predict it nearly as well as it could predict height. Yet DNA did explain some of the difference. Daniel Benjamin, a geno-economist at the University of Southern California, says that for large populations, gene scores are already as predictive of educational attainment as whether someone grew up in a rich or poor family. He adds that the accuracy of the scores has been steadily improving. Scoring embryos for high IQ, however, would be “premature” and “ethically contentious,” he says. Hsu’s prediction is that “billionaires and Silicon Valley types” will be the early adopters of embryo selection technology, becoming among the first “to do IVF even though they don’t need IVF.” As they start producing fewer unhealthy children, and more exceptional ones, the rest of society could follow suit. “I fully predict it will be possible,” says Hsu of selecting embryos with higher IQ scores. “But we’ve said that we as a company are not going to do it. It’s a difficult issue, like nuclear weapons or gene editing. There will be some future debate over whether this should be legal, or made illegal. Countries will have referendums on it.”

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102° Mercoledì di Nexa - 8 novembre 2017
by Nexa Media Nov. 6, 2017

Nov. 6, 2017

Nexa Center for Internet and Society Newsletter Se non visualizzi correttamente questo messaggio clicca qui <http://nexa.polito.it/mercoledi-102> NEXA 102° Mercoledì di Nexa Mercoledì 8 novembre 2017, ore 18.00 - 20.00 Politecnico di Torino http://nexa.polito.it/mercoledi-102 Visual, il giornalismo immediato Speaker Raphaël Zanotti (La Stampa) This event will be webcast live: http://nexa.polito.it/upcoming-events Nell’era dell’informazione permanente, in cui grazie a internet le notizie sono accessibili ovunque e in qualunque momento, il tempo medio di lettura collassa e *il giornalismo deve ripensare i suoi strumenti e i suoi linguaggi*. In Italia si affacciano timidamente esperienze di data e visual journalism. L’idea è trasmettere le informazioni in pochi secondi invece di costringere il lettore a immergersi in articoli lunghi. Partendo dall’esperienza concreta della nascita della rubrica “Data journalism” de La Stampa verranno affrontate le problematiche e le prospettive di questa nuova forma di giornalismo: il vantaggio della visualizzazione delle notizie, *la nuova centralità dell’infografica* (un tempo semplice corredo e abbellimento), lo sviluppo di software che hanno reso più democratica e accessibile la visualization, la dicotomia tra rappresentazione ed esplorazione, *il giornalismo di percezione e quello di precisione*, il problema italiano della disponibilità delle fonti, il gap tecnologico da colmare, nuovi strumenti per una partecipazione dei cittadini alla vita democratica. BIOGRAFIE - e informazioni supplementari [ZANOTTI] *Raphaël ZANOTTI * è un giornalista de La Stampa dal settembre 2007, si è formato prima come cronista di nera e giudiziaria per poi specializzarsi in Osint e Social Media Intelligence (Associazione di giornalismo investigativo), Data Journalism (European Journalism Center), Data Storytelling e Data Visualization (University of Texas ad Austin e Knight Center). *Letture consigliate e link utili:* * Alberto Cairo, /L’Arte Funzionale, infografica e visualizzazione delle informazioni/, Pearson, aprile 2013. * Stephen Few, /The Chartjunk Debate, a close examination of recent findings, Perceptual edge/, aprile, maggio e giugno 2011. * Chris Frith, /Making up the mind, how the brain creates our mental world/, Blackwell Publishing, 2007. * Ernesto Belisario, Guido Romeo, /Silenzi di Stato, storie di trasparenza negata e di cittadini che non si arrendono/, Chiarelettere, 2016. * Raphaël Zanotti,/Divieto di accesso, nonostante il Foia gli atti amministrativi restano in cassaforte/, La Stampa, 8 febbraio 2017. * Raphaël Zanotti, /Arriva la piattaforma online che ti svela dove si fanno le multe/, La Stampa, 29 dicembre 2016. Che cosa sono il Centro Nexa e i cicli di incontri “Mercoledì di Nexa” e “Nexa Lunch Seminar” Il Centro Nexa su Internet & Società del Politecnico di Torino (Dipartimento di Automatica e Informatica) è un centro di ricerca indipendente e interdisciplinare che studia Internet e il suo effetto sulla società. Maggiori informazioni all'indirizzo: http://nexa.polito.it/about. Durante i “*Mercoledì di Nexa*”, che si tengono *ogni 2° mercoledì del mese* alle *ore 18 in punto*, il Centro Nexa su Internet e Società apre le sue porte non solo agli esperti e a tutti coloro i quali lavorano con Internet, ma anche a semplici appassionati e cittadini. Il ciclo di incontri intende approfondire, con un linguaggio preciso ma divulgativo, i temi legati alla Rete: motori di ricerca, Creative Commons, social networks, open source/software libero, neutralità della rete, libertà di espressione, privacy, file sharing, big e open data, smart cities e molto altro. Al centro di quasi tutti gli incontri un ospite pronto a dialogare con i direttori del Centro Nexa, il Prof. Juan Carlos De Martin del Politecnico di Torino e il Prof. Marco Ricolfi dell'Università di Torino, nonché lo staff e i Fellows del Centro Nexa. Maggiori informazioni sui Mercoledì di Nexa, incluso un elenco di tutti i “Mercoledì” passati, sono disponibili all'indirizzo: http://nexa.polito.it/mercoledi. Si segnala inoltre che dal maggio 2012 *ogni 4° mercoledì* del mese *dalle ore 13 alle ore 14* il Centro Nexa organizza anche i "*Nexa Lunch Seminar*". Una lista di tutti i “Lunch Seminar” passati è disponibile all'indirizzo: http://nexa.polito.it/lunch-seminars. See our events calendar <http://nexa.polito.it/events> if you're curious about future luncheons, discussions, lectures, and conferences not listed in this email. Our events are free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted. Maggiori informazioni sui Mercoledì di Nexa e i Nexa Lunch Seminar, sono disponibili all'indirizzo: http://nexa.polito.it/events. Weekly Events Newsletter. Sign up <http://nexa.polito.it/mailing-lists> to receive this newsletter if this email was forwarded to you. To manage your subscription preferences, please click here <https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa>. Connect & get involved: Jobs, internships, and more <http://nexa.polito.it/get-involved>

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Saudi Arabia has just given citizenship to a robot
by Antonio Vetro' Nov. 6, 2017

Nov. 6, 2017

Al di là dell'operazione di "marketing" alla base dell'iniziativa, potrebbe essere seguita a ruota da molti altri. http://uk.businessinsider.com/sophia-robot-citizenship-in-saudi-arabia-the-… Mi chiedo a che tipo di diritti il robot Sophia possa aspirare... Un caro saluto, Antonio V.

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Computer says no: why making AIs fair, accountable and transparent is crucial
by Alberto Cammozzo Nov. 6, 2017

Nov. 6, 2017

<https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/nov/05/computer-says-no-why-making…> Alberto

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Perché la crisi dell'era delle startup potrebbe essere una grande occasione per gli imprenditori
by m c Nov. 6, 2017

Nov. 6, 2017

Una interessante analisi sulla crisi delle startup certificata da una serie di autorevoli commentatori. Ma c'è già chi guarda avanti e vede in questo processo un momento di crescita per tutti. Why the ‘end of the startup era’ could be great for entrepreneurs | | | | | | | | | | | Why the ‘end of the startup era’ could be great for entrepreneurs Di Joseph Flaherty Three prominent tech thinkers recently declared the end of the startup era, questioned the future of tech innova... | | | | Massimo Cerofolini via Flaminia 831 00191 Roma "Ogni persona che incontri sta combattendo una battaglia di cui non sai niente. Sii gentile. Sempre". Carlo Mazzacurati

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Riconoscimento facciale in Italia
by Riccardo Coluccini Nov. 3, 2017

Nov. 3, 2017

Buon pomeriggio, Sto seguendo da alcuni mesi gli acquisti di tecnologie di sorveglianza da parte del governo italiano e vorrei segnalarvi queso mio articolo su uno dei più recenti acquisti: un sistema di riconoscimento facciale. https://medium.com/@ORARiccardo/anche-litalia-si-%C3%A8-munita-di-un-sistem… Il sistema è in dotazione alla polizia scientifica e dal capitolato tecnico si legge che sarà utilizzato “a supporto di operazioni di controllo del territorio in occasione di eventi e/o manifestazioni.” Vorrei sottolineare come non vi sia riferimento alla lotta al terrorismo — che invece era presente, ad esempio, nel sistema di trascrizione e cattura impronte vocali da audio/video online. https://motherboard.vice.com/it/article/evv3xp/i-video-che-metti-online-ven… Ho segnalato il sistema di riconoscimento facciale al Garante per la protezione dei dati personali. Spero di aprire anche qui con voi un dialogo sulla via che sembra essere stata intrapresa dall'Italia per quanto riguarda la sorveglianza. Saluti, Riccardo Coluccini

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Inaugurazione 2° anno Master in Giornalismo di Torino - 7 novembre 2017
by Francesco Ruggiero Nov. 3, 2017

Nov. 3, 2017

Gentilissimi, martedì *7 novembre* *2017, *dalle 11 alle 13, si svolgerà *l'inaugurazione **del secondo anno del Master in Giornalismo* all’Università di Torino. L’incontro si terrà nell’*Auditorium de La Stampa,* in* via Lugaro 15*, a Torino. Ai Saluti istituzionali di *Alberto Sinigaglia* (Presidente Ordine dei Giornalisti del Piemonte), *Gianmaria Ajani* (Rettore Università di Torino) e *Franca Roncarolo* (Direttrice Scientifica del Master), seguiranno gli interventi di *Maurizio Molinari* (Direttore La Stampa), *Massimo Russo* – (Direttore della divisione digitale Gedi Spa) e una Lectio di *Claudio Marazzini,* (presidente dell'Accademia della Crusca) dal titolo: *La lingua dei giornali per l'italiano del futuro,* moderata da *Anna Masera* (Direttrice laboratori e testate del Master). La lectio è accreditata come corso di aggiornamento per i giornalisti Si prega di *confermare la partecipazione* compilando il modulo al link http://bit.ly/2gNXkb9 . Cordiali saluti, Francesco -- Francesco Ruggiero Communication Manager Nexa Center for Internet & Society Politecnico di Torino - DAUIN Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24 - 10129 Torino web: http://nexa.polito.it mail: francesco.ruggiero(a)polito.it tel: 011 090 7219

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We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads
by Alberto Cammozzo Nov. 3, 2017

Nov. 3, 2017

Grande talk di Zeynep Tufeci <https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_just_to_…> ... So what's going on? Now, YouTube's algorithm is proprietary, but here's what I think is going on. The algorithm has figured out that if you can entice people into thinking that you can show them something more hardcore, they're more likely to stay on the site watching video after video going down that rabbit hole while Google serves them ads. Now, with nobody minding the ethics of the store, these sites can profile people who are Jew haters, who think that Jews are parasites and who have such explicit anti-Semitic content, and let you target them with ads. They can also mobilize algorithms to find for you look-alike audiences, people who do not have such explicit anti-Semitic content on their profile but who the algorithm detects may be susceptible to such messages, and lets you target them with ads, too. Now, this may sound like an implausible example, but this is real. ProPublica investigated this and found that you can indeed do this on Facebook, and Facebook helpfully offered up suggestions on how to broaden that audience. BuzzFeed tried it for Google, and very quickly they found, yep, you can do it on Google, too. And it wasn't even expensive. The ProPublica reporter spent about 30 dollars to target this category. ... This isn't "1984." Now, if authoritarianism is using overt fear to terrorize us, we'll all be scared, but we'll know it, we'll hate it and we'll resist it. But if the people in power are using these algorithms to quietly watch us, to judge us and to nudge us, to predict and identify the troublemakers and the rebels, to deploy persuasion architectures at scale and to manipulate individuals one by one using their personal, individual weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and if they're doing it at scale through our private screens so that we don't even know what our fellow citizens and neighbors are seeing, that authoritarianism will envelop us like a spider's web and we may not even know we're in it.

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NYT - Net Neutrality: Why Artists and Activists Can’t Afford to Lose It
by A Dicorinto Nov. 3, 2017

Nov. 3, 2017

Net Neutrality: Why Artists and Activists Can’t Afford to Lose It [...] The current rules, which have been in place since 2015, ensure that internet service providers treat all data — websites, shows, emails — the same. That means nobody has to pay extra money to make sure his or her content loads quickly. This fair internet, where everyone from an amateur comedian to a celebrity to a huge media company plays by the same rules, means you don’t need a lot of money or the backing of someone with power to share your content with the world. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/31/opinion/net-neutrality-artists-activists… -- Arturo Di Corinto www.dicorinto.it ---------------------------------> AVVERTENZE AI SENSI DEL D.Lgs. 196/2003 Le informazioni contenute in questo messaggio di posta elettronica e/o nel/i file/s allegato/i sono da considerarsi strettamente riservate. Il loro utilizzo è consentito esclusivamente al destinatario del messaggio, per le finalità indicate nel messaggio stesso. Qualora riceviate questo messaggio senza esserne il destinatario, Vi preghiamo cortesemente di darcene notizia via e-mail e di procedere alla distruzione del messaggio stesso, cancellandolo dal Vostro sistema. Conservare il messaggio stesso, divulgarlo anche in parte, distribuirlo ad altri soggetti, copiarlo, od utilizzarlo per finalità diverse, costituisce comportamento contrario ai principi dettati dal D.Lgs. 196/2003

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