March 2019 - nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

SAVE THE DATE(s): 13-14 June 2019, INDL two-day conference on micro-work, AI and platform labour in Paris!
by Antonio Casilli March 29, 2019

March 29, 2019

Dear all, I'm extremely happy and thrilled to inform you that our INDL (International Network on Digital Labour, the branch of ENDL bent on world domination :) will take place in Paris on the 13th and 14th of June. Please mark it on your calendar: we count on you to attend the conference to meet, discuss, and have at least a drink and a croissant together. Plus, the conference is free. The registration link will soon be available, as well as the program. Here's a presentation, featuring the confirmed speakers: [ http://endl.network/events/conferences/indl-1-conference/ | http://endl.network/events/conferences/indl-1-conference/ ] . Feel free to forward this message to anyone who may be interested. Cheers, Antonio ---- [ http://endl.network/events/conferences/indl-1-conference/ | INDL-1 Conference "Microwork: Technology, Platforms, and Employment" ] [ http://endl.network/events/conferences/indl-1-conference/ | Two days to discuss micro-work from policy and academic perspectives ] [ http://endl.network/events/conferences/indl-1-conference/ ] [ http://endl.network/events/conferences/indl-1-conference/ | 13-14 June 2019 ] [ http://endl.network/events/conferences/indl-1-conference/ | France Stratégie ] [ http://endl.network/events/conferences/indl-1-conference/ | 20, avenue de Ségur ] [ http://endl.network/events/conferences/indl-1-conference/ | Paris (France) ] The [ http://endl.network/indl/ | International Network on Digital Labour (INDL) ] and [ https://www.strategie.gouv.fr/ | France Stratégie (a service of the French Prime Minister) ] present a two-day conference on micro-work, technology, and employment. Confirmed speakers include: Florian A. Schmidt (HTW Dresden), Vili Lehdonvirta (OII), Anoush Margaryan (University of West London), Odile Chagny (Sharers & Workers), Mariya Aleksynska (ILO), Patricia Vendramin (Université de Louvain), Julian Posada (University of Toronto), Jen Schradie (Sciences Po), Adam Badger (University of London), Paola Tubaro (CNRS), Ulrich Laitenberger (Telecom Paristech), Johan Lindquist (University of Stockholm), Niels van Doorn (University of Amsterdam), Alessandro Delfanti (University of Toronto), Antonio Casilli (Telecom ParisTech). The first day of the event will focus on policy perspectives on online platform-mediated work and especially micro-work, data preparation, and AI training. The presentations will be in English and French, with simultaneous translation. This day will feature panels both presenting the findings of [ http://diplab.eu/ | DiPLab ] , a research project entirely focusing on French micro-work, and discussing global perspectives on platform labour, with the presence of international specialists. It will also feature a "meet the micro-workers" panel, where workers, platform owners and client companies will confront their views. . The second day will feature academic explorations in the field of platform labour . The presentations will be in English. The day will start with a [ http://endl.network/doctoral-colloquium-2019-paris/ | doctoral colloquium ] where graduate students and junior researchers will present ongoing research projects and receive guidance from senior members of the network. A panel on the international perspectives of platform labour will address topics such as post-colonial theory, labour economics, skill formation, workers organisation. The two-day event will end with a keynote speech by Prof. Florian A. Schmidt (HTW Dresden). ---- -- Antonio A. Casilli Associate Professor (HDR), Telecom ParisTech Member, Interdisciplinary Institute for Innovation (i3 UMR 9217 CNRS) Associate Member, LACI-IIAC (EHESS) Faculty Fellow, Nexa Center for Internet & Society

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996.ICU
by Giacomo March 28, 2019

March 28, 2019

https://996.icu/#/it_IT Cos'è "996"? Un lavoro "996" fa riferimento ad un orario di lavoro non ufficiale (9 - 21, 6 giorni a settimana) che sta riscuotendo sempre più popolarità. Lavorare per una compagnia che incoraggia il lavoro "996" significa lavorare solitamente per 60 ore a settimana. [...] Ad inizio 2019 Youzan, una società cinese di e-commerce, ha annunciato durante la festa di fine anno l'adozione dell'orario di lavoro "996" per il futuro. L'amministratore delegato di Youzan ha affermato: "Sarà sicuramente una buona scelta quando ci guarderemo alle spalle tra qualche anno". A metà Marzo 2019 è stato segnalato che Jingdong ha iniziato ad adottare orari di lavoro "996" o "995" in alcune delle proprie unità operative. Jingdong PR ha postato sul proprio account maimai (脉脉, un social network cinese relativo al mercato del lavoro): "(La nostra cultura è quella di) consacrarci con tutto il nostro cuore (per raggiungere gli obiettivi di business)". [...] Secondo la legge sul lavoro, gli impiegati che seguono l'orario "996" devono essere pagati 2.275 volte il proprio salario base. Sfortunatamente, le persone che lavorano "996" raramente ricevono tale compenso. [...] Seguendo sistematicamente il sistema "996", si corre il rischio di finire in terapia intensiva. (In Inglese, Intensive Care Unit) La vita degli sviluppatori conta. ____ Una protesta di programmatori cinesi su GitHub. Chissà che riflessioni ne scaturiranno in Silicon Valley... Giacomo

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approvate le regole sul diritto di autore
by Mauro Alovisio March 28, 2019

March 28, 2019

Gent,me/mi segnalo news di interesse di questa mattina in materia di diritto di autore qualora non sia stato già condiviso in lista https://agcult.it/a/7023/2019-03-26/ue-approvate-le-nuove-regole-sul-diritt… Cordiali saluti Mauro Alovisio

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Fundamental Rights as Bycatch – Russia’s Anti-Fake News Legislation - Oreste Pollicino
by Giovanni De Gregorio March 28, 2019

March 28, 2019

Cari tutti, vorrei condividere con voi la blog entry del Prof. Pollicino che analizza in chiave comparata la legge approvata recentemente dalla Russia contro le fake news: O. Pollicino, Fundamental Rights as Bycatch – Russia’s Anti-Fake News Legislation, Verfassungsblog, 28 marzo 2019 disponibile all'indirizzo https://verfassungsblog.de/fundamental-rights-as-bycatch-russias-anti-fake-… Un saluto Giovanni De Gregorio --- Dai il tuo 5x1000 alla Bocconi. Aiuta gli studenti meritevoli a costruire il proprio futuro. CF 80024610158. www.unibocconi.it/5x1000 Please note that the above message is addressed only to individuals filing Italian income tax returns. 5x1000 is a percentage of Italian personal income tax that taxpayers can allocate to Universities, scientific research and non profit organizations. ---

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Eben Moglen Interviewed by NPR about Boeing Affair
by Giacomo Tesio March 28, 2019

March 28, 2019

“What we’re looking at in the case of some aerodynamic software taking over for pilots without telling them is an example of why even if you didn’t think this had anything to do with politics, it is still true that systems that don’t explain themselves to human beings who interact with them are dangerous…If we in the 21st century still believe in human autonomy, then we need to put that value into the software that runs our world.” “In the twenty-first century, there will be two kinds of autonomous systems. There will be autonomous systems made by despotism, most noticeably by the Chinese Communist Party’s economy and society. And they will not explain what they are doing because that’s the whole point: eliminating democracy, freedom of human beings, civil liberty as ideas. The only alternative to that kind of autonomous system is whatever we will invent. That is to say it’s a political task from the part of humanity that believes in freedom to build these technologies to support rather than to threaten human freedom.” http://softwarefreedom.org/news/2019/mar/22/npr-boeing/

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Developing for Android is like being a (demonetized) YouTuber
by Giacomo Tesio March 28, 2019

March 28, 2019

<https://gbl08ma.com/developing-for-android-is-like-being-a-demonetized-yout…>

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Aren’t AMP Caches committing copyright infringement?
by Giacomo Tesio March 28, 2019

March 28, 2019

<https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/amp-cache-copyright> Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are specially formatted web pages that companies like Cloudflare, Google, and Microsoft copy off publishers’ websites and make available through their own AMP Cache web servers. There is no redistribution license agreement between the AMP Caches and the publishers, so how come AMP Caches aren’t considered copyright infringement on a massive scale? Like the name suggest, albeit heavily disputed, the purpose of AMP is to speed up webpage delivery time and performance on high-latency mobile devices. Web publishers can either choose to specifically create AMP-formatted web pages in addition or instead of their regular web pages. Some publishing platform may create AMP variants alongside the regular web page without the knowledge of the author (the copyright holder). [...] # Requirements for caching safe harbor provisions Caches and caches are vaguely defined in copyright laws. However; Australian, Canadian, European Union, and USA laws agree that the caching process must be automatic and that the caches must follow industry standards for removing and updating cached materials. AMP Caches satisfies this requirement by supporting the industry standard HTTP Cache-Control header and other related caching headers. EU law also requires that the caching must only be done for the purpose of making communications more efficient; which is how Google have presented AMP all along. Copyright laws require that no modifications are made to the cached creative works. Australian and Canadian copyright laws specifically grants exceptions to this requirement for changes made by an undefined technical processes. EU and USA copyright laws have no such exceptions. AMP Caches makes a few notable optimizations and modifications to cached content. These changes performed by the AMP Caches are done to achieve high performance but it may also be stripping away their safe harbor provisions as allowed for under EU and USA copyright laws. [...] # The implied license An implied license in the context of copyright law is a license granted by a rights holder in the absence of an expressly written contract. You really need to be a copyright lawyer to make any sense of the finer details of implied licenses. Most resources on implied licenses that I found on the web consists of little more than lawyers shaking their heads at the lack of an expressly written legal agreement in their place.

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The Linux Foundation is Not About Linux
by Giacomo Tesio March 28, 2019

March 28, 2019

<http://techrights.org/2019/03/26/the-linux-foundation-is-not-about-linux/> Linux Foundation (LF) objectives/missions do not resemble what the Open Source Development Labs, Inc. (OSDL) was founded to accomplish; this puts at grave threat the very raison d’être of both GNU and Linux. [...] The Linux Foundation is big business, it’s big money. [...] What has the LF turned into since? We’re probably going to write about their courses and events separately (in the future), but in the meantime not enough people have paid attention to how the salaries exploded (what kind of “charity” pays people like a million bucks a year)? Based on ProPublica, the IRS has had nothing (public at least, as this is the latest and last) since 2016, so we assume that this “charity” now has $100,000,000 or more in turnover (annual). That’s massive. If they double the salaries, accordingly (doubling the turnover), that’s nearly a million bucks a year for a dozen or so staff members. But that’s not what matters (the money); it’s how they use that money which matters and it feels as though LF staff tries to silence/suppress people who investigate it. [...] What does the LF help with? Putting GNU inside Windows? What about GNU/Linux desktops? It seems like “adding Netflix” (DRM) is the priority now.

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How malevolent machine learning could derail AI - MIT Technology Review
by antonio.vetro＠polito.it March 28, 2019

March 28, 2019

Nuove frontiere del reverse engineering. Oltre a quanto suggerisce il titolo, in realtà potrebbero rivelarsi utili per testare l'affidabilità di sistemi di apprendimento automatico. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613170/emtech-digital-dawn-song-adversar… AV == Sent from my wireless device ==

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The culture war at the heart of open source
by Giacomo Tesio March 28, 2019

March 28, 2019

<https://words.steveklabnik.com/the-culture-war-at-the-heart-of-open-source> In talking to developers about open source, you’ll also hear something else. Something that’s been itching in the back of my brain for a while, and the thing that led me to write this. You’ll often hear developers talk about how the relationship between businesses and open source developers is messy. Complicated. Businesses don’t “give back enough,” won’t pay people to work on open source. That it’s all take and no give. I’ve said a lot of that stuff myself. But here’s the thing: that’s why the concept of open source was created in the first place. It’s there, plain as day, if you ask the folks who actually created it. Open source was a way to make free software better for businesses. This doesn’t mean that it’s beyond critique, of course. The relationship can improve. I don’t think these developers are stupid, or hypocrites. This is where we’re at today. The Free Software movement was created, and then Open Source was created as a reaction to that. Today’s developers have never learned about this history, or don’t care about it, or actively think it’s irrelevant. And so we have a war. A war for the meaning of open source. A war fought with tweets, and blog posts, and discussions. A war between the old guard, those who created the idea originally, and the new generation, the developers who have taken the base idea and run with it. I think history will repeat itself. In the same way that the open source movement said “we’re like free software, but with these changes,” I think we’ll end up with a new movement. For the same reasons that “open source” came up with a new name, I think the movement that will arise from today’s developers will also need a new name. I’m not sure what that movement will look like, and I’ll explore why in another post. To give you a teaser: the problem is in the way that both Free Software and Open Source are formulated. The rot is in the roots, and I’m not yet sure what will replace it.

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