May 2019 - nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

Rider, accordo pilota per assunzioni a tempo indeterminato
by Luigi Scorca May 11, 2019

May 11, 2019

Siglato a Firenze dai sindacati e da un'azienda del settore: i lavoratori avranno tutti i diritti e le tutele garantiti dal contratto nazionale Merci, logistica e spedizioni https://www.repubblica.it/economia/2019/05/10/news/rider_accordo_pilota_ass…

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Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes
by gianluca quaglia May 11, 2019

May 11, 2019

Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes Algorithms that take down “terrorist” videos could hamstring efforts to bring human-rights abusers to justice. May 8, 2019 Bernhard Warner Journalist based in Rome If grisly images stay up on Facebook or YouTube long enough, self-appointed detectives around the world sometimes use them to reconstruct a crime scene. In July 2017, a video capturing the execution of 18 people appeared on Facebook. The clip opened with a half-dozen armed men presiding over several rows of detainees. Dressed in bright-orange jumpsuits and black hoods, the captives knelt in the gravel, hands tied behind their back. They never saw what was coming. The gunmen raised their weapons and fired, and the first row of victims crumpled to the earth. The executioners repeated this act four times, following the orders of a confident young man dressed in a black cap and camouflage trousers. If you slowed the video down frame by frame, you could see that his black T-shirt bore the logo of the Al-Saiqa Brigade, an elite unit of the Libyan National Army. That was clue No. 1: This happened in Libya. [...] continua qui https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/facebook-algorithms-are-m…

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Una notizia, in fondo è solo una notizia... o no?
by don Luca Peyron May 10, 2019

May 10, 2019

"Secondo lo studio quasi il 14% dei lavoratori italiani ha bisogno di un training moderato (fino a 1 anno) per sfuggire al rischio di automazione (media Ocse 10,9%) e un altro 4,2% avrebbe bisogno fino a 3 anni di formazione per atterrare su lavori più sicuri". Abbiamo bisogno di formazione dunque, a mio giudizio abbiamo ancora più bisogno di educazione, che non esclude la prima, ma ne completa l'orizzonte di senso. Buona lettura dl https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/finanza-e-mercati/2019-05-09/italia-bocciat… _________________________ www.universitari.to.it via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

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After elderly tenant was locked in his apartment by his landlord's stupid "smart lock, " tenants win right to use actual keys to enter their homes
by Giacomo Tesio May 10, 2019

May 10, 2019

https://boingboing.net/2019/05/10/latch-vs-keys.html Tenants in New York City have reached a settlement with their landlord requiring the landlord to install actual locks with actual keys on demand, rather than insisting that all tenants use locks from Latch, the leading Internet of Things "smart lock" vendor, whose products conduct fine-grained surveillance on their users, which the company reserves the right to share with third parties. The suit was brought by Mary Beth McKenzie, Tony Mysak, and a group of their fellow tenants against their Hell's Kitchen landlord after the landlord summarily swapped out their apartment building's locks and replaced them with Latch products. Mysak, a 93-year-old longtime resident of the building, was unable to operate the lock on his home and found himself locked in. The settlement gives the tenants a cause of action to sue their landlord in the event that the landlord deprives them of a physical key option in the future. Lisa Gallaudet, an attorney representing the landlords, insists that this is not a "victory" for the tenants, and says her client only settled because litigation would have been an expensive nuisance.

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Opinion | It’s Time to Break Up Facebook - The New York Times
by J.C. DE MARTIN May 9, 2019

May 9, 2019

It’s Time to Break Up Facebook By Chris Hughes Mr. Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook, is a co-chairman of the Economic Security Project and a senior adviser at the Roosevelt Institute. May 9, 2019 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/opinion/sunday/chris-hughes-facebook-zuc… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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chiamate telefoniche promozionali a mezzo bot
by Alberto Cammozzo May 9, 2019

May 9, 2019

Recentemente ricevo chiamate promozionali anche "a raffica" di Enel Energia effettuate a mezzo bot, cioè con voce registrata. Capita anche a voi? Oltre ad essere una pratica aggressiva che inquina enormemente l'ecosistema delle comunicazioni (ormai non rispondo ormai più a chiamate di cui non conosco il numero) a mio avviso usare la segreteria è illegale: con una segreteria telefonica non è possibile esercitare il diritto di cancellazione. E l'estensione del registro delle opposizioni alle chiamate su cellulare attende il regolamento attuativo... Che ci vorrà mai? Intanto ho inviato questa PEC a Enel e (pc) al Garante. Ciao, Alberto Spettabile Enel Energia, sto ricevendo numerose Vostre telefonate promozionali, a volte più di una volta al giorno: questa pratica di marketing predatorio è estremamente molesta per gli utenti e danneggia gravemente l'immagine della Vostra azienda che mostra così poco rispetto per il pubblico. Quando la chiamata è effettuata da un operatore ho sempre chiesto di non essere più contattato (senza alcun esito). Ultimamente però le chiamate sono opera di un sistema automatico con voce registrata (che lascia anche messaggi in segreteria telefonica), nel quale purtroppo non avete previsto di introdurre una opzione di opt-out da successive chiamate. Nell'impossibilità di esercitare il diritto di essere cancellato dagli elenchi di chiamata previsto dalla vigente normativa sui dati personali, mi vedo costretto ad agire formalmente con la presente. Pertanto: - vi CHIEDO di rimuovere il numero XXXXXXXXX intestato a mio nome dalle vostre liste di chiamata; - vi DIFFIDO dall'effettuare qualsiasi chiamata promozionale a questo numero a partire da otto giorni solari dalla data odierna: in caso contrario mi vedrò costretto a provvedere a mia tutela con i mezzi opportuni, incluso il reclamo formale al GPDP. - vi INVITO a introdurre una opzione di opt-out nel risponditore automatico, con la quale l'utente possa esercitare i diritti sanciti dal GDPR ed essere così cancellato dagli elenchi di chiamata; Per conoscenza invio la presente al Garante per la Protezione dei Dati Personali. Distinti saluti, Alberto Cammozzo

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Fwd: Rules for Electronic Platforms in the EU
by J.C. DE MARTIN May 9, 2019

May 9, 2019

(Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any)) Begin forwarded message: > Resent-From: <d004620(a)polito.it> > From: "Giuseppe Mastruzzo - IUC Director" <direttore(a)iuctorino.it> > Date: 9 May 2019 at 12:06:03 CEST > To: "Giuseppe Mastruzzo - IUC Director" <direttore(a)iuctorino.it> > Subject: Rules for Electronic Platforms in the EU > > Rules for Electronic Platforms in the EU > by Prof. Teresa Rodríguez de las Heras Ballell > > A seminar on > Monday May 27 – 17:15/18:45 > at the > International University College of Turin > Piazza Paleocapa 2, Torino

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Ecco perché Unicredit abbandona Facebook e Instagram
by Giacomo Tesio May 8, 2019

May 8, 2019

https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/finanza-e-mercati/2019-05-05/ecco-perche-un… UniCredit abbandona l’intero gruppo che proprietariamente fa capo a Facebook, di cui evidentemente non si fida più. Per motivi etici - e quindi con un valore economico oltre che reputazionale - già emersi dopo lo scandalo Cambridge Analytica. Ma soprattutto, pare di capire, per le modalità con cui la capogruppo Facebook e le sue controllate - quindi non l’intero mondo dei social network, tanto che UniCredit resterà su Twitter e LinkedIn - continuano a gestire i dati dei clienti delle banche.

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The Era of General Purpose Computers is Ending
by Giacomo Tesio May 8, 2019

May 8, 2019

Dividi et impera? https://www.nextplatform.com/2019/02/05/the-era-of-general-purpose-computer… Moore’s Law has underwritten a remarkable period of growth and stability for the computer industry. The doubling of transistor density at a predictable cadence has fueled not only five decades of increased processor performance, but also the rise of the general-purpose computing model. However, according to a pair of researchers at MIT and Aachen University, that’s all coming to an end. [...] As they point out, general-purpose computing was not always the norm. In the early days of supercomputing, custom-built vector-based architectures from companies like Cray dominated the HPC industry. A version of this still exists today in the vector systems built by NEC. But thanks to the speed at which Moore’s Law has improved the price-performance of transistors over the last few decades, the economic forces has greatly favored general-purpose processors. That’s mainly because the cost of developing and manufacturing a custom chip is between $30 and $80 million. [...] But the computational economics enabled by Moore’s Law is now changing. In recent years, shrinking transistors has become much more expensive as the physical limitations of the underlying semiconductor material begins to assert itself. The authors point out that in the past 25 years, the cost to build a leading edge fab has risen 11 percent per year. In 2017, the Semiconductor Industry Association estimated that it costs about $7 billion to construct a new fab. Not only does that drive up the fixed costs for chipmakers, it has reduced the number semiconductor manufacturers from 25, in 2002, to just four today: Intel, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), Samsung and GlobalFoundries. [...] It’s not just a deteriorating Moore’s Law. [...] For starters, you have platforms like mobile devices and the internet of things (IoT) that are so demanding with regard to energy efficiency and cost, and are deployed in such large volumes, that they necessitated customized chips even with a relatively robust Moore’s Law in place. [...] Deep learning and its preferred hardware platform, GPUs, represent the most visible example of how computing may travel down the path from general-purpose to specialized processors. [...] But for deep learning, GPUs may only be the gateway drug. [...] Google’s own Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), which was purpose-built to train and use neural networks, is now in its third iteration. [...] The authors anticipate that cloud computing will, to some extent, blunt the effect of these disparities by offering a variety of infrastructure for smaller and less catered for communities. The growing availability more specialized cloud resources like GPUs, FPGAs, and in the case of Google, TPUs, suggest that the haves and have-nots may be able to operate on a more even playing field. None of this means CPUs or even GPUs are doomed. Although the authors didn’t delve into this aspect, it’s quite possible that specialized, semi-specialized, and general-purpose compute engines will be integrated on the same chip or processor package. Some chipmakers are already pursuing this path.

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This Is the Best Way to Tax Google and Facebook
by Giacomo Tesio May 8, 2019

May 8, 2019

Una soluzione Win-Win fra Governo e Imprese. Tassare le manipolazioni per normalizzare la sorveglianza. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-05-03/the-czech-republic-s-… The Czech finance ministry plans to have a digital tax proposal ready by the end of this month. What’s known about it so far is different from other nations’ plans in two important ways: the high proposed tax rate of 7 percent, and the targeting of advertising and personal data sales as the primary base. The country also plans to tax sharing economy platforms. It estimates receipts of about 5 billion korunas ($217 million) a year. France, with six times the Czech Republic’s population, only hopes to receive about 2.6 times as much. At first glance, the idea behind the Czech digital tax is similar to the French one, but the French proposal names platforms that put users in touch with each other for a fee as the primary target, while the Czech one prioritizes targeted ads. [...] There’s also plenty of evidence that ad targeting is a potent political manipulation tool: It has helped malicious actors during the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the Brexit referendum, arguably helping to subvert democratic institutions. Besides, targeted ad platforms have deprived news organizations of previously reliable revenue streams, creating yet another negative externality for democracy. [...] The often-heard argument that the tax simply will be passed on to advertisers may not be valid with a 7 percent rate: If Facebook and Google merely add it to their bill, advertisers may well think of going elsewhere, including to news sites and traditional advertising media. Governments shouldn’t be shy to ask for more: At some point, this should produce reliable estimates of the true worth of our personal data. [...] Taxing advertising that is based on personal data could make another important contribution to the common good. If the idea is to tax the revenue from clicks on and views of ads shown in a specific country, then platforms such as Facebook and Google must be required to disclose to a government analytical data on where the clicks and impressions occur. Governments would, naturally, want to audit the data. That would be a major step toward much-needed transparency: There’s too little independent control of digital advertising companies’ claims of precise targeting and advertising efficiency. Whatever information governments collect from platforms for tax audit purposes should be available to advertisers and the public, too.

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