July 2019 - nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

Email Tracking Is Creepy and Invasive and No One Should Do It - VICE
by J.C. DE MARTIN July 3, 2019

July 3, 2019

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3xpwj/email-tracking-is-creepy-and-inva… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Fwd: [DNAmazon Admits Alexa Voice Recordings Saved Indefinitely
by Matteo G.P. Flora July 3, 2019

July 3, 2019

"After U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) demanded Amazon outline its data privacy policies, Amazon in a letter that was publicly disclosed on Tuesday said that consumers have the option to delete their recordings – but even if they do, the company or third-party developers may still save records of customers’ interactions with Alexa." Articolo: < https://threatpost.com/amazon-admits-alexa-voice-recordings-saved-indefinit… > PDF della risposta: < https://www.coons.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Amazon%20Senator%20Coons__Respon… > Che diranno i Garanti Europei? M -- Matteo G.P. Flora Founder and CEO at TF Group A Via Vitruvio 1, Milano (MI) M +39.347.9676430 E mf(a)thefool.it W http://thefool.it

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Libra: US Congress asks Facebook to pause development | Technology | The Guardian
by Alberto Cammozzo July 3, 2019

July 3, 2019

<https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/03/libra-us-congress-asks-f…> The US Congress has asked Facebook to pause development on its Libra cryptocurrency until lawmakers have had more time to investigate the ramifications of the company’s actions. In a letter from the Democratic heads of the house committee on financial services and its subcommittees, the legislators ask the company to “immediately cease implementation plans”. “Because Facebook is already in the hands of over a quarter of the world’s population, it is imperative that Facebook and its partners immediately cease implementation plans until regulators and Congress have an opportunity to examine these issues and take action,” the letter says. “During this moratorium, we intend to hold public hearings on the risks and benefits of cryptocurrency-based activities and explore legislative solutions. Failure to cease implementation before we can do so risks a new Swiss-based financial system that is too big to fail.” [...]

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Are computers making work more routine and less social? | Eurofound
by J.C. DE MARTIN July 3, 2019

July 3, 2019

https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/publications/blog/are-computers-making-work… The spread of ICT in the economy is changing both the types of jobs that employ people and the types of tasks that people perform in their jobs. The latest research on the content of work suggests that computerisation has boosted the proportion of jobs with social interaction at their core, while at the same time reducing social tasks within certain jobs (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Chinese border guards put secret surveillance app on tourists' phones
by Alberto Cammozzo July 3, 2019

July 3, 2019

<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/02/chinese-border-guards-surveil…> Chinese border police are secretly installing surveillance apps on the phones of visitors and downloading personal information as part of the government’s intensive scrutiny of the remote Xinjiang region, the Guardian can reveal. The Chinese government has curbed freedoms in the province for the local Muslim population, installing facial recognition cameras on streets and in mosques and reportedly forcing residents to download software that searches their phones. An investigation by the Guardian and international partners has found that travellers are being targeted when they attempt to enter the region from neighbouring Kyrgyzstan. Border guards are taking their phones and secretly installing an app that extracts emails, texts and contacts, as well as information about the handset itself. Tourists say they have not been warned by authorities in advance or told about what the software is looking for, or that their information is being taken. The investigation, with partners including Süddeutsche Zeitung and the New York Times, has found that people using the remote Irkeshtam border crossing into the country are routinely having their phones screened by guards. [...]

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Aggression Detectors: The Unproven, Invasive Surveillance Technology Schools Are Using to Monitor Students
by Alberto Cammozzo July 2, 2019

July 2, 2019

<https://features.propublica.org/aggression-detector/the-unproven-invasive-s…> Ariella Russcol specializes in drama at the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Queens, New York, and the senior’s performance on this April afternoon didn’t disappoint. While the library is normally the quietest room in the school, her ear-piercing screams sounded more like a horror movie than study hall. But they weren’t enough to set off a small microphone in the ceiling that was supposed to detect aggression. A few days later, at the Staples Pathways Academy in Westport, Connecticut, junior Sami D’Anna inadvertently triggered the same device with a less spooky sound — a coughing fit from a lingering chest cold. As she hacked and rasped, a message popped up on its web interface: “StressedVoice detected.” “There we go,” D’Anna said with amusement, looking at the screen. “There’s my coughs.” The students were helping ProPublica test an aggression detector that’s used in hundreds of schools, health care facilities, banks, stores and prisons worldwide, including more than 100 in the U.S. Sound Intelligence, the Dutch company that makes the software for the device, plans to open an office this year in Chicago, where its chief executive will be based. California-based Louroe Electronics, which has loaded the software on its microphones since 2015, advertises the devices in school safety magazines and at law enforcement conventions, and it said it has between 100 and 1,000 customers for them. Louroe’s marketing materials say the detection software enables security officers to “engage antagonistic individuals immediately, resolving the conflict before it turns into physical violence.” Students at the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Queens, New York, test an aggression detector by acting out a scripted scene for a ProPublica reporter. In the wake of the shooting at a Parkland, Florida, high school and other massacres, U.S. schools are increasingly receptive to such pitches. Congress approved more than $25 million for school security improvements last year, and one analyst expects new technology could augment the $2.7 billion market for education security products. Besides Sound Intelligence, South Korea-based Hanwha Techwin, formerly part of Samsung, makes a similar “scream detection” product that’s been installed in American schools. U.K.-based Audio Analytic used to sell its aggression- and gunshot-detection software to customers in Europe and the U.S., including Cisco Systems Inc.’s professional security division. However, an Audio Analytic spokesman told ProPublica that it has since changed its business model and stopped selling the aggression detector software. By deploying surveillance technology in public spaces like hallways and cafeterias, device makers and school officials hope to anticipate and prevent everything from mass shootings to underage smoking. Sound Intelligence also markets add-on packages to recognize the sounds of gunshots, car alarms and broken glass, while Hauppauge, New York-based Soter Technologies develops sensors that determine if students are vaping in the school bathroom. The Lockport school district in upstate New York is planning a facial-recognition system to identify intruders on campus. Yet ProPublica’s analysis, as well as the experiences of some U.S. schools and hospitals that have used Sound Intelligence’s aggression detector, suggest that it can be less than reliable. At the heart of the device is what the company calls a machine learning algorithm. Our research found that it tends to equate aggression with rough, strained noises in a relatively high pitch, like D’Anna’s coughing. A 1994 YouTube clip of abrasive-sounding comedian Gilbert Gottfried (“Is it hot in here or am I crazy?”) set off the detector, which analyzes sound but doesn’t take words or meaning into account. Although a Louroe spokesman said the detector doesn’t intrude on student privacy because it only captures sound patterns deemed aggressive, its microphones allow administrators to record, replay and store those snippets of conversation indefinitely. “It’s not clear it’s solving the right problem. And it’s not clear it’s solving it with the right tools,” said Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a University of Utah computer science professor who studies how replacing humans with artificial intelligence affects decision-making in society. Some experts also dispute the underlying premise that verbal aggression precedes school violence, since they say mass shooters like Nikolas Cruz at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, tend to be quiet beforehand. “I can’t imagine when it would be useful, honestly,” said Jillian Peterson, an assistant professor of criminology and criminal justice at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Dr. Nancy Rappaport, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who studies school safety, said the audio surveillance could have the unintended consequence of increasing student distrust and alienation. She added that schools are opting for inexpensive technological fixes over solutions that get to the root of the problem, such as more counseling for troubled kids. One Louroe microphone with aggression software sells for about $1,000. Sound Intelligence CEO Derek van der Vorst said security cameras made by Sweden-based Axis Communications account for 90% of the detector’s worldwide sales, with privately held Louroe making up the other 10%. He said the Axis cameras, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars including back-end systems, contain more recent, sophisticated versions of the software than the Louroe equipment does. [...]

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Boeing's 737 MAX software outsourced to $12.80-an-hour engineers
by Giacomo Tesio July 2, 2019

July 2, 2019

https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/boeing-s-737-max-software-outsour… Longtime Boeing engineers say the effort was complicated by a push to outsource work to lower-paid contractors. The MAX software -- plagued by issues that could keep the planes grounded months longer after US regulators this week revealed a new flaw -- was developed at a time Boeing was laying off experienced engineers and pressing suppliers to cut costs. Increasingly, the iconic American planemaker and its subcontractors have relied on temporary workers making as little as $US9 ($12.80) an hour to develop and test software, often from countries lacking a deep background in aerospace -- notably India. [...] In one post, an HCL employee summarised his duties with a reference to the now-infamous model, which started flight tests in January 2016: "Provided quick workaround to resolve production issue which resulted in not delaying flight test of 737-MAX (delay in each flight test will cost very big amount for Boeing)." [...] "Boeing was doing all kinds of things, everything you can imagine, to reduce cost, including moving work from Puget Sound, because we'd become very expensive here," said Rick Ludtke, a former Boeing flight controls engineer laid off in 2017. "All that's very understandable if you think of it from a business perspective. Slowly over time it appears that's eroded the ability for Puget Sound designers to design." [...] Sales are another reason to send the work overseas. In exchange for an $US11 billion order in 2005 from Air India, Boeing promised to invest $US1.7 billion in Indian companies. That was a boon for HCL and other software developers from India, such as Cyient, whose engineers were widely used in computer-services industries but not yet prominent in aerospace. [...] "Engineering started becoming a commodity," said Vance Hilderman, who co-founded a company called TekSci that supplied aerospace contract engineers and began losing work to overseas competitors in the early 2000s. US-based avionics companies in particular moved aggressively, shifting more than 30 per cent of their software engineering offshore versus 10 per cent for European-based firms in recent years, said Hilderman, an avionics safety consultant with three decades of experience whose recent clients include most of the major Boeing suppliers. With a strong US dollar, a big part of the attraction was price. Engineers in India made around $US5 an hour; it's now $US9 or $US10, compared with $US35 to $US40 for those in the US on an H1B visa, he said. But he'd tell clients the cheaper hourly wage equated to more like $US80 because of the need for supervision, and he said his firm won back some business to fix mistakes. [...] The MAX became Boeing's top seller soon after it was offered in 2011. But for ambitious engineers, it was something of a "backwater," said Peter Lemme, who designed the 767's automated flight controls and is now a consultant. [...] "It was a stunning fail," he said. "A lot of people should have thought of this problem – not one person – and asked about it." Boeing also has disclosed that it learned soon after MAX deliveries began in 2017 that a warning light that might have alerted crews to the issue with the sensor wasn't installed correctly in the flight-display software. A Boeing statement in May, explaining why the company didn't inform regulators at the time, said engineers had determined it wasn't a safety issue. "Senior company leadership," the statement added, "was not involved in the review."

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Google's Mysterious Fuchsia OS Developer Site Debuts With New Fascinating Details
by Giacomo Tesio July 2, 2019

July 2, 2019

Anche Forbes si è accorta di Fucshia e riesce a scrivere un intero articolo in proposito senza citare le ovvie ragioni per cui Google investe tanti soldi in un sistema operativo basato su un microkernel per rimpiazzare Linux: 1. avere il controllo di fatto dello sviluppo (come per Chrome) 2. evitare i vincoli di reciprocità della GPLv2 3. fare a meno di leader come Linus https://www.forbes.com/sites/davealtavilla/2019/06/30/googles-mysterious-fu… Giacomo

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ICANN ignores community input and agrees to lift price restrictions on .org domains.
by Giacomo Tesio July 2, 2019

July 2, 2019

https://domainnamewire.com/2019/06/30/domain-overseer-lifts-all-price-caps-… As many feared, the comment period was just a formality. ICANN has agreed to remove price restrictions on .org domain names, letting the domain’s manager, Public Interest Registry, charge as much as it wants for the domains. (It also agreed to let .info manager Afilias charge whatever it wants for .info.) This is despite only six out of over 3,000 comments being in favor of removing price caps. You can blame two things: ICANN wanting to make its life easier with a misguided attempt to make its registry agreements similar, and regulatory capture. ICANN’s decision foreshadows that the organization will agree to .com price increases. Eventually, caps on .com domains could disappear. 10 million .org domains are currently registered and were registered under a system in which Public Interest Registry could not increase prices at will. Now, non-profits and other organizations that have been using these domains for years could face steep price increases. The good news is that Public Interest Registry’s management is competent and well-guided. They will likely wait a while before making any major changes to avoid comments of “we told you so”. But management changes. Boards change. And one day, it could get ugly. It will be interesting to see if any parties consider antitrust challenges.

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Re: [nexa] The day the e-books stopped working
by M. Fioretti July 2, 2019

July 2, 2019

On Tue, Jul 02, 2019 09:24:40 AM +0200, don Luca Peyron wrote: > Consumers who bought ebooks via Microsoft's online store are losing > access to their libraries. > > Quei cari vecchi libri di carta con dentro le cartoline che mio nonno > mandava a mia nonna... o no? no, nel senso che qui il problema vero non c'entra proprio niente con carta vs bit. E un passaggio di quell'articolo lo dice chiaramente: > a reminder that you do not actually own a copy of most digital > purchases outright but rather have purchased a licence that can > expire. Anche se alla riga dopo tollera senza ridicolizzarla una castroneria linguistica che nemmeno la neolingua di Orwell: "you don't own e-books when you buy them with DRM..> non puoi dire "compri" e "non possiedi" riferendoti allo stesso oggetto. "non possiedi va" con "noleggi" o "affitti", non con "compri". Che poi è la stessa castroneria della citazione iniziale: > Consumers who bought ebooks via Microsoft's online store are losing > access to their libraries. se hai "perso accesso" è o perché te li hanno rubati, i libri, o perché non li avevi mai comprati inizialmente. Una copia digitale di un romanzo si può possedere tanto quanto un libro (cioè una copia cartacea) di quello stesso romanzo. Che poi non siano perfettamente equivalenti, e che la copia digitale possa essere MOLTO più permanente di quella cartacea, è un altro discorso, da fare dopo. Ma finchè i media non fanno del "NON hai mai comprato questo libro" il tema principale degli articoli su questo tema, stroncando senza appello l'uso sbagliato di certi termini, non se ne esce. Marco

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