August 2019 - nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

Airbnb, via per via la mappa degli alloggi nelle grandi città italiane

by Luigi Scorca

https://www.infodata.ilsole24ore.com/2019/08/05/airbnb-via-via-la-mappa-deg…

Aug. 5, 2019

Re: [nexa] Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US

by Giacomo Tesio

Cioè dici che sono sciocchezze? Giacomo

Aug. 5, 2019

Re: [nexa] Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US

by Luigi Scorca

Una nuova versione delle scie chimiche... On Mon, 5 Aug 2019 at 15:31, Giacomo Tesio <giacomo(a)tesio.it> wrote: > > https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/02/pentagon-balloons-surveilla… > > Exclusive: the high-altitude balloons promise a cheap monitoring > platform that could follow multiple cars and boats for extended > periods > > The US military is conducting wide-area surveillance tests across six > midwest states using experimental high-altitude balloons, documents > filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reveal. > > Up to 25 unmanned solar-powered balloons are being launched from rural > South Dakota and drifting 250 miles through an area spanning portions > of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Missouri, before concluding in > central Illinois. > > Travelling in the stratosphere at altitudes of up to 65,000ft, the > balloons are intended to “provide a persistent surveillance system to > locate and deter narcotic trafficking and homeland security threats”, > according to a filing made on behalf of the Sierra Nevada Corporation, > an aerospace and defence company. [...] > > rthur Holland Michel, the co-director of the Center for the Study of > the Drone at Bard College in New York, said, “What this new technology > proposes is to watch everything at once. Sometimes it’s referred to as > ‘combat TiVo’ because when an event happens somewhere in the > surveilled area, you can potentially rewind the tape to see exactly > what occurred, and rewind even further to see who was involved and > where they came from.” [...] > > The new balloons promise a cheap surveillance platform that could > follow multiple cars and boats for extended periods. And because winds > often travel in different directions at different altitudes, the > balloons can usually hover over a given area simply by ascending or > descending. > > Neither Sierra Nevada nor US Southcom responded to requests for > comment on this story. However, the rival balloon operator World View > recently announced that it had carried out multi-week test missions in > which its own stratospheric balloons were able to hover over a > five-mile-diameter area for six and a half hours, and larger areas for > days at a time. > _______________________________________________ > nexa mailing list > nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it > https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa > -- Luigi Scorca Mob: +39 347 85 22 221 Mail: luigi.scorca(a)gmail.com

Aug. 5, 2019

Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US

by Giacomo Tesio

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/02/pentagon-balloons-surveilla… Exclusive: the high-altitude balloons promise a cheap monitoring platform that could follow multiple cars and boats for extended periods The US military is conducting wide-area surveillance tests across six midwest states using experimental high-altitude balloons, documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reveal. Up to 25 unmanned solar-powered balloons are being launched from rural South Dakota and drifting 250 miles through an area spanning portions of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Missouri, before concluding in central Illinois. Travelling in the stratosphere at altitudes of up to 65,000ft, the balloons are intended to “provide a persistent surveillance system to locate and deter narcotic trafficking and homeland security threats”, according to a filing made on behalf of the Sierra Nevada Corporation, an aerospace and defence company. [...] rthur Holland Michel, the co-director of the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College in New York, said, “What this new technology proposes is to watch everything at once. Sometimes it’s referred to as ‘combat TiVo’ because when an event happens somewhere in the surveilled area, you can potentially rewind the tape to see exactly what occurred, and rewind even further to see who was involved and where they came from.” [...] The new balloons promise a cheap surveillance platform that could follow multiple cars and boats for extended periods. And because winds often travel in different directions at different altitudes, the balloons can usually hover over a given area simply by ascending or descending. Neither Sierra Nevada nor US Southcom responded to requests for comment on this story. However, the rival balloon operator World View recently announced that it had carried out multi-week test missions in which its own stratospheric balloons were able to hover over a five-mile-diameter area for six and a half hours, and larger areas for days at a time.

Aug. 5, 2019

Terminating Service for 8Chan

by Giacomo Tesio

https://new.blog.cloudflare.com/terminating-service-for-8chan/ The mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio are horrific tragedies. In the case of the El Paso shooting, the suspected terrorist gunman appears to have been inspired by the forum website known as 8chan. Based on evidence we've seen, it appears that he posted a screed to the site immediately before beginning his terrifying attack on the El Paso Walmart killing 20 people. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. Nearly the same thing happened on 8chan before the terror attack in Christchurch, New Zealand. The El Paso shooter specifically referenced the Christchurch incident and appears to have been inspired by the largely unmoderated discussions on 8chan which glorified the previous massacre. In a separate tragedy, the suspected killer in the Poway, California synagogue shooting also posted a hate-filled “open letter” on 8chan. 8chan has repeatedly proven itself to be a cesspool of hate. 8chan is among the more than 19 million Internet properties that use Cloudflare's service. We just sent notice that we are terminating 8chan as a customer effective at midnight tonight Pacific Time. The rationale is simple: they have proven themselves to be lawless and that lawlessness has caused multiple tragic deaths. Even if 8chan may not have violated the letter of the law in refusing to moderate their hate-filled community, they have created an environment that revels in violating its spirit. We do not take this decision lightly. Cloudflare is a network provider. In pursuit of our goal of helping build a better internet, we’ve considered it important to provide our security services broadly to make sure as many users as possible are secure, and thereby making cyberattacks less attractive — regardless of the content of those websites. Many of our customers run platforms of their own on top of our network. If our policies are more conservative than theirs it effectively undercuts their ability to run their services and set their own policies. We reluctantly tolerate content that we find reprehensible, but we draw the line at platforms that have demonstrated they directly inspire tragic events and are lawless by design. 8chan has crossed that line. It will therefore no longer be allowed to use our services. # What Will Happen Next Unfortunately, we have seen this situation before and so we have a good sense of what will play out. Almost exactly two years ago we made the determination to kick another disgusting site off Cloudflare's network: the Daily Stormer. That caused a brief interruption in the site's operations but they quickly came back online using a Cloudflare competitor. That competitor at the time promoted as a feature the fact that they didn't respond to legal process. Today, the Daily Stormer is still available and still disgusting. They have bragged that they have more readers than ever. They are no longer Cloudflare's problem, but they remain the Internet's problem. [...] # Rule of Law We continue to feel incredibly uncomfortable about playing the role of content arbiter and do not plan to exercise it often. Some have wrongly speculated this is due to some conception of the United States' First Amendment. That is incorrect. [...] Instead our concern has centered around another much more universal idea: the Rule of Law. The Rule of Law requires policies be transparent and consistent. While it has been articulated as a framework for how governments ensure their legitimacy, we have used it as a touchstone when we think about our own policies. [...] Cloudflare is not a government. While we've been successful as a company, that does not give us the political legitimacy to make determinations on what content is good and bad. Nor should it. [...] The unresolved question is how should the law deal with platforms that ignore or actively thwart the Rule of Law?

Aug. 5, 2019

The ‘Amazon of Africa’ faces a big challenge: No addresses

by Luigi Scorca

https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?destination=%2fworld%2fafrica%…

Aug. 5, 2019

“I’m a data scientist who is skeptical about data”

by J.C. DE MARTIN

I’m a data scientist who is skeptical about data By Andrea Jones-RooyJuly 24, 2019 Professor of data science, NYU https://qz.com/1664575/is-data-science-legit/ (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

Aug. 4, 2019

A big US maker of paperless voting systems now says paper is essential - MIT Technology Review

by J.C. DE MARTIN

https://www.technologyreview.com/f/613651/a-big-us-maker-of-paperless-votin… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

Aug. 4, 2019

Technology may not create inequality, but it certainly enables it to thrive | John Naughton | Opinion | The Guardian

by Alberto Cammozzo

<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/04/technology-doesnt-cau…> ere is one of the great paradoxes of our time. The world is dominated by a few corporations that are among the most profitable companies in the history of capitalism. In the US (the home of these giants) and in the UK (an enthusiastic vassal state), parts of the economy are booming and employment is at record levels. And yet, in the middle of this astonishing prosperity, inequality is at levels not seen since the period before the first world war. In the US, the share of total income going to the top 1% of the population is now back to the level it was in the 1920s. And in the UK, more than 4 million people are trapped in deep poverty. Since this catastrophic rise in inequality seems to be correlated with the rise of the tech industry, it’s tempting to see a causal link between the two. Tempting, but too simplistic. For while digital technology has been a central factor in what’s happened, it’s only a part of the story. More often, it’s been an enabler of other forces rather than a prime mover. The biggest force reshaping our world has been globalisation. “A really good substitute for a manual labourer in the US is a manual labourer in China or Costa Rica,” says the Stanford economist Paul Oyer. But you can’t outsource complex production lines without high-bandwidth connections between the west and those distant factories. Oyer cites Apple as a canonical example of how to do it well. “The company is designing their products here, so the people who work in engineering are more and more valuable, and making more and more money, but the people who, in the old days, might have made computers here – that’s now done in China.” Globalisation exported jobs from western economies and gave them to workers in poorer countries, which is why, globally, inequality has reduced even as it increased in the west. But in our suddenly deindustrialised regions, neoliberal governments did little to help workers and communities that had been left behind. It’s been the same story with job-destroying automation. “We always forget,” says Oyer, “to go back and take care of the people who lose their jobs.” Since the companies that deploy the machines were driven by the overriding imperative to maximise shareholder value, they felt no responsibility for the collateral damage they had wreaked on communities and lives. And, once again, governments failed to pick up the pieces. [...]

Aug. 4, 2019

Re: [nexa] Record di evasione fiscale per il sito Booking.com - Il Sole 24 ORE

by Stefano Quintarelli

carramba che sorpresa On 03/08/2019 15:23, J.C. DE MARTIN wrote: > > Record di evasione fiscale per il sito Booking.com <http://Booking.com> > > > /L’intermediazione di Booking.com <http://Booking.com> sugli affitti > delle abitazioni di privati senza partite Iva, potrebbe aver > generato, tra il 2013 e il 2019, una evasione dell’Imposta sul > valore aggiunto pari a 350 milioni di euro/ > > di Ivan Cimmarusti > > 30 luglio 2019 > > > https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/record-evasione-fiscale-il-sito-bookingcom-… > > > (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any)) > > _______________________________________________ > nexa mailing list > nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it > https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa > -- reserve your meeting with me at http://cal.quintarelli.it

Aug. 3, 2019