September 2019 - nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

Reader, I Googled It | The New Yorker
by J.C. DE MARTIN Sept. 2, 2019

Sept. 2, 2019

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/02/reader-i-googled-it Reader, I Googled It Amid fears about the death of books, finding new ways to bring them to life. By Dan ChiassonAugust 26, 2019 (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

1 0

What People Hate About Being Managed by Algorithms, According to a Study of Uber Drivers
by J.C. DE MARTIN Sept. 2, 2019

Sept. 2, 2019

https://hbr.org/2019/08/what-people-hate-about-being-managed-by-algorithms-… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

1 0

Facebook scans system libraries from their Android app user’s phone in the background and uploads them to their server
by Giacomo Tesio Sept. 2, 2019

Sept. 2, 2019

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1167463054709334017.html Conoscere le versioni delle librerie installate significa sapere se il device è hackerabile. Dite che potrebbe interessare a qualcuno? Giacomo

1 0

Strike 2.0: how gig economy workers are using tech to fight back | Books | The Guardian
by Alberto Cammozzo Sept. 1, 2019

Sept. 1, 2019

<https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/31/the-new-resistance-how-gig-ec…> [...] And organised resistance by digitally outsourced workers has erupted repeatedly on the streets of major cities in recent years, usually beginning in the back alley spots where delivery riders are encouraged by their apps to congregate and then fanning out rapidly through WhatsApp networks, word of mouth and some technological trickery. In 2016, for example, an announcement by Deliveroo that it would soon be unilaterally altering its rider payment structure prompted a six-day “strike” in which riders acted en masse to make themselves unavailable for orders. Colleagues from Deliveroo’s rivals, Uber Eats, swiftly followed suit, and began taking advantage of a promotional offer within the app that granted new customers £5 off their first order. By repeatedly creating new accounts and ordering low-value meals to be delivered to the picket line, the strikers amassed both a mountain of free food at Uber’s expense and a steady stream of fellow riders, who would turn up with the order only to be met by a sea of radicalised peers cheering their arrival and chanting “Log out, log out!” In the words of one Deliveroo rider, the very technology that was designed to control workers was now being turned against their managers, allowing riders to “occupy the system in a way”. Not unlike the assembly line of the last century, and the auto strikes in Flint that subverted it, a tool engineered for capital was being hacked by the labour force. “It’s like a sit-in,” the Deliveroo rider told Woodcock. This kind of fightback can be found throughout the contemporary economy. New apps abound that allow workers to log abuse by managers, read up on their rights, organise their workplace and compare pay rates both with those in similar jobs in their industry and with their own company’s financial results, a powerful weapon for agitating colleagues and rejecting management explanations for low wages. The information asymmetry at the core of digital platforms such as Uber is gradually being undermined by a vibrant network of driver forums with hundreds of thousands of members sharing stories, advice, communications from Uber received through the app and payment details, including screenshots of receipts and monthly income tallies. These enable drivers to collectively gain an understanding of how the app’s secretive ratings systems and dispatch algorithms actually operate. Among other things, this sort of crowdsourced information provides drivers with the opportunity to game the system, for example by agreeing to log off from the app simultaneously, thereby tricking Uber’s algorithms into thinking there is a shortage of drivers and implementing surge pricing to tempt them back. Worker subversion of new management and surveillance technologies is merely one among many clandestine vulnerabilities inside the current economic system. Another can be found within those long, just-in-time supply chains that may appear to whip car parts and chicken meat and consumer electronics effortlessly across dozens of national borders but that are, in reality, almost entirely reliant on dense physical infrastructure. That network includes factories, warehouses and lorry depots, and the airports, stations, hotels, hospitals and schools that go with them: all firmly embedded in their geographical surroundings, and all highly susceptible to strike actions by those who maintain, guard and – like Fatima – clean them. In Britain, the cleaning sector alone employs 700,000 people. Since 2017, McDonald’s workers have organised themselves to fight back against conditions, and as this McStrike movement indicates, the very precariousness of work is itself a fuel for labour militancy; the more that low pay and casualisation become the norm, the more those on the wrong end of it have nothing to lose by striking back [...]

3 3

NYRB: "The Oligarch Threat"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Sept. 1, 2019

Sept. 1, 2019

*The Oligarch Threat** * /Tamsin Shaw // / On July 24, 2019, a buoyant Boris Johnson swept past crowds shouting “Bollocks to Brexit! Bollocks to Boris!” and was ushered into the hushed splendor of Buckingham Palace. There, he shook hands with the antique, bejeweled Queen Elizabeth II, and became the prime minister of Great Britain, elected not by popular mandate but by members of his Conservative Party. That same day, on the other side of the Atlantic, a frail and reluctant Robert Mueller took his oath before giving public testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, and later the House Intelligence Committee, on a controversial and difficult twenty-two-month-long investigation—made more challenging by multiple witnesses’ lying under oath—in which he had painstakingly examined Russian interference in the 2016 election of Donald Trump. […] Continua qui: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/08/27/the-oligarch-threat/

1 0