August 2020 - nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

ARM
by Giuseppe Attardi Aug. 21, 2020

Aug. 21, 2020

ARM è la società di Cambridge creata da Herman Hauser come spinoff di Acorn. Quando Acorn venne acquisita da Olivetti, Hauser divenne direttore di ricerca Olivetti e interagii con lui sullo sviluppo di software per ARM, tra cui il port del linguaggio Lisp che comprendeva un innovativo sistema di parallelismo a thread. Oggi ARM progetta i chip a basso consumo usati nei cellulari ed è stata acquistata dall’investitore giapponese SoftBank, che ora la vuole vendere. SMT e Samsung producono i chip ARM. ARM ha anche una divisione che progetta coprocessori GPU da usare per AI. BTW: 30 anni fa aiutai SMT a realizzare una GPU per cellulari Nokia, evitando che questa si rivolgesse a Texas Instrument, che ne aveva una già pronta. ARM è oggi un asset strategico per l’Europa, visto che è l’unica azienda di processori e GPU in grado di competere con Intel, almeno nel settore dei chip a basso consumo. All’acquisto di ARM è interessata NVIDIA, la principale ditta che produce GPU per applicazioni sia grafiche tradizionali, che industriali (visione e AI), avendo introdotto la libreria CUDA, che consente di programmare le GPU per svolgere calcoli tensoriali ad alto parallelismo. Oggi tutta l’AI di punto viene sviluppata su GPU NVIDIA. Herman Hauser stesso è contrario all’acquisto di ARM da parte di NVIDIA, che mette a rischio non solo l’esistenza della divisione GPU ma di lasciare agli USA il dominio totale dei processori. STM potrebbe essere l’acquirente ideale. Ho provato a sondare gli attuali dirigenti di STM che conosco, ma mi hanno risposto che l’acquisto non sarebbe possibile per motivi antitrust. Non mi sembra sia questo il caso: ci sono altri ben agguerriti produttori di chip, ben più monopolisti di una eventuale STM+ARM ed NVIDIA+ARM sarebbe avrebbe un più invadente dominio nel settore dei chip per AI. Bisognerebbe promuovere una cordata di grandi imprenditori europei del settore dei chip, comprendente ad esempio Herman Hauser, Federico Faggin, Pasquale Pistorio, che col sostegno dei politici europei, si proponga a per l’acquisto di ARM al fine di farla restare in mani europee. — Beppe

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Artificial Intelligence Easily Beats Human Fighter Pilot in DARPA Trial
by don Luca Peyron Aug. 21, 2020

Aug. 21, 2020

Così possiamo citare un altro caso che non sia sempre Alpha go... Buona lettura dl https://www.airforcemag.com/artificial-intelligence-easily-beats-human-figh… _________________________ don Luca Peyron Direttore Ufficio per la Pastorale Universitaria Arcidiocesi di Torino www.universitari.to.it via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

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The dystopian tech that companies are selling to help schools reopen sooner
by don Luca Peyron Aug. 21, 2020

Aug. 21, 2020

Un buon riassunto dello stato dell'arte oltre oceano, interessante come le tecnologie di sorveglianza siano piegate al bene comune, o presunto tale, con tutti i distinguo del caso. Buona lettura dl https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/8/14/21365300/artificial-intelligence-ai-sc… _________________________ don Luca Peyron Direttore Ufficio per la Pastorale Universitaria Arcidiocesi di Torino www.universitari.to.it via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

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The Privacy Shield Fell — Now What?
by Giacomo Tesio Aug. 20, 2020

Aug. 20, 2020

Personal data flows between countries as fast as dollars and euros. The current of personal data between US companies and European citizens was abruptly switched off after Europe’s top court killed a trans-Atlantic agreement that allows data to move between the European Union and the United States. This means that any transfer of information from EU citizens to US companies is now in legal limbo. Are you reading this on a mobile phone? Your browsing information is transferred to the US. Every time you type a message on your phone in Rome, the predictive keyboard transfers data to Google or Apple across the pond. Or say you wedge a Tesla through the narrow streets of Amsterdam — that data flies right over to the US. Without the legal framework of the Privacy Shield, all of these daily activities are technically illegal. What’s Next Companies have to rethink their data transfer and storage policies before they become outlaws. It won’t be easy. Any firm that collects and manages the data of European citizens must sift through their applications and storage policies, and storing data in European availability zones from US-based companies won’t be a workaround anymore. Tech titans like Google and Facebook are diving for loopholes, arguing that the ECJ left the system of standard contractual clauses (SCCs) in place, the section of the Privacy Shield that facilitates data transfer. But with the Privacy Shield down, the SCCs won’t help them export EU data, says Carlo Piana, who has been practicing IT law in Europe since 1995. What used to be fairly straightforward — like storing logs from a server in one of the many available EU data centers — won’t fly now. “It’s a lot more difficult to confine data from applications like speech recognition in mobile phones to Europe,” Carlo explains. While the court didn’t strike them down directly, the SCCs are only valid if they respect the same standards of protections granted by European laws. The trouble? Those same companies fall under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) jurisdiction, rendering SCCs invalid. Lawmakers are heading back to the drawing board. The US Chamber of Commerce is already in damage-control mode — see the letter they fired off — backed by thousands of companies urging governments to “develop a stable and sustainable mechanism for companies to transfer data between the European Union and the United States” or risk denting the $1.1 trillion in total trade in goods and services between the two. Continua su https://www.dataversity.net/the-privacy-shield-fell-now-what/ Giacomo

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Amazon can be liable for third-party sellers’ defective products, appeals court rules
by don Luca Peyron Aug. 20, 2020

Aug. 20, 2020

Decisioni parecchio significativa, anche se locale Buona lettura dl https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/13/21367966/amazon-liable-defective-product… _________________________ don Luca Peyron Direttore Ufficio per la Pastorale Universitaria Arcidiocesi di Torino www.universitari.to.it via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

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British Grading Debacle Shows Pitfalls of Automating Government - The New York Times
by Alberto Cammozzo Aug. 20, 2020

Aug. 20, 2020

<https://twitter.com/HUCKmagazine/status/1294985562106015750> <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/20/world/europe/uk-england-grading-algorith…> Even after a final term with schools closed for the pandemic, Sam Sharpe-Roe was optimistic about the coming school year. Teachers from his West London school had given him grades — three A’s and one B — that were strong enough to secure him a spot at his first choice of university next month. But after the British government used a computer-generated score to replace exams that were canceled because of the coronavirus, all his grades fell and the college revoked his admission. Mr. Sharpe-Roe, along with thousands of other students and parents, had received a crude lesson in what can go wrong when a government relies on an algorithm to make important decisions affecting the public. Experts said the grading scandal was a sign of debates to come as Britain and other countries increasingly use technology to automate public services, arguing that it can make government more efficient and remove human prejudices. But critics say the opaque systems often amplify biases that already exist in society and are typically adopted without sufficient debate, faults that were put on clear display in the grading disaster. Nearly 40 percent of students in England saw their grades reduced after the government re-evaluated the exams, known as A-levels, with the software model. It included in its calculations a school’s past performance on the tests and a student’s earlier results on “mock” exams. Government officials said the model was meant to make the system more fair, balancing out potentially inflated scores given by some teachers. But students and their parents, particularly those from lower-income areas with struggling schools, were outraged that their futures had been turned over to lines of code that favored students from private schools and wealthy areas. [...]

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Germany′s military-run transport fleet hacked | News | DW | 16.08.2020
by Alberto Cammozzo Aug. 20, 2020

Aug. 20, 2020

<https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-military-run-transport-fleet-hacked/a-545842…> Germany's military-run transport fleet hacked Germany's state-owned vehicle fleet, which provides chauffeurs for parliamentarians and is run by the Bundeswehr military, has been hacked. Federal cyber experts have begun a probe, reports the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. German government cars Germany's Bundestag administration and federal parliamentarians were told Friday that unknown hackers had infiltrated the FuhrparkService (BWFU) transport fleet, reported the Sunday newspaper BamS (Bild am Sonntag). "Last week, there was an attack on the company's IT network by an as yet unidentified external party," Germany's defense ministry added on Saturday. Headquartered at Troisdorf, near Bonn, the BWFU is run by Germany's Bundeswehr military and comprises 33,500 vehicles, including trucks, and chauffeur-driven cars assigned to parliamentarians, including those in Berlin. Read more: Germany: Third of small and mid-sized companies have been hacked Last year, it provided 142,000 such chauffeur services for the Bundestag parliament and BaMs said it was possible the hackers could have obtained politicians' private addresses and other sensitive details such as times booked and locations. Parliament's own information technology system was hacked in 2015. Last May, Chancellor Angela Merkel told the Bundestag there was "hard evidence" that Russian intelligence had been behind that infiltration. The BWFU fleet and driver service, established in 2002 as a state-owned company, operates from 160 locations across Germany and recruits its own certified drivers. The Bundeswehr military has a three-quarter majority holding in the fleet service; German Rail (Deutsche Bundesbahn) a one quarter stake.

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Automated and partly automated contact tracing: a systematic review to inform the control of COVID-19 - The Lancet Digital Health
by J.C. DE MARTIN Aug. 20, 2020

Aug. 20, 2020

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landig/article/PIIS2589-7500(20)30184-9/… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Splinternet. Gli Usa e Mike Pompeo vogliono rompere l’internet globale?
by dgiorio＠hotmail.com Aug. 19, 2020

Aug. 19, 2020

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What Can America Learn from Europe About Regulating Big Tech?
by don Luca Peyron Aug. 19, 2020

Aug. 19, 2020

Una storia interessante, buona lettura dl https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/what-can-america-learn-… _________________________ don Luca Peyron Direttore Ufficio per la Pastorale Universitaria Arcidiocesi di Torino www.universitari.to.it via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

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