September 2020 - nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

How philanthropy benefits the super-rich
by Giacomo Tesio Sept. 10, 2020

Sept. 10, 2020

There are more philanthropists than ever before. Each year they give tens of billions to charitable causes. So how come inequality keeps rising? https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/08/how-philanthropy-benefits-t… Philanthropy, it is popularly supposed, transfers money from the rich to the poor. This is not the case. In the US, which statistics show to be the most philanthropic of nations, barely a fifth of the money donated by big givers goes to the poor. [...] The biggest donations in education in 2019 went to the elite universities and schools that the rich themselves had attended. In the UK, in the 10-year period to 2017, more than two-thirds of all millionaire donations – £4.79bn – went to higher education, and half of these went to just two universities: Oxford and Cambridge. When the rich and the middle classes give to schools, they give more to those attended by their own children than to those of the poor. British millionaires in that same decade gave £1.04bn to the arts, and just £222m to alleviating poverty. The common assumption that philanthropy automatically results in a redistribution of money is wrong. A lot of elite philanthropy is about elite causes. Rather than making the world a better place, it largely reinforces the world as it is. Philanthropy very often favours the rich – and no one holds philanthropists to account for it. Philanthropy is always an expression of power. Giving often depends on the personal whims of super-rich individuals... There are a number of tensions inherent in the relationship between philanthropy and democracy. [...] Bill Gates can become fixed on addressing a problem which is not seen as a priority by local people, in an area, for example, where polio is far from the biggest problem. He did something similar in his education philanthropy in the US where his fixation on class size diverted public spending away from the actual priorities of the local community. Other philanthropists are more wilfully interventionist. Individuals such as Charles Koch on the right, or George Soros on the left, have succeeded in altering public policy. More than $10bn a year is devoted to such ideological persuasion in the US alone. The result has been what the late German billionaire shipping magnate and philanthropist Peter Kramer called “a bad transfer of power”, from democratically elected politicians to billionaires, so that it is no longer “the state that determines what is good for the people, but rather the rich who decide”. The UN general assembly has warned governments and international organisations that, before taking money from rich donors, they should “assess the growing influence of major philanthropic foundations, and especially the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation … and analyse the intended and unintended risks and side-effects of their activities”. Elected politicians, the UN warned in 2015, should be particularly concerned about “the unpredictable and insufficient financing of public goods, the lack of monitoring and accountability mechanisms, and the prevailing practice of applying business logic to the provision of public goods”. [...] Some kinds of philanthropy may have become not just non-democratic, but anti-democratic. [...] Continua con una analisi estremamente interessante su https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/08/how-philanthropy-benefits-t… Ne consiglio una lettura attenta e critica: mi pare sorvoli completamente la dimensione geopolitica della questione. E ovviamente non arriva lontanamente a suggerire l'esigenza di ravvivare una coscienza (ed una lotta) di classe. Se "più tasse" significasse un limite superiore alla ricchezza individuale come funzione fissa del limite inferiore, forse il "volemose bene" finale avrebbe un senso. Oltre un certo limite (3-4 volte il limite inferiore), l'unico modo legale per incrementare il benessere individuale dovrebbe essere incrementare il benessere collettivo, in modo che la spinta a collaborare bilanci la spinta a competere. Ma la rilevanza di questo articolo per la lista l'abbiamo evidenziata recentemente, discutendo dei progetti open source internazionali. D'altronde... non sembra anche a voi che l'ONU si stia spostando > pericolosamente verso un'analisi un filo complottistica del tutto Come si può pensare a "qualcosa di orchestrato più o meno a tavolino"? ;-) Giacomo

1 0

A robot wrote this entire article. Are you scared yet, human?
by Antonio Iacono Sept. 10, 2020

Sept. 10, 2020

Se avete qualche minuto, leggetelo [1]. E' tutto così insensato che commentarne il contenuto sarebbe tempo perso, ma già li vedo i direttori di alcuni giornali sfregarsi le mani, toh, vuoi vedere che riusciamo a risparmiare pure su quella miseria che diamo agli articolisti "umani" !!!. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/08/robot-wrote-this-arti…

2 2

Cory Doctorow: IP
by Giacomo Tesio Sept. 9, 2020

Sept. 9, 2020

In other words, when free software was born, if you wanted to clone, interoperate with, improve, or modify any existing software, all you needed to do was reverse-engineer that software and go to town. The GPL wasn’t permission to make something new that was compatible with something that already existed. People who knew how to make software already behaved as though that was something they were permitted to do, irrespective of the feelings of the company or individual whose code they were interacting with. The GPL was a request for companies and software authors to make this process easier and less tedious by handing out source code, so that would-be interoperators could skip the wasteful, time-consuming reverse-engineering step and go right to the good stuff – making a new thing that improved upon (and/or competed with) whatever was already made. The GPL was icing on the cake. Applying the GPL to your code didn’t signal that you’d forswear legal vengeance upon those who wanted to make something compatible with your thing. You had no right to that vengeance! Applying the GPL to your code signalled that you wanted to collaborate with interoperators, rather than impotently shake your fist at them from the sidelines as they went right ahead and interoperated with your code against your wishes. [...] Forty years ago, we had cake and asked for icing on top of it. Today, all we have left is the icing, and we’ve forgotten that the cake was ever there. If code isn’t licensed as “free,” you’d best leave it alone. [...] Interoperability is the default state of the world. Anyone’s charcoal will burn in your barbecue, just as anyone’s gas will make your car go. Any manufacturer can make a lightbulb that fits in your light-socket and any shoes can be worn with any socks. [..] Interoperability lowers “switching costs” – the cost of leaving behind whatever you’re using now in favor of something you think will suit you better. [...] Companies like high switching costs. For a would-be monopolist, the best product is one that’s seductively easy to start using and incredibly hard to get rid of. Think of Purdue Pharma’s gleeful internal memos – revealed in leaks and court cases – about the ease with which their “customers” were getting started on opioids and how hard it was for those same people to switch away. Addiction isn’t the only way to raise switching costs. Facebook makes it incredibly easy to get started [...] But when you want to leave Facebook, there’s no easy way to do so. You can’t go to a Facebook rival and follow what your friends post to Facebook from there. You certainly can’t reply to what your Facebook friends post using a rival service. [...] Google wants to ensure that you won’t leave the company or its products and services. It could improve its retention by making you so delighted with its offerings that you never consider leaving – but a surer, cheaper way is to interweave its products and services with your life: making sure that your kid can’t go to a public school without creating a Google account; embedding Google search in your mobile OS; releasing web- and app-development frameworks for third parties that quietly harvest the data of their users and send them to Google. [...] Interoperability improves self-determination by safeguarding your ability change the your current situation by incremental steps [...] The thicket of anti-interoperability rules that has sprung up around interoperability has a catch-all name: “intellectual property.” [...] “intellectual property” is an incoherent category: when you assert that your work has “intellectual property” protection, do you mean that you can sue rivals to protect your customers from deception; or that the government will block rivals if you disclose the inner workings of your machines; or that you have been given just enough (but no more) incentive to publish your expressions of your ideas, with the understanding that the ideas themselves are fair game? [...] When you look at how “IP” is used by firms, a very precise – albeit colloquial – meaning emerges: “IP is any law that I can invoke that allows me to control the conduct of my competitors, critics, and customers.” [...] Your printer uses DRM to force you to buy ink that the manufacturer has approved; your phone uses DRM to force you to buy apps that the manufacturer has approved. Ventilators from Medtronic and tractors from John Deere use DRM to force you to get them repaired by the manufacturer – and to scrap them when the manufacturer decides it’s time for you to buy a new one. [...] Bypassing DRM to get your printer to accept third-party ink is not a copyright violation: you’re not reproducing its code, nor are you duplicating the traces etched into its chips. But even though you’re not breaking copyright when you jailbreak your phone, you’re still breaking copyright law. The law bans legal conduct, if you have to break DRM to engage in it. This isn’t copyright protection – it’s felony contempt of business-model. It’s not just DRM. Take “Goldman Sans,” a free font released by the finance giant and global supervillain Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sans is a copyrighted work, and it comes with a copyright license that you “agree” to when you download the font. Among the license terms for Goldman Sans is a non-disparagement clause – that is, a clause that prohibits you from criticizing Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs doesn’t need copyright law to prevent people from copying its font. It gives the font away for free. Goldman Sachs needs copyright law so it can boss people around – so it can tell them what they may (and may not) say. [...] Even where tech is challenging these monopolies, it is doing so in order to create more monopolies. Kindle Unlimited presents a real challenge to traditional genre publishing, and every Kindle Unlimited book is released with DRM that locks it to Amazon’s platform. Any attempt to liberate Kindle Unlimited books so they can be read with a rival’s device (or with a device designed to stop Amazon from spying on you while you read) involves breaking the DRM, and trafficking in tools to break DRM is a felony under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. [...] As Amazon conquers an ever-larger proportion of genre readers, it permanently locks those readers into its platform, meaning that any author who wants to access those readers will have to do so on Amazon’s terms, turning over the power of their “author’s monopoly” to be used in Amazon’s “market power monopoly” arsenal. Give authors more copyright – a stronger monopoly – and Amazon will seize that too, as a condition of reaching the audience Amazon has imprisoned in its walled garden. [...] You may have heard Netscape founder Marc Andreessen’s famous phrase: “Software is eating the world.” It’s not quite true. Software has eaten the world. Past tense. If there was any doubt, the pandemic erased it. Locked down, viewing the world through our screens, there is no longer any distinction between human rights and digital rights. There is no software freedom. There’s only freedom. Continua su https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/ Giacomo

2 1

Il kernel Linux adotta il Code Of Conduct
by Francesco Mecca Sept. 9, 2020

Sept. 9, 2020

Il mondo del FOSS e piu` in generale quello dell'informatica non e` un universo a se` stante ma coesiste con il mondo della politica e ci interagisce. Il 16 settembre Linus con questa email http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1809.2/00117.html ha annunciato di prendersi una pausa dallo sviluppo del kernel. Inoltre si scusa per il suo comportamento aggressivo: "The above is basically a long-winded way to get to the somewhat painful personal admission that hey, I need to change some of my behavior, and I want to apologize to the people that my personal behavior hurt and possibly drove away from kernel development entirely. I am going to take time off and get some assistance on how to understand people's emotions and respond appropriately." Questo cambiamento, che non ha precedenti in 30 anni di benevola dittatura, rientra nel panorama molto piu` ampio dell'attuale conflitto ideologico fra le vecchie idee di selezione per merito e le piu` nuove idee di selezione per diversita`, fra il "technical coding" e il "social coding", alt-destre e la sinistra culturale. Francesco Mecca

8 52

Mozilla published an open letter to European Commission President
by Antonio Iacono Sept. 9, 2020

Sept. 9, 2020

https://blog.mozilla.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Mitchell-Letter-to-EU-C… Vari punti tra cui: Content accountability - For too many individuals and groups, the internet today is not an empowering outlet for free expression ... A healthier online ecosystem - ... Aggressive collection of personal data and microtargeting of individuals is at the heart of many of the systemic problems facing the internet. The DSA can take meaningful steps to address this, for instance by ensuring the advertising economy is not a vector for individual and collective harm; by clamping down on nefarious cross-site tracking; or by bringing more transparency to the ad tech ecosystem. I strongly encourage you to make it a key objective.

1 0

“Synch Video is Bad,” perhaps a new research project?
by Giacomo Tesio Sept. 9, 2020

Sept. 9, 2020

Just to back up a step: after teaching online since about 2005, after doing a lot of research on best practices for online teaching, after doing a lot of writing and research about MOOCs, I’ve learned at least two things about teaching online: - Asynchronous instruction works better than synchronous instruction because of the affordances (and limitations) of the medium. - Video – particularly videos of professors just lecturing into a webcam while students (supposedly) sit and pay attention– is not very effective. [...] judging from what I see on social media, a lot of my colleagues who are teaching online this fall for the first time are completely ignoring these best practices: they’re teaching synchronous classes during the originally scheduled time of the course and they are relying heavily on Zoom. In many cases (again, based on what I’ve seen on the internets), instructors have no choice: that is, the institution is requiring that what were originally scheduled f2f classes be taught with synch video regardless of what the instructor wants to do, what the class is, and if it makes any sense. But a lot of instructors are doing this to themselves (which, in a lot of ways, is even worse). In my department at EMU, all but a few classes are online this fall, and as far as I can tell, many (most?) of my colleagues have decided on their own to teach their classes with Zoom and synchronously. It doesn’t make sense to me at all. [...] I think requiring students to meet online but synchronously for a class via Zoom simply is putting a round peg into a square hole. Imagine the logical opposite situation: say I was scheduled to teach an asynchronous online class that was suddenly changed into a traditional f2f class, something that meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 am to 11:45 am. Instead of changing my approach to this now different mode/medium, I decided I was going to teach the class as an asynch online class anyway. I’d require everyone to physically show up to the class on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10 am (I have no choice about that), but instead of taking advantage of the mode of teaching f2f, I did everything all asynch and online. There’d be no conversation or acknowledgement that we were sitting in the same room. Students would only be allowed to interact with each other in the class LMS. No one would be allowed to actually talk to each other, though texting would be okay. Students would sit there for 75 minutes, silently doing their work but never allowed to speak with each other, and as the instructor, I would sit in the front of the room and do the same. We’d repeat this at all meetings the entire semester. A ridiculous hypothetical, right? Well, because I’m pretty used to teaching online, that’s what an all Zoom class looks like like to me. The other problem I have with Zoom is its part in policing and surveilling both students and teachers. Inside Higher Ed and the Chronicle of Higher Education both published inadvertently hilarious op-eds written to an audience of faculty about how they should maintain their own appearances and of their “Zoom backgrounds” to project professionalism and respect. [...] When online teaching came up in the first department meeting of the year (held on Zoom, of course), the main concern voiced by my colleagues who had never taught online before was dealing with students who misbehave in these online forums. I’ve seen similar kinds of discussions about how to surveil students from other folks on social media. And what could possibly motivate a teacher’s need to have bodily control over what their students do in their own homes to the point of requiring them to wear fucking shoes? This kind of “soft surveillance” is bad enough, but as I understand it, one of Zoom’s features it sells to institutions is robust data on what users do with it: who is logged in, when, for how long, etc. [...] On the other hand… The conventional wisdom about teaching online asynchronously and without Zoom might be wrong, and that makes it potentially interesting to study. For example, the main reason why online classes are almost always asynchronous is the difficulty of scheduling and the flexibility helps students take classes in the first place. But if you could have a class that was mostly asynchronous but with some previously scheduled synchronous meetings as a part of the mix, well, that might be a good thing. Continua su http://stevendkrause.com/2020/09/07/synch-video-is-bad-perhaps-a-new-resear… Ho trovato il pezzo interessante perché scritto da un insegnante. L'idea della privacy non lo sfiora lontanamente. Non nomina alternative libere o open source come Jitsi o BigBlue Button, nominando solo Zoom e Google Meet (evidenziando involontariamente il controllo assoluto del mercato da parte di queste aziende). Eppure, dalla sua prospettiva di insegnante che tiene da anni corsi online, conferma che la didattica a distanza asincrona è nettamente superiore a quella sincrona, cui sono stati costretti docenti e studenti durante il lockdown. La teledidattica asincrona è anche molto più economica da realizzare in modo scalabile, sicuro, distribuito e "privacy preserving". Non servono tecnologie avanzate: basta un servizio di hosting attraverso cui distribuire i materiali e una mailing list o un forum. Magari pensiamoci... alla prossima pandemia! ;-) Giacomo

2 1

What the real history of the 'Wild West' can teach us about the tech industry
by J.C. DE MARTIN Sept. 8, 2020

Sept. 8, 2020

https://mashable.com/article/wild-west-tech-industry-regulation/ (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

1 0

The Stalinist Trial of Julian Assange - CounterPunch.org
by J.C. DE MARTIN Sept. 8, 2020

Sept. 8, 2020

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/09/07/the-stalinist-trial-of-julian-assan… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

1 0

Web by Google (TM)
by Giacomo Tesio Sept. 8, 2020

Sept. 8, 2020

https://landshark.io/2020/08/16/web-by-google.html Looking at Mozilla’s finances, it’s reasonable to conclude that Google is keeping them on life support to keep the anti-trust hounds at bay. Mozilla’s deal with Google will account for at least 70% of their revenues going forward. That’s over $400 million to be the default search provider in 4% of browsers. For 1 year. I’ll bet my next paycheck that Google reupped this rather generous agreement to avoid a repeat of Microsoft’s troubles over an Internet Explorer monopoly. My guess is that Google will decide it’s in their interest to pull the plug right around the time this latest wave of anti-trust talk blows over. With the troubles at Mozilla, Google is one step closer to replicating the WeChat and Facebook walled-garden model on the Web. A quick survey a the field of play shows just how far Google has come in capturing the once open Web. # (Browser) War is over Chrome’s ability to dictate web standards will only get stronger over time. Safari and Firefox have been able to apply some shame to Chrome on things like disabling third-party cookies, but soon it’ll just be Apple left with a voice. But Google doesn’t even need Chrome to dictate standards since it controls the Web’s front door. AMP, a technology no one asked for, is now on over 70% of all marketing websites for no other reason than Google said so. And let’s not forget that most people now access the web via mobile devices, 75% of which run Google’s Android. # Original Sins Two deficiencies have determined the course the Web has taken: lack of native search and lack of native payments. Lacking native distributed search allowed Google to grab a monopoly position as the entry point to the web. The Web’s orignal architects were off base on hyperlinks; it turns out people just want to skip right to the answer they’re looking for. There was once the beginnings of an alternative in public bookmarking sites, but social networks came and sucked all the air out of that space. Lack of a safe and easy way of exchanging funds was a big factor in advertising becoming the dominant business model on the Web. No-charge services became the norm because, for a long time, there was no reasonable way to pay for them. Enter advertising to fill the void. I think it’s safe to say that Google’s AdWords is the dominant advertising platform on the open Web, which means it holds a commanding position in the Web’s finances. I’m also going to throw in an honorable mention to poor native video support (it is hyper_text_ after all). It’s beating a dead horse to point out that Google also serves up the vast majority of videos streamed on the Web. # So then… So Google controls the Web’s search and video infrastructure. It can and does dictate standards and media formats. It also controls a huge chunk of the revenues available when publishing and selling on the Web. It even controls the operating system and browser through which most people interact with it. Google’s capture of the Web is a fait accompli. Only legislation will keep the World Wide Web from finally becoming Web by Google (TM).

1 0

E-Voting App Maker Voatz Asks The Supreme Court To Let It Punish Security Researchers For Exposing Its Flaws | Techdirt
by Alberto Cammozzo Sept. 8, 2020

Sept. 8, 2020

<https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200903/16005645245/e-voting-app-maker-v…> Voatz has decided to weigh in on a Supreme Court case that could turn a lot of normal internet activity into a federal crime. At the center of this CFAA case is a cop who abused his access privileges to run unauthorized searches of law enforcement databases. The end result -- after a visit to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals -- was a CFAA conviction for violating the system's terms of use. That's why this case is important. If the CFAA is interpreted this broadly, plenty of people become criminals. And it won't just be security researchers risking criminal charges simply by performing security research. It will also be everyone who lies to social media services about their personal info. Lawprof Orin Kerr's brief to the Supreme Court points out what a flat "no unauthorized use" reading would do to him. Like the majority of American adults, I have a Facebook account. Facebook’s terms of service require its users to “[p]rovide accurate information about” themselves. See Facebook Terms of Service, https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms/plain_text_ terms (last visited July 1, 2020). I recently violated that term by listing my home city as Sealand. Sealand is an offshore platform in the North Sea near England built during World War II to host anti-aircraft guns. It’s not actually my home city. I list it only to make a point about the CFAA. But under the government’s position, my joke is no laughing matter. It is a federal crime. No one should want the law to be read this way. Not even sites that would greatly prefer users to respect the terms of service. The collateral damage of a broad reading would make it far easier to prosecute people who use sites in ways owners don't expect or engage in research efforts that require ignoring the rules. And it would give abusive site owners plenty of ways to harass users and visitors they don't like. But one developer wants this to happen. And it's a developer of notoriously flawed e-voting systems. Voatz has made plenty of headlines lately. None of them have been flattering. MIT researchers discovered a bunch of flaws in Voatz software. Voatz tried to combat this negative press by hiring outside researchers to perform an independent audit of its systems. This went no better than the MIT study. Voatz is full of holes, which made its accusations that the MIT researchers were only in it for the clicks look even stupider. [...]

1 0