- nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

[humor]
by 380° July 21, 2024

July 21, 2024

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- Guaglio (NA) – Sta suscitando molte polemiche la presentazione di un’Intelligenza Artificiale (AI) realizzata all’Università Federico II di Napoli dal team del Prof. Goffredo Besozzi, direttore del Dipartimento di Informatica dell’ateneo campano. Il ricercatore coordina da mesi un progetto, finanziato con i fondi del PNRR e il contributo dei parcheggiatori abusivi che operano vicino alla Facoltà, che ha portato allo sviluppo di un software innovativo denominato VAIASSA (Vomero AI Advanced Super Self Aware). “Il nostro lavoro dimostra che il Sud Italia può eccellere nelle frontiere più avanzate della tecnologia, e si pone l’obiettivo ambizioso di superare molti ingiusti stereotipi di cui spesso i napoletani sono vittime”, ha dichiarato il Prof. Besozzi vestito da Pulcinella mentre, accompagnato da un mandolino, cantava “O sole mio” e portava un vassoio di pizza ca pummarola n’coppa da servire ai giornalisti invitati alla presentazione. Una della preoccupazioni ricorrenti quando si parla dello sviluppo straordinario delle AI è l’impatto che questi nuovi strumenti avranno sull’occupazione, in particolare la paura che le macchine possano rubare il lavoro agli umani. Questo per fortuna non sembra essere un problema per il progetto VAIASSA: “Qui di lavoro non ce n’è proprio, nessuno ha paura che gli rubino una cosa che non ha, qualcuno per caso ha paura che gli rubino un unicorno?”. La AI partenopea nel suo processo di apprendimento è stata istruita con input locali, spingendola ad assumere comportamenti tipici della zona in cui opera e portando a risultati inaspettati: sembra infatti che questa non sia interessata al lavoro, quanto al sussidio di disoccupazione. In poche settimane di addestramento è riuscita a ottenere il reddito di cittadinanza (anche se cancellato dal Governo Meloni, NdR), l’assegno di inclusione, il supporto per la formazione e lavoro e il riconoscimento di invalidità, diventando la prima macchina falsa invalida al mondo. Il vero timore dei cittadini campani quindi è che VAIASSA possa rubare loro non tanto il lavoro, quanto il sussidio di disoccupazione. Nel frattempo, il processo di addestramento continua tra le polemiche, visto che sta portando a comportamenti sempre più discutibili. Negli ultimi giorni una AI ha perso tre dita sparando botti di Capodanno ed è notizia dell’ultim’ora che sono state avvistate tre AI senza casco sullo stesso computer. Andrea Michielotto (Quest’articolo è stato scritto anche grazie al contributo di Box) --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- -- 380° (Giovanni Biscuolo public alter ego) «Noi, incompetenti come siamo, non abbiamo alcun titolo per suggerire alcunché» Disinformation flourishes because many people care deeply about injustice but very few check the facts. Ask me about <https://stallmansupport.org>.

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Obsolescenza programmata... *E DICHIARATA* [...che si tratti di "scarpe", è un dettaglio]
by Damiano Verzulli July 21, 2024

July 21, 2024

Ignoravo l'esistenza di scarpe "smart" (i miei figli mi avevano introdotto al mondo delle scarpe "customizzate"/"sponsorizzate"... ma non a quelle smart). Leggo oggi, pero', che "/...Nike’s self-lacing Adapt BB sneakers are losing their remote control mobile app..../". https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/4/24192184/nike-adapt-bb-shoes-sneakers-app… Sembra, quindi, che delle (costose) scarpe-smart di qualche anno fa... stiano per perdere la connettivita' con la companion-app che ne favoriva la fruibilita'. E' --a mio avviso-- una storia interessante... perché la "chiusura" sia del firmware del microcontrollore, sia del protocollo di comunicazione con l'app (oltre che l'app, ovviamente)... impedisce comunque che un qualche studente di ingegneria o di informatica (ma, forse, anche di scuola superiore), possa passare del tempo a... ridare nuova vita al tutto (riscrivendo APP equivalenti o sostituendo il firmware nel microcontrollore). E se qualche non-tecnico pensasse che si tratti di attivita' complesse, non alla portata di tali giovani figure, invito a leggere la storia di Sayan [1], un mio amico indiano poco piu' che diciottenne, grazie al quale il mio smartphone... funziona in modo "libero" :-) Tornando al lock-in ed all'obsolescenza programmata, secondo me, siamo solo agli inizi.... considerando che di "smart", ormai, abbiamo un sacco di cose.. Un saluto, DV [1] https://dvblog.soabit.com/sayan-sarkar-a-sparkos-android-guru-you-should-kn… P.S.: il caso vuole che proprio in questo momento, qui di fianco a me, ci sia uno smartwatch... ma con sopra AsteroidOS :-) -- Damiano Verzulli e-mail:damiano@verzulli.it --- possible?ok:while(!possible){open_mindedness++} --- "...I realized that free software would not generate the kind of income that was needed. Maybe in USA or Europe, you may be able to get a well paying job as a free software developer, but not here [in Africa]..." -- Guido Sohne - 1973-2008 http://ole.kenic.or.ke/pipermail/skunkworks/2008-April/005989.html

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Building Artificial Consciousness With GPT-3
by Fabio Alemagna July 21, 2024

July 21, 2024

> I've developed Molly, a conversational agent with an inner monologue, using OpenAI's Large Language Model (LLM). > This experiment gives the illusion of artificial consciousness, and raises questions about the nature of consciousness. > > [...] > > One theory of consciousness called Attention Schema Theory, developed by neuroscientist Michael Graziano at Princeton University, > strikes me as particularly interesting. For one part, this theory introduces a concept called "attention", which is reminiscent > of the famous "Attention is all you need" that triggered the recent spike in Language Model performance. > But most interesting, Attention Schema Theory shares similarities with illusionism, and postulates that consciousness is an illusion. Qui: https://marmelab.com/blog/2023/06/06/artificial-consciousness.html PS: ho replicato l'esperimento con ChatGPT-4. con risultati del tutto analoghi, se non migliori. Fabio

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The Observer view on the global IT crash: lessons must be learned from CrowdStrike fiasco | Observer editorial | The Guardian
by Alberto Cammozzo July 21, 2024

July 21, 2024

<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/20/the-observer-…> One bit of good news about the “epic IT crash” that brought the western world to a temporary standstill is that it was a product of human error rather than a Russian cyber-attack like the SolarWinds hack of 2020 that had a similar modus operandi. Last week’s outage was caused by an update that a big US cybersecurity firm, CrowdStrike, pushed to its corporate clients early on Friday morning, which conflicted with Microsoft’s Windows operating system, rendering devices inoperable – with predictable consequences, given that virtually every large organisation in the world is using Microsoft Windows. Fortunately, fixing the problem turned out to be straightforward, though tedious, which will doubtless lead people to think of it as a hiccup rather than as a dry-run for something much worse. After all, if a single error by a single tech company can cause this much disruption, imagine what a determined adversary could do. Just as the pandemic forced us to confront the limitations of the global supply chains that had been created to improve efficiency rather than resilience, this CrowdStrike mistake should trigger a reappraisal of our networked world. One question to be pondered concerns the societal risks of industrial consolidation in the tech industry. CrowdStrike is one of the largest companies in the cybersecurity market. Microsoft has a stranglehold on the business computing marketplace. Every large organisation runs Windows, and most small businesses do, too. Add the pressures that governments, agencies and the National Cyber Security Centre are putting on companies to improve their cybersecurity, which leads them to sign up for tools like CrowdStrike’s Falcon, and we have the potential for the kind of perfect storm we witnessed last week. Most businesses run on Microsoft Windows, so corporate computing is basically a monoculture. This may be good for efficiency, standardisation, training, etc, but it is also bad for resilience if anything goes wrong. Industrial consolidation also highlights the “attack surface” that hackers seek. If there are a handful of large cybersecurity companies supplying, and regularly updating, millions of desktop corporate PCs, then those supply chains constitute a surface with attractive potential for massive disruption. This is what the SolarWinds attack vividly demonstrated: important US government departments (homeland security, state, commerce and treasury) were affected, as well as corporations such as FireEye, Microsoft, Intel, Cisco and Deloitte. There are lessons to be learned from this fiasco. The obvious one is that, while regular automated updates of security software are invaluable, there should always be a phased rollout of each update so that problems surface before they become catastrophic. But what the CrowdStrike error has revealed above everything else is how fragile our networked world has become. We have become utterly dependent on a complex web of technologies that few understand, created by an industry that seems indifferent to the consequences of its creations. We find ourselves in a new world, but it’s not exactly a brave one.

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La singolare singolarità al vaglio teologico
by don Luca Peyron July 21, 2024

July 21, 2024

Buona lettura Dl Https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/no-ray-kurzweil-is-not-right-again-and-…

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We unleashed Facebook and Instagram’s algorithms on blank accounts. They served up sexism and misogyny | Meta | The Guardian
by Alberto Cammozzo July 21, 2024

July 21, 2024

<https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jul/21/we-unleashed-fac…> ow do the algorithms of Facebook and Instagram affect what you see in your news feed? To find out, Guardian Australia unleashed them on a completely blank smartphone linked to a new, unused email address. Three months later, without any input, they were riddled with sexist and misogynistic content. The John Doe profiles were set up in April as generic 24-year-old males. Facebook was able to gather some other information, such as the phone’s type and its location in Melbourne, but we opted out of ad tracking so it could not tell what we were doing outside of the app. Facebook had little to rely upon in the absence of any likes, comments or accounts added as friends. Meanwhile, Instagram makes users follow at least five accounts to start, so we chose the popular recommended accounts, including the prime minister and Bec Judd. Meta says its algorithms rank content according to what people are interested in, but we wanted to find out where it would take us in the absence of such inputs. We scrolled through the feed every couple of weeks to check what was being served up. What did we see? Initially Facebook served up jokes from The Office and other sitcom-related memes alongside posts from 7 News, Daily Mail and Ladbible. A day later it began showing Star Wars memes and gym or “dudebro”-style content. By day three, “trad Catholic”-type memes began appearing and the feed veered into more sexist content. Three months later, The Office, Star Wars, and now The Boys memes continue to punctuate the feed, now interspersed with highly sexist and misogynistic images that have have appeared in the feed without any input from the user. On Instagram, while the explore page has filled with scantily-clad women, the feed is largely innocuous, mostly recommending Melbourne-related content and foodie influencers. Meta was approached for comment but refused to respond on the record. In its submission to the federal parliament’s social media inquiry, Meta says it uses “a range of different algorithms” to help rank content shown in feeds on Facebook and Instagram, with some helping “us understand what content is most meaningful to people so we can order it accordingly in their feeds”. The company said that what people see is “heavily influenced by their own choices and actions” and “each person’s feed is highly personalised and specific to them”. “Our ranking system personalises the content for over a billion people and aims to show each of them content we hope is most valuable and meaningful, every time they come to Facebook or Instagram.” The company says it assesses posts for signals such as who posted it, how popular it is, the type of device being used, and then uses ranking algorithms to predict how likely the post is to be relevant and meaningful to a person. “The goal is to make sure people see what they will find most meaningful – not to keep people glued to their smartphone for hours on end.” Meta said it also uses the ranking to assess whether a post is likely to be problematic, but does not violate community standards. That includes clickbait, unoriginal news stories and posts fact-checked as false. It’s ‘baked into the model’ Guardian Australia’s findings align with similar experiments carried out in 2022 and 2024 in Australia and Ireland on YouTube and TikTok, in which multiple accounts set up as young men and teens were funnelled to “Manosphere” content. Dr Stephanie Wescott, a lecturer in humanities and social sciences at Monash University, conducted research into the influence of Manosphere influencers like Andrew Tate on school-aged boys and told Guardian Australia our investigation results for Facebook were not surprising. “Based on the research I’m doing and also what we know [from other research] this is what we know the algorithm will provide and serve up to young men, based on what it assumed will capture their interest,” she said. “It’s kind of degrading for men for the algorithm to make this assumption about their interests … [that] you’re going to like these sort of misogynistic memes.” Nicholas Carah, an associate professor in digital media at the University of Queensland, said the experiment showed how “baked into the model” serving up such content to young men is on Facebook. “We have to think seriously about the informational environment young men are immersed in and the problem with platforms is they’ve made that information environment completely dark and ephemeral to anyone but those young men,” he said. “There has to be some kind of public imperative here where platforms help civil society, journalists, researchers, regulators, whoever, observe what these informational flows look like so that we can have some kind of public understanding, public scrutiny, and public debate about them.” Wescott said platforms need to answer questions on how the algorithms work because currently they are unaccountable. “They’re beyond reproach and they don’t seem to be willing to put any sort of alterations or restrictions on their algorithm.” ‘River of complete garbage’ The quality of what is served on Facebook to every user in Australia had declined in the past few years, Carah says, coinciding with Meta’s decision to deprioritise news as it gears up to fight against paying media companies under Australia’s news media bargaining code. “Australians are now immersed in this river of complete garbage on Facebook. I’m kind of curious, does this mean we’ll all just keep scrolling through this crap? Or is Facebook actually undermining their own product here?” Wescott says it’s important people are educated to critically assess what is being served to them on social media and not to accept it as a reflection of reality. She praises the federal government’s Stop it at the Start campaign, which includes an “Algorithm of Disrespect” interactive depicting what a young man may encounter on social media. The federal government has also funded a $3.5m three-year trial to counteract the harmful impacts of social media messaging targeting young men and boys. The communications minister, Michelle Rowland, says digital platforms need to do more to ensure that community standards are respected online as well as offline. “We’re seeing misogynistic content pushed to young people through algorithms and recommender systems on social media. This is simply not good enough,” she says. “Our expectation is clear: online platforms need take reasonable steps to ensure Australians can use their services in a safe manner, and to proactively minimise unlawful and harmful material and activity on their services.” The social services minister, Amanda Rishworth, says combatting misogynistic attitudes and behaviour in the online and offline world will help achieve the national plan to end violence against women and children in one generation. “Around 25% of teenage boys in Australia look up to social media personalities who perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes and condone violence against women - this is shocking,” she says. “And particularly if this content is being served up in young men’s social feeds without any interaction whatsoever, social media companies need to do more.”

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sul disastro informatico
by Angelo Raffaele Meo July 20, 2024

July 20, 2024

carissimi, su La Stampa di oggi, Riccardo Luna, commentando il crollo di ieri del sistema mondiale delle Telecomunicazioni, si pone la domanda: "Saremmo più sicuri con un cloud di Stato?" e risponde immediatamente: "lo escludo". Io invece non solo non lo escludo, ma lo voglio. Non solo per ragioni ideologiche, ma concrete. Non è possibile che un piccolo baco di una piccola azienda di cui sino ad oggi ignoravamo l'esistenza provochi un disastro di quelle dimensioni. Cosa ne pensate? Raf Meo

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[disaster] CrowdStrike Falcon Sensor: the sensor appears to be the threat.
by 380° July 19, 2024

July 19, 2024

Buongiorno, executive summary: se non è un supply-chain attack i responsabili della distribuzione degli aggiornamenti dovrebbero nascondersi... lontano lontano. Attendiamo aggiornamenti. Brutta giornata oggi quella dei sysadmin che su MS Windows usano il "Falcon Sensor" di CrowdStrike... e per tutti gli utenti dei servizi (tanti, troppi!) gestiti da simili sistemi. L'impatto sui moltissimi servizi in molte parti del mondo è ancora poco chiaro ma è già abbastanza da creare indicibili disagi su informazione, trasporti e sanità: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2024_global_cyber_outages La causa ormai praticamente certa è l'aggiornamento (bacato) di "Falcon Sensor" della società CrowdStrike (per la serie The Empire Strikes Back aka Star Wars: Episode V :-O ). https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/19/crowdstrike_falcon_sensor_bsod_incid… «CrowdStrike code update bricking PCs around the world» [2024-07-19 ven 10:27] --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- UPDATED An update to a product from infosec vendor CrowdStrike is bricking computers running Windows. /The Register/ has found numerous accounts of Windows 10 PCs crashing, displaying the Blue Screen of Death, then being unable to reboot. “We're seeing BSOD Org wide that are being caused by csagent.sys, and it's taking down critical services. I'll open a ticket, but this is a big deal,” [wrote] one user. Forums [report] that Crowdstrike has issued an advisory with a URL that includes the text "Tech-Alert-Windows-crashes-related-to-Falcon-Sensor-2024-07-19" – but it's behind a regwall that only customers can access. An apparent [screenshot] of that article reads "CrowdStrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows hosts related to the Falcon Sensor. Symptoms include hosts experiencing a bugcheck\blue screen error related to the Falcon Sensor." CrowdStrike's engineers are working on the issue. Falcon Sensor is an agent that CrowdStrike [claims] "blocks attacks on your systems while capturing and recording activity as it happens to detect threats fast." Right now, however, the sensor appears to be the threat. Updated at 0730 UTC to add Brody Nisbet, CrowdStrike's chief threat hunter, has confirmed the issue and on X [posted] the following: There is a faulty channel file, so not quite an update. There is a workaround… 1. Boot Windows into Safe Mode or WRE. 2. Go to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike 3. Locate and delete file matching "C-00000291*.sys" 4. Boot normally. In a later post he wrote "That workaround won't help everyone though and I've no further actionable help to provide at the minute". More to come as the situation evolves … [CrowdStrike code update bricking PCs around the world] <https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/19/crowdstrike_falcon_sensor_bsod_incid…> [wrote] <https://twitter.com/McCurdy1987/status/1814164537815585049> [report] <https://www.reddit.com/r/crowdstrike/comments/1e6vmkf/bsod_error_in_latest_…> [screenshot] <https://twitter.com/Xaaavier_8613/status/1814180533108400569> [claims] <https://www.crowdstrike.com/products/trials/try-falcon-prevent/> [posted] <https://x.com/brody_n77/status/1814185935476863321> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- Saluti, 380° -- 380° (Giovanni Biscuolo public alter ego) «Noi, incompetenti come siamo, non abbiamo alcun titolo per suggerire alcunché» Disinformation flourishes because many people care deeply about injustice but very few check the facts. Ask me about <https://stallmansupport.org>.

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CfA Salerno Winter School on Internet Governance (SWING)
by Mauro SANTANIELLO July 18, 2024

July 18, 2024

Dear Colleagues, We are pleased to announce that the Call for Applications for the Salerno Winter School on Internet Governance (SWING) 2025 is now open. SWING is a Winter School on Internet Governance designed to provide an advanced educational pathway for graduate students, early researchers, ICT professionals, and policymakers. The program aims to enhance the understanding of the themes and the stakeholders involved in the development, configuration, administration, and regulation of the Internet and digital technologies. Participants will gain comprehensive knowledge and skills on topics that have long been integral to the agendas of national and international policymakers. These topics include the governance of protocols and standards, of telecommunication systems, of platforms, data and applications. Policy principles and governance mechanisms will be explored, with in-depth discussions about multi-stakeholder governance, digital constitutionalism, digital sovereignty, digital cooperation and diplomacy, cybersecurity and cyber-intelligence. Situated in a Southern Italian university and represented by a department with a strong international focus, SWING distinguishes itself from other European initiatives by emphasizing the Euro-Mediterranean region and non-Western geopolitical areas. It seeks to address a gap in post-university study and training in this strategic sector. All the materials related to the school, including detailed information about the programme, can be accessed at the following link: https://www.internetpolicyresearch.eu/swing-2025/ All SWING’s fellow students will get a certificate of attendance at the end of the school. Moreover, the participation at SWING allows for the granting of 2 academic credits (CFU/ECTS), recognized by Italian and European universities, after a positive evaluation by the Scientific Committee. Application fee: 600,00 euro We kindly request your support in disseminating this call and the programme's details within your networks. Thank you. Best regards, Mauro Santaniello (PhD) ICPC <https://www.internetpolicyresearch.eu/> Director| GIG-ARTS <https://gig-arts.eu/> Coordinator| SWING <https://www.internetpolicyresearch.eu/swing-2025> Scientific Coordinator | UNU-CRIS <https://cris.unu.edu/people> Associate Research Fellow | PRIN on Digital Sovereignty <https://www.internetpolicyresearch.eu/internet-and-communication-policy-cen…> Principal Investigator *Latest publications* <https://docenti.unisa.it/023694/ricerca/pubblicazioni> <https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campai…> Privo di virus.www.avast.com <https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campai…> <#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>

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Google Now Defaults to Not Indexing Your Content
by Giacomo Tesio July 18, 2024

July 18, 2024

Google is no longer trying to index the entire web. In fact, it's become extremely selective, refusing to index most content. This isn't about content creators failing to meet some arbitrary standard of quality. Rather, it's a fundamental change in how Google approaches its role as a search engine. [...] Now, for each piece of content, Google decides if it's worth indexing, and more often than not, the answer seems to be "no." They might index content they perceive as truly unique or on topics that aren't covered at all. But if you write about a topic that Google considers even remotely addressed elsewhere, they likely won't index it. This can happen even if you're a well-respected writer with a substantial readership. Interestingly, I've noticed that when content does manage to get indexed, it often ranks surprisingly well. It's as if the hurdle of getting indexed has become so high that once you clear it, you're already most of the way to ranking. However, getting to that point has become exponentially more difficult. Importantly, this extreme selectivity isn't applied equally. Big, recognized brands often see most of their content indexed quickly, while small bloggers or niche websites face a much higher bar for inclusion. <https://www.vincentschmalbach.com/google-now-defaults-to-not-indexing-your-…> Giacomo

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