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humor: Power Users
by Giovanni Biscuolo April 17, 2021

April 17, 2021

Buongiorno, è da anni che tento di capire i veri motivi di situazioni come il "Dependency Confusion" (in reatà di tutta la classe di "Supply Chain Attacks") segnalato poco fa in lista [1] e solo ieri sera ho scoperto l'arcano: tutto dipende dai "Power Users"! https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/power.users.html --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- Power Users never read their "Power User's Guide to ..." books, for the same reason they didn't read the software manuals in the first place. [...] Power Users believe computer salesmen. Power Users will buy ANY program that makes wild promises on the box about increasing productivity. These boxes always look impressive on the bookshelf, beside the "Power User" books and course notes. [...] Power Users unreservedly believe their MicroJerk ProjectMeister when it says the project will be complete at 5pm on the last Friday in September next year, but eighteen months later, they won't believe the Real Programmer who says it'll be done "Real Soon Now (tm)". Power Users believe the ads for 4GLs and Application Generator packages, and think that in two weeks they'll be able to fire all their Real Programmers. (Ha ha ha... remember "The Last One"?) --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- Giusto: «increase productivity» *e* «fire all real programmers» [2], ecco qual'è il motivo (lo scopo?) di tutto questo :-D Saluti, Giovanni. [1] https://server-nexa.polito.it/pipermail/nexa/2021-April/021041.html [2] il cugino di uno che conosco che fa il programmatore web in una azienda mi ha confessato che il loro "sales department" è talmente efficiente a vendere che loro non riescono a star dietro col reclutamento di nuovi programmatori :-) P.S.: la pagina umoristica risale presumibilmente all'inizio degli anni '90 ma forse forse le cose oggi non sono molto differenti, mah? -- Giovanni Biscuolo Noi, incompetenti come siamo, non abbiamo alcun titolo per suggerire alcunché.

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The EU draft Regulation on AI: a threat to labour protection? - Regulating for Globalization
by J.C. DE MARTIN April 16, 2021

April 16, 2021

http://regulatingforglobalization.com/2021/04/16/the-eu-draft-regulation-on… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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"Filosofia digitale" (Quaderni di filosofia)
by J.C. DE MARTIN April 16, 2021

April 16, 2021

Tutti gli articoli sono "open access". jc http://mimesisbooks.com/index.php/mim/catalog/book/10 Riccardo Fedriga (ed) Fabio Ciracì (ed) Cristina Marras (ed) *Introduzione* Riccardo Fedriga, Fabio Ciracì, Cristina Marras * Biodiversità ed ecosistema digitale* Per una filosofia plurilingue e multiprospettica Cristina Marras * Nuovi abiti per la vecchia cerimonia: Aristotele e la narrativa digitale* Luca Bandirali * La tecnologia wiki come spazio per il dialogo operativo tra filosofia e informatica* Luigi Catalani * Crisscross ontology: Mapping concept dynamics, competing argument and multiperspectival knowledge in philosophy* Alois Pichler, James M. Fielding, Nivedita Gangopadhyay, Andreas L. Opdahl * Digit-filosofia o filosofia del digitale?* Enrico Terrone * Per una teoria critica del digitale: fake-news e postverità alla luce della logica della verosimiglianza* Fabio Ciracì * Macchine?* Mario A. Bochicchio, Simona Corciulo * I diritti dell’algoritmo. Per un’ontologia dell’“autorialità digitale”* Roberto Limonta * Eventi Digitali* Riccardo Fedriga * Digital Humanities and Trans Humanities – Some Research Problems for the Humanities of the Not-Too-Far Future* Stefan Gruner * DH: un dialogo a più voci* Riccardo Fedriga, Fabio Ciracì, Cristina Marras, Stefan Gruner

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The EU’s R&D process: unaccountable, unethical, even illegal? - about:intel
by Alberto Cammozzo April 15, 2021

April 15, 2021

<https://aboutintel.eu/eu-unaccountable-rd-process/> Gemma Galdon-Clavell While most R&D requires some level of experimental latitude and trade secret discretion, how much should be tolerated in publicly funded technological development? In the European Commission’s R&D process, ethical review of legally questionable topics comes far too late – only at a point where funding is too advanced for such projects to be rejected. The civil liberty and democratic accountability concerns stemming from this are vast, and leads us to wonder whether this lack of oversight is merely a fixable ‘bug’ or an intentional feature? In early 2021, a German MEP submitted a court complaint about a project funded under the European Commission’s research & development (R&D) programme. The project, iBorderCntrl, has received 4.5 million euros in order to develop new technology to detect from facial “micro-expressions” when somebody is lying while answering questions, and to test it on EU borders. According to MEP Patrick Breyer, “the European Union is funding illegal technology that violates fundamental rights and is unethical”, and in this case “pseudo-scientific security hocus pocus” with potential discriminatory impacts among vulnerable communities. Ethics oversight It’s not the first time that a project funded with the EU’s R+D funds has received attention for its apparent ethical risks, and the robustness of the system established to oversee what is funded by EU taxpayers. In 2009-10, the INDECT project prompted a debate at the EU parliament about the secrecy of EC-funded research, its effective ethics oversight and the overall aims of some projects funded in the security domain. Funded with almost 11 million euros, INDECT aimed to research “intelligent information system supporting observation, searching and detection for security of citizens in urban environments” but was qualified by some media as the “‘Orwellian’ artificial intelligence plan to monitor public for ‘abnormal behaviour’”. Examples such as these raise concerns as to the role that civil liberties and democratic accountability play in the process of deciding which technologies get funded and are implemented by EU actors. The EC and its relevant bodies (the Research Executive Agency and European Research Council Executive Agency) have been developing oversight mechanisms for years, which have translated into a mandatory ethics review of all projects that are awarded funding under the Horizon 2020 funding framework and the upcoming HorizonEurope framework. While the ethics oversight process is a robust mechanism that allows the funder and a set of experts to assess whether an intended tech development may raise ethical issues (linked to the participation of humans and their data, issues of misuse and dual use, of staff safety, etc.), this assessment only takes place once projects have already been selected for funding. There is therefore room to question what happens before projects get to this stage. The process of prioritisation In the EU funding programmes, consortiums of organisations (public and private) that aim to apply for research grants request funding along a list of pre-set ‘topics’. These topics are brief descriptions of the priorities established after a long period of consultation with Member States and other actors, who are provided with early drafts of the proposed topics to make comments and suggest ideas, changes, etc. The process is fairly open but also demanding in terms of time for those interested in making specific proposals. Moreover, there is no clarity as to the process that the suggestions submitted follow, and so one may find that well-justified changes or suggestions end up in nothing, which disincentivises further work in future calls. While this has an impact on the kind of actors that can devote the time and effort to pursue their contributions to the programme (mostly corporations and Member States), it is nonetheless welcome that the consultation process exists. Because of this process, the final programme and wording of the topics is the result of multiple conversations and contributions at different levels, as well as some necessary adjustments to the available funding and regional priorities. The selected research areas are therefore the result of a complex process that involves various actors and negotiation spaces. What the process does not include is a final ethics review before the programme is published. This means that, down the line, ethics reviewers may assess the social, legal, and ethical impact of actual projects which are responding to legally questionable topics, at a point where the funding process is too advanced for such projects to be rejected. An ex-ante evaluation would allow experts to assess whether a topic may promote developing mass surveillance tools, or technologies which can be deployed without consent or transparency. Justified exceptions? However, it is unclear whether this is a feature or a bug. What scope for unregulated, experimental innovation should be provided in publicly funded technological developments? There are multiple voices, and indeed a legal framework, that allows for a level of secrecy and experimentation in security research that is not afforded to other domains, where the precautionary principle rules over strict oversight mechanisms (think of medical research, for instance). Incorporating issues related to the impact of security technologies on civil liberties or allowing for democratic accountability procedures during innovation processes would require that technological innovation in the field of security is removed from its regulatory exceptionality and instead asked to provide the transparency and oversight that is required from other innovation sectors. If the lack of robust oversight to ensure that the existing legal framework, necessary precautions, and accountability mechanisms is not a feature but a bug, R+D programmes would only need to move the ethics review procedure to earlier on in the process. But if the lack of accountability is an intentional feature — designed to afford technological innovation a lack of oversight and compliance unheard of in other innovation fields for reasons that are not clear to the public — a broader debate is needed. We would need to assess whether the exceptions afforded to security-related innovations are justified in advanced democratic settings, and in a world where new technologies are increasingly making citizens vulnerable to unaccountable uses of their private information.

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(no subject)
by Giovanni Leghissa April 15, 2021

April 15, 2021

segnalo questo Giovanni http://www.leparoleelecose.it/?p=41212

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Le ragioni dell'emergenza: sui limiti della didattica a distanza
by Antonio Iacono April 15, 2021

April 15, 2021

Anche oggi mia figlia, liceale, è a casa, in DaD. E' stata sufficiente la presunta positività di una compagna di scuola (che è stata male dieci giorni fa) per lasciare tutta la classe a casa per altre due settimane. In questo mese ha fatto solo UN giorno di presenza. Riporto uno stralcio di un articolo molto bello, di qualche mese fa, scritto dal gruppo DiSLL (Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Letterari dell’Università di Padova) [1] "La comunicazione umana è un fenomeno oltremodo complesso, che eccede largamente il piano dell’espressione verbale e della trasmissione linguistica, interessando diversi livelli e ambiti semiotici. Chi pensi di sostituire l’affollato seminario in un’aula gremita, la convivialità di una tavolata, la danza di gruppo e il cerchio degli amici attorno al fuoco con un pallido retablo di ologrammi disposti nelle cellette ad alveare di un monitor, dovrebbe riflettere sugli aspetti alienanti di queste cyber-esperienze. Contraddire bruscamente il percorso evolutivo plurimillenario della nostra specie (per innamoramento tecnologico, per fregola di novità, per economia di scala o anche per meno confessabili motivazioni) non solo ci priva di momenti qualificanti di esperienza autenticamente umana, ma rischia di renderci molto infelici." Antonio [1] http://www.leparoleelecose.it/?p=39553

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The EU is considering a ban on AI for mass surveillance and social credit scores - The Verge
by J.C. DE MARTIN April 15, 2021

April 15, 2021

https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/14/22383301/eu-ai-regulation-draft-leak-sur… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Latest digital yuan trial is 10x the first. Hong Kong cross border tests start
by don Luca Peyron April 15, 2021

April 15, 2021

“The digital renminbi pilot test adheres to the principles of stability, safety, and control, and focuses on small transactions from invited whitelisted users,” said Li Bin. “At present, the number of participants, the number of transactions, and the amount of net exchange are still relatively small. During the pilot process, all parties have a relatively high interest in digital renminbi, and users in the pilot areas are relatively motivated.” https://www.ledgerinsights.com/latest-digital-yuan-trial-is-10x-the-first-h… _________________________ 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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Robot Race: The World´s Top 10 automated countries
by don Luca Peyron April 14, 2021

April 14, 2021

italia leggermente sotto la media europea, dati interessanti Buona lettura dl https://ifr.org/ifr-press-releases/news/robot-race-the-worlds-top-10-automa… _________________________ 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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Wired: "Data Brokers Are a Threat to Democracy"
by J.C. DE MARTIN April 14, 2021

April 14, 2021

*Data Brokers Are a Threat to Democracy** * /Unless the federal government steps up, the unchecked middlemen of surveillance capitalism will continue to harm our civil rights and national security.// / Justin Sherman You’ve probably never heard of Acxiom, but it likely knows you: The Arkansas firm claims to have data on 2.5 billion people around the world. And in the US, if someone’s interested in that information, there are virtually no restrictions on their ability to buy and then use it. Enter the data brokerage industry, the multibillion dollar economy of selling consumers’ and citizens’ intimate details. Much of the privacy discourse has rightly pointed fingers at Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok, which collect users’ information directly. But a far broader ecosystem of buying up, licensing, selling, and sharing data exists around those platforms. Data brokerage firms are middlemen of surveillance capitalism—purchasing, aggregating, and repackaging data from a variety of other companies, all with the aim of selling or further distributing it. Data brokerage is a threat to democracy. [...] continua qui: https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-data-brokers-are-a-threat-to-democracy/

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