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Digitale: in Italia un giovane su quattro sta abbandonando i social
by don Luca Peyron Aug. 1, 2020

Aug. 1, 2020

Dati interessanti Buona lettura dl https://www.ansa.it/canale_lifestyle/notizie/teen/2020/07/30/troppo-stress-… _________________________ 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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I Tried to Live Without the Tech Giants. It Was Impossible. - The New York Times
by gabriele elia July 31, 2020

July 31, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/technology/blocking-the-tech-giants.html Digital vegan????

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"Read Steve Jobs’ emails about why you can’t buy digital books in Amazon’s apps"
by J.C. DE MARTIN July 31, 2020

July 31, 2020

*Read Steve Jobs’ emails about why you can’t buy digital books in Amazon’s apps** * /His own words, as revealed by the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee/ By Jay Peters @jaypeters Jul 30, 2020, 1:53pm EDT https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/30/21348130/apple-documents-steve-jobs-emai…

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Contact tracing during Phase I of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Province of Trento, Italy: key findings and recommendations | medRxiv
by Alberto Cammozzo July 31, 2020

July 31, 2020

Preprint. La piattaforma è stata sviluppata da MPA soutions con free software per una PA anche se non mi risulta sia stata rilasciata. Una piattaforma di contact tracing free/open mi pare possa essere uno sforzo efficace ne quale investire risorse comuni. <https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.16.20127357v1> Introduction Contact tracing is a key pillar of COVID-19 control. In response to the COVID-19 epidemic in the Autonomous Province of Trento (Italy) a software was developed to standardize data collection and facilitate surveillance of contacts and outbreaks and map the links between bases and contacts. In this paper, we present the results of contact tracing efforts during Phase I of the epidemic (March-April, 2020, mostly under lockdown), including sociodemographic characteristics of contacts who became cases and of the cases who infected one or more contact. Methods A contact tracing website was developed that included components for geolocation and linking of cases and contacts using open source software. Information on community-based confirmed and probable cases and their contacts was centralized on the website. Information on cases came directly from the central case database, information on contacts was collected by telephone interviews following a standard questionnaire. Contacts were followed via telephone, emails, or an app. Results The 2,812 laboratory-diagnosed community cases of COVID-19 had 6,690 community contacts, of whom 890 (13.3%) developed symptoms. Risk of developing symptomatic disease increased with age and was higher in workplace contacts than cohabitants or non-cohabiting family or friends. The greatest risk of transmission to contacts was found for the 14 cases <15 years of age (22.4%); 8 of the 14, who ranged in age from <1 to 11 years) infected 11 of 49 contacts. Overall, 606 outbreaks were identified, 74% of which consisted of only two cases. Discussion The open-source software program permitted the centralized tracking of contacts and rapid identification of links between cases. Workplace contacts were at higher risk of developing symptoms. Although childhood contacts were less likely to become cases, children were more likely to infect household members, perhaps because of the difficulty of successfully isolating children in household settings.

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Privacy. La prima intervista al nuovo Garante. Stanzione: Gdpr è garanzia democratica
by don Luca Peyron July 31, 2020

July 31, 2020

Buona lettura dl https://www.dimt.it/news/privacy-la-prima-intervista-al-nuovo-garante-stanz… _________________________ 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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Opening Spaces for Digital Rights Activism: Multilateral Trade Negotiations - Public Citizen
by J.C. DE MARTIN July 31, 2020

July 31, 2020

Opening Spaces for Digital Rights Activism: Multilateral Trade Negotiations By BURCU KILIC AND RENATA AVILA DOWNLOAD THE FULL REPORT 2.6 MB SHARE The largest, most powerful tech companies are putting into motion a perverse initiative to dictate what internet and digital policy laws will look like around the world. And if they succeed, they will set in stone rules that would let them continue to harvest and exploit our data, limit free expression online, and violate a number of other human rights. Big tech seeks to paralyze all governments and public interest institutions from being able to put checks on their power and rein them in ever again. https://www.citizen.org/article/51451-2/ (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Opening Spaces for Digital Rights Activism: Multilateral Trade Negotiations - Public Citizen
by J.C. DE MARTIN July 31, 2020

July 31, 2020

Opening Spaces for Digital Rights Activism: Multilateral Trade Negotiations By BURCU KILIC AND RENATA AVILA DOWNLOAD THE FULL REPORT 2.6 MB The largest, most powerful tech companies are putting into motion a perverse initiative to dictate what internet and digital policy laws will look like around the world. And if they succeed, they will set in stone rules that would let them continue to harvest and exploit our data, limit free expression online, and violate a number of other human rights. Big tech seeks to paralyze all governments and public interest institutions from being able to put checks on their power and rein them in ever again. https://www.citizen.org/article/51451-2/ (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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(no subject)
by Mauro Magnani July 31, 2020

July 31, 2020

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'Too much power': Congress grills top tech CEOs in combative antitrust hearing | Technology | The Guardian
by Alberto Cammozzo July 30, 2020

July 30, 2020

<https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/29/tech-hearings-facebook-m…> The US’s top tech bosses were told they have “too much power”, are censoring political speech, spreading fake news and “killing” the engines of the American economy, at a combative congressional hearing on Wednesday. The historic hearing in Washington saw Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Sundar Pichai of Google’s parent Alphabet appear before members of the House judiciary’s antitrust subcommittee and face intense questioning from lawmakers from both sides of the aisle. The subcommittee has been investigating the companies’ dominance of the online world for over a year, collecting 1.3 million documents and conducting hundreds of hours of interviews. Already in the opening minutes, the subcommittee chairman, David Cicilline, struck a combative tone, pointing out that the companies dominate their respective spheres and accusing them of stifling competition. The complaints against the tech giants are varied but the overarching criticisms are that they have used their dominant position to quash rivals and overcharge the people and businesses reliant on their services. “Our founders would not bow before a king,” the Rhode Island Democrat said. “Nor should we bow before the emperors of the online economy.” Republican lawmakers at different times in the hearing directed the conversation away from antitrust to allegations of anti-conservative bias on the platforms, accusing the companies of silencing conservative voices and working to undo Donald Trump’s 2016 election win. Google and Facebook took intense heat for their business practices. Cicilline opened the round of questions with allegations from small businesses that Google took over their content and listing on its own pages. CEO Pichai struggled to answer when Cicilline brought up Google taking reviews from Yelp and cross-posting them to its own pages. When Yelp asked Google to stop, Google reportedly threatened to remove Yelp from its search listings entirely. Cicilline called the behavior “economically catastrophic” for other companies online. “The evidence seems very clear to me that as Google became the gateway to the internet, it began to abuse its power,” he said. Zuckerberg faced repeated questions about Facebook’s purchase of Instagram in 2012. Referencing internal documents that revealed Facebook bought Instagram to neutralize it as a competitive threat, congressman Jerry Nadler called the acquisition “ exactly the type of anticompetitive acquisition the antitrust laws were designed to prevent”. Zuckerberg defended the acquisition, arguing Facebook helped Instagram build up its infrastructure and security as it grew rapidly. Zuckerberg and Pichai also received a beating from Republicans, who repeatedly accused the companies of anti-conservative bias. Representative Jim Sensenbrenner asked Zuckerberg why conservatives are “censored” on Facebook, claiming that Donald Trump Jr was removed from the platform for sharing a video containing false information this week. Zuckerberg politely explained to the representative that it was Twitter that limited Trump’s account for posting the video. Bezos faced few questions following his opening statement, perhaps because of a technical difficulty with his video feed. Representative Pramila Jayapal pressed Bezos on whether the company used data from third-party sellers in making sales decisions. In a previous hearing, an Amazon executive denied this under oath and was contradicted by a later news report. Bezos was also asked whether the online giant favored its own products when prioritizing certain shipments during the pandemic. Bezos, the world’s richest man, leaned heavily on his life story in his opening statement, noting that his mother was “a 17-year-old high school student” and his adoptive father is a Cuban immigrant. “Amazon’s success was anything but preordained,” he said before noting that the company had invested $270bn in the US over the last decade and created hundreds of thousands of jobs. Zuckerberg, too, argued Facebook “got here the American way.” “We started with nothing and provided better products that people find valuable. As I understand our laws, companies aren’t bad just because they are big. Many large companies that fail to compete cease to exist,” he said. Cook, the Apple CEO, faced effective questioning from representative Hank Johnson of Georgia, who said the investigation had surfaced concerns that rules governing the App Store review process are not available to the app developers. “The rules are made up as you go and subject to change - and Apple expects developers to go along with the changes or leave the App Store,” Johnson said. “That’s an enormous amount of power.” Cook argued the App Store does not constitute a monopoly because it does not charge the vast majority of apps to list there. He said 84% of apps are not charged anything and Apple has not increased commissions on apps since 2008. The hearing comes at a fraught moment for the tech giants with Republican and Democrats both highly critical of their dominance. Donald Trump, who has attacked the tech companies on numerous occasions, weighed in ahead of the hearing: “If Congress doesn’t bring fairness to Big Tech, which they should have done years ago, I will do it myself with Executive Orders. In Washington, it has been ALL TALK and NO ACTION for years, and the people of our Country are sick and tired of it!” [...]

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Socialism’s DIY Computer
by Giacomo Tesio July 29, 2020

July 29, 2020

The Galaksija computer was a craze in 1980s Yugoslavia, inspiring thousands of people to build versions in their own homes. The idea behind them was simple – to make technology available to everyone. [...] While most other machines would automatically run a program after loading the tape—a primitive anti-copy protection—Antonić’s commitment to open source meant that he had no desire to protect anything. After loading a program, users would have to type a “RUN” command to make it go. That extra step, though subtle, acted as a deterrent to programmers imposing any copy protection upon their work; the tape could just as easily be straightforwardly input as it could be edited or duplicated en masse. Free play was implicitly encouraged: the sharing, collaboration, manipulation, and proliferation of software was built into Galaksija’s very operation. [...] A computing enthusiast since 1979, Zoran Modli caught wind of Galaksija after the publication of Computers in Your Home. As host and DJ of Ventilator 202—a renowned New Wave radio show on Serbia’s Radio Beograd 202—Modli was something of a minor celebrity in Yugoslavia. This was the period in which the compact cassette tape had begun to usurp the 12-inch vinyl record as the listening medium of choice for audiophiles; portable pocket recorders like the Sony Walkman were in the ascendant. Sensing an opportunity in this media shift, Regasek called Modli one day in the autumn of 1983 with a pitch for a radically new Ventilator segment. Because all the day’s computers, including Galaksija, ran their programs on cassette, Regasek thought Modli might broadcast programs over the airwaves as audio during his show. The idea was that listeners could tape the programs off their receivers as they were broadcast, then load them into their personal machines. An overnight sensation, this DJing practice quickly became a staple on Modli’s show. In the ensuing months, Ventilator 202 broadcast hundreds of computer programs. During the hour, Modli would announce when the segment was approaching, signaling to his listeners that it was time for them to fetch their equipment, cue up a tape, and get ready to hit record. Fans began to write programs with the expressed intention of mailing them into the station and broadcasting them during the segment. Those programs included audio and video recordings but also magazines, concert listings, party promotions, study aids, flight simulators, and action-adventure games. In the case of games, users would “download” the programs off the radio and alter them—inserting their own levels, challenges, and characters—then send them back to Modli for retransmission. In effect, this was file transfer well before the advent of the World Wide Web, a pre-internet pirating protocol. Continua su https://tribunemag.co.uk/2020/07/make-your-own-self-managed-socialist-micro… Un pezzo di storia che potrebbe (e dovrebbe) ispirare l'Unione Europea per ovvie ragioni geopolitiche. Ne cito solo due passaggi particolarmente illuminanti che sottolineano come la tecnologia sia SEMPRE uno strumento politico (il più potente di tutti). Può essere usato per diffondere libertà o accentrare potere. Oggi come allora. Non solo è possibile: è già avvenuto. Giacomo

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