- nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

Changing World, Changing Mozilla
by Giacomo Tesio Aug. 11, 2020

Aug. 11, 2020

Over the last while, it has been clear that Mozilla is not structured properly to create these new things — and to build the better internet we all deserve. Today we announced a significant restructuring of Mozilla Corporation. This will strengthen our ability to build and invest in products and services that will give people alternatives to conventional Big Tech. Sadly, the changes also include a significant reduction in our workforce by approximately 250 people. [...] I desperately wish there was some other way to set Mozilla up for long term success in building a better internet. But to go further, we must be organized to be able to think about a different world. To imagine that technology will become embedded in our world even more than it is, and we want that technology to have different characteristics and values than we experience today. So going forward we will be smaller. We’ll also be organizing ourselves very differently, acting more quickly and nimbly. We’ll experiment more. We’ll adjust more quickly. We’ll join with allies outside of our organization more often and more effectively. We’ll meet people where they are. We’ll become great at expressing and building our core values into products and programs that speak to today’s issues. We’ll join and build with all those who seek openness, decency, empowerment and common good in online life. [...] I also realize this vision will feel abstract to many. With this in mind, we have mapped out five specific areas to focus on as we roll out this new structure over the coming months: 1. New focus on product... 2. New mindset... 3. New focus on technology... 4. New focus on community... 5. New focus on economics... We’re fortunate that Firefox and Mozilla retain a high degree of trust in the world. Trust and a feeling of authenticity feel unusual in tech today. But there is a sense that people want more from us. They want to work with us, to build with us. The changes we are making today are hard. But with these changes we believe we’ll be ready to meet these people — and the challenges and opportunities facing the future of the internet — head on. https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/08/11/changing-world-changing-mozilla/ Giacomo

1 0

first ‘FLY AI’ report on the current use and future potential of artificial intelligence in aviation
by don Luca Peyron Aug. 11, 2020

Aug. 11, 2020

The first Fly AI report provides an overview of the many ways that artificial intelligence is already applied in our industry and assesses its potential to transform the sector. https://www.eurocontrol.int/publication/fly-ai-report _________________________ don Luca Peyron Direttore Ufficio per la Pastorale Universitaria Arcidiocesi di Torino www.universitari.to.it via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

1 0

Il buon Samaritano e la sharing economy
by don Luca Peyron Aug. 10, 2020

Aug. 10, 2020

Semplice, diretto. Buona lettura dl p.s. anche se confonde il buon samaritano con S. Martino... https://www.avvenire.it/economia/pagine/il-buon-samaritano-e-la-sharing-eco… <https://www.avvenire.it/economia/pagine/il-buon-samaritano-e-la-sharing-eco…> _________________________ don Luca Peyron Direttore Ufficio per la Pastorale Universitaria Arcidiocesi di Torino www.universitari.to.it via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

1 0

8 million people, 14 alerts: why some covid-19 apps are staying silent
by Giacomo Tesio Aug. 10, 2020

Aug. 10, 2020

When France launched its app for digital contact tracing, it looked like a possible breakthrough for the virus-ravaged country. After going live in June, StopCovid was downloaded by 2 million people in a short time, and digital affairs minister Cédric O said that “from the first downloads, the app helps avoid contamination, illness, and so deaths.” But officials soon had to walk their enthusiasm back after it emerged that in its first three weeks the app had alerted only 14 people to tell them they might have been exposed to the coronavirus. [...] Part of the criticism may be due to too much hype. [...] On a mathematical level, too, the low level of notifications might be expected [...] However, even with the most optimistic lens, it’s clear there’s a gulf between what was promised and what these apps are delivering. [...] “This is the prime risk for developers: you make one mistake and wipe out somebody’s battery,” says Andrew Eland, who until recently worked as an engineering director at Google and then DeepMind Health. [...] “If you want to know the best way to spend time and money on technology to track and trace coronavirus infections, it would probably be better to focus on making manual contact tracing more efficient,” says Eland. Continua su https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/07/10/1005027/8-million-people-14-ale… Giacomo

1 0

Lo sviluppo gentile
by don Luca Peyron Aug. 10, 2020

Aug. 10, 2020

Il cambio d’epoca che stiamo attraversando è prodotto dalla tecnologia e dal suo impatto sul nostro modo di comprendere noi e la realtà. Tuttavia il mondo della tecnologia è oggi descritto dalla categoria dell’innovazione. Se continueremo a guardare la tecnologia solamente come innovazione rischiamo però di non riuscirne a percepire la portata di trasformazione sociale né di orientarne verso il bene gli effetti. Buona lettura dl https://www.osservatoreromano.va/it/news/2020-08/lo-sviluppo-gentile.html _________________________ don Luca Peyron Direttore Ufficio per la Pastorale Universitaria Arcidiocesi di Torino www.universitari.to.it via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

2 1

Amazon and Mall Operator Look at Turning Sears, J.C. Penney Stores Into Fulfillment Centers
by Roberto Dolci Aug. 10, 2020

Aug. 10, 2020

Ciao Luigi, Poi aggiungi questo https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-e-commerce-booms-robots-pick-up-human-slack… Quello che manca all’articolo e’ un piccolo insignificante dettaglio. Questi robot li compri ed installi per $50k cadauno, ovvero $5/ora su 6.000 ore lavorate anno , ed in due anni te li ripaghi. Se sei Jeff B. Se sei Jim il magazziniere in carne ed ossa, ed ora prendi $15/ora, la felicita’ di avere uno o piu’ compagni robotici durera’ poco. Ovviamente Sue, Randall, Colin e Bobby da bravi robot non spendono, non comprano, non vanno in vacanza e son pessimi consumatori. Quindi continuare a pagare Jim il magazziere umano serve a mantenere la domanda. Per il resto ci sara’ il reddito di cittadinanza. Happy Monday 😊 Roberto From: nexa <nexa-bounces(a)server-nexa.polito.it> On Behalf Of Luigi Scorca Sent: Monday, August 10, 2020 5:57 AM To: Nexa <nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it> Subject: [nexa] Amazon and Mall Operator Look at Turning Sears, J.C. Penney Stores Into Fulfillment Centers https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-and-giant-mall-operator-look-at-turning… Luigi -- Luigi Scorca Mob: +39 347 85 22 221 Mail: luigi.scorca(a)gmail.com<mailto:luigi.scorca@gmail.com>

1 0

Classifica dei 500 uomini più ricchi del mondo
by don Luca Peyron Aug. 10, 2020

Aug. 10, 2020

Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg. O anche Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook. Così il podio dei tre uomini più ricchi del mondo, secondo il Bloomberg Billionaires Index, e delle rispettive creature, tutte legate alla Silicon Valley, il colosso della logistica mondiale, il fondatore dell’azienda con i più diffusi software da ufficio, il creatore del social network più popolare nel mondo. La ricchezza mondiale corre online. Tutto noto, quasi gossip da spiaggia... ma numeri interessanti se pensiamo a monopoli, democrazia, libertà. Chi sale, chi scende, chi non c'è più da tempo. Buona lettura dl https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/bezos-gates-zuckerberg-guidano-classifica-5… _________________________ don Luca Peyron Direttore Ufficio per la Pastorale Universitaria Arcidiocesi di Torino www.universitari.to.it via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

1 0

Amazon and Mall Operator Look at Turning Sears, J.C. Penney Stores Into Fulfillment Centers
by Luigi Scorca Aug. 10, 2020

Aug. 10, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-and-giant-mall-operator-look-at-turning… Luigi -- Luigi Scorca Mob: +39 347 85 22 221 Mail: luigi.scorca(a)gmail.com

1 0

Fawkes - Image poisoning contro Facial recognition.
by Alberto Cammozzo Aug. 10, 2020

Aug. 10, 2020

Questo mi pare il primo vero punto di svolta nella realizzazione di una protezione preventiva della privacy visuale online da quando il riconoscimento facciale è entrato nell'ecosistema digitale. Mi vengono queste domande: - questa alterazione è rilevabile e reversibile? E' l'inizio di una arms race? - La perturbazione regge anche al passaggio analogico? Che succede se stampo la foto alterata per introdurla ad es. nel passaporto elettronico? - Chi realizzerà per primo il plugin per browser che altera i volti prima dell'upload? - Quali piattaforme offriranno questa feature a chi carica le proprie foto? Ciao, Alberto Articolo: <http://sandlab.cs.uchicago.edu/fawkes/> Paper: <https://arxiv.org/pdf/2002.08327.pdf> [...] The SAND Lab at University of Chicago has developed Fawkes, an algorithm and software tool (running locally on your computer) that gives individuals the ability to limit how their own images can be used to track them. At a high level, Fawkes takes your personal images and makes tiny, pixel-level changes that are invisible to the human eye, in a process we call image cloaking. You can then use these "cloaked" photos as you normally would, sharing them on social media, sending them to friends, printing them or displaying them on digital devices, the same way you would any other photo. The difference, however, is that if and when someone tries to use these photos to build a facial recognition model, "cloaked" images will teach the model an highly distorted version of what makes you look like you. The cloak effect is not easily detectable by humans or machines and will not cause errors in model training. However, when someone tries to identify you by presenting an unaltered, "uncloaked" image of you (e.g. a photo taken in public) to the model, the model will fail to recognize you. Fawkes has been tested extensively and proven effective in a variety of environments and is 100% effective against state-of-the-art facial recognition models (Microsoft Azure Face API, Amazon Rekognition, and Face++). We are in the process of adding more material here to explain how and why Fawkes works. For now, please see the link below to our technical paper, which will be presented at the upcoming USENIX Security Symposium, to be held on August 12 to 14. The Fawkes project is led by two PhD students at SAND Lab, Emily Wenger and Shawn Shan, with important contributions from Jiayun Zhang (SAND Lab visitor and current PhD student at UC San Diego) and Huiying Li, also a SAND Lab PhD student. The faculty advisors are SAND Lab co-directors and Neubauer Professors Ben Zhao and Heather Zheng. [...]

3 3

You Don’t Need College Anymore
by Giovanni Biscuolo Aug. 9, 2020

Aug. 9, 2020

Nota tecnica: se aprendo l'articolo con un browser vi appare "Error 500", semplicemente ricaricatelo e interrompete il caricamento della pagina appena compare il titolo (Medium è un sito PATETICO); in alternativa usate un browser con Javascript disabilitato (io uso eww di Emacs) Nota redazionale: nell'oggetto ho modificato il titolo dell'articolo, perché non è Google a dirlo. Buongiorno lista, sebbene possa sembrare leggermente OT rispetto al cuore del discorso di questa lista, voglio condividere con voi questa chicca segnalata da un amico: mi piacerebbe un commento, anche solo due righe, da parte di coloro di questa lista (sono molti mi pare) che si dedicano all'insegnamento, universitario o meno che sia. Interessanti anche gli aspetti sociologici dell'universo di discorso sottostante a questo articolo... che oserei definire FUTURISTA :-D Segue l'articolo integrale, così potere commentare inline volendo :-) https://web.archive.org/web/20200802062705/https://medium.com/discourse/you… «You Don’t Need College Anymore, Says Google» di David Leibowitz, 29 Luglio 2020 --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- If you can earn $93k after taking a $300 course, then what’s the future of higher education? This week, Google announced new professional career certificates that can be completed in six months to help Americans obtain high growth job opportunities. They also signaled to jobseekers that they would treat these certificates, which require no prior experience of undergraduate credentials, as the equivalent of four-year degrees by their hiring managers. For the beleaguered education sector which was already experiencing dwindling enrollment, a sluggish pace in curriculum development, lack of distance learning adoption, and high costs, the move by Google and employers may be the harbinger of digital disruption that is long overdue. Google‘s new certification programs On July 14th, Google launched new professional certification programs in data analysis, project management, and UX design, to be hosted on Coursera. Though the platform charges a monthly $49 fee, Google will provide 100,000 needs-based scholarships to cover costs and will be awarding over $10 million in grants to certain non-profits that partner with workforce development to women, veterans, and underrepresented Americans. “In our own hiring, we will now treat these new career certificates as the equivalent of a four-year degree for related roles.” — Google Google lists the median annual wage of each career track with a high of $93,000 for the project management program. According to Google, 80% of learners that complete the IT Support Specialist certification either landed a new job or earned a raise. Prior experience and higher education are not required as a prerequisite for the courses. And, once completed, typically in three-to-six months, participants may have a crack at a job with the tech giant. Kent Walker, Google senior vice president of corporate affairs announced via Twitter, that “in our own hiring, we will now treat these new career certificates as the equivalent of a four-year degree for related roles.” [...] Two weeks before the Google announcement, Microsoft launched a global initiative to uplift the professional skills of 25 million people per a blog post on June 30th. The target ambitions in light of the pandemic are strikingly similar to Google in supporting “genuinely inclusive recovery [with] programs to provide easier access to digital skills for people hardest hit by job losses, including those with lower incomes, women, and underrepresented minorities.” The company will combine resources from LinkedIn, GitHub, and Microsoft to provide Microsoft Certifications along with $20 million in cash grants to help non-profit organizations. Twenty-five percent of that will be provided in cash grants to community-based non-profit organizations that are led by and serve communities of color in the United States. LinkedIn learning paths will be available for multiple roles through March 2021 (Software Developer, Sales Representative, IT Administrator, Data Analyst, Financial Analyst, Graphic Designer, and Project Manager). Online delivery isn’t the only answer, it’s the content too Coursera raised another $130 million in funding this week and is now valued at $2.5 billion, as reported in Forbes. The Coursera service offers 4,500 MOOC courses with 160 university partners. The Harvard Business Review, in a piece co-authored by the CEO of Coursera, signals that Higher Ed Needs a Long-Term Plan for Virtual Learning. Undoubtedly, hardware, software, connectivity, and digital course catalog production are required by advanced institutions to succeed in education delivery for the new age. To be blunt, university degrees are only as valuable as the weight applied by company hiring managers, and Google has just signaled that a $300 certificate has parity with a diploma. But technology alone is not the salve. By focusing on the tools or pedagogy, the authors miss the workforce relevance of the course content. Higher education has had a challenge adapting curriculum with speed and agility to meet the needs of students and employers. According to Microsoft’s calculations, global unemployment in 2020 may reach a quarter of a billion people due to automation and pandemic-related disruption. However, they further estimate 149 million new technology-related jobs within the next five years with a majority in software development, data analysis, cybersecurity, and privacy protection. Coursera’s own growth metrics appear to be evidence that employers can wait no longer for skilled labor. Indeed, Coursera’s enterprise business accounts for twenty-five percent of their revenue with continuing education courses for 2,500 companies and has grown 70% year over year. College admissions have been on a downward spiral Though college enrollment was projected to be down as much as 20% for colleges this fall, they had been on the downward trend pre-pandemic. Harvard is facing a $415 million revenue drop this year and anticipates another $715 million for the next academic year, as reported in Bloomberg. At the end of last year, total US enrollments were already below 18 million, representing a decline of over 2 million from its peak in 2011, according to the Fall 2019 Current Term Enrollment Estimates report by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Over the past eight years, nationwide enrollment has fallen about 11% across every sector: public state schools, community colleges, and private schools. A survey in April by high-ed research firm SimpsonScarborough, as reported by Business Insider, found that 10% of high school seniors would not be attending a four-year institution. Peeling back the detail revealed an additional disparity: 41% of minority high school students said they likely wouldn’t attend college in the fall, or it’s “too soon to tell,” as compared to 24% of white high school seniors who responded similarly. Google hopes that low-cost certification programs that can be completed at a cost of $300 may be a solution to unequal access to education in certain fields. “While college degrees have tons of value, they are not accessible to everyone,” said Google vice president, Lisa Gevelber. According to a CNBC report, Google says that 58% of those who take its IT certificate identify as Black, Latino, female, or as a veteran and that 45% of enrollees make less than $30,000 per year. Microsoft sees the problem as two-fold: a lack of training equity and opportunity for underrepresented populations, and the decline in employer investments in training over the past 20 years. According to Microsoft, on-the-job training is more than two times as prevalent among workers who are already in higher-skilled roles, leaving those in more automatable positions even more vulnerable to displacement. Disrupt higher education — if not now, when? Microsoft’s initiative goes a step beyond academic courseware. Their program includes free, real-time labor market data and skills insights to help governments, policymakers, and business leaders understand what’s happening in their local labor markets: what companies are hiring, the top jobs companies are hiring for, and the trending skills for those jobs. It’s time for Hi-Ed to address the imperative to digitally transform and better prepare students for workforce readiness and the future labor market One of the issues with traditional institutional curriculum is that by the time the degree has been granted, the market may have already changed. A sluggish pace to develop a curriculum may not be appropriately preparing students for the needs of employers. Do students still need to spend four years in class (either physically or virtually) only to find that the technology and market have changed once their degree has been earned? The challenge is that “academics are notoriously slow to change,” as argued by Dawn Lerman of Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business in Times Higher Education. In her piece “Could the coronavirus force positive change in higher education? “she notes the imperative for universities to institutionalize the culture to respond swiftly to the demands of the digital era and asks if not now, then when? Indeed, without disruption, higher education is under existential threat, and many may begin to question if a four-year degree is required. In the tech industry, there are several high-profile examples of leaders who dropped out and still achieved notable success: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Michael Dell, and Mark Zuckerberg. Beyond tech, there’s Oprah, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, Ralph Lauren, and Wolfgang Puck. Puck quit school at the age of fourteen to become a cooking apprentice at a hotel. Though these are extreme examples of extraordinarily successful leaders across industries, the lack of a university degree may no longer be the hurdle to skilled positions with economic opportunity. In Google’s report of their IT certification course, 61% did not have a four-year degree, typically complete the program in under six months, and earn a median annual wage of $54,760. To be blunt, university degrees are only as valuable as the weight applied by company hiring managers, and Google has just signaled that a $300 certificate has parity with a diploma. Non-technical industries are getting the message too. The National Retail Federation (NRF) just launched a virtual education program with denim companies American Eagle Outfitters, Gap, and Levi Strauss aimed at young retail industry hopefuls. The eight-week program, called RISE, allows attendees to learn directly from the retail giants via recorded sessions, which will provide “professional development opportunities.” As all other industries are undergoing digital disruption and reinvention, from retail to healthcare — perhaps it’s time for higher education to address the imperative to digitally transform and better prepare students for workforce readiness and the future labor market. Perhaps it is time to rethink the notion of a four-year degree and how higher education can partner with industry associations and the tech giants to digitally disrupt while providing expanded access to communities — at the same time ensuring their own survival. --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- -- Giovanni Biscuolo

1 0