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New Zealand claims world first in setting standards for government use of algorithms | New Zealand | The Guardian
by Alberto Cammozzo July 28, 2020

July 28, 2020

<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/28/new-zealand-claims-world-firs…> New Zealand’s government says it is the first in the world to produce a set of standards for how public agencies should use the algorithms that increasingly drive decision-making by officials about every area of public life. The increasing application of algorithms by governments around the world – particularly when they are deployed to profile or generate decisions about citizens by law enforcement, immigration, welfare and health agencies – has proved controversial in recent years. Critics claim that decision-making driven by lines of code can be inaccurate and discriminatory and that their use is often kept secret from the public. A Dutch court ruled in February that an automated surveillance system to detect welfare fraud was unlawful – a decision that provoked debate about the need for greater scrutiny in other nations. New Zealand is no exception: a 2019 review of algorithm use in the public sector had found “huge variability as to the extent of the use and how they were being used”, said James Shaw, the statistics minister and co-leader of the left-leaning Green party. He said algorithms determined matters from the seemingly innocuous – such as when the traffic lights changed on a central Wellington street – to the more serious, including police decision-making for frontline officers, and their use was expanding. The New Zealand charter, which the Guardian has viewed, was due to launch on Tuesday with 19 government agencies as initial signatories. In it, departments pledge to be publicly transparent about how decision-making is driven by algorithms, including giving “plain English” explanations; to make available information about the processes used and how data is stored unless forbidden by law (such as for reasons of national security); and to identify and manage biases informing algorithms. Agencies must also consider te ao Māori, or Indigenous, worldviews on data collection – in New Zealand, Māori are disproportionately represented in the justice and prison system – and consult with groups affected by their equations. “Part of this is driven by the fact that because people are now increasingly aware of how Facebook operates and the extent to which our lives are shaped by the use of and the manipulation of data,” Shaw said, referring to the way social media companies use algorithms to direct users towards content. “This is a really important part of building public trust in government institutions.” Departments committed to the charter included New Zealand’s accident compensation scheme – which was criticised in 2017 for using algorithms to detect fraud among those on its books – and the corrections agency, which has deployed algorithms to determine an inmate’s risk of reoffending. But other bodies that have been the subject of high profile cases in which critics decried the use of algorithms – including the immigration agency, found in March to be profiling applicants by algorithm – and the police, who came under fire from privacy advocates in 2019 for introducing facial recognition technology without announcing it, were not among the signatories. Nor were the country’s spy agencies. A spokesman for Shaw’s office said no agency had ruled out the charter and that others were expected to sign on later. The standards do not include an enforcement mechanism. Shaw said he hoped that within months agencies that had signed the charter would provide information on their websites explaining how algorithms were used, even supplying source code – and that if they did not, the public could demand it. Colin Gavaghan, a law professor at the University of Otago, was involved in the 2019 review that suggested an independent regulator to oversee the use of algorithms by agencies – a move the government has stopped short of in its charter. He said there was “plenty to like” in the new standards and he hoped they could serve as a blueprint for other governments. “As ever, the devil’s in the detail and that means implementation,” he said. “We still feel like some kind of oversight and regulatory body that should have an all-of-government remit seems like a good idea.” Gavaghan praised a point in the charter that required agencies to provide a channel to appeal against decisions informed by algorithms, but added that “people might not always know” they had been subject to such decisions, even under the new standards. [...]

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Socialism’s DIY Computer
by Giacomo Tesio July 27, 2020

July 27, 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 usata per diffondere conoscenza (e dunque libertà) o per accentrare potere. Oggi come allora. Giacomo

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Edizione italiana di "The Syllabus"
by J.C. DE MARTIN July 27, 2020

July 27, 2020

Segnalo con piacere l'uscita dell'edizione italiana di "The Syllabus", la splendida iniziativa "editoriale" di Evgeny Morozov: https://app.the-syllabus.com/syllabus/iCWi8bLLwi juan carlos

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Tech Is About Power. And These Four Moguls Have Too Much of It.
by Giuseppe Attardi July 27, 2020

July 27, 2020

“We need to move from this disconnected set of grievances and scandals, that these problems are seemingly separate: tech addiction, polarization, outrage-ification of culture, the rise in vanities, micro-celebrity culture, everyone has to be famous. These are not separate problems. They’re actually all coming from one thing, which is the race to capture human attention by tech giants.” And it has become a completely fixed race. Because of their heft, these behemoths block every lane and there is no space for innovative small companies to pass them, especially those that are faster or with better ideas. The debate about breakup or levying fines or writing regulations should also be a debate about innovation. What about all of the useful inventions that do not happen when there is only one or maybe two real games in town in social media, in search, in online video, in apps and in e-commerce. Tech Is About Power. And These Four Moguls Have Too Much of It. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/opinion/tech-moguls-congressional-hearin…

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Modelli matematici e Covid. Intervista ad Andrea Crisanti.
by Luigi Scorca July 26, 2020

July 26, 2020

http://maddmaths.simai.eu/in-evidenza/intervista-con-andrea-crisanti/ Segnalo questa intervista. Buona serata. Luigi

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"Still searching - We need a new technical constitution"
by J.C. DE MARTIN July 26, 2020

July 26, 2020

Carissimi, vi segnalo un breve articolo scritto in occasione della pubblicazione di una nuova edizione del pionieristico: "The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology" di Langdon Winner (University of Chicago Press, 1986). Buona domenica! juan carlos THR Blog / July 23, 2020 *Still Searching** */*We need a new technical constitution.*/* * Richard Hughes Gibson In July 2009, the /American Journal of Sociology/ published something peculiar: a review of Michael Young’s 1958 book /The Rise of Meritocracy/. The review’s appearance so long after its publication wasn’t its only oddity. The review had, the journal’s editor explains, “arrived at /AJS/ by snail mail, with a date stamp of 2048 in the postmark,” having been submitted by one Barbara Celarent, a professor at the University of Atlantis. Professor Celarent—whose name derives from several sources, including a medieval mnemonic poem for remembering valid syllogistic forms—was later revealed to be the alter ego (or on his telling, sometime collaborator) of Andrew Abbott, the venerable sociologist at the University of Chicago. Over the ensuing six years, thirty-five more reviews would be published under Celarent’s name, her chosen authors scattered across the global and modern history, including Thoreau (/Walden/, 1854), the Senegalese writer Mariama Bâ (/So Long a Letter/, 1980), the Indian social reformer Pandita Ramabai (/The High Caste Hindu Woman/, 1887), and the midcentury French West Indian psychiatrist Frantz Fanon (/A Dying Colonialism/, 1959). Why do this? Celarent was invented, Abbott has explained, to aid his project of taking a broader view of social theory both in terms of time and space. But Abbott wasn’t simply informing his guild about titles due fresh attention. The Celarent project also issues a quiet challenge to readers to consider which books they’d choose for such a /long-view/ review. It raises several intriguing questions about how we gauge the success or failure of a book. Perhaps the first question is the most interesting of all: What books would make your Celarent list? It’s a intriguing prompt to put to friends. If I had it my way, there’d be a Celarent column in all of the journals I read regularly, including this one. One of the books on my own Celarent mental list has reappeared in a second edition thirty-four years after its initial publication: the political theorist Langdon Winner’s /The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology/. The new edition confirms the book’s status as a classic on the topic of technology’s social meanings. Yet that we are receiving a fresh edition of this book—largely unchanged from its 1986 text—is also troubling. As Winner points out in the new preface, he’s left the original chapters largely “as is” because their counsel remains applicable even if some of his examples (such as the “appropriate technology” movement of the seventies) are historical material now. Reading the book, one receives regular reminders of just how little progress has been made on the core issues that Winner addressed in the mid-eighties: the digital revolution, the environment, and what was already called the “energy crisis.” Winner hoped to invigorate the search for limits on technology in the first edition. The second edition underscores what we already know: We’re still searching for those limits over three decades later. […] Continua qui: https://hedgehogreview.com/blog/thr/posts/still-searching

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The Court of Justice invalidates Decision 2016/1250 on the adequacy of the protection provided by the EU-US Data Protection Shield
by Giacomo Tesio July 26, 2020

July 26, 2020

Che anno! :-D https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/jcms/p1_3117876/en/ Giacomo

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Intel ‘Stunning Failure’ Heralds End of Era for U.S. Chip Sector - Bloomberg
by J.C. DE MARTIN July 25, 2020

July 25, 2020

Intel ‘Stunning Failure’ Heralds End of Era for U.S. Chip Sector By Ian King 25 July 2020, 05:07 CEST World’s largest chipmaker considers outsourcing manufacturing Crucial technology expertise is shifting overseas, to TSMC https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-25/intel-stunning-failure-h… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any)) (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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"The Quiet Return of Feudalism" (commento sul libro di Kotkin "The Coming of Neo-Feudalism")
by J.C. DE MARTIN July 24, 2020

July 24, 2020

Lo segnalo in questa lista per il ruolo centrale che ha il "big tech" nel commento. jc "The Quiet Return Of Feudalism" JULY 15, 2020 JORGE GONZÁLEZ-GALLARZA /"The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class," by Joel Kotkin, (New York: Encounter Books, 2020), 224 pages./ Few policy items have more ominously heralded the ongoing realignment of our politics than Universal Basic Income. That its proponents and detractors can’t seem to agree on what UBI is intended for in the first place is merely a measure of that omen. [...] continua qui: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-quiet-return-of-feudal…

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Barber tracing
by Giuseppe Attardi July 23, 2020

July 23, 2020

Sono andato dal barbiere che ha riaperto da poco. Appena entrato mi ha fatto firmare un foglio (sa, è per il tracciamento), dove ho dovuto indicare il mio nome e numero di telefono, ovviamente la posizione l’ora erano impliciti. Con la firma dichiaravo di non essere ammalato né di avere avuto contati con ammalati. Pochi giorni prima ero andato dal dentista: lì il foglio coi miei dati, compreso un questionario riguardante il mio stato di salute e i miei contati con persone infette, era un PDF inviato via whatsapp, da stampare (sic) e riportare firmato. Privacy? Obiettivi? Chi riceve i dati? Chi li conserva? Quanti saranno i falsi positivi? Servirà davvero? Benvenuti nel mondo reale. Non vi parlo di quello virtuale. — Beppe

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