- nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

Deep Learning And The Limits Of Learning By Correlation Rather Than Causation
by J.C. DE MARTIN April 23, 2019

April 23, 2019

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/04/18/deep-learning-and-the-… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Apple Face-Recognition Blamed by New York Teen for False Arrest - Bloomberg
by Alberto Cammozzo April 23, 2019

April 23, 2019

Se casi come questi si moltiplicheranno, implementare riconoscimento facciale inaffidabile può cominciare a costare parecchio più di quanto rende. <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-22/apple-face-recognition-b…> A New York student sued Apple Inc. for $1 billion, claiming the company’s facial-recognition software falsely linked him to a series of thefts from Apple stores. Ousmane Bah, 18, said he was arrested at his home in New York in November and charged with stealing from an Apple store. The arrest warrant included a photo that didn’t resemble Bah, he said in a lawsuit filed Monday. One of the thefts he was charged with, in Boston, took place on the day in June he was attending his senior prom in Manhattan, he said. Bah said he had previously lost a non-photo learner’s permit, which may have been found or stolen by the real thief and used as identification in Apple stores. As a result, Bah claimed, his name may have been mistakenly connected to the thief’s face in Apple’s facial-recognition system, which he said the company uses in its stores to track people suspected of theft. "He was forced to respond to multiple false allegations which led to severe stress and hardship,” Bah said in the complaint. Apple and Security Industry Specialists Inc., a security firm that’s also named as a defendant, declined to comment on the suit. The case is Bah v. Apple Inc., 19-cv-03539, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

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You're thinking about smart cities in completely the wrong way | WIRED UK
by J.C. DE MARTIN April 23, 2019

April 23, 2019

You're thinking about smart cities in completely the wrong way Technology gives us an opportunity to make cities more open, inclusive and democratic. But only if it's used in the right way, says Barcelona's chief technology officer, Francesca Bria By FRANCESCA BRIA 17 Apr 2019 https://www.wired.co.uk/article/reboot-britain-francesca-bria (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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How the Boeing 737 Max Disaster Looks to a Software Developer
by Alberto Cammozzo April 22, 2019

April 22, 2019

Come accade che 346 persone muoiano di software. <https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-the-boeing-737-max-disaste…> [...] It is astounding that no one who wrote the MCAS software for the 737 Max seems even to have raised the possibility of using multiple inputs, including the opposite angle-of-attack sensor, in the computer’s determination of an impending stall. As a lifetime member of the software development fraternity, I don’t know what toxic combination of inexperience, hubris, or lack of cultural understanding led to this mistake. But I do know that it’s indicative of a much deeper problem. The people who wrote the code for the original MCAS system were obviously terribly far out of their league and did not know it. How can they can implement a software fix, much less give us any comfort that the rest of the flight management software is reliable? So Boeing produced a dynamically unstable airframe, the 737 Max. That is big strike No. 1. Boeing then tried to mask the 737’s dynamic instability with a software system. Big strike No. 2. Finally, the software relied on systems known for their propensity to fail (angle-of-attack indicators) and did not appear to include even rudimentary provisions to cross-check the outputs of the angle-of-attack sensor against other sensors, or even the other angle-of-attack sensor. Big strike No. 3. None of the above should have passed muster. None of the above should have passed the “OK” pencil of the most junior engineering staff, much less a DER. That’s not a big strike. That’s a political, social, economic, and technical sin. [...] It is likely that MCAS, originally added in the spirit of increasing safety, has now killed more people than it could have ever saved. It doesn’t need to be “fixed” with more complexity, more software. It needs to be removed altogether.

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The global race for 5G supremacy is not yet won
by J.C. DE MARTIN April 22, 2019

April 22, 2019

https://www.ft.com/content/339c74d8-61ff-11e9-b285-3acd5d43599e (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Opinion | Think You’re Discreet Online? Think Again - The New York Times
by J.C. DE MARTIN April 22, 2019

April 22, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/21/opinion/computational-inference.html (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Dichiarazione di Ola Bini sulla detenzione arbitraria nella prigione di El Inca, Ecuador
by Giacomo April 22, 2019

April 22, 2019

https://freeolabini.org/it/statement-from-ola/ Credo fermamente nel diritto alla privacy. Senza privacy perdiamo la libertà di agire, e senza l'azione siamo schiavi. Ecco perché ho dedicato la mia vita a questa lotta. La vigilanza è una minaccia per tutti noi, dobbiamo fermarla. I leader del mondo stanno conducendo una guerra contro la conoscenza. Il caso contro di me si basa sui libri che ho letto e sulla tecnologia che ho. Questo è un ThoughtCrime Orwelliano. Non possiamo permettere che questo accada. Il mondo si chiuderà sempre più vicino attorno a noi, finché non ci sarà rimasto nulla. Se l'Ecuador può fare questo, anche gli altri possono farlo. Dobbiamo fermare questa idea ora, prima che sia troppo tardi.

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Re: [nexa] How the Boeing 737 Max Disaster Looks to a Software Developer
by Giuseppe Attardi April 21, 2019

April 21, 2019

> On Apr 21, 2019, at 11:42, nexa-request(a)server-nexa.polito.it wrote: > > L'uomo non è più al vertice di tale catena alimentare, ma alla base. Abbiamo messo sopra l’uomo i mercati. Sono i loro appetiti che dobbiamo sfamare. > > Ci va bene così? Certo che no. —

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The Web is missing an essential part of infrastructure: an Open Web Index
by Giacomo April 21, 2019

April 21, 2019

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1903.03846.pdf From the users’ point of view, search engines are reliable and trustworthy sources, providing fair and unbiased results. However, it has been found that search results simply should not be considered “neutral”. Some scholars argue that an unbiased search engine is simply not possible, as there is no ideal result set against which a bias can be measured [5,6]. Therefore, I argue that every search engine presents its own algorithmically generated view of the web’s content. Every such view can be different, and none of them are the definitive or correct one. Problems that may arise from search engines’ interpreting the world in certain ways are, amongst others, reinforcing stereotypes, e.g., towards women [7]; influencing public opinion in the context of political elections (e.g., [2]), and preferring dramatic interpretations of rather harmless health-related symptoms [13]. It seems, therefore, unreasonable to have only one (or a few) dominant search engines imposing their view on the Web's content, which is, on closer inspection, really only one of many possible views. Therefore, I argue for building an index of the Web that will form the basis for a multitude of search engines and other services that are based on Web data.

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SuperTuxKart 1.0 Release
by Giacomo April 21, 2019

April 21, 2019

Basta un video gioco per far Politica? http://blog.supertuxkart.net/2019/04/supertuxkart-10-release.html You can play with your friends online, and it doesn't have to be split screen anymore - your gaming partners can be in a different city, country, or even continent - you can still meet for a race or two. Cross-continent may not work the best; you should try to have a reasonable ping - 100ms works fine, and we had some races with 300ms ping, though unavoidable sudden stuttering and karts jumping around is more frequent at higher latencies. Even more important than the ping (unless it's abnormally high) is that there isn't packet loss or packet slowdowns (jitter), so a stable connection is required, especially for the server hosts. The bandwidth use is minimal even for hosting 10 players, so as long as you don't use a metered connection it should be fine for anyone with 150 kilobytes (~1.2 megabit) per second upload speed to spare. If that's still too much, less bandwidth is used with fewer players.

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