- nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

Bad bots now make up 20 percent of web traffic
by Giacomo April 21, 2019

April 21, 2019

https://www.zdnet.com/article/bad-bots-focus-on-financial-targets-make-up-2… So-called "bad bots" can be tasked with performing denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, they can scrape and steal data, they may be used to automatically publish fake content or reviews, and also skew advertising and visitor metrics. Bots, in general, are estimated to make up roughly 37.9 percent of all Internet traffic. In 2018, one in five website requests -- 20.4 percent -- of traffic was generated by bad bots alone. According to Distil Networks' latest bot report, "Bad Bot Report 2019: The Bot Arms Race Continues," the financial sector is the main target for such activity, followed by ticketing, the education sector, government websites, and gambling. [...] A total of 73.6 percent of bad bots are classified as Advanced Persistent Bots (APBs), which are able to cycle through random IP addresses, switch their digital identities, and mimic human behavior. An example of this is mouse mimicry, in which the bot is able to simulate mouse events a genuine visitor may perform on a website domain. These tactics are used to try and appear as a legitimate user for the purposes of ad fraud, as well as brute-force attacks against online accounts, competitive data mining, transaction fraud, spam, and phishing campaigns. Amazon is the leading ISP for bad bot traffic origins. In total, 18 percent of bad bot traffic came from the firm's services, a jump from 10.62 percent in 2017. [...] The United States outstrips all other countries as a generator of bad bots. In total, 53.4 percent of bad bot traffic came from the US, followed by the Netherlands and China.

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Silicon Valley Came to Kansas Schools. That Started a Rebellion. - The New York Times
by J.C. DE MARTIN April 21, 2019

April 21, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/21/technology/silicon-valley-kansas-schools… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Parola per parola, il formidabile discorso della giornalista che ha inchiodato Facebook
by Giacomo April 21, 2019

April 21, 2019

https://www.agi.it/estero/perche_facebook_minaccia_la_democrazia-5367741/ne… Questo è accaduto perché nel Regno Unito noi abbiamo un limite ai soldi che puoi spendere in campagna elettorale. Esiste perché nel diciannovesimo secolo le persone andavano in giro con letteralmente carriole cariche di soldi per comprarsi i voti. Per questo venne votata una legge che lo vieta e mette dei limiti. Ma questa legge non funziona più. La campagna elettorale del referendum infatti si è svolto soprattutto online. E tu puoi spendere qualunque cifra su Facebook, Google o YouTube e nessuno lo saprà mai, perché queste aziende sono scatole nere. [...] Non ho bisogno di dirvi che odio e paura sono stati seminati in rete in tutto il mondo. Non solo nel Regno Unito e in America, ma in Francia, Ungheria, Brasile, Myanmar e Nuova Zelanda. E sappiamo che c’è come una forza oscura che ci collega tutti globalmente. E che viaggia sulle piattaforme tecnologiche. Ma di tutto questo noi vediamo solo una piccola parte superficiale. [...] La nostra democrazia è in crisi, le nostre leggi non funzionano più, e non sono io a dirlo, è un report del nostro parlamento ad affermarlo. Questa tecnologia che avete inventato è meravigliosa. Ma ora è diventata la scena di un delitto. E voi ne avete le prove. E non basta ripetere che in futuro farete di più per proteggerci. Perché per avere una ragionevole speranza che non accada di nuovo, dobbiamo sapere la verità. _____ Nemmeno la verità basterebbe. Per avere una ragionevole speranza che non accada di nuovo bisogna smontare l'infrastruttura che permette queste manipolazioni. Giacomo

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Make ReCaptcha's "I'm not a robot" accurate - strugee.net
by Alberto Cammozzo April 21, 2019

April 21, 2019

<https://strugee.net/blog/2019/04/make-recaptchas-im-not-a-robot-accurate> [...] I threw together a browser extension in like 30 minutes that changes "I'm not a robot" to "I want to do unpaid image classification". [...] today I've uploaded the latest version of this extension to both addons.mozilla.org and the Chrome Web Store. So at least if you're getting screwed by Google, you'll be able to make them be honest about how they're screwing you. Here's a screenshot: Screenshot of a test page with Google ReCaptcha on it; "I'm not a robot" has been replaced with "I would like to do unpaid image classification" [...]

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Report: Uber in DC
by J.C. DE MARTIN April 21, 2019

April 21, 2019

http://lwp.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/Uber-Workplace.pdf Executive Summary The on-demand ride-hailing industry presents challenges for its new workforce . These include: drivers not knowing how much they earn; increased financial risk and debt; and dangers to health and safety . In keeping with the mission of the Kalmanovitz Intiative for Labor and the Working Poor to advance public policy that improves workers’ lives, this report about a two-year investigation of the working conditions of 40 Uber drivers in the Washington, D .C . area reveals that: 1. Uber drivers do not know how much they earn or lose. • 100% of drivers experienced difficulties with, or barriers to, calculating their actual compensation . 2. Data about the Uber workplace is limited. • Regulators and researchers do not have access to basic information about labor conditions . 3. Uber drivers are encouraged to take on financial risk and debt. • 33% of drivers took on debt as a result of their work on the ride-hailing platform . 4. Uber drivers report challenges to their health and safety. • 30% of drivers reported physical assaults or safety concerns . 5. Despite these challenges, the Uber workplace remained attractive. • 50% of drivers would recommend the job to a friend . • 45% of drivers planned to keep working the job for at least six more months . (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Microsoft staff are openly questioning the value of diversity
by Giacomo Tesio April 20, 2019

April 20, 2019

https://qz.com/1598345/microsoft-staff-are-openly-questioning-the-value-of-… Some Microsoft employees are openly questioning whether diversity is important, in a lengthy discussion on an internal online messaging board meant for communicating with CEO Satya Nadella. Two posts on the board criticizing Microsoft diversity initiatives as “discriminatory hiring” and suggesting that women are less suited for engineering roles have elicited more than 800 comments, both affirming and criticizing the viewpoints, multiple Microsoft employees have told Quartz. The posts were written by a female Microsoft program manager. [...] “I have an ever-increasing file of white male Microsoft employees who have faced outright and overt discrimination because they had the misfortune of being born both white and male. This is unacceptable,” the program manager wrote in a comment later. [...] As the controversy around Google’s firing of Damore illustrated, it can be extremely contentious for companies to wade into disciplining employees for their personal views on such issues. They can face intense criticism for retaliating against individual speech because it’s not politically correct—and if the company doesn’t respond, critics can say they’re not supporting an inclusive workplace. The abundance of online forums for employees to express their views is a complicating factor, as is the modern worker’s high level of comfort with sharing their views online. [...] The post racked up nearly 1,000 comments, with many male programmers jumping in to take an opposing view. As in the two posts from January and April, not all comments were anti-diversity: Some Microsoft employees argued back against their colleagues. “Where? How? Proof? Data? If if it is [skewed] let’s fix that. But just saying Microsoft has less female than male engineer [sic] is not a valid point,” a male Microsoft employee responded to a separate employee who defended the original poster.

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French government releases in-house IM app to replace WhatsApp and Telegram use
by Giacomo Tesio April 20, 2019

April 20, 2019

https://www.zdnet.com/article/french-government-releases-in-house-im-app-to… French government open-sources in-house-made end-to-end encryption IM app named Tchap. [...] But despite the French government's plans, the app's launch didn't go as planned. On the same day it was released, French security researcher Baptiste Robert found a security flaw in Tchap that would have allowed anyone to register an account and spy on the French government's internal communications. The researcher found that by adding a government email domain on top of his regular email, like so name@domain.com@french-government-domain.com, he could register on the app, even when not being authorized to do so.

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Mozilla Firefox to Enable Hyperlink Ping Tracking By Default
by Giacomo Tesio April 20, 2019

April 20, 2019

Q.E.D. Per chi crede ancora che a Mozilla interessi la privacy degli utenti. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/mozilla-firefox-to-enable-hy… Mozilla has told BleepingComputer that they will be enabling the tracking feature called hyperlink auditing, or Pings, by default in Firefox. There is no timeline for when this feature will be enabled, but it will be done when their implementation is complete. For those not familiar with hyperlink auditing, it is a HTML feature that allows web sites to track link clicks by adding the "ping=" attribute to HTML links. When these links are clicked, in addition to navigating to the linked to page, the browser will also connect to the page listed in the ping= attribute, which can then be used to record the click.

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Fun Fictions in Economics
by Giacomo Tesio April 20, 2019

April 20, 2019

http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/fun-fictions-in-economics Economists pride themselves on being the serious social science, the one most deserving of status as an actual science. I will let others make the comparative assessment, but there is an awful lot of nonsense that passes as serious analysis within economics. For cheap fun, I thought I would use a nice spring afternoon to highlight some of my favorites. Myth 1: The Robots Are Taking All the Jobs Myth 2: We Are Threatened by a Declining Population Myth 3: Technology Is Shifting Income Upwards to the More Skilled Myth 4: The Government Debt Will Impoverish Our Kids Myth 5: Economy Threatening Bubbles Are Difficult to Detect Myth 6: CEOs Manipulate Share Prices with Buybacks to Maximize Shareholder Value

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The Digital Gap Between Rich and Poor Kids Is Not What We Expected - The New York Times
by J.C. DE MARTIN April 19, 2019

April 19, 2019

dell’ottobre scorso, mi era sfuggito. jc The Digital Gap Between Rich and Poor Kids Is Not What We Expected America’s public schools are still promoting devices with screens — even offering digital-only preschools. The rich are banning screens from class altogether. By Nellie Bowles Oct. 26, 2018 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/style/digital-divide-screens-schools.html (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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