- nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

The culture war at the heart of open source
by Giacomo Tesio March 28, 2019

March 28, 2019

<https://words.steveklabnik.com/the-culture-war-at-the-heart-of-open-source> In talking to developers about open source, you’ll also hear something else. Something that’s been itching in the back of my brain for a while, and the thing that led me to write this. You’ll often hear developers talk about how the relationship between businesses and open source developers is messy. Complicated. Businesses don’t “give back enough,” won’t pay people to work on open source. That it’s all take and no give. I’ve said a lot of that stuff myself. But here’s the thing: that’s why the concept of open source was created in the first place. It’s there, plain as day, if you ask the folks who actually created it. Open source was a way to make free software better for businesses. This doesn’t mean that it’s beyond critique, of course. The relationship can improve. I don’t think these developers are stupid, or hypocrites. This is where we’re at today. The Free Software movement was created, and then Open Source was created as a reaction to that. Today’s developers have never learned about this history, or don’t care about it, or actively think it’s irrelevant. And so we have a war. A war for the meaning of open source. A war fought with tweets, and blog posts, and discussions. A war between the old guard, those who created the idea originally, and the new generation, the developers who have taken the base idea and run with it. I think history will repeat itself. In the same way that the open source movement said “we’re like free software, but with these changes,” I think we’ll end up with a new movement. For the same reasons that “open source” came up with a new name, I think the movement that will arise from today’s developers will also need a new name. I’m not sure what that movement will look like, and I’ll explore why in another post. To give you a teaser: the problem is in the way that both Free Software and Open Source are formulated. The rot is in the roots, and I’m not yet sure what will replace it.

1 0

Why Data Is Never Raw - The New Atlantis
by J.C. DE MARTIN March 27, 2019

March 27, 2019

https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/why-data-is-never-raw (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

1 0

Cars are regulated for safety – why not information technology?
by Alberto Cammozzo March 26, 2019

March 26, 2019

<http://theconversation.com/cars-are-regulated-for-safety-why-not-informatio…> As the computing industry grapples with its role in society, many people, both in the field and outside it, are talking about a crisis of ethics. There is a massive rush to hire chief ethics officers, retool codes of professional ethics and teach ethics to students. But as a scholar of computing – and a teacher of a course on computing, ethics and society at Rice University – I am skeptical of the assumptions that what ails technology is a lack of ethics, and that the best fix is to teach technologists about ethics. Instead, in my view, the solution is government action, which aims at balancing regulation, ethics and markets. This isn’t a radical new idea: It’s how society treats cars and driving. Consider, for instance, the Ford Model T, the first mass-produced and mass-consumed automobile. Its debut in 1908 launched the automobile age, a time of great mobility – and widespread death. Car crashes kill more than a million people worldwide each year – but the fatality rate per mile driven has been dropping almost since the first Model T rolled off the assembly line. The reason for that improving safety record is not that people learning to drive studied the ethics of responsible and safe driving. Rather, they were taught, and tested on, the rules of the road, in order to obtain a driving license. Other regulations improved how roads were built, required car makers to adopt new safety features, mandated accident insurance, and outlawed drunk driving and other unsafe behaviors. I believe a similar approach – regulation, in addition to ethics education for technologists, as well as market competition – is needed today to make modern technology safe for society as a whole. Flaws in the basic business model In the 1980s, internet pioneers adopted a philosophy that “information wants to be free” – so website owners didn’t charge readers for access to the content. Instead, internet companies used advertising to support their efforts. That led them to collect personal data on their users and offer micro-targeted advertising to make money, which social scientist Shoshana Zuboff calls “surveillance capitalism.” This business model is enormously profitable, so it’s unlikely internet companies will abandon it on their own as a result of ethical qualms. Even in the face of blistering critiques and Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, the massive profits are compelling. The real problem with surveillance capitalism is not that it is unethical – which I believe it is – but that it is completely legal in most countries. It is unreasonable to expect for-profit corporations to avoid profitable businesses that are legal. In my view, it is not enough to simply criticize internet companies’ ethics. If society finds the surveillance business model offensive, then the remedy is not an ethical outrage, but making laws and regulations that govern it, or even prevent it altogether. Of course, public policy cannot be divorced from ethics. Selling human organs is banned in the U.S. in part because society finds it ethically repugnant to profit from life itself. But the ban is enforced by laws, not by an ongoing ethics debate. As Chief Justice Earl Warren remarked: “In civilized life, law floats in a sea of ethics.” Regulation has benefits For decades, the information-technology industry has successfully lobbied against attempts to legislate or regulate it, arguing that “regulation stifles innovation.” Of course, that assumes all innovation is good. It has become evidently clear that this is not always the case: Some of the internet giants’ innovation has harmed democratic society in the U.S. and around the world. In fact, one purpose of regulation is to chill certain kinds of innovation – specifically, those that the public finds wrong, distasteful or unhelpful to the advancement of society. Regulation can also encourage innovation in ways society deems beneficial. There is no question that regulations on the automobile industry encouraged innovation in safety and fuel efficiency. Some members of Congress have proposed a number of ambitious plans to tackle information warfare, consumer protection, competition in digital technology and the role of artificial intelligence in society. But much simpler – and more widely supported – rules could make a huge difference for individual customers and society as a whole. For instance, federal regulators could require software terms and licenses include plain language that’s easily understood by anyone – perhaps modeled on the longstanding “plain English rule” for corporate financial filings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Laws or rules could also require companies to disclose data breaches quickly, both to officials and the public at large. That might even spark innovation as firms increase their efforts to prevent and detect network intrusions and data theft. Another relatively easy opportunity would be to regulate automated judicial decision systems, including requiring that they not be deployed before passing an independent audit showing that they are fair and unbiased. Those straightforward regulations could pave the way for thinking and talking about whether and how to regulate the sizes of these big technology firms. But rule-making need not start with the hardest problems – there’s plenty to do that most people would agree on right away. The bottom line is that technology advances have been moving very fast, while public policy has lagged behind. It is time for public policy to catch up with technology. If technology is driving the future, society should do the steering.

1 0

Facebook Stored Hundreds of Millions of User Passwords in Plain Text for Years — Krebs on Security
by Alberto Cammozzo March 25, 2019

March 25, 2019

<https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/03/facebook-stored-hundreds-of-millions-of…>

1 0

Automating ethics: Machines will need to make ethical decisions, and we will be responsible for those decisions.
by Giacomo Tesio March 25, 2019

March 25, 2019

https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/automating-ethics (tralascio una valanga di opinioni discutibili espresse come verità evidenti in tutta la prima metà dell'articolo... in fondo stiamo parlando di O'Reilly! Non è un caso che l'intero articolo sia una lunga leccata a GMail...) > If we’re going to automate ethical decisions, we need to start from > some design principles. Spam detection gives us a surprisingly good start. > Gmail’s spam detection assists users. > It has been designed to happen in the background and not > get into the user’s way. [...] there are too many decisions La solita ansia ossessiva per la produttività. Ci sono troppe decisioni etiche? O c'è troppo poco tempo per affrontarle? Invece che ridurre le decisioni etiche, e se lasciassimo più tempo alle persone per ponderarle? Un problema che affligge tutte le piattaforme "social" mainstream è l'assenza di moderatori umani in un numero proporzionato alla quantità di utenti. Un moderatore pagato a tempo per dedicarsi alla gestione di 30-50 utenti risolverebbe rapidamente molti problemi. O magari qualcuno pensa davvero che a Twitter importi la libertà di espressione? Minimizza semplicemente i costi! Il fediverse affronta il problema in un modo diverso, distribuendolo fra gli amministratori delle istanze (attraverso il blocco di server che questi ritengono inaccettabili) ma soprattutto delegandolo in larga parte sugli utenti, che possono "zittire" un thread o un utente o "bloccare" un utente che urti la loro sensibilità. Sebbene questo secondo modello abbia dei limiti (ciascuno è incentivato a crearsi autonomamente la propria echo chamber), almeno richiede sempre una scelta etica consapevole ai membri della comunità. Abbiamo troppe scelte etiche da fare? Riduciamo a 20 ore le ore lavorative massime che un individuo può erogare in una settimana! Così avrà il tempo di dedicarsi a tali scelte! ;-) > A second principle we can draw from spam filtering is that > decisions can’t be irrevocable. [...] > In a conversation, Anna Lauren Hoffmann said it’s less > important to make every decision correctly than to have a > means of redress by which bad decisions can be corrected. > That means of redress must be accessible by everyone, > and it needs to be human, even though we know humans > are frequently biased and unfair. La prima persona che mi ha proposto questa idea è stato Marco Ricolfi, parlando dell'automazione di certi tipi di processo estremamente burocratici (scusa Marco, non ricordo esattamente i dettagli sul tipo di processo in questione). L'idea è che la possibilità di ricorso per richiedere un giudizio umano, sia sufficiente a garantire la correttezza del processo nel suo complesso. Io direi però che questo approccio è perseguibile solo se gli effetti sull'uomo sono reversibili in caso di errore. Se si tratta di una questione civile, in cui un oggetto passa di proprietà, non ho particolari obbiezioni. Al massimo si annulla il trasferimento e lo stato risarcisce adeguatamente la parte danneggiata dall'errore del software (rifacendosi poi sulla società che lo produce). Ma se la posta in gioco è la libertà di un essere umano, cui non è possibile restituire gli anni di libertà sottratta, è fondamentale che sia un uomo ad assumersi la piena responsabilità di tale decisione. > Ethical problems arise when a company’s interest in profit > comes before the interests of the users. [...] > The customer’s interest must always come before the company’s. Peccato che utenti e clienti non siano la stessa cosa. Peccato che le persone siano il prodotto venduto da queste aziende. Peccato che nessuna delle proposte abbozzate attacchi il problema di fondo: la funzione obbiettivo dell'azienda, che continuerà semplicemente a massimizzare il profitto FINGENDO di garantire l'interesse dell'utente. > There's no way back to some simpler world where your medical > records were stored on paper in your doctor’s office, your purchases > were made with cash, and your smartphone didn’t exist. > And we wouldn’t want to go back. > The benefits of the new data-rich world are immense. Il solito fatalismo. Le solite magnifiche sorti e progressive. I soliti atti di fede. Nel Capitalismo, prima che nella Tecnologia. La tesi cui si voleva giungere era chiara sin dalla prima riga. E' la solita tesi. Ripeterla ancora e ancora è fondamentale per renderla "vera". Un po' come le Fake News. :-D La Tecnologia è un'artefatto umano. Come tale si può orientare, modificare e sostituire. Chiunque sostenga il contrario o è incompetente o è in mala fede. Spesso, è entrambe le cose. Giacomo

1 0

special issue "Internet architecture and human rights"
by Milan, Stefania March 25, 2019

March 25, 2019

car@ collegh@ quests special issue potrebbe interessare ad alcuni di voi. Buona lettura! Stefania --------- We are very excited to announce the publication of a Special Issue of the journal Policy & Internet on ��Internet Architecture and Human Rights��. Edited by myself with Monika Zalnieriute (Allens Hub for Technology, UNSW Sydney, Australia), issue 11(1) explores what we call the "human rights gap�� whereby "the delegation of human rights enforcement to private actors circumvents both international human rights law, and often domestic laws and constitutions as well. Said human rights gap is the consequence of the "vacuum which occurs when human rights are public [��] and the Internet architecture��through which human rights online are largely mediated and governed today��is mainly privately owned or privately operated�� (Zalnieriute & Milan, p. 8). We explore this claim with the help of stellar contributions, as follows: * Samantha Bradshaw & Laura DeNardis: "Privacy by Infrastructure: The Unresolved Case of the Domain Name System��; * Niels ten Oever: "Productive Contestation, Civil Society, and Global Governance: Human Rights as a Boundary Object in ICANN�� * Milton L. Mueller & Farzaneh Badiei: "Requiem for a Dream: On Advancing Human Rights via Internet Architecture�� * Nicolas Suzor, Molly Dragiewicz, Bridget Harris, Rosalie Gillett, Jean Burgess & Tess Van Geelen: "Human Rights by Design: The Responsibilities of Social Media Platforms to Address Gender�\Based Violence Online�� * Ben Wagner: "Liable, but Not in Control? Ensuring Meaningful Human Agency in Automated Decision�\Making Systems�� To read, follow this link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/19442866/2019/11/1 Enjoy! Best, Stefania and Monika Stefania Milan Associate Professor of New Media and Digital Culture, University of Amsterdam | https://stefaniamilan.net Principal Investigator, DATACTIVE (ERC Starting Grant 639379) | https://data-activism.net Principal Investigator, ALEX (ERC Proof of Concept 825974) | https://algorithms.exposed (coming soon!) @annliffey | @data_ctive The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, retransmission, dissemination, distribution, forwarding, or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon, this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited without the express permission of the sender. If you received this communication in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from any computer.

1 0

Report (2017): "The zombie robot argument lurches on"
by J.C. DE MARTIN March 25, 2019

March 25, 2019

Del 2017, ma non mi sembra sia passato in lista: *"The zombie robot argument lurches on"** */There is no evidence that automation leads to joblessness or inequality / Report • By Lawrence Mishel and Josh Bivens • May 24, 2017 https://www.epi.org/publication/the-zombie-robot-argument-lurches-on-there-…

1 0

Visalli: "Annette Bernhardt, Governare il sentiero di sviluppo tecnologico"
by J.C. DE MARTIN March 25, 2019

March 25, 2019

Riflessione di Alessandro Visalli di quasi due anni fa, ma che raccomando lo stesso ai lettori di questa lista. jc http://tempofertile.blogspot.com/2017/05/annette-bernhardt-governare-il-sen…

2 1

Re: [nexa] Secure, Fast & Private Web Browser with Adblocker | Brave Browser
by Marco Mellia March 25, 2019

March 25, 2019

Ciao jc, Conosco bene alcuni colleghi che ora lavorano li. L’idea e’ sempre quella di creare delle blacklist, con in più la possibilità di creare un market place dove gli utenti possano essere ricompensati in cambio delle informazioni con micropayment. Al momento la parte reward e’ molto limitata. Soffre il fatto di avere solo un browser - che su mobile e’ limitante (perché usi delle app specifiche e non un semplice browser…). In compenso, hanno un pacco di soldi :) Ciao M -- Marco Mellia - Full Professor SmartData@PoliTO coordinator - https://smartdata.polito.it <https://smartdata.polito.it/> Dipartimento di Elettronica e Telecomunicazioni Politecnico di Torino Corso Duca Degli Abruzzi 24 10129 - Torino - IT Tel: +39-011-090-4173 Cel: +39-331-6714789 Skype: mgmellia Home page: http://www.tlc-networks.polito.it/mellia <http://www.tlc-networks.polito.it/mellia> > > Message: 1 > Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2019 11:56:04 +0100 > From: "J.C. DE MARTIN" <demartin(a)polito.it> > To: Center Nexa <nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it> > Subject: [nexa] Secure, Fast & Private Web Browser with Adblocker | > Brave Browser > Message-ID: <04C89B34-647F-41D2-970F-4D3737CC3053(a)polito.it> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > qualcuno conosce questo browser? > hype o sostanza? > > jc > > https://www.brave.com/ > > > (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any)) > > > ------------------------------ > > Subject: Digest Footer > > _______________________________________________ > nexa mailing list > nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it > https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa > > > ------------------------------ > > End of nexa Digest, Vol 119, Issue 51 > *************************************

1 0

Conferenza inaugurale - Constitutional Challenges in the Algorithmic Society
by Giovanni De Gregorio March 25, 2019

March 25, 2019

Carissimi, sono lieto di condividere con voi la conferenza inaugurale del gruppo di ricerca "Algorithmic State, Market and Society" su "Constitutional Challenges in the Algorithmic Society". La conferenza si terrà presso l'Università di Firenze e l'Istituto universitario europeo dal 9 all'11 maggio 2019. L'evento è organizzato dall'Istituto universitario europeo, Università di Firenze e Università Bocconi. È possibile trovare il programma, le sedi e il modulo per la registrazione della conferenza sul sito della conferenza disponibile al seguente link: http://www.algorithmicstate.eu/ Per qualsiasi domanda, non esitate a contattarmi. Un saluto Giovanni De Gregorio --- Dai il tuo 5x1000 alla Bocconi. Aiuta gli studenti meritevoli a costruire il proprio futuro. CF 80024610158. www.unibocconi.it/5x1000 Please note that the above message is addressed only to individuals filing Italian income tax returns. 5x1000 is a percentage of Italian personal income tax that taxpayers can allocate to Universities, scientific research and non profit organizations. ---

1 0