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Robot says: Whatever | Aeon
by J.C. DE MARTIN Aug. 22, 2018

Aug. 22, 2018

https://aeon.co/amp/essays/the-robots-wont-take-over-because-they-couldnt-c… Robot says: Whatever What stands in the way of all-powerful AI isn't a lack of smarts: it's that computers can't have needs, cravings or desires Margaret Boden In Henry James’s intriguing novella The Beast in the Jungle (1903), a young man called John Marcher believes that he is marked out from everyone else in some prodigious way. The problem is that he can’t pinpoint the nature of this difference. Marcher doesn’t even know whether it is good or bad. Halfway through the story, his companion May Bartram – a wealthy, New-England WASP, naturally – realises the answer. But by now she is middle-aged and terminally ill, and doesn’t tell it to him. On the penultimate page, Marcher (and the reader) learns what it is. For all his years of helpfulness and dutiful consideration towards May, detailed at length in the foregoing pages, not even she had ever really mattered to him. That no one really mattered to Marcher does indeed mark him out from his fellow humans – but not from artificial intelligence (AI) systems, for which nothing matters. [...] This essay is adapted from the inaugural Margaret Boden Lecture, delivered by Professor Boden herself, at the University of Cambridge in June 2018. (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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PDF Antologia spagnola di miei testi
by Antonio Casilli Aug. 22, 2018

Aug. 22, 2018

Hello all, ho passato un'estate un po' strana, con in mezzo un lungo soggiorno in Bolivia per accompagnare (a suon di conferenze) l'uscita di un mio libro un po' particolare: si tratta di un'antologia di 5 saggi apparsi nell'ultimo decennio in riviste francesi e inglesi (più un inedito, versione extended play di un testo che avevo scritto per Feltrinelli l'anno scorso). Il tutto è stato coordinato, praticamente senza che io ci mettessi mano, dall'ambasciata di Francia in Bolivia e dalla Agetic, l'equivalente boliviano dell'Agenzia per l'Italia digitale. Quindi se leggete lo spagnolo e/o se avete colleghi ispanofoni interessati a futuro del lavoro, intelligenza artificiale, privacy e sorveglianza di massa (ma anche virus, hacking e wikipedia -- c'è un po' di tutto in 'sto libro...) non esitate a scaricare il pdf e a farlo circolare abbondantemente via email, media sociali o dove meglio vi aggrada. ------- Antonio A. Casilli (2018). Trabajo, conocimiento y vigilancia: 5 ensayos sobre tecnología. La Paz, Bolivia: Editorial del Estado. Descarga documento PDF: https://agetic.gob.bo/pdf/estadotic/AGETIC-Trabajo-conocimiento-vigilancia.… Contenido Introducción.........................................................5 ¿Existe una cultura laboral digital global? Marginación del trabajo, desigualdades globales y colonialidad................................9 Inteligencia artificial: ¿los humanos reemplazarán a los robots?....45 Una historia de la virulencia: El cuerpo y la cultura informática en la década de 1980...................................................83 El wikipedista, el investigador y el vándalo.......................125 Cuatro tesis sobre vigilancia digital masiva y la negociación de la privacidad.........................................................141 Cheers, Antonio

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Competition Act investigation regarding business parcel delivery services
by Luigi Scorca Aug. 21, 2018

Aug. 21, 2018

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/bulletins/competition-bulletins…

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Award-winning security research reveals a host of never-seen, currently unblockable web-tracking techniques
by Alberto Cammozzo Aug. 21, 2018

Aug. 21, 2018

<https://boingboing.net/2018/08/16/who-left-open-the-cookie-jar.html> Who Left Open the Cookie Jar? A Comprehensive Evaluation of Third-Party Cookie Policies <https://wholeftopenthecookiejar.eu/static/tpc-paper.pdf> won the Distinguished Paper prize at this year's Usenix Security Conference; its authors, researchers at Belgium's Catholic University in Leuven, revealed a host of devastating, never-seen tracking techniques for identifying web-users who were using privacy tools supplied by browser-vendors and third-party tracking-blocking tools. The techniques the KU Leuven team identified allowed them to track users across sites by means of the Appcache API; "lesser-known HTML tags"; the Location response-header; various <meta> redirects; Javascript in PDF tables, Javascript's location.href property; and through service workers. These techniques bypassed the stock browser privacy protections, including the latest, most extensive privacy settings in Firefox; they also worked against popular cookie-blocking/ad-blocking/script-blocking browser extensions. The good news is that the researchers found no evidence of these techniques being exploited in the wild and they tipped off the browser vendors before going public, which means that we can hope that future browsers will be better equipped to defend against these tactics. The bad news is that until then, we're all vulnerable to unscrupulous websites using these tactics to track us everywhere. Here's the researchers' catalog of exploits <https://wholeftopenthecookiejar.eu/> with suggested countermeasures. [...]

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Is coding style personal data?
by Giovanni Battista Gallus Aug. 20, 2018

Aug. 20, 2018

Identifying Programmers by their Coding Style *[2018.08.13]* <https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/08/identifying_pro.html> Fascinating research <https://www.wired.com/story/machine-learning-identify-anonymous-code/> de-anonymizing code -- from either source code or compiled code: Rachel Greenstadt, an associate professor of computer science at Drexel University, and Aylin Caliskan, Greenstadt's former PhD student and now an assistant professor at George Washington University, have found that code, like other forms of stylistic expression, are not anonymous. At the DefCon hacking conference Friday, the pair will present a number of studies they've conducted using machine learning techniques to de-anonymize the authors of code samples. Their work could be useful in a plagiarism dispute, for instance, but it also has privacy implications, especially for the thousands of developers who contribute open source code to the world. Una prospettiva molto interessante, segnalata sull'ultimo Cryptogram ( https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/2018/0815.html#cg29) Buone riflessioni agostane. G.Battista Gallus

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How Royal Mail saved home mover marketing from the GDPR graveyard
by Luigi Scorca Aug. 20, 2018

Aug. 20, 2018

https://www-computerworlduk-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.computerworlduk.…

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Botched CIA Communications System Helped Blow Cover of Chinese Agents
by Alberto Cammozzo Aug. 20, 2018

Aug. 20, 2018

<https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/15/botched-cia-communications-system-help…># t was considered one of the CIA’s worst failures in decades: Over a two-year period starting in late 2010, Chinese authorities systematically dismantled the agency’s network of agents across the country, executing dozens of suspected U.S. spies. But since then, a question has loomed over the entire debacle. How were the Chinese able to roll up the network? Now, nearly eight years later, it appears that the agency botched the communication system it used to interact with its sources, according to five current and former intelligence officials. The CIA had imported the system from its Middle East operations, where the online environment was considerably less hazardous, and apparently underestimated China’s ability to penetrate it. “The attitude was that we’ve got this, we’re untouchable,” said one of the officials who, like the others, declined to be named discussing sensitive information. The former official described the attitude of those in the agency who worked on China at the time as “invincible.” [] When CIA officers begin working with a new source, they often use an interim covert communications system—in case the person turns out to be a double agent. The communications system used in China during this period was internet-based and accessible from laptop or desktop computers, two of the former officials said. This interim, or “throwaway,” system, an encrypted digital program, allows for remote communication between an intelligence officer and a source, but it is also separated from the main communications system used with vetted sources, reducing the risk if an asset goes bad. Although they used some of the same coding, the interim system and the main covert communication platform used in China at this time were supposed to be clearly separated. In theory, if the interim system were discovered or turned over to Chinese intelligence, people using the main system would still be protected—and there would be no way to trace the communication back to the CIA. But the CIA’s interim system contained a technical error: It connected back architecturally to the CIA’s main covert communications platform. When the compromise was suspected, the FBI and NSA both ran “penetration tests” to determine the security of the interim system. They found that cyber experts with access to the interim system could also access the broader covert communications system the agency was using to interact with its vetted sources, according to the former officials. In the words of one of the former officials, the CIA had “fucked up the firewall” between the two systems. [...]

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This company embeds microchips in its employees, and they love it
by Guido Noto La Diega Aug. 19, 2018

Aug. 19, 2018

Last August, 50 employees at Three Square Market got RFID chips in their hands. Now 80 have them https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611884/this-company-embeds-microchips-in… -- Guido Dr Guido Noto La Diega Senior Lecturer / European Research Partnerships Coordinator @ Northumbria Law School Director @italiot | Fellow @nexacenter | Co-convenor @NINSOrig | Co-founder @DPA2018 Northumbria Law School City Campus East, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST noto.la.diega(a)gmail.com +44(0)191 349 5562 You can access my papers on Academia.edu <http://northumbria.academia.edu/GuidoNotoLaDiega> and on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN <https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=1794950>) This e-mail and any attachment hereto are strictly confidential and are exclusively intended for the person above identified. Without intended recipient’s entitlement, use, copy and dissemination of this e-mail is prohibited. If you have received it in error, please advice us immediately by telephone and return the documents received to the above address, deleting the files. Thank you. Unless necessary, please do not print this e-mail.

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Gli algoritmi del copyright censurano articoli contro la censura- BrunoSaetta.it
by J.C. DE MARTIN Aug. 17, 2018

Aug. 17, 2018

https://brunosaetta.it/diritto-autore/algoritmi-copyright-censurano-articol… Gli algoritmi del copyright censurano articoli contro la censura (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Interesting and relevant paper
by Roberto Dolci Aug. 16, 2018

Aug. 16, 2018

Segnalo questo articolo che prende un approccio economico interessante sul controllo e possesso dei dati, concentrandosi sul concetto di (non) rivalita’. Buona lettura Rob http://christophertonetti.com/files/papers/JonesTonetti_DataNonrivalry.pdf

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