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Defending Internet Freedom through Decentralization: Back to the Future?
by Stefano Zacchiroli Oct. 3, 2017

Oct. 3, 2017

- full paper: http://dci.mit.edu/assets/papers/decentralized_web.pdf - opinion piece: https://www.wired.com/story/decentralized-social-networks-sound-great-too-b… Interessante critica degli approcci puramente tecnologici (e.g., sviluppo dell'ennesima rete sociale federata) alla risoluzione del problema della centralizzazione del Web. -- Stefano Zacchiroli . zack(a)upsilon.cc . upsilon.cc/zack . . o . . . o . o Computer Science Professor . CTO Software Heritage . . . . . o . . . o o Former Debian Project Leader & OSI Board Director . . . o o o . . . o . « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »

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"E-Mail Tracking"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Oct. 3, 2017

Oct. 3, 2017

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/10/e-mail_tracking.html *E-Mail Tracking* Interesting survey paper (https://senglehardt.com/papers/pets18_email_tracking.pdf) on the privacy implications of e-mail tracking: Abstract: We show that the simple act of viewing emails contains privacy pitfalls for the unwary. We assembled a corpus of commercial mailing-list emails, and find a network of hundreds of third parties that track email recipients via methods such as embedded pixels. About 30% of emails leak the recipient's email address to one or more of these third parties when they are viewed. In the majority of cases, these leaks are intentional on the part of email senders, and further leaks occur if the recipient clicks links in emails. Mail servers and clients may employ a variety of defenses, but we analyze 16 servers and clients and find that they are far from comprehensive. We propose, prototype, and evaluate a new defense, namely stripping tracking tags from emails based on enhanced versions of existing web tracking protection lists. Blog post on the research: https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2017/09/28/i-never-signed-up-for-this-privacy…

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Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Data Science - Milano Bicocca
by Francesco Ruggiero Oct. 2, 2017

Oct. 2, 2017

Oggi, 2 ottobre 2017, si terrà l’inaugurazione del *Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Data Science* dell’Università degli Studi Milano Bicocca, alla presenza del Rettore Prof.ssa* Cristina Messa* e del Prorettore alla didattica Prof.* Paolo Cherubini*. Seguirà l’intervento del *Prof. Carlo Batini* che esporrà le idee ispiratrici e le informazioni sul corso. Il sito del Corso di Laurea è disponibile alla pagina: http://datascience.disco.unimib.it/it/ Cordiali saluti, Francesco -- Francesco Ruggiero Communication Manager Nexa Center for Internet & Society Politecnico di Torino - DAUIN Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24 - 10129 Torino web: http://nexa.polito.it mail: francesco.ruggiero(a)polito.it tel: 011 090 7219

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I: Facebook and Google facing regulations: The first step: Regulating political ads on the internet like TV ads
by gabriele elia Oct. 2, 2017

Oct. 2, 2017

Anche negli USA si incomincia a discutere , proprio partendo dalla politica …uno degli effetti imprevisti dell’era Trump? saluti gabriele https://finance.yahoo.com/news/facebook-google-soon-play-new-set-rules-2027… Facebook and Google could soon have to play by a new set of rules Erin Fuchs<https://www.yahoo.com/author/erin-fuchs> Yahoo Finance<http://finance.yahoo.com/>September 26, 2017 View photos A sell-off of tech stocks <https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-set-weigh-wall-st-130758854.html> dominated the financial news headlines Monday, as questions continued to loom over how Facebook (FB<https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/FB/>) may have facilitated Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite slumped by 0.9% on Monday, with Facebook shares having their worst day of the year<https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tech-stocks-sell-off-deepens-194626132.html> and Apple (AAPL<https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL?p=AAPL>), Netflix (NFLX<https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NFLX/>), and Amazon (AMZN<https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AMZN/>) also seeing drops. Regulators ‘asleep at the switch’ There’s no way to know why investors ran from tech stocks on Monday, or why those stocks bounced back on Tuesday. Still, it’s worth noting that the apparent skittishness around tech stocks comes amid increasing public distrust over tech companies<https://finance.yahoo.com/news/americas-tech-giants-reached-crisis-mode-130…> — and the increasing likelihood that America’s once-untouchable tech giants may soon face new regulations in the U.S. “It’s my own personal take that we’ve really seen regulators kind of falling asleep at the switch when it comes time to regulate these big online entities like Google and Facebook,” said Mark Bartholomew<http://www.law.buffalo.edu/faculty/facultyDirectory/bartholomewMark.html>, a University of Buffalo professor specializing in law and technology. But that may be starting to change. As the Reformed Broker’s Josh Brown noted on Friday<https://finance.yahoo.com/news/keep-facebook-shareholders-night-154715373.h…>, the U.S. government may try to check Facebook’s growing influence in the same way that it did with Microsoft (MSFT<https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MSFT/>) two decades ago and Standard Oil before that. “Governments that feel threatened or genuinely fear for the safety and/or competitive position of their constituents will absolutely take action if they feel the need to,” Brown wrote. The first step: Regulating political ads on the internet like TV ads While new regulations of tech companies could take several forms, Bartholomew believes that the “biggest, most likely” regulatory change will require Facebook to keep closer tabs on the political ads that run on its site. Specifically, Bartholomew said, the Federal Election Commission may end up reversing a 2006 rule<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/27/AR200603270…> that left most political activity on the internet unhindered by regulations. “The momentum is towards changing what has to be disclosed for political ads,” he said. What would this look like? Facebook might be required to keep a database that stored a digital copy of the ad along with whom the ad targeted, how much it cost, and when it ran. These requirements would be more in line with the regulatory mandates imposed on TV stations. “When you put a political ad on TV, there’s a record of that,” Bartholomew noted. ‘Regulation will be coming’ Possibly staying a step ahead of regulators, Facebook has already started reining in its advertisers. Last week, Facebook said it would block ads<https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/20/facebook-to-block-ads-with-derogatory-terms…> targeting users based on derogatory terms, and earlier this month it unveiled new standards for the kind of content <https://media.fb.com/2017/09/13/standards-and-guidelines-for-earning-money-…> that can be monetized on Facebook. At a trade conference Monday, a panel of advertising consultants suggested that both Facebook and Google (GOOG<https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GOOG/>, GOOGL<https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GOOGL/>) would be wise to continue self-regulating political ads<http://www.reuters.com/article/legal-us-facebook-alphabet/facebook-google-b…>. Those two tech giants alone are set to take more than 60%<https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Google-Facebook-Tighten-Grip-on-US-Digita…> of the digital ad market in 2017, according to eMarketer. “I think there will be more scrutiny, and there better be more self-regulation,” political ad consultant Brent McGoldrick said at Advertising Week New York, according to Reuters<http://www.reuters.com/article/legal-us-facebook-alphabet/facebook-google-b…>. “Otherwise, I think regulation will be coming.” Indeed, Congress has already taken some steps to listen to constituents who might be disillusioned with the outsize influence of tech companies. Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) are pushing a bill that would require more disclosures from companies<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/09/22/facebook-googl…> like Facebook that run political advertising. And, on the state level, there has been a push for restrictions on companies that use facial-recognition software without people’s consent, Bartholomew noted. In June, Washington became the latest state to enact a so-called biometric privacy law <https://www.huntonprivacyblog.com/2017/06/01/washington-becomes-third-state…> regulating the commercial use of identifiers like eye retinas or fingerprints. Questo messaggio e i suoi allegati sono indirizzati esclusivamente alle persone indicate. La diffusione, copia o qualsiasi altra azione derivante dalla conoscenza di queste informazioni sono rigorosamente vietate. Qualora abbiate ricevuto questo documento per errore siete cortesemente pregati di darne immediata comunicazione al mittente e di provvedere alla sua distruzione, Grazie. This e-mail and any attachments is confidential and may contain privileged information intended for the addressee(s) only. Dissemination, copying, printing or use by anybody else is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, please delete this message and any attachments and advise the sender by return e-mail, Thanks. Rispetta l'ambiente. Non stampare questa mail se non è necessario.

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Tufekci (NYT): "Zuckerberg’s Preposterous Defense of Facebook"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Oct. 2, 2017

Oct. 2, 2017

*Zuckerberg’s Preposterous Defense of Facebook* Zeynep Tufekci SEPT. 29, 2017 Responding to President Trump’s tweet this week that “Facebook was always anti-Trump,” Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, defended the company by noting that Mr. Trump’s opponents also criticize it — as having aided Mr. Trump. If everyone is upset with you, Mr. Zuckerberg suggested, you must be doing something right. “Both sides are upset about ideas and content they don’t like,” he wrote in a Facebook post. “That’s what running a platform for all ideas looks like.” This doesn’t hold water at all. […] Continua qui: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/opinion/mark-zuckerberg-facebook.html

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Amazon's Echo Spot is a sneaky way to get a camera into your bedroom
by Alberto Cammozzo Oct. 2, 2017

Oct. 2, 2017

Telecamera puntata sul letto. Se il mercato accetta questa i professionisti privacy possono darsi all'ippica. <https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/28/16378472/amazons-echo-spot-camera-in-you…> Amazon unveiled six new hardware products at its surprise event in Seattle yesterday, but the Echo Spot has everyone talking. Most people think the Echo Spot is cute; a little alarm clock that’s designed to sit next to your bed. While all the focus is on what the Echo Spot looks like, it’s important to remember that Amazon is using the Spot as a very clever way of making you comfortable with having a camera in your bedroom. It’s also a camera that will probably be pointing directly at your bed. Amazon launched its Echo Look camera earlier this year to judge your outfits. It’s designed to sit in your wardrobe and offer you style advice, and it was Amazon’s first Echo device with a camera. Amazon quickly followed it up with the Echo Show, a touchscreen device that sits in your kitchen and lets you watch tutorials or recipes and participate in video calls. Amazon’s Look device is still only available exclusively by invitation, and in hindsight it now looks like experimental hardware to gauge the reaction of a camera in the bedroom. A litmus test, if you will. []

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Extra Nexa Lunch Seminar - 4 ottobre 2017
by Nexa Media Oct. 2, 2017

Oct. 2, 2017

Nexa Center for Internet and Society Newsletter Se non visualizzi correttamente questo messaggio clicca qui <http://nexa.polito.it/lunch-extra1> NEXA /Extra/ Nexa Lunch Seminar Mercoledi 4 ottobre 2017, ore 13.00 - 14.00 Politecnico di Torino http://nexa.polito.it/lunch-extra1 Understanding and rewiring cities using big data Speaker Bruno Lepri (Fondazione Bruno Kessler) This event will be webcast live: http://nexa.polito.it/upcoming-events In the last decades, cities have been largely acknowledged as complex and emergent systems as opposed to top-down planned entities. Thus, *a new city science is emerging that aims at an empirical analysis of urbanization processes*. However, it is evident the lack of understanding of the dynamics that regulate people interactions, their relationship with urban characteristics, and their influence on socio-economic outcomes of cities. Nowadays, massive streams of human behavioural data and urban data combined with increased analytical capabilities are creating unprecedented possibilities for understanding global patterns of human behaviour and for helping researchers to better understand relevant problems for cities and also whole societies. For example, analysing the digital traces people leave every day (e.g., mobile phones and social media data, credit card transactions, etc.) researchers were able, among the other things, *to estimate the socio-economic status of territories, to monitor the vitality of urban areas and to predict neighbourhood’s crime levels*. In my talk, I describe some recent works where we have leveraged data from public and from commercial entities in order (i) to infer how vital and liveable a city is, (ii) to find the urban conditions (e.g., mixed land use, mobility, safety perception, etc.) that magnify and influence urban life, (iii) to study their relationship with societal outcomes such as poverty, criminality, innovation, segregation, and (iv) to envision data-driven guidelines for helping policy makers to respond to the demands of citizens. Our results open the door for a *new research framework to study and to understand cities, and societies*, by means of computational tools (i.e. machine learning approaches) and novel sources of data able to describe human life with an unprecedented breath, scale and depth. /Ingresso libero - Saranno disponibili panini e bibite per coloro che si saranno registrati su http://extralunch.eventbrite.com/ <http://extralunch.eventbrite.com> entro il 2 ottobre./ BIOGRAFIE - e informazioni supplementari [LEPRI] BRUNO LEPRI leads the Mobile and Social Computing Lab (MobS) and is vice-responsible of the Complex Data Analytics research line at Bruno Kessler Foundation (Trento, Italy). He recently launched an alliance between MIT and FBK on Human Dynamics Observatories. He is also a senior research affiliate of Data-Pop Alliance, the first think-tank on Big Data and Development co-created by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, MIT Media Lab, Overseas Development Institute to promote a people-centered big data revolution. In 2010 he won a Marie Curie Cofund post-doc fellow and he has held post-doc positions at FBK and at MIT Media Lab. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Trento. His research interests include computational social science, big data and personal data, human behavior understanding, and new models for personal data management and monetization. His research has received attention from several press outlets and obtained the best paper award at ACM Ubicomp 2014. His work on personal data management was one of the case studies discussed at the World Economic Forum. Letture consigliate e link utili: * M. De Nadai, R. Vieriu, G. Zen, S. Dragivecic, N. Naik, M. Caraviello, C. Hidalgo, N. Sebe, and B. Lepri,/Are Safer Looking Neighborhoods More Lively? A Multimodal Investigation into Urban Life <https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.00462>/, in Proceedings of ACM-MM 2016. * M. De Nadai, J. Staiano, R. Larcher, N. Sebe, D. Quercia, and B. Lepri, /The Life and Death of Great Italian Cities: A Mobile Phone Data Perspective <https://arxiv.org/pdf/1603.04012.pdf>/, in Proceedings of WWW 2016. * N. Naik, S. D. Kominers, R. Raskar, E. L. Glaeser, C. Hidalgo,/Computer Vision Uncovers Predictors of Physical Urban Change <http://www.pnas.org/content/114/29/7571.full>/, PNAS 2017. * E. L. Glaeser,/The Triumph of City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier <https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Healthier/dp/0143120…>/. Che cosa sono il Centro Nexa e i cicli di incontri “Mercoledì di Nexa” e “Nexa Lunch Seminar” Il Centro Nexa su Internet & Società del Politecnico di Torino (Dipartimento di Automatica e Informatica) è un centro di ricerca indipendente e interdisciplinare che studia Internet e il suo effetto sulla società. Maggiori informazioni all'indirizzo: http://nexa.polito.it/about. Durante i “*Mercoledì di Nexa*”, che si tengono *ogni 2° mercoledì del mese* alle *ore 18 in punto*, il Centro Nexa su Internet e Società apre le sue porte non solo agli esperti e a tutti coloro i quali lavorano con Internet, ma anche a semplici appassionati e cittadini. Il ciclo di incontri intende approfondire, con un linguaggio preciso ma divulgativo, i temi legati alla Rete: motori di ricerca, Creative Commons, social networks, open source/software libero, neutralità della rete, libertà di espressione, privacy, file sharing, big e open data, smart cities e molto altro. Al centro di quasi tutti gli incontri un ospite pronto a dialogare con i direttori del Centro Nexa, il Prof. Juan Carlos De Martin del Politecnico di Torino e il Prof. Marco Ricolfi dell'Università di Torino, nonché lo staff e i Fellows del Centro Nexa. Maggiori informazioni sui Mercoledì di Nexa, incluso un elenco di tutti i “Mercoledì” passati, sono disponibili all'indirizzo: http://nexa.polito.it/mercoledi. Si segnala inoltre che dal maggio 2012 *ogni 4° mercoledì* del mese *dalle ore 13 alle ore 14* il Centro Nexa organizza anche i "*Nexa Lunch Seminar*". Una lista di tutti i “Lunch Seminar” passati è disponibile all'indirizzo: http://nexa.polito.it/lunch-seminars. See our events calendar <http://nexa.polito.it/events> if you're curious about future luncheons, discussions, lectures, and conferences not listed in this email. Our events are free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted. Maggiori informazioni sui Mercoledì di Nexa e i Nexa Lunch Seminar, sono disponibili all'indirizzo: http://nexa.polito.it/events. Weekly Events Newsletter. Sign up <http://nexa.polito.it/mailing-lists> to receive this newsletter if this email was forwarded to you. To manage your subscription preferences, please click here <https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa>. Connect & get involved: Jobs, internships, and more <http://nexa.polito.it/get-involved>

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Genealogia della nozione di “piattaforma”
by Antonio Casilli Oct. 2, 2017

Oct. 2, 2017

Hello, ho a critto un testo (lunghetto e per di più in francese) sulla genealogia della nozione di piattaforma digitale. Nel quale (ovviamente) si parla di Francis Bacon, di Winston Churchill e dei proto-comunisti inglesi del XVII secolo. “De quoi une plateforme (numérique) est-elle le nom ?” http://www.casilli.fr/2017/10/01/de-quoi-une-plateforme-est-elle-le-nom/ -- Antonio A. Casilli Associate Professor, Telecom ParisTech Research Fellow, Edgar-Morin Center (EHESS) Member, Interdisciplinary Institute for Innovation (i3 UMR 9217 CNRS) Faculty Fellow, Nexa Center for Internet & Society

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WSJ: "Facebook Is Still In Denial About Its Biggest Problem"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Oct. 2, 2017

Oct. 2, 2017

*Facebook Is Still In Denial About Its Biggest Problem * / //In a world where social media is the pre-eminent news conduit, ‘If it’s outrageous, it’s contagious’ is the new ‘If it bleeds, it leads’ / By Christopher Mims Oct. 1, 2017 7:00 a.m. ET 128 COMMENTS It’s a good time to re-examine our relationship with Facebook Inc. In the past month, it has been revealed that Facebook hosted a Russian influence operation which may have reached between 3 million and 20 million people on the social network, and that Facebook could be used to micro-target users with hate speech. It took the company more than two weeks to agree to share what it knows with Congress. Increased scrutiny of Facebook is healthy. What went mainstream as a friendly place for loved ones to swap baby pictures and cat videos has morphed into an opaque and poorly understood metropolis rife with influence peddlers determined to manipulate what we know and how we think. We have barely begun to understand how the massive social network shapes our world. […] Continua qui: https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-is-still-in-denial-about-its-biggest-…

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Terzo convegno annuale AISA - Università di Milano 9-10 novembre 2017
by Roberto Caso Oct. 1, 2017

Oct. 1, 2017

Buongiorno, Segnalo che il programma del terzo convegno annuale dell'Associazione Italiana per la promozione della Scienza Aperta (AISA), organizzato, quest'anno, dall'università di Milano, è visibile a partire da qui: http://aisa.sp.unipi.it/attivita/iii-convegno-annuale/ http://aisa.sp.unipi.it/aisa-3rd-annual-conference/ o dalla notizia pubblicata qui: http://aisa.sp.unipi.it/aisami2017/ Chi è interessato a essere presente può registrarsi qui: http://aisa.sp.unipi.it/attivita/iii-convegno-annuale/registrazione/ soprattutto se desidera prenotare un certificato di partecipazione. Il primo giorno sarà dedicato agli interventi dei relatori invitati e il secondo alle risposte a una call for papers ancora visibile qui: http://aisa.sp.unipi.it/attivita/cfpIII A presto, rc -- Roberto Caso Professore Associato di Diritto Privato Comparato Università di Trento - Facoltà di Giurisprudenza http://www5.unitn.it/People/it/Web/Persona/PER0000633 http://www.lawtech.jus.unitn.it/index.php/people/roberto-caso

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