«C'è quieta gioia, nel mattino assolato. Brilla la rugiada sulle malve, e ogni foglia ha un gioiello che la abbellisce anche se nulla aggiunge al suo valore. L'ora non è di fretta, non di traffico. Lenti sono i pensieri, e nella lentezza profondi, dorati.» -- John Steinbeck /Colonna sonora: ``Mount Kimbie - Four Years and One Day''/ ``The Seven Deadly Sins of AI Predictions'', Rodney Brooks ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ «We are surrounded by hysteria about the future of artificial intelligence and robotics - hysteria about how powerful they will become, how quickly, and what they will do to jobs.» ``The Networked Nature of Algorithmic Discrimination'', danah boyd et al. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Riflessione su come la "network" (dove per "network" si intende una rete sociale di persone) può portare ad una discriminazione... ``Modern Day Gopher: The Protocol That the Web Beat'', Ernie Smith ------------------------------------------------------------------ «The Gopher protocol isn't supported by the modern web basically at all, but despite this, it lingers on, a quarter century from its peak. Here's how.» (`lynx', il browser testuale, ancora supporta Gopher! Se vi affascina tutto ciò consiglio caldamente di leggere l'RFC 1436!) ``Eliminating the Human'', David Byrne ------------------------------------------------------------------ «I have a theory that much recent tech development and innovation over the last decade or so has an unspoken overarching agenda. It has been about creating the possibility of a world with less human interaction. This tendency is, I suspect, not a bug - it's a feature. We might think Amazon was about making books available to us that we couldn't find locally - and it was, and what a brilliant idea - but maybe it was also just as much about eliminating human contact. The consumer technology I am talking about doesn't claim or acknowledge that eliminating the need to deal with humans directly is its primary goal, but it is the outcome in a surprising number of cases. I'm sort of thinking maybe it is the primary goal, even if it was not aimed at consciously. Judging by the evidence, that conclusion seems inescapable.» ``I asked Tinder for my data. It sent me 800 pages of my deepest, darkest secrets'', Judith Duportail --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- «The dating app knows me better than I do, but these reams of intimate information are just the tip of the iceberg. What if my data is hacked – or sold?» (s/Tinder// probabilmente!) ``A Smart Home is No Castle: Privacy Vulnerabilities of Encrypted IoT Traffic'', Noah Apthorpe et al. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- «The increasing popularity of specialized Internet-connected devices and appliances, dubbed the Internet-of-Things (IoT), promises both new conveniences and new privacy concerns. Unlike traditional web browsers, many IoT devices have always-on sensors that constantly monitor fine-grained details of users' physical environments and influence the devices' network communications. Passive network observers, such as Internet service providers, could potentially analyze IoT network traffic to infer sensitive details about users. Here, we examine four IoT smart home devices (a Sense sleep monitor, a Nest Cam Indoor security camera, a WeMo switch, and an Amazon Echo) and find that their network traffic rates can reveal potentially sensitive user interactions even when the traffic is encrypted. These results indicate that a technological solution is needed to protect IoT device owner privacy, and that IoT-specific concerns must be considered in the ongoing policy debate around ISP data collection and usage.» ``How Facebook Outs Sex Workers'', Kashmir Hill -------------------------------------------------------------- Riflessione riguardo alla difficoltà di tenere separate due diverse identità su Facebook... ``'Our minds can be hijacked': the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia'', Paul Lewis ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- «Google, Twitter and Facebook workers who helped make technology so addictive are disconnecting themselves from the internet.»