Shamar @Shamar@qoto.org

Big Tech's lack of transparency is undemocratic

Google warned Dorchester County, USA, that the amount of water it needs from the county's utility to cool computer server farms and other equipment it plans to build is a closely guarded "trade secret." Google has imposed a gag order on officials elected by the public, warning them that they must not tell the public anything about Google project.

Big Tech is a threat to democracy.

https://www.postandcourier.com/business/charleston-google-data-center-public-records-oregon-portland/article_c5f00fd8-d6f9-11ee-b3c1-f3f5e0012225.html

1/3 🚨 The final negotiations on the European Health Data Space #EHDS law are happening later this week.

✊🏾 We are calling on MEPs to stand firm and insist as a bare minimum on the right to opt-out for everyone in the EU when sharing their personal medical records with third parties.

Here's why...🧵

My remarks at the European DIGITAL SME Alliance this morning:

The Commission should use gatekeepers' persistent GDPR infringement (via DMA Article 5 and 6) to pursue interim measures under DMA Article 24 (for “serious and irreparable damage for business users or end users of gatekeepers")

The Commission move as soon as possible to market investigation of systematic non-compliance under DMA Article 18. Signal with action that it is fully prepared to impose structural remedies.

Thus, by dribs and drabs, freedom leeches out of openness. Today's tech giants have mobilized "open" to create a two-tier system: the largest tech firms enjoy broad freedom themselves - they alone get to decide how their software stack is configured. But for all of us who rely on that (increasingly unavoidable) software stack, all we have is "open": the ability to peer inside that software and see how it works, and perhaps suggest improvements to it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBknF2yUZZ8

11/

Data is never "raw" or "unprocessed" or "neutral" or "objective". The decision to record a thing (and not others), the structures and data formats it's pressed into, the granularity and frequency of collection are already a curation and interpretation of the world.

A data set with unclear collectors, without a declaration of the original purpose and goals is basically unusable responsibly.

If I don't agree, I cannot use the TV that was ALREADY PURCHASED UNDER A DIFFERENT AGREEMENT!

And I just read some of it. I don't agree.
I want my money back. The TV we bought did not have this forced agreement.

That's it! I'm fucking done. My next "TV" is just going to be a monitor. I don't want anymore smarts in what's just being used as a display

La Ue dà ragione a Spotify: multa a Apple da 1,8 miliardi per abuso di posizione dominante nello streaming musicale

https://www.corriere.it/tecnologia/24_marzo_04/apple-multata-dalla-commissione-europea-dovra-versare-1-8-miliardi-di-euro-per-abuso-di-posizione-dominante-c8a33134-11c4-4ae6-a61f-cf764c106xlk.shtml

come se unab persona che gudadagna 30k/anno ricevesse una sanzione da 117 euro

Scrivi 21 volte "l’intelligenza artificiale nell’istruzione è un problema pubblico"

«Questi 21 argomenti contro l’intelligenza artificiale nell’istruzione dimostrano come l’intelligenza artificiale non possa essere considerata inevitabile, benefica o trasformativa in alcun modo diretto.»

@eticadigitale

Grazie a @Shamar per la segnalazione

https://codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/2024/02/22/ai-in-education-is-a-public-problem/

@tkinias @990000 @Daojoan
Firefox is getting a 'shopping' sidebar and ads built-in.

A few months ago, I persuaded a client to abandon an external cloud system and use Nextcloud on their own server instead. Powered by FreeBSD and ZFS, it has already demonstrated its strengths on a couple of occasions (such as in the case of a snapshot rollback). This morning, they expressed the desire to abandon the various WhatsApp groups they use for coordination and to use a solution "all on their servers." I was inspired and quickly installed both an ejabberd and a Matrix server (Synapse) - which they will probably prefer, according to the latest news they sent me - on two FreeBSD jails.

Today, we have the awareness and experience of what it means to give our data to large companies, completely losing control over it. We have the tools, so why not use them?
And I'm really happy when someone like them, thanks to their willingness to try "new" solutions, realizes the alternatives to the colorful, advertised, warmly recommended (by salespeople) "proprietary" solutions.

#Jabber #XMPP #Matrix #Nextcloud #SelfHost #OSS #OwnYourData

This should be a viral national story in #US. After this team unanimously unionized, Google refused to come to the bargaining table.

A resolution supporting the workers was brought to the city council. The day the workers showed up to testify on the resolution, Google laid off the entire team.

This was the precise instant when YouTube Music employees became aware that we had lost our jobs, as we were addressing the City Council.

google rant:

a little website i shepherd for a friend has a contact form. it uses php mail() via sendmail. ive done all the things: fail2ban, recaptcha, spf, dkim, reject dmarc policy; the config is just as tight as my personal mail server, and few to no illegitimate form submissions ever make it as far as the mta.

gmail happily sends a daily dmarc report congratulating me for successful spf and dkim tests, yet refuses to deliver any messages to a gmail inbox. at the same time, the target gmail inbox is stacked full of spam, all from gmail.com addresses.

google is a bully and a tyrant and hostile to the open internet. msft does the same shit.

L'FBI utilizza gli avvisi push per rintracciare i predatori e "pensare ai bambini"

Il Washington Post descrive come le forze dell'ordine hanno convinto aziende come Google a consegnare i dati associati alle notifiche push. Il sistema è già usato per rintracciare i predatori di bambini, anche attraverso app crittografate, secondo il Post, ma le forze dell'ordine di tutto il mondo potrebbero utilizzare la tattica per rintracciare attivisti e anche altri.

@informatica

https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/29/24086717/the-fbi-has-been-using-push-alerts-to-track-down-predators

"After gathering evidence from the UK, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal, UN special rapporteur Michel Forst said the repression faced by peaceful environmental activists was a major threat to #democracy & #humanrights.

"The environmental emergency that we are collectively facing and that scientists have been documenting for decades cannot be addressed if those raising the alarm and demanding action are criminalised for it."

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/28/european-nations-must-end-repression-of-peaceful-climate-protest-says-un-expert
#climatecrisis #activism

Tre persone in una sola sostanza! Dalla narrativa fantastica di Dr. #COARA e Mr. #ANVUR al mistero teologico-amministrativo. Non ci credete? Guardate qui: https://www.roars.it/dr-coara-mister-anvur-magnifico-rettore/ #rettori #università

Comunque la pensiate su #guerra e #Nato, un Francesco Sylos Labini da leggere: https://archive.is/Px1vo

Google, following the industry trend to AI-all-the-things, has released Magika - a machine learning model which can identify file types. It claims it can outperform traditional methods by 20 per cent.

I pitted it against BSD File on something I figured Google hadn't included in its million-file-strong corpus: CU Amiga's Mega CD-ROM coverdisc from November 1995.

Magika identified... one file correctly, a plain-text document. File? File got 'em all, and quicker too.

(An unfair test, I know!)

I and Kris Shrishak will be testifying at the Oireachtas (Irish parliament) Children's Committee today to testify about the impact of A.I. on children.

The Examiner has a preview this morning --> https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41330389.html

#datafixation Love this concept. A "wordplay that combines #datafication and #fixation. The article showcases how the datafication of #education presents compelling arguments about the importance and usefulness of #data, while remaining silent about the negative consequences of reducing students, learning, teaching, and education to superficial indicators. Such a one-sided view meets the criteria of fixation as anunhealthy #attachment." Pekka Mertala #edtech
https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839465820-003