#Regulation #State #Government #Antitrust #Competition: "In Public Choice Theory, the biggest companies in an industry have the strongest interest in capturing the regulator, and they will work harder – and have more resources – than anyone else, be they members of the public, workers, or smaller rivals. This inevitably leads to capture, where the state becomes an arm of the dominant companies, wielded by them to prevent competition:
(...)
This is regulatory nihilism. It supposes that the only reason you weren't killed by your dinner, or your antilock brakes, or your collapsing roof, is that you just got lucky – and not because we have actual, good, sound regulations that use evidence to protect us from the endless lethal risks we face. These nihilists suppose that making good regulation is either a myth – like ancient Egyptian sorcery – or a lost art – like the secret to embalming Pharaohs.
But it's clearly possible to make good regulations – especially if you don't allow companies to form monopolies or cartels. What's more, failing to make public regulations isn't the same as getting rid of regulation. In the absence of public regulation, we get private regulation, run by companies themselves."
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/23/getting-stuff-done/#praxis
#Crypto #Cryptocurrencies #Bitcoin #Crime #USA #NY: "For years, a gang operating in New York allegedly offered a cash-for-Bitcoin service that generated at least $30 million, with men standing on street corners with plastic shopping bags full of money, drive-by pickups, and hundreds of thousands of dollars laid out on tables, according to court records.
The records provide rare insight into an often unseen part of the criminal underworld: how hackers and drug traffickers convert their Bitcoin into cash outside of the online Bitcoin exchanges that ordinary people use. Rather than turning to sites like Coinbase, which often collaborate with and provide records to law enforcement if required, some criminals use underground, IRL Bitcoin exchanges like this gang which are allegedly criminal entities in their own right.
In a long spanning investigation by the FBI involving a confidential source and undercover agents, one member of the crew said “that at least some of his clients made money by selling drugs, that his wealthiest clients were hackers, and that he had made approximately $30 million over the prior three years through the exchange of cash for virtual currency,” the court records read."
#EU #AgeVerification #Privacy #DataProtection: "Based on the methods and risks analysed in this paper, we define six key risks of the use of age verification tools, in particular:
1. Violating children’s privacy and data protection rights;
2. Infringing upon children’s autonomy and self-expression online;
3. Letting companies control what children can see and do online;
4. Making anonymity online difficult or impossible;
5. Exacerbating structural discrimination; and
6. Creating a false sense of security
Read EDRi's analysis
After charting out the three main types of age verification, EDRi’s analysis concludes that there are no EU-wide ‘document-based verification’ or ‘estimation’ tools that minimise these risks to the extent that their widespread use could be considered compatible with children’s rights. Age ‘declaration’ tools are more likely to align with children’s rights, but they require additional research and development to improve their effectiveness. As a general rule, therefore, policy- and law-makers must not mandate age estimation or document-based verification measures."
https://edri.org/our-work/policy-paper-age-verification-cant-childproof-the-internet/
São Francisco está a ferro e fogo!! São Francisco está a saque! Não venham até cá que isto aqui é o inferno dos EUA!! Está-se tão mal aqui…
#USA #DigitalGovernment #eGovernment: "Currently, only two percent of government forms are digitized, 45 percent of websites have not been designed to work on mobile devices, and 60 percent of websites are not fully usable by those who use assistive technologies. When people search online for information and services from our government, they get too many results with confusing answers and it’s not clear what they should do next. This is unacceptable. We can and must do better.
Today, OMB is releasing new policy guidance to agencies on Delivering a Digital-First Public Experience (M-23-22), which will transform the way Federal government communicates with the American people digitally to ensure it is providing information that is easy to use, trustworthy, and accessible. This digital framework for government includes a variety of actions and standards to help Federal agencies design, develop, and deliver modern websites and digital services. The guidance will make it seamless for the public to obtain government information and services online, and help agencies fully implement the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act (IDEA).
Today and over the coming years, this Digital Experience (DX) guidance will drive progress across government to ensure that you will:"
nostr:npub15w5xwgp4jy94hc7d5pt6hm7dgeg460csypvu34e7ygcejnw5eupq0xtse4 quando comecei a ler, a primeira coisa em que pensei foi "alguém da IL já andou a mandar bitaites na rede social anteriormente conhecida como Twitter" e parece que, pelo menos na parte de ser alguém da IL, acertei
nostr:npub1mnprfl7sn37vd9l04u9rkqdeywtwsx6wr3gknvdavx2xm25zgk8qfpk9zl Pois, é um discurso que foge sempre com o rabo à seringa quando a coisa dá para o torto... ;)
#Crypto #Cryptocurrencies #Cybersecurity #Cybercrime: "Billionaire Mark Cuban has long been a major supporter of cryptocurrencies, promoting Bitcoin as a better investment than gold and criticizing security regulators’ approach to reigning in the industry. Now, he’s been hit with a nearly $1 million loss after falling victim to a phishing scam.
The substantial theft was first spotted by an anonymous blockchain watcher on social media, who noticed that Cuban’s crypto wallet was being drained of all its funds on Friday. “Lmao, did Mark Cuban's wallet just get drained? Wallet inactive for 160 days and all assets just moved,” said WazzCrypto in a tweet with an attached screenshot of Cuban’s wallet activity. The losses amounted to roughly $870,000, according to blockchain data from the attacker’s crypto address."
#Crypto #Cryptocurrencies #FTX #Scams: "Both parents have distinguished careers that long precede their son’s alleged fraud. They met in the 1980s at Stanford University, where they taught at the law school for more than three decades, living on campus and raising two sons. Bankman, an expert on taxes, is renowned for his work making the US tax code friendlier to lower-income citizens. Fried, an authority on legal ethics, was prominent in progressive political circles.
At the time the ad aired, critics were warning that FTX was luring naive investors with extremely risky financial instruments that were mostly banned in the US. Those investors would see their money vanish when the funds were diverted, without their knowledge, to a hedge fund that Bankman-Fried also owned. FTX collapsed and filed for bankruptcy in November 2022."
#EU #AI #GenerativeAI #GPAI #AIAct: "As the European Union's Artificial Intelligence Act enters its final phase of negotiations, AlgorithmWatch publishes key policy proposals for governing General Purpose AI (GPAI) and Generative AI (GenAI). The recommendations were developed with substantive input by leading experts in the field.
The paper highlights actionable suggestions that should be considered during the ongoing trilogue negotiations.
The policy briefing delves into five critical areas for governing GPAI and GenAI:"
#TechnicalWriting #Cybersecurity #MFA: "Technical writers simplify complex information so that anyone can understand it. The best tech writers partner with project, product, marketing, engineering, and customer support teams to create strategies and content that help customers and internal teams succeed. That’s exactly what Tammy Rahn, content architect at Salesforce, did for the MFA initiative.
In her time at Salesforce, Rahn learned to connect internal silos. No matter the roles, teams, or organizational structures, she used content as a foundation to align stakeholders and drive tasks forward. From the start of the MFA program, she aligned teams around a centralized content strategy – including a blueprint for how to inspire and guide customers to adopt MFA.
Investing in quality technical writers can help your company break down silos. This ensures that employees across departments are able to understand the task — and how to explain the benefits to customers."
https://www.salesforce.com/blog/technical-writer-technology-adoption/
#Decentralization #TechnologicalResistance #Encryption #P2P: "This book brings together voices from various fields of intellectual inquiry, based on the idea that technological, legal and societal aspects of the information sphere are interlinked and co-dependent from each other. In order to tackle the existing gap in shared semantics, this glossary converges the efforts of experts from various disciplines to build a shared vocabulary on the social, technical, economic, political aspects of decentralised, distributed or sovereign technologies: artefacts which seek to challenge the techno-social status quo by, for example, circumventing law enforcement, resisting surveillance, or being participative.
The idea ofthis glossary arose from the need for a workable, flexible and multidisciplinary resource for terminological clarity, which reflects instead of denying complexity. Situating the terms emerging through technology development in the wider context of multidisciplinary scientific, policy and political discourses, this glossary provides a conceptual toolkit for the study of the various political, economic, legal and technical struggles that decentralised, encryption-based, peer-to-peer technologies bring about and go through.
Choosing relevant technology-related terms and understanding them is to investigate their affordances within a given ecosystem of actors, discourses and systems of incentives. This requires an interdisciplinary, multi-layered approach that is attentive to the interlinkages between technological design nuances and socio-political, economic implications."
#AI #GenerativeAI #Copyright #IP: "On Thursday, Microsoft announced that it will provide legal protection for customers who are sued for copyright infringement over content generated by the company's AI systems. This new policy, called the Copilot Copyright Commitment, is an expansion of Microsoft's existing intellectual property indemnification coverage, Reuters reports.
Microsoft's announcement comes as generative AI tools like ChatGPT have raised concerns about reproducing copyrighted material without proper attribution. Microsoft has heavily invested in AI through products like GitHub Copilot and Bing Chat that can generate original code, text, and images on demand. Its AI models have gained these capabilities by scraping publicly available data off of the Internet without seeking express permission from copyright holders."
#DigitalEconomy #DigitalColonialism #VC #SiliconValley: "As countries in the Global South have long been plundered for labor and precious natural resources, today’s digital economy is extracting data from its citizens. And as the new dirty jobs of the digital economy are outsourced to the Global South—for instance, content moderators and data labelers in Kenya and the Philippines scouring the dregs of social media to protect the public from extreme and graphic material—we are witnessing the construction of a new age of digital sweatshops, where the most dangerous work is offshored to be performed by workers with the fewest protections.
The tech industry likes to present itself as presiding over a new industrial revolution that will change the world forever. It’s a more apt comparison than they might realize. As Dr. Onoho’Omhen Ebhohimhen of the Nigeria Labour Congress explained to us, noting that the effects of the digital economy, such as algorithmic management of workers, “is akin to reproducing the first Industrial Revolution, where workers were bonded and locked up, worked for 20 hours or more in a day, and had no right to a family life.”
Yet, it doesn’t have to be this way. Digital innovation can disrupt economies in favor of collaborative, solidarity-based forms of decent and quality work, where all can flourish. So, how might we democratize the digital economy so workers have agency and are able to shape the future alongside the technologists and venture capitalists of Silicon Valley?"
https://ssir.org/articles/entry/building_the_future_of_work_we_want
#AI #GenerativeAI #ChatGPT #Hallucinations: "Although chatbots such as ChatGPT can facilitate cost-effective text generation and editing, factually incorrect responses (hallucinations) limit their utility. This study evaluates one particular type of hallucination: fabricated bibliographic citations that do not represent actual scholarly works. We used ChatGPT-3.5 and ChatGPT-4 to produce short literature reviews on 42 multidisciplinary topics, compiling data on the 636 bibliographic citations (references) found in the 84 papers. We then searched multiple databases and websites to determine the prevalence of fabricated citations, to identify errors in the citations to non-fabricated papers, and to evaluate adherence to APA citation format. Within this set of documents, 55% of the GPT-3.5 citations but just 18% of the GPT-4 citations are fabricated. Likewise, 43% of the real (non-fabricated) GPT-3.5 citations but just 24% of the real GPT-4 citations include substantive citation errors. Although GPT-4 is a major improvement over GPT-3.5, problems remain."
#Microsoft #AI #GenerativeAI #Water #WaterConsumption: "In its latest environmental report, Microsoft disclosed that its global water consumption spiked 34% from 2021 to 2022 (to nearly 1.7 billion gallons, or more than 2,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools), a sharp increase compared to previous years that outside researchers tie to its AI research.
“It’s fair to say the majority of the growth is due to AI,” including “its heavy investment in generative AI and partnership with OpenAI,” said Shaolei Ren, a researcher at the University of California, Riverside who has been trying to calculate the environmental impact of generative AI products such as ChatGPT.
In a paper due to be published later this year, Ren’s team estimates ChatGPT gulps up 500 milliliters of water (close to what’s in a 16-ounce water bottle) every time you ask it a series of between 5 to 50 prompts or questions. The range varies depending on where its servers are located and the season. The estimate includes indirect water usage that the companies don’t measure — such as to cool power plants that supply the data centers with electricity."
https://fortune.com/2023/09/09/ai-chatgpt-usage-fuels-spike-in-microsoft-water-consumption/
Se o governo deste país fosse realmente SOCIALISTA, haveria certamente muito maior investimento PÚBLICO num bem PÚBLICO como a CIÊNCIA. É preciso ser muito estúpido e/ou teimoso para não admitir isso...
#Portugal #Ciência #UE: "Investimento público de Portugal em I&D em 2022 foi equivalente a 0,34% do PIB, traduzindo um declínio de 0,1 pontos percentuais face a 2012. No "ranking" da UE só há seis países com uma percentagem inferior.
Portugal figura na cauda da União Europeia (UE) no que toca ao investimento público em investigação e desenvolvimento (I&D), com o gasto por habitante a ser 70,5% inferior à média dos 27."
RT @mario_gug
false arrests, AI discrimination in health care, education, and employment. I am encouraged to see more media organizations using their platforms to show the present dangers of AI and highlighting real people being impacted and pushing back
https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/6310661/joy-buolamwini-ai/
"Journalists in America investigating this matter report that the real concern of advertisers is Musk’s own lurid tweeting, making them nervous of association with what such an unpredictable character might say through the medium of his own product.
As if to confirm the validity of such concerns, Musk last week on Twitter/X followed up a user who quoted the toxic conspiracy theorist Alex Jones (author of the claim that the shootings of children at the Sandy Hook school was a “hoax” involving actors) that the ADL is “the most pro-Hitler organisation I’ve ever seen”. Musk added: “The ADL, because they are so aggressive in their demands to ban social media accounts for even minor infractions, are ironically the biggest generators of anti-Semitism on this platform!”
As Yair Rosenberg wrote in The Atlantic: “Abuse of Jews on his site, he argued, is the consequence of Jews complaining about the abuse. (Chronology does not appear to be his strong suit).” Greenblatt, asked whether he thought Musk was espousing antisemitism himself, responded that the site’s owner was “engaging with users who are blatantly and boldly doing so, and that’s very problematic. I would say that blaming the Jews or the ADL for antisemitism also . . . evokes the age-old tropes that we work so hard to fight.”"
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/77706ee6-4f42-11ee-a041-9c691fc04ff2
#Google #AdTracking #Privacy #DataProtection #FLoC #Cookies: "Don't let Chrome's big redesign distract you from the fact that Chrome's invasive new ad platform, ridiculously branded the "Privacy Sandbox," is also getting a widespread rollout in Chrome today. If you haven't been following this, this feature will track the web pages you visit and generate a list of advertising topics that it will share with web pages whenever they ask, and it's built directly into the Chrome browser. It's been in the news previously as "FLoC" and then the "Topics API," and despite widespread opposition from just about every non-advertiser in the world, Google owns Chrome and is one of the world's biggest advertising companies, so this is being railroaded into the production builds.
Google seemingly knows this won't be popular. Unlike the glitzy front-page Google blog post that the redesign got, the big ad platform launch announcement is tucked away on the privacysandbox.com page. The blog post says the ad platform is hitting "general availability" today, meaning it has rolled out to most Chrome users. This has been a long time coming, with the APIs rolling out about a month ago and a million incremental steps in the beta and dev builds, but now the deed is finally done."
RT @jasonhickel
Since 2020, two-thirds of all new wealth we have collectively produced has been captured by the richest 1%.