• Will blockchain fulfil its democratic promise or will it become a tool of big tech? | John Naughton | The Guardian

  “The problem with digital technology is that, for engineers, it is both intrinsically fascinating and seductively challenging, which means that they acquire a kind of tunnel vision: they are so focused on finding solutions to the technical problems that they are blinded to the wider context. At the moment, for example, the consensus-establishing processes for verifying blockchain transactions requires intensive computation, with a correspondingly heavy carbon footprint. Reducing that poses intriguing technical challenges, but focusing on them means that the engineering community isn’t thinking about the governance issues raised by the technology. There may not be any central authority in a blockchain but, as Vili Lehdonvirta pointed out years ago, there are rules for what constitutes a consensus and, therefore, a question about who exactly sets those rules. The engineers? The owners of the biggest supercomputers on the chain? Goldman Sachs? These are ultimately political questions, not technical ones.”

  Tags: ITGS, blockchain, security, utopia, technocentric, control, server, politics and government

  • – By dr tech

• Why Nigeria Has Finally Lifted Its Twitter Ban

  “The Nigerian government reinstated Twitter on Jan 13, 2022, after Twitter agreed to conditions issued by the Nigerian government, according to CNN.

  Notably, one of these conditions includes “managing prohibited publication in line with Nigerian law”.

  Twitter also has to comply with “applicable tax obligations on its operations under Nigerian law” as well as enroll Nigeria in its Partner Support and Law Enforcement Portals.”

  Tags: ITGS, Nigeria, ban, censorship, twitter, global citizenship, law, social media, politics and government, equalityofaccess

  • – By dr tech

• This law firm employee secretly automated their job and now works 10 minutes a day from home | Boing Boing

  “When Reddit user Throwaway59724 had to start working from home because of Covid, they learned how to automate their IT job duties so they don’t have to work more than 10 minutes a day to earn their “just-shy-of-90k” salary.”

  Tags: ITGS, automation, ai, people and machines, business and, business, and, employment

  • – By dr tech

• Facebook mistakenly banning ok content a growing problem | Thaiger

  “People have been censored or blocked from the platform because their names sounded too fake. Ads for clothing disabled people we removed buy algorithms that believed they were breaking the rules and promoting medical devices. The Vienna Tourist Board had to move to adult content friendly site OnlyFans to share works of art from their museum after Facebook removed photos of paintings. Words that have rude popular meanings but other more specific definitions in certain circles – like “hoe” amongst gardeners, or “cock” amongst chicken farmers or gun enthusiasts – can land people in the so-called “Facebook jail” for days or even weeks.”

  Tags: ITGS, facebook, social media, censorship, content, problem, alogorithm

  • – By dr tech

Posted from Diigo. The rest of ITGSonline group favorite links are here.

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As a child, I was curious about hackers at all and this cyber-everything, and every time I was faced with something about our cyberlife eg. about some hackers my curiosity was taking over me and it was made me read it like I was falling in love from the first sight. So that’s why I saw the name sandworm I thought that’s it! That’s my book!

The Sandworm Team, also known as Unit 74455, is allegedly a Russian cybermilitary unit of the GRU, the organization in charge of Russian military intelligence. Other names, given by cybersecurity researchers, include Telebots, Voodoo Bear, and Iron Viking.

A little bit about this book 

• The novel will focus on Sandworm, a Russian group of hackers, and use investigation of them to discuss modern cyber warfare.
• The 2009 Stuxnet worm which attacked Iranian centrifuges was the first great example of the ability of cyber attacks to affect the physical world.
• NotPetya, unleashed by Sandworm in 2017, had worldwide effects but its epicentre was Ukraine, in which the first ever cyber-induced blackouts occurred.

Part I: Emergence

“Use the first moments in study. You may miss many an opportunity for quick victory in this way, but the moments of study are insurance for success. Take your time and be sure.”

This is the plot of the first part of this book and I really agree with it because it gives us the main idea of being human that is not wasting the opportunity –  time and the idea of working smarter not harder 🙂 .I really like that and trying to live so.

1: The Zero-Day

• An American cyber security firm called iSIGHT received news from their Ukrainian branch that they may have discovered a zero day vulnerability in Microsoft PowerPoint.
• The expert hackers in that company’s ‘black room’ spent a day testing, reporting and creating a proof of concept.
• Despite confirming that this was indeed a rare zero day vulnerability in a near ubiquitous piece of software, they had not yet grasped its significance.

This was the first part of the book and it was a little story about that new company iSight which was working on big companies and trying to find some viruses or like this one the zero days. I liked this story it was interesting and some of the part connected with the black room it was very interesting. The background story was very interesting about cyberwar I like it.

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• Ukraine hit by ‘massive’ cyber-attack on government websites | Ukraine | The Guardian

  “Ukraine has been hit by a “massive” cyber-attack, with the websites of several government departments including the ministry of foreign affairs and the education ministry knocked out.

  Officials said it was too early to draw any conclusions but they pointed to a “long record” of Russian cyber assaults against Ukraine, with the attack coming after security talks between Moscow and the US and its allies this week ended in stalemate.”

  Tags: ITGS, cyberattack, security, politrics and government

  • – By dr tech

Posted from Diigo. The rest of ITGSonline group favorite links are here.

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Remix : Making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy by Lawrence Lessig is a book that discuss about copyright law and creativity in the Internet era.

I chose this book simply because I feel like I’m part of the music industry or “creativity”, although not at the professional level. I think that this book could help me see the world (in terms of creativity industry) in new perspectives that I never know or experienced before.

Main idea

The main idea about the first part of this book is RO and RW cultures.

RO culture is when you only consume ie. listen to music, read music scores

RW culture is when you contribute or do something with the creative works. ie. re-creating the music

The author has mentioned that remix (or RW) is not a new thing. Only the techniques are new. ie. technology of sharing remixes, new platforms

    vs. 

Technologies

The technology that the author has been talking about are Internet and Media.

Internet is probably the most popular communication technology. People from all around the world can interact through different platforms.

• Taking blogs as an example, internet allows readers to bookmark or tag or share a blog that they find useful for others who might need the same thing to be able to see it. This is a way of connecting with other people.

The author stated that the internet is the place where all writings are RW. Anything you write on the internet is open to debate. Anyone has access to it and there are able to comment, rate and criticise. 

Media are channels where people can spread music, films etc. They are seems to be more important than “text” or writings. These media are around us. You see them everywhere.

Nowadays, images and sounds that get remixed into a new video are far more powerful than a long essay. It can also effectively make an impact on the audience. 

–> Media remix = creativity supported by technology

Social and ethical issues

The main issue discussed is intellectual property.

Copyright is the main point of this book. The author stated that “Whether RW culture flourishes depends at least in part upon the law”

Copyright law still inhibit new form of ‘writing’ such as film, music from developing. The author is questioning that if we can quote a text from a book then we should be able to quote lyrics from a song because the only difference is that it is just from a different source.

Things I found interesting so far…

1. The author stated that why can’t the remixer create something new by themselves? Why do they need to use someone else’s (eg. famous singer, actor) images or audio for remixes?

The answer is that those “original” things from famous people have “power” in it. 

I found this really interesting as it reflects how most people value work created by people who has different level of skills and how those amateur or non-professionals would need to try much harder to get their work out there.

2. Remix can create “education”

• It is “internet based learning” where you can learn from things you are passionate in doing and it is usually more effective.   –> For example, when remixing audios and videos from a movie, you will definitely learn how to use different tools in a software you are using but at the same time, you will also learn something new from that specific audios or videos you have use to do the remix.
• There are both good and bad remixes out there. Those poor ones can be use for education as a case study.

Agree or disagree with the main idea?

I think the author’s main idea is that RW culture, especially using media because it is becoming ubiquitous, should be developing and people should be able to do it without worrying about copyright or license.

I agree with this to some extent. I think that it would be great if you can pick out some songs to use to play around and learn from the song itself and also from recreating it to make it yours.

BUT I think that there should be a limit to this as well. Having a clear separation of sources would be good :

1. Where you can only listen to music that has copyright or license and
2. Where you can pick out some songs to use for whatever you might need it for.

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The System – James Ball
Review

The Book Called The System is an interesting book written by the author James Ball , which I had been reading during 2 weeks of Christmas holiday. This book is a very interesting and was made for people who are not experts in technology as well. The Author give readers insights in these parts to give us a good understanding about what has happened to the internet in all these years.

This book reflects how the lack of actions from the government made the world we live in today. He gave us an excellent summary of how we got to where we are now. At the start of the chapter he was talking about how things had completely changed after the internet was invented. It was supposed to be something of a revolution but it was not like that in reality.

James Ball made us realize how much power the internet has that can control everything of you. He also told us that there are ways to build a better internet which is in the book. I totally agree with him but I think the amount of power the internet can control you is also the amount of power we can control the internet. It depends on the person whether he’s going to use it for good or for bad.

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• PrivacyTests.org: open-source tests of web browser privacy

  Tags: ITGS, privacy and anonymity, browsers, cookies, cache, https

• As a new year dawns, expect a fresh assault on big tech | John Naughton | The Guardian

  “This tulip-mania de nos jours has been happening with cryptocurrencies for a while, but is about to become more frenzied as the notion that blockchain – the cryptographic technology that underpins bitcoin, Ethereum et al – can become the basis for something called Web3: a new, properly decentralised version of the world wide web (as compared with the current version in which control has become effectively centralised in a small number of giant corporations).”

  Tags: ITGS, bitcoin, web3, utopia, decentralised, control

  • – By dr tech

• Your attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen | Psychology | The Guardian

  “The more our attention degrades, the harder it will be to summon the personal and political energy to take on the forces stealing our focus. The first step it requires is a shift in our consciousness. We need to stop blaming ourselves, or making only demands for tiny tweaks from our employers and from tech companies. We own our own minds – and together, we can take them back from the forces that are stealing them.”

  Tags: focus, attention, social media, technology, ITGS

  • – By dr tech

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• Worried about super-intelligent machines? They are already here | John Naughton | The Guardian

  “This is the dystopian nightmare that Russell fears if his discipline continues on its current path and succeeds in creating super-intelligent machines. It’s the scenario implicit in the philosopher Nick Bostrom’s “paperclip apocalypse” thought-experiment and entertainingly simulated in the Universal Paperclips computer game. It is also, of course, heartily derided as implausible and alarmist by both the tech industry and AI researchers. One expert in the field famously joked that he worried about super-intelligent machines in the same way that he fretted about overpopulation on Mars.”

  Tags: ITGS, AI, machine learning, people and machines

  • – By dr tech

• Social media is a bad feelings machine. Why can’t we just turn it off for good? | Sirin Kale | The Guardian

  Tags: ITGS, social media, media, social, people and machines

• Alexa tells 10-year-old girl to electrocute herself | Boing Boing

  “A 10-year-old girl asked Alexa for a “challenge to do.”

  The voice assistant replied: “Plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs.””

  Tags: ITGS, alexa, voice assistant, people and machines

  • – By dr tech

Posted from Diigo. The rest of ITGSonline group favorite links are here.

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• Recently uncovered software flaw ‘most critical vulnerability of the last decade’ | Software | The Guardian

  “The flaw, dubbed “Log4Shell”, may be the worst computer vulnerability discovered in years. It was uncovered in an open-source logging tool that is ubiquitous in cloud servers and enterprise software used across the industry and the government. Unless it is fixed, it grants criminals, spies and programming novices alike, easy access to internal networks where they can loot valuable data, plant malware, erase crucial information and much more.”

  Tags: ITGS, security, flaw, unix, webserver, patch

  • – By dr tech

• More on Roblox’s exploitation of children | Boing Boing

  “Why? Because it has an internal app store that puts its young player base to work making virtual stuff and selling it for scrip or peanuts while the company pockets the profits. It even promotes the far-right personalities and groups using it to recruit. It is a ruthless money machine that embodies the perverse incentives of social media, aimed directly at children and operated by amoral reptiles.”

  Tags: ITGS, roblox, security, people and machines, children

  • – By dr tech

• We invited an AI to debate its own ethics in the Oxford Union – what it said was startling

  “The data wars to come?

  Worryingly, there was one question where the AI simply couldn’t come up with a counter argument. When arguing for the motion that “Data will become the most fought-over resource of the 21st century”, the Megatron said:

  The ability to provide information, rather than the ability to provide goods and services, will be the defining feature of the economy of the 21st century.

  But when we asked it to oppose the motion – in other words, to argue that data wasn’t going to be the most vital of resources, worth fighting a war over – it simply couldn’t, or wouldn’t, make the case. In fact, it undermined its own position:

  We will able to see everything about a person, everywhere they go, and it will be stored and used in ways that we cannot even imagine.”

  Tags: ITGS, ai, ethics, data, information, chatbot, turing

  • – By dr tech

• Scared about the threat of AI? It’s the big tech giants that need reining in | Devdatt Dubhashi and Shalom Lappin | The Guardian

  “But by far the most immediate danger is the role that AI data analysis and generation plays in spreading disinformation and extremism on social media. This technology powers bots and amplification algorithms. These have played a direct role in fomenting conflict in many countries. They are helping to intensify racism, conspiracy theories, political extremism and a plethora of violent, irrationalist movements.”

  Tags: ITGS, ai, misinfromation, fakenews, data, information

  • – By dr tech

Posted from Diigo. The rest of ITGSonline group favorite links are here.

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• WhatsApp criticised for plan to let messages disappear after 24 hours | World news | The Guardian

  “WhatsApp users are to be given the option to have their messages disappear after 24 hours, a change that drew immediate criticism from children’s charities.

  In a blog post announcing the change, WhatsApp, which has 2 billion users, said its mission was to “connect the world privately”.”

  Tags: ITGS, whatsapp, social media, privacy and anonymity, message, people and machines

  • – By dr tech

• ‘So vague, it invites abuse’: Twitter reviews controversial new privacy policy | Twitter | The Guardian

  “Activists swiftly warned that the policy as it was published would backfire. The policy was vague and had been put together without much input from the communities most vulnerable to harassment and doxxing, the activists argued. They had little faith in Twitter’s reporting and appeals process, which they described as unreliable, automated and allowing for little discussion about the enforcement of policies.”

  Tags: ITGS, policies and standards, twitter, social media, privacy and anonymity

  • – By dr tech

• Working from home could be damaging for mentally demanding tasks

  “The research concludes that mentally demanding tasks are more difficult to handle at home than when physically present at a workplace. Based on the chess players’ performances, excessive use of homeworking can hurt productivity, the three researchers believe.”

  Tags: ITGS, policies and standards, homeworking, telecommuting, people and machines

  • – By dr tech

Posted from Diigo. The rest of ITGSonline group favorite links are here.

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Yess!!

Eventually, Apple announced that it will start selling replacement parts.

Apple starts carrying a little bit more about its customers, but still not fully because it will be available for only iPhone 12 and 13 lineups in 2022.

But it is great for us customers and for apple too because it is more of an economic move to attract more customers. Nowadays Apple has a lot of concurrents, so in order to be the first, they made their radical move.

Ifixit they posted this article on tweeter.

This was one of the main issues of apple users concerning hardware since before this announcement the users after damaging some of the parts of their iPhone or Mac they had to buy new ones or try to fix it with some nonpermanent or buggy working replacement parts from other phones or laptops.

So this description is more of a way to attract more customers it is the circular economy that Apple is starting to use and it is surprising that they started to do that so late, every company based on technology is doing the replacing parts and circular economy form the start of their business.

But it is not a decision that apple made to make big progress in their company it’s even maybe going to hurt the company income of so first couple of years.

It actually sounds great for customers but it is still the same thing because you are still going to buy new products after a couple of years using old ones.

Everyone Is a Genius: Apple Will Offer Parts and Tools for DIY Repairs

this is a more detailed article on this theme.

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