Vort3x | Cybersalon | November 15, 2024
Vort3x, published on the 15th of each month, aims to pick out significant developments in the intersection of computers, freedom, privacy, and security for friends near and far. The views expressed in these stories do not necessarily reflect those of Cybersalon, either individually or collectively.
Prepared by Wendy M. Grossman.
Contents: Cybersalon events | News | Features | Diary
Cybersalon Events
Re-imagining The City -Learn & Work space for all
20th Nov (Wedn) 1-2.30 In Person RSA Strand and On Line (Zoom)
Join us with UCL Visiting Professor (Smart Cities) Matthew Hopkinson, neuroscientist and learning expert Dr Danbee Kim and our lead architect on world’s first Internet Cafes and hybrid work spaces Bernhard Blauel – chaired by Eva Pascoe
As AI reshapes both education and the workplace, how can we reimagine our built environments to foster creativity and innovation? Drawing insights from the ground-breaking space designs of the 90s that spurred the Internet revolution, we’ll explore how lessons from the past can inspire the radical transformations needed in our cities today.
Learn how new design environments cater to the unique learning styles of the AI-native generation, identifying key differences and considering innovative approaches for future-ready spaces. Engage with leading experts and explore the cutting-edge of educational design.
Sign up here for In person or Online session
NEWS
Cloudfare Seeks Exclusion From European Commission Piracy List
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Cloudflare is pushing the European Commission to exclude it from its upcoming Piracy Watch List, while some rights holder groups are requesting its inclusion, Ernesto Van der Sar reports at TorrentFreak. Cloudflare argues that piracy concerns should not outweigh the security and privacy services it provides to millions of organizations, including 30% of Fortune 500 companies and government agencies, as well as some of the largest piracy platforms. Cloudflare says it is willing to colaborate with rights holders and law enforcement.
Incoming Trump Administration Will Undo Biden Regulations
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The incoming Trump administration intends to undo President Joe Biden’s October 2023 executive order establishing oversight of AI development, Benj Edwards reports at Ars Technica. Biden’s order created the AI Safety Institute, laid down reporting requirements for AI companies, and directed the National Institute of Standards and Technology to create guidance to help identify and fix flaws in AI models. Also at Ars Technica, Jon Brodkin reports that Brendan Carr, the likely incoming Republican head of the Federal Communications Commission, said in his chapter of the Project 2025 document that he would drop consumer protection initiatives and punish news organizations that have been critical of Trump, such as NBC News. Carr may also try to steer federal subsidies towards Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite system. Still at Ars Technica, Ashley Belanger considers the potential price rises due to the 60% tariff Trump has threatened to apply to all China imports: potentially, laptops double, game consoles rise by 40%, and smartphones up 25%. The US-China Business Council has warned that Chinese retaliation could cost the US $1.6 trillion in GDP over the next five years. At his Big Substack, Matt Stoller sees enthusiasm for opportunities for consolidation across financial markets after three years of Biden-era restrictions. Finally, at Techdirt, Karl Bode predicts the outcome of that consolidation in media and streaming services.
OpenAI Model Is More Often Wrong Than Right
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OpenAI’s new benchmark, “SimpleQA”, designed to measure the accuracy of the output of AI intelligence models, finds that its own model is more likely to produce wrong answers than right ones, Victor Tangermann reports at Futurism. Competing models scored even lower: Anthropic’s Claude-3.5-sonnet got only 28.9% of questions right, though it was more likely than OpenAI’s model to refuse to answer when it was uncertain. Kyle Orland reports at Ars Technica that a new study from researchers at the University of Washington finds that job applicants presenting with female or Black-seeming names get fewer callbacks and interviews than those with white and male-sounding names even when coupled to identical resumes. At 404 Media, Jason Koebler reports that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg intends to bring new AI-generated feeds to Facebook and Instagram and that already more than 1 million businesses are creating more than 15 million ads a monthon his platforms using generative AI.
Chilean Activists Oppose New Data Centers
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Multiple activist groups oppose the Chilean government’s plan to welcome 28 new data centers into the country, which has had historically low levels of rain since 2010 and has registered a national drought, Claudia Urqueta and Daniela Dib report at Rest of World.
One of the biggest data center hubs in Latin America, Chile is already home to 22 data centers; 16 have been approved since 2012 in the Santiago metropolitan area. Even a small data center using a water-based cooling system requires 25 million liters of water a year.
Also at Rest of World, Ushar Daniele and Khadija Alam report that Malaysia is adding data center capacity at the fastest rate in the Asia-Pacific region. Fifty of those projects, for companies including ByteDance and Microsoft, are in Johor, near Singapore, and offering cheaper land, labor, and electricity. While the centers bring jobs, they also bring power outages and disruptions to the water supply.
Corsight System Watches Retail Workers’ Relationships
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Israel-based Corsight AI has begun offering its global clients a new system intended to detect “sweethearting” – that is, cases where store employees give friends and family discounts or free items, Todd Feathers reports at Gizmodo. The system tracks how individual customers interact with different employees over long periods of time, effectively regarding it as suspicious if a customer consistently prefers a particular employee. Corsight already supplies facial recognition systems in response to rising rates of shoplifting.
At Techdirt, Tim Cushing spells out the antisocial implications of this technology and the lack of understanding of how people shop displayed by Corsight’s CEO, and argues that if it is a problem, sweethearting can be handled by existing technology.
FEATURES & ANALYSIS
European Alternatives to US Tech Services
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This page lists European alternatives to major US technology companies for services such as email, web analytics, VPNs, cloud computing, search engines, and content delivery for those wishing to escape US technology companies over privacy concerns during the upcoming Trump administration.
The list is compiled by software engineer Constantin Graf, who is reminding on Mastodon of the privacy risks inherent in using US-based services. In an interactive map, Surveillance Watch allows users to look up the entities watching them, their funders, and their known target countries. Users can submit additional information.
Virtual Currencies in Video Games
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In this complaint submitted to EU authorities, the Norwegian Consumer Council, working with 21 consumer organizations from 17 countries and backed by BEUC, analyzes the use of virtual currencies in video games such as Fortnite, Minecraft, Clash of Clans, and EA Sports FC 24 and finds endemic unfairness. The report recommends banning hidden algorithmic systems that influence consumers’ economic behavior and the sale of premium virtual currencies, or at least establish transparency requirements that ensure people understand how much they’re spending.
Post-Cyberattack Transport for London Still Fights Disruption
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In this article at London Centric, Jim Waterson goes behind the scenes to detail the ongoing disruption inside Transport for London following August’s cyber attack. The knock-on effects are hitting vulnerable groups such as students and over-60s, who are unable to apply for or renew concessionary travel tickets, as well as the mayor’s office and the Greater London Authority, which outsourced some IT functions to TfL.
Also at London Centric, an effort to build local London journalism, is Waterson’s study of the capital’s epidemic of bike theft.
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In this article at 404 Media, Emanuel Maiberg highlights the work of the gender-transitioning artist Ada Ada Ada, who has used her In Transitu series of Instagram photos to investigate the criteria by which the algorithm decides that a human nipple is female and needs to be blocked.
It took more than a year until, in 2023, two years after she began transitioning, Instagram removed one of her weekly shirtless self-portraits for nudity. As her transition has continued, more and more images are being removed.
AI Chatbot “Boyfriend” Shutdown Leaves Users Mourning
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In this article at Rest of World, Viola Zhou examines the impact of the shutdown of Chinese AI voice startup Timedomain’s four-month-old “Him” chatbot, which called subscribers every day with personal messages from a customized voice, acting like a long-distance boyfriend.
The company said that the few thousand daily active users the service attracted could not make it a sustainable business; the decision has left those users bereft.
DIARY
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November 19-22, 2024
Wuzhen, Tongxiang, China, and online
The World Internet Conference (WIC) was established as an international organization on July 12, 2022, headquartered in Beijing, China. It was jointly initiated by Global System for Mobile Communication Association (GSMA), National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team/Coordination Center of China (CNCERT), China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), Alibaba Group, Tencent, and Zhijiang Lab.
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November 20-21, 2024
Lusaka, Zambia
Mozilla Festival is where art, technology, and social impact combine, creating a global gathering unlike any other. Themes for 2024 include bias, transparency, and the stewardship of data to build trustworthy AI.
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December 15-19, 2024 and online
Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
The 19th IGF, “Building Our Multistakeholder Digital Future”, will focus on four main themes: harnessing innovation and balancing risks in the digital space; enhancing the digital contribution to peace, development, and sustainability; advancing human rights and inclusion in the digital age; and improving digital governance for the Internet We Want.
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December 27-30, 2024
Hamburg, Germany
The 38th Chaos Communication Congress (38C3) is Europe’s largest hacker gathering, featuring lectures, workshops, and other events relating to security, privacy, freedom of expression, and cryptography.
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January 10-12, 2025
Washington, DC, US
ShmooCon is an annual east coast hacker convention hell-bent on offering three days of an interesting atmosphere for demonstrating technology exploitation, inventive software and hardware solutions, and open discussions of critical infosecurity issues. The first day is a single track of speed talks called One Track Mind. The next two days bring three tracks: Build It, Belay It, and Bring It On.
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February 1-2, 2025
Brussels, Belgium
FOSDEM is a free event for software developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate. Every year, thousands of developers of free and open source software from all over the world gather at the event in Brussels. You don’t need to register. Just turn up and join in!
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February 4-5, 2025
London, UK
The third annual State of Open Con will focus on Open Technology including open source software, open hardware, open data, open innovation, open standards, and the value that the open community brings to the UK and its digital economy. Alongside a diverse range of topics, the event promises to include a diverse range of speakers and participants.
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February 11, 2025
Washington, DC, US
Annually attracting over 600 attendees, the State of the Net Conference provides unparalleled opportunities to network and engage on key policy issues. It is also the only Internet policy conference with over 50 percent of Congressional staff and government policymakers in attendance, making it the perfect setting to explore important, emerging trends.
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February 24-27, 2025
Taipei, Taiwan and online
Each edition of RightsCon convenes business leaders, policy makers, general counsels, government representatives, technologists, academics, journalists, and human rights advocates from around the world to tackle pressing issues at the intersection of human rights and technology. RightsCon is where the global community comes together to build strategies and drive forward change toward a more free, open, and connected world.
Cambridge Disinformation Summit
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April 23-24, 2025
Cambridge, UK
The 2025 Cambridge Disinformation Summit is designed to convene global thought leaders to discuss research regarding the efficacy of potential interventions to mitigate the harms from disinformation.
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May 29-30, 2025
Los Angeles, California, US
PLSC started in 2008 to bring privacy law scholars and practitioners from around the world together to discuss current issues in information privacy law and policy. The conference is, first and foremost, a paper workshop. Authors, commentators, and participants all work together to discuss ideas contained in the drafts. PLSC is conducted under the Chatham House Rule.
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May 12-14, 2025
Strasbourg, France
EuroDIG is a platform for discussion and the exchange of ideas on emerging issues and challenges concerning the Internet. All stakeholders are invited to shape the agenda jointly and take part in the discussion. The inclusive and continuous dialogue, which culminates in an annual event, has taken place in a different European country every year since its inception in 2008. The resulting “Messages” are forwarded to policy makers and fed into the annual global UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF).
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May 26-28, 2025
Berlin, Germany
The motto for the 2025 festival for digital society is “Generation XYZ”. The program will once again bring the most important topics relating to the Internet and its communities, and the opportunities and challenges that lie in the digitalization of society to the stages.
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June 19-21, 2025
Boston, MA, USA
State of the Map US is the largest gathering of OpenStreetMap community members from across the country. In 2025 we will spotlight the successes and challenges of mobility mapping with the theme “Charting the Course”. The event will connect mappers, businesses, academics, government agencies, and nonprofits, who all collaborate around the free and editable map of the world.
Workshop on the Economics of Infosecurity
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June 24-25, 2025
Tokyo, Japan
For more than 20 years, WEIS has been the leading forum for interdisciplinary scholarship on information security and privacy, combining expertise from the fields of economics, social science, business, law, policy, and computer science.
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July 8-11, 2025
Geneva, Switzerland
Organized by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in partnership with 40 UN sister agencies and co-convened with the government of Switzerland, the AI for Good Global Summit is the leading UN event on AI. It brings together top names in AI with a high-level lineup of global decision makers. Our goal is to identify practical applications of AI, accelerate progress towards the UN SDGs and scale solutions for global impact.
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July 21-23, 2025
San Francisco, CA, USA
TrustCon is the global conference dedicated to trust and safety professionals who are responsible for the challenging work of keeping our platforms and communities safe. This conference will create an enduring and supportive community; offer workshops and presentations focused on the practice of trust and safety; and explore successes, lessons learned, and the future of the field. Attendees have the opportunity to collaborate, hear from trust and safety thought leaders, and connect with peers from all over the world.
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July 31-August 3, 2025
Portland, OR, USA
Software Freedom Conservancy hosts Free and Open Source Software Yearly to focus on the creation and impact of free and open source software. The event includes community-led tracks with talks and workshops over four days. Previous topics have included community building, education, development and legal and licensing issues. We will use free software to run our conference and reduce the amount of proprietary software that is treated as default.
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August 7-9, 2025
New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Since 2006, Netroots Nation has hosted the largest annual conference for progressives, drawing thousands of attendees from around the country and beyond.
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August 06-09, 2025
Nairobi, Kenya, and online
Wikimania is the annual celebration of all the free knowledge projects hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation with four days of conferences, discussions, meetups, training, and workshops. Hundreds of volunteers and Free Knowledge leaders from around the world gather to discuss issues, report on new projects and approaches, and exchange ideas.
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August 7-10, 2025
Las Vegas, Nevada, US
Def Con is one of the world’s largest hacker conventions.
