Dell’impatto umano della crisi del debito ha parlato oggi pomeriggio Chiara Mariotti, in servizio presso l’Alto commissariato per i diritti umani delle Nazioni Unite, durante il convegno sul messaggio del Papa per la Giornata mondiale della pace, in …
Play2000, la piattaforma streaming di Tv2000 e inBlu2000, sabato 11 gennaio dalle ore 10, trasmette in diretta l’apertura ufficiale dell’VIII Centenario della composizione del Cantico delle Creature di San Francesco (1225/2025) presso il Santuario Sa…
“Il Giubileo della speranza è un invito urgente a ripartire”. Lo ha detto oggi pomeriggio a Roma don Antonio De Rosa, di Caritas italiana, durante il convegno organizzato alla Pontificia Università Lateranense intitolato “Rimetti a noi i nostri debit…
“Sadly, we begin this year as the world finds itself rent by numerous conflicts, large and small, more or less known, but also by the resumption of heinous acts of terror, such as those that recently occurred in Magdeburg in Germany and in New Orlean…
@Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁) L'aspetto interessante di questa cyber minaccia è che FireScam per Android utilizza come "cavallo di Troia" una finta applicazione Telegram che, come prima azione, ruba le credenziali della piattaforma d'instant messaging dell'utente.
@Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁) Un annuncio criminale parla dell'esposizione online di 5,5 milioni di dati di clienti dalla struttura Infocert. L'origine potrebbe essere una vulnerabilità di un sistema di assistenza mediante ticketing online L'articolo
Bluesky rumoured to be valued at 700M USD, adds Trending Topics, Graze talks about how to monetise custom feeds, and a persistent bot problem on Bluesky.
The year has only just started, and already the owners of the current Big Tech social networks have made it abundantly clear why open social networks matter. While it was never really true that networks, such as Twitter, were neutral platforms, we could at least collectively agree to that polite fiction. But in 2025, social networks are political, and have political alignments. Over the holidays I’ve taken some time away from all of my socials, and it’s been nice to have some space for reflection. Two articles came out this week that touch on some of my thoughts. The first is Henry Farrell’s ‘We’re getting the social media crisis wrong’, in which Farrell says: “The fundamental problem, as I see it, is not that social media misinforms individuals about what is true or untrue but that it creates publics with malformed collective understandings.” He takes the perspective of information and how it shapes beliefs, but his core observation is powerful and worth repeating. In effect, social media is a tool of collective sense-making. We have let a few tech billionaires control our tools that we globally use to collectively make sense of the world, and it turns out that has some negative consequences, to put it mildly.
This is why I care about social networks, because they are one of the main tools that we use in 2025 to come to a collective understanding of how the world works. I think that it is bad that these extraordinary powerful tools are in the hands of a few fascist billionaires, allowing them unprecedented control over how society sees and understands the world. The value of open social networks is in creating new forms of governance for our collective sense making tools.
Bluesky Won’t Save Us by Katharina Alejandra Cross touches on more of the risks that having access to collective sense making tools bring, as well as the issues that Bluesky has to truly be a different place. I agree with all the major points here: Being on X is a severe risk for many reasons, but a major one is that it warps your perspective of collective thought, shaped by a fascist billionaire. Bluesky has struggled to adapt to what it wants to be exactly, and while it is clearly a much better place than X, it has not yet provided a good answer to the tension between building a safe (centralised) platform and a decentralised open protocol. Cross writes: “Our best hope, then, is that Bluesky acts as a halfway house—most especially for politicians, journalists, academics, influencers, and other people who clearly spend way too much time online to their detriment.” I also hope that Bluesky acts as a halfway house, although maybe in a slightly different way than Cross is talking about here. I think we need to invent new types of social networks that better serve their role as collective tools for sense-making. Bluesky is a good step in the right direction, but I think we can do more than ‘decentralised microblogging’. ATProto can provide a powerful substrate for people to experiment on with new forms of social networking, and I’m excited to see what 2025 will bring for that.
The News
Business Insider reports that Bluesky is now valued at 700 million USD, and that they are close to finishing another funding round, this time led by Bain Capital Ventures. It is not known how much money Bluesky would raise in this new round. The previous funding round, the series A, was led by Blockchain Capital for 15 million, just barely 3 months ago. The series A did not provide a valuation for Bluesky. The series A also was just before the massive inflow of new users following the results of the US election, and Bluesky has doubled its user base in the 3 months since, from 13 million to 26 million. The new inflow of users also led to significant extra costs for Bluesky, which quadrupled its moderation team from 25 to 100 people, as well as the additional technical costs that comes with the growing user base. Bluesky got critiqued during the previous funding round for Blockchain Capital’s ties with cryptocurrency. In Blockchain Capital’s investment thesis they describe investing in a ‘vision of social infrastructure’ more than investing into a specific product. Crypto-themed VC funds tend to be more open to investing into lower-level internet infrastructure. Bain Capital Ventures seems to be a more generic VC fund: it does not have the connections to crypto that a significant part of the Bluesky user base finds noxious, but does not have a clear indication of a willingness to invest in social infrastructure over products either.
Bluesky has recently added Trending Topics as a new feature to their app. When you hit search on the app, you’ll now see a list of the most talked about topics. The feature is also visible in the Discover feed. Trending Topics has been a long-requested feature, and especially the Brazilian community was asking for it a lot during their time on Bluesky in fall 2024. The technological underpinning of how Trending Topics work on Bluesky is noteworthy: every trending topic is a custom feed. Every time a new topic is trending, a new custom feed gets created, giving the team better control over the topic. It also allows for new possibilities that have not yet been explored, such as archiving and documenting feeds after the trend is over, or other options that have not yet been explored. One of the more interesting trends on Bluesky is the emergence of (some) custom feeds as digital places, with Blacksky as the most notable example. I am interested in seeing how Trending Topics also being custom feeds interacts with that dynamic.
Graze is a tool for people to create their own custom feeds on ATProto. It has an extensive feature set allowing for a great amount of customisability, complex logic and the ability to moderate content that appears in a feed. Graze recently published their plans for monetisation. Graze says that the project is experiencing explosive growth, and is escalating quickly from a small gamble, with the tool now serving over 170k unique people every day. Graze expects that they can host 90-95% of custom feeds for free, and view it as a priority to keep making feeds as accessible as possible. Operating the infrastructure for custom feeds is not free however, and Graze plans to make money as follows: they will allow feed operators to run sponsored posts in their Graze feeds, at a cost specified by the feed operator. Feed operators are free to run their own sponsored content or find their own sponsors. If feed operators decide to monetise their custom feed, Graze will take a cut of the transaction. Graze has not specified yet how that transaction cost will be determined.
Bluesky has seen a large increase in the number of bot and spam accounts in recent weeks. There are roughly three groups of bots active: porn and romance scams, inauthentic accounts posing as Democratic defenders, content farms, and Russian disinformationnetworks. The Bluesky team has finally managed to crack down on the current spam wave. As spam is an eternal cat-and-mouse game between spammers and moderation, the reprieve is likely temporarily however. The spam has significant impact on how community moderation functions, as the tools that are available are not up to the task of handling such a massive inflow of reports. More automod functions are needed for community labeling projects to deal with the spam.
The Analysis
There are multiple connections between these four different news stories. Early in 2024, Bluesky CEO Jay Graber gave an interview with The Verge, in which she talked about potential ways for Bluesky to make money. She described the idea of marketplaces that Bluesky could operate, such as marketplaces for algorithms. While she did not go into much detail on this, the basic idea seemed to be that people could create valuable systems (algorithms, moderation layers, custom feeds) and sell access to those systems to other people. Bluesky could then potentially operate these marketplaces, take a cut of every transaction as payment for providing the infrastructure, and make money this way. What we are seeing now with Graze is some version of this idea: Graze provides a marketplace for custom feed operators to put sponsored content in their feed, and Graze takes a cut of every transaction as payment for operating the infrastructure. It shows the interesting challenge for Bluesky PBC that is ahead: in an open system it is not actually guaranteed to be the first one to build marketplaces and become the default/largest operator of such a marketplace. If the potential is high enough, other organisations might just get there first.
There has been a lot of conversation about whether or not Bluesky will have advertisement in the future. The large majority of these conversations, and even remarks by Bluesky CEO Graber herself, imply a direct connection between people seeing advertisement when they open the Bluesky app, and the actions of Bluesky PBC. People assume that if they were to see ads on Bluesky, that is because Bluesky PBC put those ads there. The plans by Graze however show that this assumption is not always correct. In the near future, any ads people will see on the Bluesky app will likely be outside of the control of Bluesky PBC. Instead, the trend is towards ads being connected to the community/place/feed that shows the advertisement. I think this has a lot of implications for how we conceptualise advertisements on social networks that are hard to fully grasp right now, but certainly something I’m keeping an eye on.
One factor that has contributed to the bot spam in recent weeks is the inflow of a specific type of accounts, often called resistlibs in a derogatory manner. This is a group of people who identify as Democrat, and want to resist the Trump presidency by being active on social media. A defining characteristic is that they tend to engage in follow-back campaigns such as the ‘NoDemocratUnder1k‘ hashtag, where they follow all accounts that have that hashtag. Using Starter Packs this group can very quickly build up accounts that are followed and follow tens of thousands of people. This behaviour is easily hijacked by bad actors however, it is easy for spam networks to make accounts that look similar to resistlibs. Following Starter Packs, participating in follow-back culture and using the right hashtags makes it particularly easy for spam networks or other bad actors to build up large accounts on Bluesky. This has contributed to the influx of spam and bots on Bluesky recently, although it is far from the only factor.
Editors note: I’m experimenting with alternating the weekly newsletters with prioritising Bluesky and prioritising ATProto. I’ve found that especially ATProto tech needs more context. If you are an ATProto dev, here are some interesting tech to check out. And if you are not, next week I’ll give some more context on what is happening in the wider ATmosphere
Recipes.blue is a recipe manager build on ATProto.
Plonk.li is a pastebin clone that stores your pastes in your PDS, and shows a timeline of all pastes.
Atpaste is another pastebin clone, that ties in with ATFile by using the same lexicon.
Uksnowmap uses hashtags to display an interactive map of the UK to display where it is showing. The tool has been around for a while, and has now fully transitioned from Twitter to Bluesky.
BlueskyTimeline allows you to embed a Bluesky timeline on your site.
That’s all for this week, thanks for reading! You can subscribe to my newsletter to receive the weekly updates directly in your inbox below, and follow this blog @fediversereport.com and my personal account @laurenshof.online.
@Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁) La costellazione di satelliti in orbita bassa gestita da SpaceX rappresenta un sistema innovativo, ma il confronto con altre tecnologie terrestri e marittime richiede un'analisi approfondita in termini di sicurezza, resilienza e
@Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁) L’uso in azienda dell’intelligenza artificiale al di fuori di processi autorizzati espone le organizzazioni a rischi di sicurezza: ecco come limitare i pericoli del fenomeno shadow AI L'articolo Shadow AI, i rischi per le aziende: perché serve una strategia proviene da Cyber Security
@Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁) La costellazione di satelliti in orbita bassa gestita da SpaceX rappresenta un sistema innovativo, ma il confronto con altre tecnologie terrestri e marittime richiede un'analisi approfondita in termini di sicurezza, resilienza e
@Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁) La Corte UE dei diritti dell'uomo sulla protezione dei dati personali fa il punto dopo il caso dell'accesso abusivo al sistema informatico fiscale italiano, noto come "Serpico", che ha innescato l'iter giudiziario
@Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁) Diverse metodologie aiutano a garantire la sicurezza dell'IA. Ecco un approccio olistico alla valutazione dei LLM applicati ai sistemi critici che va oltre la precisione L'articolo Le proprietà dei LLM applicati ai sistemi
Le persone che supervisionano la sicurezza del browser Chrome di Google proibiscono esplicitamente agli sviluppatori di estensioni di terze parti di provare a manipolare il modo in cui le estensioni del browser che inviano vengono presentate nel Chrome Web Store . La politica richiama specificamente le tecniche di manipolazione della ricerca come l'elencazione di più estensioni che forniscono la stessa esperienza o l'aggiunta di parole chiave vagamente correlate o non correlate alle descrizioni delle estensioni.
Mercoledì, il ricercatore di sicurezza e privacy Wladimir Palant ha rivelato che gli sviluppatori stanno palesemente violando quei termini in centinaia di estensioni attualmente disponibili per il download da Google. Di conseguenza, le ricerche di un termine o di termini specifici possono restituire estensioni non correlate, imitazioni di qualità inferiore o svolgere attività abusive come la monetizzazione occulta delle ricerche web, cosa che Google proibisce espressamente.
@Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁) Vediamo nel dettaglio cosa è stato fatto e cosa resta da fare per la crescita delle competenze nazionali di cyber security implementate dall'ACN L'articolo Sviluppo delle capacità cyber dell’Italia. A che punto siamo proviene da Cyber Security 360.
@Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁) Come ogni anno, la Polizia Postale del dipartimento sulla sicurezza cibernetica ha diffuso il report annuale che fotografa la lotta al cybercrime. Uno spaccato del 2024 a tratti preoccupante. Eccone i dati che ci
@Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁) L'importanza di Privacy Badger consiste nell'affrontare una delle sfide più pressanti dell'era digitale: il tracciamento pervasivo delle attività online. Un tracciamento che non solo lede la privacy, ma può anche portare a discriminazioni, manipolazione
@Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁) Una nuova campagna malevola del malware Vidar sta prendendo di mira gli utenti italiani sfruttando caselle PEC compromesse e nuove tecniche di offuscamento per bypassare i sistemi di controllo. Ecco tutti i dettagli e le raccomandazioni per mitigare il rischio
@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo Il movimento sciita e i suoi alleati, sotto pressione in Libano e a causa degli sconvolgimenti regionali, hanno dovuto accettare l'elezione a capo dello Stato del comandante delle forze armate sostenuto dagli Usa L'articolo LIBANO. Joseph Aoun presidente, anche con i
Da sola, Lockheed Martin fattura poco meno dell’intera industria europea della Difesa. Questo è quanto emerge da un report realizzato dagli analisti del Parlamento europeo. Che l’Europa sia indietro per quanto riguarda la Difesa non è un mistero,
Gli hacker stanno sfruttando attivamente la vulnerabilità CVE-2024-52875 scoperta in GFI KerioControl, un firewall per le piccole e medie imprese. Questa vulnerabilità critica CRLF Injection consente l‘esecuzione di codice remoto con un solo clic.
GFI KerioControl è una soluzione di sicurezza di rete tutto in uno che combina funzionalità firewall, VPN, gestione del traffico, antivirus e prevenzione delle intrusioni. La vulnerabilità, che colpisce le versioni 9.2.5-9.4.5, è dovuta alla gestione errata dei caratteri di avanzamento riga (LF) nel parametro “dest”, che apre la possibilità di manipolazione delle intestazioni e delle risposte HTTP.
Il 16 dicembre 2024, il ricercatore di sicurezza Egidio Romano (EgiX) ha pubblicato una descrizione dettagliata di del CVE-2024-52875. Ha mostrato come un problema inizialmente valutato come di basso livello potesse portare all’esecuzione di codice tramite risposte HTTP vulnerabili. Il JavaScript dannoso inserito nelle risposte può rubare cookie e token CSRF.
Utilizzando token di amministrazione rubati, gli aggressori possono scaricare file IMG dannosi contenenti script con diritti di root. Ciò consente di attivare la shell inversa tramite la funzionalità di aggiornamento di Kerio.
L’8 gennaio, la piattaforma di monitoraggio delle minacce Greynoise ha rilevato tentativi di sfruttamento di CVE-2024-52875 da quattro diversi indirizzi IP. Queste azioni sono considerate dannose e sono associate ad attacchi piuttosto che ad attività di ricerca.
Secondo Censys, online esistono 23.862 istanze ad accesso aperto di KerioControl, ma non si sa quante di esse siano vulnerabili.
GFI Software ha rilasciato la versione 9.4.5 Patch 1 per risolvere il problema. Si consiglia agli utenti di installare immediatamente la patch. Come misura temporanea, si consiglia di limitare l’accesso all’interfaccia web di gestione del firewall solo agli indirizzi IP attendibili, bloccare le pagine “/admin” e “/noauth” e ridurre i tempi di sessione per migliorare la sicurezza.
Nave Amerigo Vespucci, impegnata da luglio 2023 nel Tour Mondiale insieme al Villaggio Italia, l’esposizione internazionale Made in Italy che riunisce le "nazionali delle eccellenze italiane", voluta dal Ministro della Difesa, Guido Crosetto, e alla …
Il framework di riferimento per l'architettura EUDI (ARF) è basato sulla specifica eIDAS2 e il suo atto di attuazione è stato recentemente approvato dai rappresentanti degli stati membri dell'UE. La Commissione europea ne ha appena ratificato l'adozione. La motivazione alla base dell'EUDI è quella di raggiungere un'autonomia strategica per i nostri servizi pubblici e sociali, ma la sua realizzazione va nella direzione opposta, mettendo di fatto nelle mani dei produttori di sistemi operativi mobili i principali canali di interazione con le istituzioni che governano la nostra società.
The problems in the European Digital Identity (EUDI)
@jaromil's independent feedback on the dangers of the current #EUDI implementation. What it should be, and the issues it has regarding Fairness, Privacy, Security, Scalability, Obsolescence and Methodology.
EUDI as is today presents big problems and disregards criticism, warnings, and requests to review technical details, with results that harm the fairness of the system and the privacy of its participants, also limiting infrastructure security and scal…
Google's AI search feature is telling people searching for answers about using vibrating sex toys during pregnancy that they should consider it for counseling children, instead.
Googlex27;s AI search feature is telling people searching for answers about using vibrating sex toys during pregnancy that they should consider it for counseling children, instead.#Google #AI #aioverview
Google's AI search feature is telling people searching for answers about using vibrating sex toys during pregnancy that they should consider it for counseling children, instead.
Read our comprehensive review of IPVanish VPN. Discover its features, pricing, and more to determine if it meets your online security and privacy needs.#IPVanishVPN #ipvanishvpnreview #VPN
Oggi, a Roma, il Ministro Giuseppe Valditara è intervenuto presso l'Istituto Professionale per i Servizi per Enogastronomia ed Ospitalità Alberghiera Vincenzo Gioberti all’iniziativa “Olio extravergine di oliva, nuovi percorsi didattici negli Istitut…
Much has been written about the demise of physical media. Long considered the measure of technological progress in audiovisual and computing fields, the 2000s saw this metric seemingly rendered obsolete by the rise of online audiovisual and software distribution services. This has brought us to a period in time where the very idea of buying a new music album, a movie or a piece of software in a physical, or even online, retail store has become largely impossible amidst the rise of digital-only media.
Even so, not all is well in this digital-only paradise, as the problems with having no physical copy of the item which you purportedly purchased are becoming increasingly more evident. From increases in monthly service costs, to items being removed or altered without your consent, as well as concerns over privacy and an inability to resell or lend an album or game to a buddy, there are many reasons why having the performance or software on a piece of off-line, physical media is once again increasing in appeal.
Even if the demise of physical data storage was mostly a trick to extract monthly payments from one’s customer base, what are the chances of this process truly reverting, and to what kind of physical media formats exactly?
The End Of Ownership
The concept of having audiovisual performances on physical media which you can play at will within the confines of your own abode is relatively new, first brought to the masses by inventions such as the phonograph, starting with wax cylinders, followed by shellac and vinyl records. This brought everything from concerts to stage performances to the home, where the proud owner of this piece of physical media could play it back on its corresponding playback device. This set the trend that would persist until the dominance of CDs.
Similarly, movies would at first be just something that you’d watch in the cinema, then you could catch it on broadcast TV along with an increasing number of series. Owning a copy of your favorite series or movie became possible with VHS, Laserdisc and so on. When home computer systems became prevalent, the software for them was found in magazines, on tapes, diskettes, CDs, etc., with in-store displays using their box art to entice potential buyers.
Yet at all of this has effectively come to an end. LG recently announced that they’ll stop making new Blu-ray players, following the recent decision by Best Buy and other stores to quit selling Blu-rays and DVDs. Optical drives are now firmly considered a legacy feature on laptops and desktop systems, with only a subset of game consoles still featuring this feature and thus doubling as a Blu-ray player with compromises.
Unlike our parents and their grandparents, it looks like today’s generations will not leave behind a legacy of (physical) media that their children and grandchildren can peruse, often not even for books, as these are equally becoming tied into online subscription services. In this Digital Media Age, it seems that the best we can hope for is to temporarily lease an ethereal digital copy by the grace of media corporate overlords.
Digital Media Is Terrible
There are many reasons to mourn the death of physical media, with some pertinent ones laid out for DVDs and Blu-rays in this AV Club article by Cindy White:
Permanence: you purchase the copy and as long as you take good care of it, it’s yours to do with as you please.
Better quality: owing to the video compression of digital streaming services, you’ll get a worse audiovisual experience.
Portability: you can take the physical media with you, lend it to a friend, or even sell it.
Better for artists: the system of residuals with DVD/BD sales was much more fair to artists.
Extras: DVD and BD releases would come with extra content, like soundtracks, behind the scenes, interviews, and much more.
Some are beginning to feel uneasy in the face of this dawning realization that before long all our movies, series, books, games and software will be locked behind what are essentially leasing services on our (ad-sponsored) smart TVs, smart phones, smart books and smart computers/consoles in increasingly barren rooms.
Take for example this article by Amelia over at IGN on physical vs digital media and ownership and the lack thereof. An aspect raised in it is preservation in general, as a streaming platform could decide to put the proverbial torch to (part of) its library and that would be the end of that content, barring any Digital Restrictions Management (DRM)-busting copies. Even so, Amelia finds it hard to ignore the convenience of watching something on these streaming services.
The lack of visual quality is a view that Henry T. Casey over at CNN Underscored shares, with over at The National Faisal Salah and William Mullally advocating for starting that physical media collection. The permanence argument is prevalent here, while the latter article pointing out the hopeful signs of a revival of physical media by smaller (boutique) distributors, but this leaves much of mainstream content firmly digital-only, including recent games like Alan Wake 2 which only got a physical version after fans insisted.
Shallow Libraries
The convenience of flicking on the smart appliance and tuning out on-demand without having to go to a store is a tempting feature that physical media cannot really compete with, yet there’s an argument to be made that physical media sales complement streaming, not unlike how those same sales complemented broadcast TV and cinemas in the past. In fact, as a corollary one could state that digital streaming services have replaced broadcast TV, rather than physical media. This would make the latter collateral damage, whether intentional or not.
A strong advantage of physical media is also that it’s not limited to being sold by a single store, while digital (streaming) services have very shallow libraries that can make finding a specific piece of content or game a complete nightmare. So the conclusion that people seem to be increasingly coming to is that while digital media isn’t bad by itself, there is a lot of value in physical media that we’re now at risk of losing forever.
Yet if CDs and Blu-rays are dying a slow death today, and the next Microsoft and Sony game consoles may not have an optical drive option any more, is there any hope for a physical media revival?
It’s The Business Model
As alluded to already, digital media-as-a-service will not go away, as it has too many advantages. Especially in terms of low distribution costs, as the logistics of physical media can get rather convoluted. Where the real business case for physical media may be is in the added value. This is something which is observed with a platform like Bandcamp, which is an online music distribution platform via which artists can sell their music and merchandise, including CDs or vinyl records.
All of which points to that the physical formats of the future will likely remain CDs, Blu-rays and even vinyl records and cassette tapes as the most popular formats. Meanwhile for video games on PCs at least there are stores like Good Old Games, who recently launched their Preservation Program that seeks to keep older titles playable on modern systems. This in addition to allowing customers to download the installer for any game they purchase and put it on any kind of physical media which they desire, courtesy of their lack of DRM.
Yet the ticking timebomb under this revival of physical media may be that good players are becoming scarce. Cassette tapes and records increasingly are being played on the same cheap mechanisms, like the Tanashin clones, that are still being churned out by factories in China as Sony and others have abandoned the market. Now it seems that optical drives are facing the same race to the bottom, until one day the only physical media players and readers can be found used for exorbitant prices.
After all, what use is physical media if you have no way to play it?
Featured image: Front panel of a GPO Brooklyn with cassette player (Credit: VSchagow, Wikimedia)
Nobody likes reading the fine print, least of all when you’re just downloading some 3D model. While printing a copy for personal use this is rarely an issue, things can get a lot more complicated when you make and distribute a derived version of a particular model.
Case in the point the ever popular 3DBenchy model, which was intended to serve as a diagnostic aid by designer [Creative Tools]. Although folks have been spinning up their own versions of this benchmark print for years, such derivative works were technically forbidden by the original model’s license — a fact that the company is now starting to take seriously, with derivative models reportedly getting pulled from Printables.
The license for the 3DBenchy model is (and always has been) the Creative Commons BY-ND 4.0, which requires attribution and forbids distributing of derivative works. This means that legally any derived version of this popular model being distributed on Thingiverse, Printables, etc. is illegal, as already noted seven years ago by an observant user on Reddit. According to the message received by a Printables user, all derived 3DBenchy models will be removed from the site while the license is now (belatedly) being enforced.
Although it’s going to be a bit of an adjustment with this license enforcement, ultimately the idea of Creative Commons licenses was that they set clear rules for usage, which become meaningless if not observed.
Nel 2025 La Civiltà Cattolica compie 175 anni, consolidando il suo primato di rivista culturale più antica d’Italia, e per l'occasione si rinnova diventando mensile e presentando una nuova veste grafica.
Da oggi, il Flusso IoC del CERT-AGID supporta anche il formato per ClamAV, l’antivirusopen source ampiamente utilizzato in contesti accademici, istituzionali e aziendali. Questa nuova funzionalità è stata realizzata per soddisfare una valida proposta espressa dalla comunità dei sistemisti degli Atenei del GARR, che aveva evidenziato l’opportunità di aggiungere al flusso già disponibile un ulteriore formato personalizzabile e di facile utilizzo per aumentare il livello di protezione dei propri sistemi.
Il nuovo formato consente di utilizzare direttamente gli indicatori di compromissione (IoC) diramati dal CERT-AGID per individuare file sospetti nei sistemi protetti da ClamAV. La gestione delle firme è trasparente e altamente flessibile, come dettagliato nella documentazione ufficiale.
Le pubbliche amministrazioni già accreditate al Flusso IoC possono utilizzare subito il nuovo formato per ClamAV, semplicemente aggiungendo il parametro type=clamav all’URL ricevuto:
&type=clamav
Il servizio restituirà una lista testuale conforme al formato .hsb per ClamAV, omettendo la dimensione del file. Per questo motivo, viene utilizzato il carattere jolly *. Inoltre, per garantire la compatibilità con le versioni precedenti di ClamAV, è stato fissato un livello funzionale minimo pari a 73. Esempio di Flusso IoC formato ClamAV L'articolo CERT-AGID: Flusso IoC ora compatibile con ClamAV, la protezione open source si evolve! proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.
“Iniziamo questo anno mentre il mondo si trova lacerato da numerosi conflitti, piccoli e grandi, più o meno noti e anche dalla ripresa di esecrabili atti di terrore, come quelli recentemente avvenuti a Magdeburgo in Germania e a New Orleans negli Sta…
Under the guise of protecting free speech, an alarming alignment between government power and Big Tech’s corporate power is unfolding. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, while publicly claiming that they wish to protect free speech, are in fact aligning their corporate power with the political interests of the second Trump administration. Unsurprisingly, their claims have provoked alarm.
The politico-corporate bubble
What does it mean for global social media giants to be promoting “free speech” under Donald Trump? Are Meta and X now claiming that misinformation and disinformation are not a significant challenge; or that we should protect the speech of liars and frauds? The challenges of dealing with misconceptions and lies, especially when sponsored by state actors, are not at all trivial, and solutions are not easy to implement at scale.
At Meta, the appointment of Joel Kaplan, a Trump ally as their head of global affairs marks a significant shift in the company’s direction. Following this appointment, Zuckerberg announced changes at Meta in a video in which he addressed issues with the company’s approach to fact-checking and algorithmic moderation systems. Both of these issues warrant closer examination.
Furthermore, what content is promoted and why is just as important as what is removed, when we consider its impacts. All of the approaches suggested by Meta are top down and centralised;, as of today, we are forced to accept their rules if we want to engage with Meta’s products.
Subject to T&Cs
Secondly, Meta’s loosening of moderation rules are not a one way street to greater freedom of expression. Meta’s products serve a vast diversity of communities, and changes to limitations can be both positive and negative. There is a need to ensure civility between users, which is a legitimate and necessary aim for any online community, but is also incredibly hard to achieve when moderating at scale.
Meta’s content acceptability rules are designed to enable easy and swift decisions, but present arbtitrary hard lines (this not that) and are problematic as a result. For example, their restrictions on nudity and adult material have frequently caused problems, as have bans on “violent” material. However, changes designed to allow people to be more insulting or offensive could easly result in legitimising toxic behaviour. Many of the exclusions which have been removed look very likely to result in more hate speech, rather than more useful free speech.
This matters: for example, speech on Facebook denying the existence of the Rohingya as an ethnic group in Myanmar was a precursor to genocidal violence, and after being added to Meta’s exclusions, is now again permissable. Problems enforcing content rules at these extremes, especially in non-English language contexts are very serious, so presenting the problems of moderation as solely about over-enforcement while removing references to real world harms is not a good way to signal Meta’s direction of travel.
Decisions for change in moderation rules at scale need to be based on human rights principles alongside evidence of their likely impact, and should preferably interate slowly. Meta’s team needs to explain what evidence and human rights analysis lies behind their decision, and how they believe they will continue to ensure users’ safety. Making politically motivated announcements to present moderation changes has understandably undermined public confidence in their decision making.
Fact-checking to Community Notes
Thirdly, fact-checking panels—composed of experts appointed by centralized authorities—have their own limitations. These systems depend on trust in the appointing authority, raising the question: what happens if that authority abuses its power? And who oversees the fact-checkers – Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Community-driven solutions, such as the Community Notes feature offer a different approach but raise philosophical and ethical problem of the “tyranny of the majority”. In any case, while useful mitigations against misinformation, neither fact checkers nor community notes directly address the underlying reasons causing untrue and unreliable content to be created and spred. Some are about the platforms’ business models, and their desire to drive advertising engagement, through mechanisms such as recommendation algorithms, which tend to promote extreme content over more nuanced opinions.
Other reasons are about the society we live in today, and may be very hard to address – such as the desire to seek simple explanations, social alienation, to the failure of politics to produce a sense of fairness. High spending domestic or foreign actors deliberately attempt to manipulate these concerns. The problems generated by bad actors with deep pockets need more fundamental actions, which are the responsibility of governments to co-ordinate.
Zuckerberg, meanwhile, speaks of previous political pressures to censor content and a new political direction under the Trump administration. Yet his past compliance with such pressures and current alignment with the new presidency reveal a troubling pattern. Whereas Musk uses his platforms to impose his perspective, Zuckerberg appears to have aligned Meta (who own four of the most popular social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp) with the prevailing political climate in order to ensure that Meta is better able to maintain their dominance and model of surveillance capitalism.
Ending monopolies
The solution to these abuses of power lies in dismantling Big Tech’s monopolistic grip on the Internet. As we have arguedrepeatedly, this requires shifting power to social media’s users, through greater use of competition powers and enforcing data protection rights. The aim has to social media plurality – just as we aim for media plurality in traditional media.
Over the past year, users have increasingly abandoned platforms like X in favor of alternatives such as Mastodon, the Fediverse, and BlueSky. However, many users remain trapped in Big Tech’s “walled gardens” because their content, connections, and networks are deeply embedded within them. How often do we stay on Facebook or X simply because a specific relative, organisation, or journalist we follow remains active there? Writ large, these “network effects” make Big Tech heavily entrenched, for users, organisations and advertisers.
Competition
Political leaders concerned about misinformation and Big Tech’s abuses of power (and our privacy and personal data) should take concrete steps to promote fair competition online. Encouraging decentralised social media models, such as the Fediverse, where communities host their own content independent of any single corporate entity, could be a crucial step forward. Interoperability standards that allow seamless communication across platforms could further reduce Big Tech’s stranglehold. Other measures can be taken to allow alternative prioritisation and moderation engines, even within centralised systems, as envisaged by BlueSky.
Legislation
Likewise, greater enforcement of data protection law could begin to dismantle the unfair abuse of personal data, to engage in profitable but unlawful profiling of users, and to harvest their data to build Artificial Intelligence products that are further designed to cement Big Tech monopolies.
The alternative looks dire. Measures that concentrate on the symptoms of the social media mess – like the Online Safety Act – at best can only deal with the most problematic content. At worst, they result in safe online spaces closing down because they face inappropriate levels of compliance risks. With a resurgent Trump administration, even measures like the UK’s OSA and the European Digital Services Act will be under pressure through trade related threats made to the UK and EU about their approach to US corporations. The underlying agenda will be to promote a changed information environment, that favours Trump’s allies, whether in the US or Europe; this is only possible because social media’s power is concentrated and monopolistic.
Breaking these monopolies and fostering diverse, user-driven platforms is essential to ensuring a free and fair society.
We are pleased to invite you to the Pirate Parties International General Assembly, January 2025.
The meeting will take place on Saturday, January 11th, starting at 12:00 UTC. If needed we will also meet on Sunday, January 12th.
Several groups will meet in physical locations, including at the Berlin Pirate office at Pflugstraße 9, but the conference will be entirely online on JITSI: jitsi.pirati.cz/PPI-Board with a backup of BBB bbb.piratensommer.de/b/gre-cnw… and a final backup of Mumble.
There is no deadline for motions, so feel free to put forward any ideas and/or your candidates at any time. All proposals should be submitted on our Discourse Forum: ga.pp-international.net/c/2025…
There is no deadline for registering delegates and each PPI member may have up to 6. Please register your delegates by email: board@pp-international.net.
Because this is the start of the year assembly, there will also be elections of PPI Officers. The following positions in PPI will be up for election in January:
-1 Chairperson -5 Board members (4 for two years and 1 for 1 year, clarification may follow on the exact number and length of positions pending an onsite review of the statutes) -(No limit) Alternate board member -3 Lay auditors -6 Court of Arbitration members
Please submit your nominations for PPI officers on the Discourse forum.
Do not hesitate to reach out to the PPI board if you have any questions, suggestions or concerns. We look forward to meeting with you again!
We hope to see you there.
The following is the provisional agenda:
Jan. 11 2025
Time is in UTC
12:00: Delegates accreditation
13:00: Opening of the General Assembly
13:30: Formalities–Meeting chair, secretary, acceptance of agenda
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Learn how to automate a cold disaster recovery for Oracle HeatWave MySQL using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Full Stack Disaster Recovery (OCI Full Stack DR).
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