a Quinta 's weblog : un Blog di Stefano Quintarelli

Twitter's Mobile Ad Shop Using Verizon's ID to Track Users - ProPublica

Twitter's mobile advertising arm enables its clients to use a hidden, undeletable tracking number created by Verizon to track user behavior on smartphones and tablets.

Wired and Forbes reported earlier this week that the two largest cellphone carriers in the United States, Verizon and AT&T, are adding the tracking number to their subscribers' Internet activity, even when users opt out.

The data can be used by any site – even those with no relationship to the telecoms -- to build a dossier about a person's behavior on mobile devices – including which apps they use, what sites they visit and for how long.

MoPub, acquired by Twitter in 2013, bills itself as the "world's largest mobile ad exchange." It uses Verizon's tag to track and target cellphone users for ads, according to instructions for software developers posted on its website.

Twitter declined to comment.

via www.propublica.org

L'erba del vicino: nelle filippine una proposta di legge per rendere obbligatoria la registrazione delle SIM (come da noi)

AN ACT REQUIRING THE REGISTRATION OF THE PRE-PAID SIM CARD USERS AND MOBILE PHONE UNITS AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES

Principal Author: BIAZON, RODOLFO G.

Status: Under study by the Technical Working Group(TWG) on 2013-11-28

via www.congress.gov.ph

ah. ecco...

(errata corrige (avevo scritto USA, vedi a leggere le cose su small screen,, e' pi' facile sbagliare. mi scuso..)

L'erba del vicino: Verizon dichiara di non voler fare prioritizzazione a pagamento di internet

(Reuters) - Verizon Communications Inc on Wednesday reasserted that it was not planning to strike any Internet "fast lane" deals that would help some websites load faster than others, in a letter to a top U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee lawmaker.

The committee's chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, last week wrote to top U.S. Internet service providers (ISPs) urging them to formally commit to no so-called "paid prioritization" deals in which content companies could pay ISPs to ensure smooth and fast delivery of their traffic.

Verizon on Wednesday wrote back, calling paid prioritization a "phantasm."

"As we have said before, and affirm again here, Verizon has no plans to engage in paid prioritization of Internet traffic," Verizon's general counsel Randal Milch said in the letter.

via www.reuters.com

L'erba del vicino: l'illimitato limitato di AT&T

The Federal Trade Commission has sued AT&T for promising unlimited data to wireless customers and then throttling their speeds by as much as 90 percent, the FTC announced Tuesday.

via arstechnica.com

lavoro per Karim...
;-)

L'erba del vicino: Verizon fa l'editore, basta non parlare di Net Neutrality

Verizon is getting into the news business. What could go wrong?

The most-valuable, second-richest telecommunications company in the world is bankrolling a technology news site called SugarString.com. The publication, which is now hiring its first full-time editors and reporters, is meant to rival major tech websites like Wired and the Verge while bringing in a potentially giant mainstream audience to beat those competitors at their own game.

There’s just one catch: In exchange for the major corporate backing, tech reporters at SugarString are expressly forbidden from writing about American spying or net neutrality around the world, two of the biggest issues in tech and politics today.

via www.dailydot.com

L'erba del vicino: in Germania boom di VC (e questa volta è davvero più verde)

Germany became the most favored destination in Europe for equity financing during the third quarter of 2014, generating €1.2 billion ($1.5 billion) in deals, according to new data by Dow Jones VentureSource.

The country took in 53% of all investment into European VC-backed companies for the quarter, a new record, beating the previous high of €913 million in 2000.

via blogs.wsj.com

Un pezzettino di soluzione per la SLA

 

pagine 324-331 di Neuron (Download Smith B TUBA4A Neuron 2014 )

The results revealed an excess of patient variants within TUBA4A, the gene encoding the Tubulin, Alpha 4A protein. Analysis of a further 272 FALS cases and 5,510 internal controls confirmed the overrepresentation as statistically significant and replicable. Functional analyses revealed that TUBA4A mutants destabilize the microtubule network, diminishing its repolymerization capability.
These results further emphasize the role of cytoskeletal defects in ALS and demonstrate the power of gene-based rare variant analyses in situations where causal genes cannot be identified through traditional segregation analysis.

questa ricerca, in parte anche italiana, è un passo nella direzione di soluzione per la SLA.

almeno in USA una parte delle secchiate serviranno a finanziare anche questi laboratori.

non così delle italiche secchiate per italici laboratori...

L'erba del vicino: Verizon traccia il browsing degli utenti

Verizon Wireless, the nation's largest wireless carrier, is now also a real-time data broker. According to a security researcher at Stanford, Big Red has been adding a unique identifier to web traffic. The purpose of the identifier is advertisement targeting, which is bad enough. But the design of the system also functions as a 'supercookie' for any website that a subscriber visits. "Any website can easily track a user, regardless of cookie blocking and other privacy protections. No relationship with Verizon is required. ...while Verizon offers privacy settings, they don’t prevent sending the X-UIDH header. All they do, seemingly, is prevent Verizon from selling information about a user."

via beta.slashdot.org

At Austin airport, Wi-Fi predicts how long the security line will be | ITworld

Austin-Bergstrom International Airport got the nation's first airport Wi-Fi network in 2000, according to Boingo, which has run the airport's Wi-Fi since 2008. Now it's become one of the first airports to implement Passpoint, the standard that lets users of some devices get on networks and roam between them without entering a username and password.

Travelers don't even need to get on the network to take advantage of the security-wait warning system. A forecast for how long each line will take appears on screens right outside the security checkpoint. And any traveler who goes through security with a device that has Wi-Fi or Bluetooth turned on also helps to make the system work, according to Boingo CTO Derek Peterson. Boingo has launched the wait-sensing technology at three airports, all in trial mode, and Austin's is the first facility where it's displaying the information.

Here's how the system works: Wi-Fi devices with standard settings turned on constantly send out signals looking for nearby Wi-Fi devices and access points. Access points near the security checkpoints detect those signals and the unique MAC (media access control) addresses associated with them. Using that data, the system determines when that device entered the area of the queue and when it reached the other end of the checkpoint, after the owner finished with security.

via www.itworld.com

The Sharing Economy’s ‘First Strike’: Uber Drivers Turn Off the App - Working In These Times

Silicon Valley types often wax lyrical about the way that the app-based “sharing economy” disrupts existing business models and create new forms of social relations. When tech magnates extol “disruption,” of course, they likely aren’t talking about the sort caused by labor actions.

But on October 22, tech-giant Uber got a taste of its own disruptive medicine when drivers in at least five cities who work on the ridesharing platform turned off their apps and stopped picking up passengers, in protest of what they say are unjust working conditions and a dwindling share in the company’s profits. Some drivers are calling this action the first strike in the “sharing economy,” a sector known for its aversion to labor organizing.

A small crowd of Uber drivers and labor activists rallied outside the company’s offices in Santa Monica, California, at noon today, carrying signs reading “Uber: 15 Hour Days and Poverty Wages” and “Stop the War on Workers.” Drivers in San Francisco held a concurrent rally, while groups in New York, Chicago and London pledged to turn off their phones for three hours in what organizers are calling a “global day of protest” against Uber.

via inthesetimes.com