Other News from Participating Centers

RFCs We Love meetup

In collaboration with India Internet Engineering Society (IIESoc), CIS hosted the a 'RFCs We Love' meetup, where we discussed some IETF specifications and standards. The event was held on January 19 at the CIS office, Bangalore.

The theme of the meetup was data centres and service providers. The agenda was:

MediaNama roundtables on intermediary liability rules

MediaNama hosted one policy round-table on Intermediary Liability protections in Bangalore and another round-table in New Delhi, to discuss inputs sought by MEITY on the amendments to Safe Harbor for platforms (payments services, content services, ISPs, etc.) in India. Centre for Internet & Society is a community partner for the event.

Dissent on Aadhaar: New book highlights limitations of ID project, legal and tech opposition to it

In 2010, a year after the UIDAI was constituted, three of its functionaries visited internationally-renowned developmental economist Professor Reetika Khera.
The article by Partha P Chakrabartty was published in First Post on February 2, 2019.

Google Gives Wikimedia Millions—Plus Machine Learning Tools

Google is pouring an additional $3.1 million into Wikipedia, bringing its total contribution to the free encyclopedia over the past decade to more than $7.5 million, the company announced at the World Economic Forum Tuesday.
The article was published by WIRED on January 22, 2019.

Better Jobs and Better Future: What cooperatives can do for young people?

The following article is reposted from CECOP-CICOPA Europe.

CECOP-CICOPA Europe has decided to give a voice directly to young people and those working with them. Here is the result! Three videos illustrating employment and entrepreneurial opportunities that cooperatives in industry and services provide to young people across EU.

New movies lose out due to piracy

Piracy continues to be a huge concern among filmmakers but it can also be a marketing strategy for small-budget films.
The article by Surupasree Sarmmah was published in Deccan Herald on January 23, 2019. Akriti Bopanna was quoted.

Submitted Your Biometrics for Aadhaar? Here’s How You Can Lock/Unlock That Data

Did you know that UIDAI provides a facility that allows users to lock/unlock their Aadhaar biometric data online?
The blog post by Vidya Raja was published in the Better India on January 24, 2019. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

Open standards can disrupt Facebook’s messaging monopoly

Facebook made the news last week when The New York Times’ Mike Isaac reported that CEO Mark Zuckerberg intended to integrate the company’s three messaging platforms: WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram.
The blog post by Abhimanyu Ghoshal was published in The Next Web on January 30, 2019. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

DSCI's Bangalore chapter meet

On January 29, 2019, Karan Saini and Gurshabad Grover participated in the Bangalore chapter meet organized by Data Security Council of India in Bangalore.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/dscis-bangalore-chapter-meet

New paper: The dynamics of hate speech and counter speech in the social media

The dynamics of hate speech and counter speech in the social media

Hochleistungsrechnen an HHU gefördert

Das High-Performance Computing ist eine Schlüsseltechnologie und ein Standortfaktor für wissenschaftliche Forschung aus allen Fakultäten. In Nordrhein-Westfalen gibt es hierzu bereits eine gut ausgebaute Infrastruktur und große wissenschaftliche und technische Expertise, so etwa das Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) am Forschungszentrum Jülich, eines der drei leistungsfähigsten Höchstleistungszentren Deutschlands. Auch die HHU ist – in einem kleineren Maßstab – mit seinem HPC-Rechnercluster „HILBERT“ am Zentrum für Informations- und Medientechnik (ZIM) gut aufgestellt.

Conmen seed fake phone numbers in Google to trap people looking for customer care details

Googling for anything might seem like a good idea, but searching for contacts of businesses and customer care numbers is landing people in the hands of conmen.
The article by Tushar Kaushik was published in Economic Times on January 30, 2019.

India’s largest bank SBI leaked account data on millions of customers

India’s largest bank has secured an unprotected server that allowed anyone to access financial information on millions of its customers, like bank balances and recent transactions.
The blog post by Zack Whittaker was published Tech Crunch on January 30, 2019. Karan Saini was quoted.

Amazon and Walmart are about to take a big hit in India

India is the world’s biggest emerging digital economy, and Silicon Valley’s top companies have invested huge sums to cash in on it. Now new regulations are threatening their business.
The blog post was published in Q13 Fox on January 31, 2019. Gurshabad Grover was quoted.

Community Network Champions Take a Rural Dip in India

By Digital Empowerment Foundation
In the last 25 years, half the world has been connected to the Internet and the almost infinite opportunities it has to offer. Most of these, among the 3.5 billion connected individuals of the world, are people who are largely economically empowered, literate, and reside in urban or accessible areas. However, there is also half the world that is yet to get online and access what the Internet has to offer them.

Promotionsfeier: Beste Dissertation zu Quantencomputern ausgezeichnet

Dr. Stephan Plugge interessiert sich für besonders exotische Materialien – sogenannte topologische Quantenmaterialien – und wie man diese nutzen kann. Er arbeitet damit in einem aktuellen Feld der Physik, in dem im Jahr 2016 auch der Physiknobelpreis vergeben wurde. Diese exotischen Materialien sind vielversprechende Kandidaten für das ebenfalls stark beforschte Feld der Quanteninformationsverarbeitung, wozu unter anderem auch die Entwicklung von Quantencomputern gehört.

FGV ocupa 6º lugar no ranking global de melhores think tanks

Fundação sobe uma posição no rankingA Fundação Getulio Vargas é o 6º melhor think tank do mundo, de acordo com o 2018 Global Go To Think Tanks Index, divulgado hoje, 31 de janeiro, pela Universidade da Pensilvânia. A FGV, pelo terceiro ano consecutivo, é eleita o think tank melhor administrado do planeta e completou uma década na primeira colocação entre seus pares na América Latina.

Ideological Tensions and Affinities Between Crypto-Libertarian and Crypto-Commonist Visions

Michel Bauwens: At the P2P Foundation, we do not favour technological determinism (technology determines societal outcomes), nor the ‘technology is neutral, it depends what you do with it’, but rather, we believe that technological infrastructures are in fact socio-technical systems, whose design and deployment, and potentially subversive use, are the reflection of the values and material interests of the social groups and individuals involved. Our most famous quadrant outines four such competing systems, which are all in phase of deployment today.

Warming up to csv,conf.v4

On May 8 and 9 2019, the fourth version of csv,conf is set to take place at Eliot Center in Portland, Oregon, United States. csv,conf is a community conference bringing together diverse groups to discuss data topics, and features stories about data sharing and data analysis from science, journalism, government, and open source. Over two days, attendees will have the opportunity to hear about ongoing work, share skills, exchange ideas (and stickers!) and kickstart collaborations.

Call for contributions: International conference “Social Solidarity Economy & the Commons: Contributions to the Deepening of Democracy”

International
Conference: “Social Solidarity Economy and the Commons: Contributions to the Deepening
of Democracy”

Venue: Instituto
Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Lisbon, Portugal

Date: 6 – 8th November 2019

Organiser: Centre for International Studies
(CEI-IUL)