#01/02/2022

[violentdevotion]

[luckymoonly]

🤫 I've started posting the noodle fic. You can read it here.(chap 4/15)🍜

[aiiaiiiyo]

[aurelsabre]

random starter - @sendousha​ 

Archimedes Ward is not so bad on enjoying things out during the Winterfes as she was not too far at the Crystal Funhouse. She remembers his deeds a long ago but who knows, does he had friends with him or alone by himself? Narberal came by her own probably company with those she knew is better and he’s one of them.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you around. Are you here to venture the house itself?” Probably they would do for looking around the funhouse. 

[hakkyoken]

starter - @shurensama​ 

The singing coming from Calliope Theater took Nanao’s interest as she’d just stay there and here them sing asides from holidays are almost not a thing to be celebrated at Soul Society than the World of Living. 

There is something familiar regarding reiatsu-related things and he seemed came from somewhere else which is ‘Hell’ in their world.

“What do you think of their singing?” She wondered about his reaction if he likes it or not.

[covering-peinture-noir-mat]

covering vélo route, covering wrangler, covering yamaha r6, covering mt 07 prix, cover 72 seasons, covering z4, coverinG 01, covering 02, covering 04, covering mt 07 2022, covering mt 03, covering voiture 04

covering vélo route, covering wrangler, covering yamaha r6, covering mt 07 prix, cover 72 seasons, covering z4, coverinG 01, covering 02, covering 04, covering mt 07 2022, covering mt 03, covering voiture 04

[fernand0]

Flores amarillas. 

(2023-03-24) (2022-12-11) (2022-12-11) (2022-12-24) (2022-12-24) (2022-12-24) (2023-01-21) (2023-01-21) (2023-02-09) (2023-02-09) (2023-03-06) (2023-03-06) (2023-03-24) (2023-03-24) (2023-03-24) (2023-03-24) (2023-03-24) (2023-03-24)

[ultralowoxygen]

Family outing. The boys. by auqanaj Via Flickr: Magaluf street, 2022.

[elicatkin]

[jius-sims]

Children’s shoes collection 02      

[Jius] Leather Ankle Boots 06-Toddler/Child

18 swatches

10k+ Polygons

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[Jius] Cartoon Animal Slippers 01-Toddler/Child

3 swatches

2k+ Polygons

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[Jius] Rain Boots 01-Toddler/Child

25 swatches

3k+ Polygons

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[Jius] Flat Sandals 04-Toddler/Child

30 swatches

11k+ Polygons

---------------------------------

[Jius] Crocs Clog 01-Toddler/Child

30 swatches

7k+ Polygons

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[Jius] Mary Jane Pumps 03-Toddler/Child

28 swatches

4k+ Polygons

----------------------------------

[Jius] Knitted Socks 08-Toddler/Child

30 swatches

HQ✔️ Custom thumbnail✔️ All lods✔️

Patreon ( Early access )

❤️ Public release on 31 December, 2022 ❤️

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Reverse engineers bust sleazy gig work platform

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/23/hack-the-class-war/#robo-boss

A COMPUTER CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE

THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER MAKE A MANAGEMENT DECISION

Supposedly, these lines were included in a 1979 internal presentation at IBM; screenshots of them routinely go viral:

https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/1385565737167724545?lang=en

The reason for their newfound popularity is obvious: the rise and rise of algorithmic management tools, in which your boss is an app. That IBM slide is right: turning an app into your boss allows your actual boss to create an "accountability sink" in which there is no obvious way to blame a human or even a company for your maltreatment:

https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/

App-based management-by-bossware treats the bug identified by the unknown author of that IBM slide into a feature. When an app is your boss, it can force you to scab:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/30/computer-says-scab/#instawork

Or it can steal your wages:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

But tech giveth and tech taketh away. Digital technology is infinitely flexible: the program that spies on you can be defeated by another program that defeats spying. Every time your algorithmic boss hacks you, you can hack your boss back:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/02/not-what-it-does/#who-it-does-it-to

Technologists and labor organizers need one another. Even the most precarious and abused workers can team up with hackers to disenshittify their robo-bosses:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#gojek

For every abuse technology brings to the workplace, there is a liberating use of technology that workers unleash by seizing the means of computation:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/13/solidarity-forever/#tech-unions

One tech-savvy group on the cutting edge of dismantling the Torment Nexus is Algorithms Exposed, a tiny, scrappy group of EU hacker/academics who recruit volunteers to reverse engineer and modify the algorithms that rule our lives as workers and as customers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

Algorithms Exposed have an admirable supply of seemingly boundless energy. Every time I check in with them, I learn that they've spun out yet another special-purpose subgroup. Today, I learned about Reversing Works, a hacking team that reverse engineers gig work apps, revealing corporate wrongdoing that leads to multimillion euro fines for especially sleazy companies.

One such company is Foodinho, an Italian subsidiary of the Spanish food delivery company Glovo. Foodinho/Glovo has been in the crosshairs of Italian labor enforcers since before the pandemic, racking up millions in fines – first for failing to file the proper privacy paperwork disclosing the nature of the data processing in the app that Foodinho riders use to book jobs. Then, after the Italian data commission investigated Foodinho, the company attracted new, much larger fines for its out-of-control surveillance conduct.

As all of this was underway, Reversing Works was conducting its own research into Glovo/Foodinho's app, running it on a simulated Android handset inside a PC so they could peer into app's data collection and processing. They discovered a nightmarish world of pervasive, illegal worker surveillance, and published their findings a year ago in November, 2023:

https://www.etui.org/sites/default/files/2023-10/Exercising%20workers%20rights%20in%20algorithmic%20management%20systems_Lessons%20learned%20from%20the%20Glovo-Foodinho%20digital%20labour%20platform%20case_2023.pdf

That report reveals all kinds of extremely illegal behavior. Glovo/Foodinho makes its riders' data accessible across national borders, so Glovo managers outside of Italy can access fine-grained surveillance information and sensitive personal information – a major data protection no-no.

Worse, Glovo's app embeds trackers from a huge number of other tech platforms (for chat, analytics, and more), making it impossible for the company to account for all the ways that its riders' data is collected – again, a requirement under Italian and EU data protection law.

All this data collection continues even when riders have clocked out for the day – its as though your boss followed you home after quitting time and spied on you.

The research also revealed evidence of a secretive worker scoring system that ranked workers based on undisclosed criteria and reserved the best jobs for workers with high scores. This kind of thing is pervasive in algorithmic management, from gig work to Youtube and Tiktok, where performers' videos are routinely suppressed because they crossed some undisclosed line. When an app is your boss, your every paycheck is docked because you violated a policy you're not allowed to know about, because if you knew why your boss was giving you shitty jobs, or refusing to show the video you spent thousands of dollars making to the subscribers who asked to see it, then maybe you could figure out how to keep your boss from detecting your rulebreaking next time.

All this data-collection and processing is bad enough, but what makes it all a thousand times worse is Glovo's data retention policy – they're storing this data on their workers for four years after the worker leaves their employ. That means that mountains of sensitive, potentially ruinous data on gig workers is just lying around, waiting to be stolen by the next hacker that breaks into the company's servers.

Reversing Works's report made quite a splash. A year after its publication, the Italian data protection agency fined Glovo another 5 million euros and ordered them to cut this shit out:

https://reversing.works/posts/2024/11/press-release-reversing.works-investigation-exposes-glovos-data-privacy-violations-marking-a-milestone-for-worker-rights-and-technology-accountability/

As the report points out, Italy is extremely well set up to defend workers' rights from this kind of bossware abuse. Not only do Italian enforcers have all the privacy tools created by the GDPR, the EU's flagship privacy regulation – they also have the benefit of Italy's 1970 Workers' Statute. The Workers Statute is a visionary piece of legislation that protects workers from automated management practices. Combined with later privacy regulation, it gave Italy's data regulators sweeping powers to defend Italian workers, like Glovo's riders.

Italy is also a leader in recognizing gig workers as de facto employees, despite the tissue-thin pretense that adding an app to your employment means that you aren't entitled to any labor protections. In the case of Glovo, the fine-grained surveillance and reputation scoring were deemed proof that Glovo was employer to its riders.

Reversing Works' report is a fascinating read, especially the sections detailing how the researchers recruited a Glovo rider who allowed them to log in to Glovo's platform on their account.

As Reversing Works points out, this bottom-up approach – where apps are subjected to technical analysis – has real potential for labor organizations seeking to protect workers. Their report established multiple grounds on which a union could seek to hold an abusive employer to account.

But this bottom-up approach also holds out the potential for developing direct-action tools that let workers flex their power, by modifying apps, or coordinating their actions to wring concessions out of their bosses.

After all, the whole reason for the gig economy is to slash wage-bills, by transforming workers into contractors, and by eliminating managers in favor of algorithms. This leaves companies extremely vulnerable, because when workers come together to exercise power, their employer can't rely on middle managers to pressure workers, deal with irate customers, or step in to fill the gap themselves:

https://projects.itforchange.net/state-of-big-tech/changing-dynamics-of-labor-and-capital/

Only by seizing the means of computation, workers and organized labor can turn the tables on bossware – both by directly altering the conditions of their employment, and by producing the evidence and tools that regulators can use to force employers to make those alterations permanent.

Image: EFF (modified) https://www.eff.org/files/issues/eu-flag-11_1.png

CC BY 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/

[demoniomano]

starter - @flarecasts​

Lysithea was just venturing around Archimedes as she doesn’t know what to do on doing things for fun. She had been in several Winterfes before and she’ll do it again. It seemed fun but undecided this time as there was a lady around the corner. 

Fodlan native or not, better bring a stranger-buddy than nobody.

“So, you prefer to celebrate Winterfes by yourself or with company?” A sincerely asked question as she continued to talk. “I could tag along on wherever you liked at Archimedes or somewhere else!”

[skrubu]

Ideas are like fish #davidlynch #infinitedeep #art #exhibition #helsinki #finland https://instagr.am/p/Clqd_yYIt_Q/

[mft-toyama]

ABEMAのUIはトップページから入って動画を見るまで絶対に結果をネタバレしない情報設計になっていてUXをよくわかってる。

— Yukiya Okuda / ツク郎くん™ (@alumican_net) Dec 2, 2022

[dopingconsomme]

ローカル路線バス終点への旅 (新書y)

ローカル路線バス終点への旅 (新書y) https://booklog.jp/users/dopingconsomme/archives/1/4800311993 via December 02, 2022 at 01:03PM

[hakkyoken]

starter - @qwincy​ 

To be surrounded by snow for scavenges is something Nanao would not do but she was too late as gotta find something behind the snow underneath. She only wanted is the free gift card she can use but alas, they are very hard to capture.

Maybe this man can help as she have shown no hesitation to ask for help.

“We can help each other catch these snow-things.” Cooperation in a hard-to-catch objectives is a must.