Two years ago I made a bet (a beer) with a friend who works in autonomous driving for a major automotive technology provider.My bet was that in 5 years, we wouldn’t have self-driving cars circulating diffusely in our urban centers.His bet was that it could happen by making them drive very slowly.I recently spoke with him and suggested that we double the bet. He refused ? . Eight months ago I talked to a friend who works at an important autonomous driving company.I raised my central point with him as well, which is that there is an underlying unpredictability about…

(good to know, Cut&paste from here) Conventional lithium-ion batteries are reaching their theoretical maximum gravimetric energy density of just 387Wh/Kg. A major EV battery supplier in the market has reported that their best batteries currently deliver 260Wh/Kg, with a forecasted improvement of just 20% over the next 5 years. Lithium-sulphur batteries have a theoretical gravimetric energy density of 2,567 Wh/Kg – in the order of 5x that of lithium-ion batteries. A battery with a higher gravimetric energy density will last longer before needing to be recharged, which should enable EVs to travel farther and drones to fly for longer between…

This looks exactly the type of dystopic digital power behavior by the executive branch that I think should be impossible in a democratic State, as I wrote on my brief reflections on the issue (an article which is basically a revised transcript of my keynote at Nexa’s annual event). A trustworthy state does not require its citizens to trust it. Source: Civio.es A Spanish court has rejected the publication of source code for the software that approves applications for subsidies created to combat energy poverty. Civio, having noticed errors in its functioning, requested the code under the Transparency Law to…

I think government software is the second real use case for blockchains (besides DeFi):You need a system where you don’t have to trust by default the people running the systems. The key point is that states have the monopoly on force. it’s an asymmetry compared to the rest of the situations IT is used in (b2b, b2c, ..). This asymmetry justifies that the citizens should not be required to trust the State’s systems by default, whoever manages them. A trustworthy state is a state that does not require its citizens to trust it. This implies that transactions, logs, data, be…

Here’s my keynote with the proposal of anonimity protection for online content moderation.The Euroconsumer’s event was held online on Feb 3rd, 2022

This post is a revised transcript of my speech during the XIII Nexa Conference on Internet and Society, dedicated to Digital and the State.. Many thanks to Lucio Bragagnolo for the effort The design of Italy’s public digital infrastructure and the current legislation, starting from the Constitution, indicate that the road for public services must lead towards decentralization; on the contrary, we are witnessing an ideological trend towards centralization on which important questions must be asked and on which we should reflect at a time when the stability of institutions and governability is not in question. UPDATE: if you thought…

E queste sotto sono risposte a domande

Premessa Questa settimana segna la fine della fase della mia vita a servizio della cosa pubblica. Una fase durata otto anni. La mia vita professionale non nasce e non vive di aspirazioni rivolte a una carriera politica, lo preciso qualora chi si trovasse a leggermi non mi conoscesse. Sono un informatico e un imprenditore (qui un mio profilo molto sintetico) chiamato alla partecipazione politica proprio in virtù delle mie esperienze precedenti. Nell’intraprendere questo percorso ho appreso molte cose che credo sia interessante conoscere a chi si affacci alla politica; a chi di lavoro analizza la vita politica (ci sono retroscena…

Apple has announced the new client-side content scanning (based on parameters received from the center) to find child sexual abuse materials to be reported to law enforcers. The point I try to make is that it will do little to protect children (while weakening users’ privacy and pushing criminals to hide better) but it will be used as  an excuse to justify a tight control of the devices in order to perpetuate their apparent monopolistic power through the app store in a time when such behavior is under the fire of competition authorities. As per Apple’s announcement, that will happen…

Artificial intelligence opens us new application spaces, previously inaccessible on an algorithmic basis: activities of perception, classification and prediction. But every time we digitize an activity, the speed of computers is such that the scale transcends traditional human possibilities. Scenarios of mass customization, mass conditioning, mass surveillance, etc. open up. If these activities are carried out by governments, what are the appropriate checks and balances? Under what power would Montesquieu have placed egovernment? What is the most suitable IT architecture for an institutional democratic architecture?