Samer Hassan is a computer scientist, social scientist, activist and researcher, focused on the study of the collaborative economy, online communities and decentralized technologies. He is an associate professor at Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain) and Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. He is the recipient of an ERC Grant of 1.5M€ with the P2P Models project, to research blockchain-based decentralized autonomous organizations for the collaborative economy. == Education and career == Hassan is a Spanish/Lebanese scholar with an interdisciplinary background, which combines computer sciences with social sciences and activism. He received a degree in Computer Science and MSc in Artificial Intelligence from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) in Spain. He also studied three years of Political Science at the distance learning university UNED. He then pursued a PhD in Social Simulation at the department of Software Engineering and Artificial Intelligence of UCM, supervised by the computer scientist Juan Pavón and the sociologist Millán Arroyo-Menéndez. He has been researching in several institutions, funded by several scholarships and awards, most notably Harvard's Real Colegio Complutense, and the Spanish postdoctoral grants Juan de la Cierva and José Castillejo. Thus, he was a visiting researcher at the Centre for Research in Social Simulation, in the Department of Sociology at the University of Surrey in the UK, working under the supervision of Nigel Gilbert (2007-2008), and a lecturer at the American University of Science and Technology in Lebanon (2010–11). He was selected as Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University (2015-2017) and is presently a Faculty Associate at the same structure. Starting in 2024, he joined, as affiliate faculty, the Institute for Digital Cooperative Economy (The New School), part of the Platform Cooperativism Consortium. == Activism and social engagement == As an activist, Hassan has been engaged in both offline (La Tabacalera de Lavapiés, Medialab-Prado) and online (Ourproject.org, Barrapunto, Wikipedia) initiatives. He was accredited as a grassroots facilitator by the Altekio Cooperative. He co-founded the Comunes Nonprofit in 2009 and the Move Commons webtool project in 2010. He has co-organized practitioner-oriented workshops on platform co-ops and free/open source decentralized tools for communities, and has presented his work in non-academic conferences of Mozilla, the Internet Archive, and others. As a privacy advocate, he co-created a course on cyber-ethics which has been teaching since 2013 (as of 2021). He was co-founder of the Sci-Fdi Spanish science-fiction magazine. His gender is non-binary and uses he/they pronouns. == Work == Hassan's interdisciplinary research spans multiple fields, including online communities, online governance, online collaboration, decentralized technologies, blockchain-based decentralized autonomous organizations, free/libre/open source software, Commons-based peer production, agent-based social simulation, social movements and cyberethics. He has published more than 60 works in these fields. Hassan's PhD thesis focused on the methodological challenges for building data-driven social simulation models. The main model built simulated the transition from modern values to postmodern values in Spain. His methodological work also explored the combination of different artificial intelligence technologies, i.e. software agents with fuzzy logic, data mining, natural language processing, and microsimulation. In his postdoctoral period, he focused on experimenting with multiple software systems to facilitate the collaborative economy, e.g. semantic-web labelling for commons-based initiatives, distribution of value in peer production communities, agent-supported online assemblies, decentralized real-time collaborative software, decentralized blockchain based reputation, or blockchain-enabled commons governance. Hassan was Principal Investigator of the UCM partner in the EU-funded P2Pvalue project on building decentralized web-tools for collaborative communities. As such, he led the team that created SwellRT, a federated backend-as-a-service focused to ease development of apps featuring real-time collaboration. Intellectual Property of this project was transferred to the Apache Software Foundation in 2017. As part of this research line, Hassan's team also develop two SwellRT-based apps, "Teem" for management of social collectives and Jetpad, a federated real time editor. He presented the innovations concerning these software at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center and Harvard's Center for Research on Computation and Society. Other research lines offered outcomes beyond publications. "Wikichron", coled by Javier Arroyo, is a web tool to visualize MediaWiki community metrics, currently in production and available for third-parties. "Decentralized Science", led by Hassan's PhD student Ámbar Tenorio-Fornés, is a framework to facilitate decentralized infrastructure and open peer review in the scientific publication process, which has been selected by the European Commission to receive funding as a spin-off social enterprise. His research on blockchain and crowdfunding models awarded him with a commission from Triple Canopy. His team pushed forward a mapping of the ecosystem of blockchain for social good, led by the Joint Research Centre and published by the European Commission. As part of his ERC project P2P Models, Hassan and his team –including Silvia Semenzin– are investigating whether blockchain technology and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations could contribute to improving the governance of commons-oriented communities, both online and offline. Their work has been showcased for tackling the impact of blockchain on governance, proposing alternatives to the current sharing economy, emerging forms of techno-social systems like NFTs or prediction markets, or giving relevance to gender issues in the field. Hassan was invited to present the project achievements in Harvard Kennedy School, MIT Media Lab, Harvard's Data Privacy Lab, Harvard's Center for Research on Computation and Society, and Harvard's SEAS EconCS. British MP and Opposition Leader Ed Miliband showcased his research and its potential impact on policy. The project made public its way of organizing and its core values. In particular, it has shown a commitment to diversity as a core value in hiring, or choosing case studies. == Selected works == Arroyo, Javier; Davó, David; Martínez-Vicente, Elena; Faqir-Rhazoui, Youssef; Hassan, Samer (8 November 2022). "DAO-Analyzer: Exploring Activity and Participation in Blockchain Organizations" (PDF). Companion Publication of the 2022 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing. CSCW'22 Companion. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 193–196. doi:10.1145/3500868.3559707. ISBN 978-1-4503-9190-0. Rozas, David; Tenorio-Fornés, Antonio; Díaz-Molina, Silvia; Hassan, Samer (2021). "When Ostrom Meets Blockchain: Exploring the Potentials of Blockchain for Commons Governance". SAGE Open. 11 (1): 215824402110025. doi:10.1177/21582440211002526. ISSN 2158-2440. Faqir-Rhazoui, Youssef; Ariza-Garzón, Miller-Janny; Arroyo, Javier; Hassan, Samer (8 May 2021). "Effect of the Gas Price Surges on User Activity in the DAOs of the Ethereum Blockchain" (PDF). Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. CHI EA '21. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 1–7. doi:10.1145/3411763.3451755. ISBN 978-1-4503-8095-9. Hassan, Samer; Filippi, Primavera De (20 April 2021). "Decentralized Autonomous Organization". Internet Policy Review. 10 (2). doi:10.14763/2021.2.1556. hdl:10419/235960. ISSN 2197-6775. Joint Research Centre (European Commission); Hassan, Samer; Hakami, Anna; Brekke, Jaya Klara; De Filippi, Primavera; Lopéz Morales, Genoveva; Pólvora, Alexandre; Orgaz Alonso, Christian; Bodó, Balázs (2020). Scanning the European ecosystem of distributed ledger technologies for social and public good: what, why, where, how, and ways to move forward. LU: Publications Office of the European Union. doi:10.2760/300796. ISBN 978-92-76-21578-3. Filippi, Primavera De; Hassan, Samer (14 November 2016). "Blockchain technology as a regulatory technology: From code is law to law is code". First Monday. arXiv:1801.02507. doi:10.5210/fm.v21i12.7113. ISSN 1396-0466.
Friendica
Friendica (formerly Friendika, originally Mistpark) is a free and open-source software distributed social network. It forms one part of the Fediverse, an interconnected and decentralized network of independently operated servers. == Features == Friendica users can connect with others via their own Friendica server, but may also fully integrate contacts from other platforms including Diaspora, Pump.io, GNU social, email, Discourse and more recently ActivityPub (including Mastodon, Pleroma and Pixelfed) and Bluesky into their 'newsfeed'. In addition to these two way connections, users can also use Friendica as a publishing platform to post content to WordPress, Tumblr, Insanejournal and Libertree. Posting to Google+ was also supported until that service was shut down. In addition, RSS feeds can be ingested. Because users are distributed across many servers, their "addresses" consist of a username, the "@" symbol, and the domain name of the Friendica instance in the same manner email addresses are formed. Twitter support was available but was deprecated due to API changes under Elon Musk's leadership rendering it unusable. Most of the functionality from major microblogging and social networking platforms are available in Friendica; for example, tagging users and groups via "@ mentions"; direct messages; hashtags; photo albums; "likes"; "dislikes"; comments; and re-shares of publicly visible posts. Published items can be edited and updated across the network. Comprehensive settings for privacy and the public visibility of posts allow users to regulate who can read which contributions, or see specific information about the user. Users can also create multiple profiles, allowing different groups of people (such as friends, or work mates) to see a different profile entirely when viewing the same page. User accounts can be downloaded or deleted, and can be imported to a different Friendica server if so required. Public forums can be created under different accounts, which can be switched between if the accounts are registered with the same email address. == Development == There is no corporation behind Friendica. The developers work on a voluntary basis and the project is run informally; the platform itself is used for the communication between the developers. There are different forums within Friendica, such as "Friendica Developers" and "Friendica Support". The source code of Friendica is hosted on GitHub. == Installation == The developers aim to make installation of the software as simple as possible for technical laymen. They argue that decentralization on small servers is a key condition for the freedom of users and their self-determination. The difficulty level is similar to an installation of WordPress. However, the installing on shared hosting is sometimes difficult because of missing PHP5 modules. Some volunteers also run public servers so that newcomers can also avoid the installation of their own software. == List of clients == Friendica implements multiple client-server API variants simultaneously. Along with endpoints needed to use enhanced Friendica features, it also implements the API used by GNU social, Twitter and since version 2021.06 also the one used by Mastodon. As a result, most GNU social and Mastodon clients can be used for Friendica. Examples of Friendica compatible clients include: Raccoon for Friendica, Friendiqa, Fedilab, AndStatus, Twidere and DiCa for Android, friendly for Sailfish OS, friclicli (CLI client), choqok and Friendiqa for Linux and Friendica Mobile for Windows 10. == Reception == Friendica was cited in January 2012 by Infoshop News as an "alternative to Google+ and Facebook" to be used on the Occupy Nigeria movement. In January 2012 Free Software Foundation Europe's blog cited Friendica as a reasonable alternative to centralized and controlled social networks such as Facebook or Google+. Biblical Notes writer J. Randal Matheny described Friendica in January 2012 as "One social networking option flying under the radar until recently deserves consideration as an already stable platform with a wide range of options, applications, plug-ins, and possibilities for opening up the Internet." In February 2012, the German computer magazine c't wrote: "Friendica demonstrates how decentralized social networks can become widely accepted." Another German publication, the professional magazine t3n listed Friendica as a Facebook rival in an online article in March 2012 about Facebook alternatives. It compared Friendica with similar social networks like Diaspora and identi.ca. MSN Tech & Gadgets contributor Emma Boyes wrote about Friendica in May 2012: "why you'll love it: you can use it to access all the other social networks and get recommendations of new friends and groups to join. Friendica is open source and decentralised. There's no corporation behind it and there are extensive privacy settings. You can choose from a variety of user interfaces and it boasts some cool features—for instance, being able to key in a list of your interests and use the 'profile match' feature to recommend other users who share them with you. A word of warning, though, the site is not as user-friendly as the others on this list, so it may be this one is one for the geeks." == Later reviews == Acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk had revitalized public interest in Fediverse technologies in April 2022. Friendica received favorable reviews, with a PCMag article describing it as "mostly comparable to Facebook", drawing a parallel to Google+ and highlighting using it "for planning events, and its multiple profile feature means you can show a different face to your friends, coworkers, and family". The September 2022 issue of Linux Magazine contains a detailed comparison and walk-through of registering to and using basic functions of Diaspora, Friendica and Mastodon. They describe Friendica as "intuitive" and highlight the "huge choice of account settings" and that "Friendica does not require any specific hardware, so you can use an old computer system as a server." == Vulnerabilities == In September 2020, a hotfix was released to patch a security vulnerability that could leak sensitive information from the server environment since versions released in April 2019 (develop branch) and June 2019 (stable).
Curve (tonality)
In image editing, a curve is a remapping of image tonality, specified as a function from input level to output level, used as a way to emphasize colours or other elements in a picture. Curves can usually be applied to all channels together in an image, or to each channel individually. Applying a curve to all channels typically changes the brightness in part of the spectrum. Light parts of a picture can be easily made lighter and dark parts darker to increase contrast. Applying a curve to individual channels can be used to stress a colour. This is particularly efficient in the Lab colour space due to the separation of luminance and chromaticity, but it can also be used in RGB, CMYK or whatever other colour models the software supports.
CEITON
CEITON is a web-based software system for facilitating and automating business processes such as planning, scheduling, and payroll using workflow technologies. The system is used by several media companies such as MDR, Yle, RAI and Red Bull Media House. In December 2018, the first CEITON User Group Meeting took place in Leipzig, Germany. == Architecture == The software runs on a server (on premises) or in the cloud and is scalable on parallel servers. Data security is warranted by role-based access control (RBAC). The software is used via web-browsers and not dependent on particular system software. == Structure and Features == CEITON combines the two classical approaches of production planning and control and workflow management. === Project Management === The scheduling system plans, manages, bills, and analyzes projects or tasks. It manages human and technical resources, material, and locations on a single GUI. The system uses a gantt chart to assign tasks to be done to available and eligible resources (i.e. staff), automatically or by drag-and-drop. The scheduling module includes material management, resource management/ human resource management, integration of freelancers, clients and suppliers, long-term budget planning, time-tracking, shift scheduling, quality management, delivery and logistics, document management, archive, analysis and controlling, business reporting, as well as all accounting and documentation processes. === Workflow === The workflow management system module coordinates business processes. Processes are defined once as a workflow and then repeatedly executed. Human resources are automatically assigned to steps (tasks) and integrated in workflow forms. Systems are integrated with an EAI/SOAP module, allowing data exchange with arbitrary external systems which are also involved in the business process. It also features a 3-D workflow overview in which the status of each project step can be determined by its color in the overview. === Process Management === For project and order processing management, business processes are designed as workflows, and coordinate communication automatically. Different user interfaces for staff, customers or suppliers can be created so each gets only relevant information. Different workflow forms are associated with different log-ins. The main application for the system is knowledge-based business processes, in which many people are involved and virtual results are produced, e.g. in research, or development of media products, such as TV and movies. Broadcasters and media companies such as MDR and Yle use CEITON to control their production processes for products and services and coordinate complex workflows with all kinds of resources. === Integrations === An integrated EAI module allows CEITON to integrate every external system in any business process without programming, using SOAP and similar technologies. Aspera and FileCatalyst were integrated for faster data transfer, yet complex ERP systems and numerous SAP modules have also been integrated, for example, to extract working times to payroll. === Mobile Working === Since Version 7, released in 2015, CEITON includes a time-tracking module allowing employees to enter their times from mobile devices such as tablets running Android, iPhones etc. == History == Ceiton Technologies (SME tech firm), the company developing CEITON, was founded in Leipzig, Germany in 2000, staffing solutions for the Bureau of Internal Revenue in Manila, Philippines, were implemented in 2000 together with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit of the German government. The first version (1.0) of the software was released in July 2001. The product was originally developed for German broadcasting companies. CEITON is named after the Japanese concept Seiton, one of the principles of Japanese workplace design methodology known as 5S. Since version 7, released in 2015, CEITON includes a time-tracking module allowing employees to enter their times from mobile devices such as tablets running Android, iPhones etc. In May 2005 CEITON won the IQ innovation award, sponsored by Siemens, in the category Excellent innovation in the IT-sector. Since 2007, CEITON has been present at the broadcast trade fairs NAB in Las Vegas and IBC in Amsterdam. In 2020, the company celebrated its 20th anniversary.
Curve (tonality)
In image editing, a curve is a remapping of image tonality, specified as a function from input level to output level, used as a way to emphasize colours or other elements in a picture. Curves can usually be applied to all channels together in an image, or to each channel individually. Applying a curve to all channels typically changes the brightness in part of the spectrum. Light parts of a picture can be easily made lighter and dark parts darker to increase contrast. Applying a curve to individual channels can be used to stress a colour. This is particularly efficient in the Lab colour space due to the separation of luminance and chromaticity, but it can also be used in RGB, CMYK or whatever other colour models the software supports.
Artificial consciousness
Artificial consciousness, also known as machine consciousness, synthetic consciousness, or digital consciousness, is consciousness hypothesized to be possible for artificial intelligence. It is also the corresponding field of study, which draws insights from philosophy of mind, philosophy of artificial intelligence, cognitive science and neuroscience. The term "sentience" can be used when specifically designating ethical considerations stemming from a form of phenomenal consciousness (P-consciousness, or the ability to feel qualia). Since sentience involves the ability to experience ethically positive or negative (i.e., valenced) mental states, it may justify welfare concerns and legal protection, as with non-human animals. Some scholars believe that consciousness is generated by the interoperation of various parts of the brain; these mechanisms are labeled the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC). Some further believe that constructing a system (e.g., a computer system) that can emulate this NCC interoperation would result in a system that is conscious. Some scholars reject the possibility of non-biological conscious beings. == Philosophical views == As there are many hypothesized types of consciousness, there are many potential implementations of artificial consciousness. In the philosophical literature, perhaps the most common taxonomy of consciousness is into "access" and "phenomenal" variants. Access consciousness concerns those aspects of experience that can be apprehended, while phenomenal consciousness concerns those aspects of experience that seemingly cannot be apprehended, instead being characterized qualitatively in terms of "raw feels", "what it is like" or qualia. === Plausibility debate === Type-identity theorists and other skeptics hold the view that consciousness can be realized only in particular physical systems because consciousness has properties that necessarily depend on physical constitution. In his 2001 article "Artificial Consciousness: Utopia or Real Possibility," Giorgio Buttazzo says that a common objection to artificial consciousness is that, "Working in a fully automated mode, they [the computers] cannot exhibit creativity, unreprogrammation (which means can 'no longer be reprogrammed', from rethinking), emotions, or free will. A computer, like a washing machine, is a slave operated by its components." For other theorists (e.g., functionalists), who define mental states in terms of causal roles, any system that can instantiate the same pattern of causal roles, regardless of physical constitution, will instantiate the same mental states, including consciousness. ==== Thought experiments ==== David Chalmers proposed two thought experiments intending to demonstrate that "functionally isomorphic" systems (those with the same "fine-grained functional organization", i.e., the same information processing) will have qualitatively identical conscious experiences, regardless of whether they are based on biological neurons or digital hardware. The "fading qualia" is a reductio ad absurdum thought experiment. It involves replacing, one by one, the neurons of a brain with a functionally identical component, for example based on a silicon chip. Chalmers makes the hypothesis, knowing it in advance to be absurd, that "the qualia fade or disappear" when neurons are replaced one-by-one with identical silicon equivalents. Since the original neurons and their silicon counterparts are functionally identical, the brain's information processing should remain unchanged, and the subject's behaviour and introspective reports would stay exactly the same. Chalmers argues that this leads to an absurd conclusion: the subject would continue to report normal conscious experiences even as their actual qualia fade away. He concludes that the subject's qualia actually don't fade, and that the resulting robotic brain, once every neuron is replaced, would remain just as sentient as the original biological brain. Similarly, the "dancing qualia" thought experiment is another reductio ad absurdum argument. It supposes that two functionally isomorphic systems could have different perceptions (for instance, seeing the same object in different colors, like red and blue). It involves a switch that alternates between a chunk of brain that causes the perception of red, and a functionally isomorphic silicon chip, that causes the perception of blue. Since both perform the same function within the brain, the subject would not notice any change during the switch. Chalmers argues that this would be highly implausible if the qualia were truly switching between red and blue, hence the contradiction. Therefore, he concludes that the equivalent digital system would not only experience qualia, but it would perceive the same qualia as the biological system (e.g., seeing the same color). Greg Egan's short story Learning To Be Me (mentioned in §In fiction), illustrates how undetectable duplication of the brain and its functionality could be from a first-person perspective. Critics object that Chalmers' proposal begs the question in assuming that all mental properties and external connections are already sufficiently captured by abstract causal organization. Van Heuveln et al. argue that the dancing qualia argument contains an equivocation fallacy, conflating a "change in experience" between two systems with an "experience of change" within a single system. Mogensen argues that the fading qualia argument can be resisted by appealing to vagueness at the boundaries of consciousness and the holistic structure of conscious neural activity, which suggests consciousness may require specific biological substrates rather than being substrate-independent. Anil Seth argues that the complexity of brain neurons intrinsically matters in addition to their function and that it is not possible to replace any part of the brain with a perfect silicon equivalent. He points out that some of biological neurons exhibit activity aimed at cleaning up metabolic waste products, and writes that a perfect silicon replacement would require a silicon-based metabolism, but silicon is not suitable for creating such artificial metabolism. ==== In large language models ==== In 2022, Google engineer Blake Lemoine made a viral claim that Google's LaMDA chatbot was sentient. Lemoine supplied as evidence the chatbot's humanlike answers to many of his questions; however, the chatbot's behavior was judged by the scientific community as likely a consequence of mimicry, rather than machine sentience. Lemoine's claim was widely derided for being ridiculous. Moreover, attributing consciousness based solely on the basis of LLM outputs or the immersive experience created by an algorithm is considered a fallacy. However, while philosopher Nick Bostrom states that LaMDA is unlikely to be conscious, he additionally poses the question of "what grounds would a person have for being sure about it?" One would have to have access to unpublished information about LaMDA's architecture, and also would have to understand how consciousness works, and then figure out how to map the philosophy onto the machine: "(In the absence of these steps), it seems like one should be maybe a little bit uncertain. [...] there could well be other systems now, or in the relatively near future, that would start to satisfy the criteria." David Chalmers argued in 2023 that LLMs today display impressive conversational and general intelligence abilities, but are likely not conscious yet, as they lack some features that may be necessary, such as recurrent processing, a global workspace, and unified agency. Nonetheless, he considers that non-biological systems can be conscious, and suggested that future, extended models (LLM+s) incorporating these elements might eventually meet the criteria for consciousness, raising both profound scientific questions and significant ethical challenges. However, the view that consciousness can exist without biological phenomena is controversial and some reject it. Kristina Šekrst cautions that anthropomorphic terms such as "hallucination" can obscure important ontological differences between artificial and human cognition. While LLMs may produce human-like outputs, she argues that it does not justify ascribing mental states or consciousness to them. Instead, she advocates for an epistemological framework (such as reliabilism) that recognizes the distinct nature of AI knowledge production. She suggests that apparent understanding in LLMs may be a sophisticated form of AI hallucination. She also questions what would happen if an LLM were trained without any mention of consciousness. === Testing === Sentience is an inherently first-person phenomenon. Because of that, and due to the lack of an empirical definition of sentience, directly measuring it may be impossible. Although systems may display numerous behaviors correlated with sentience, determining whether a system is sentient is known as the hard pr
AlternativeTo
AlternativeTo is a website which lists alternatives to web-based software, desktop computer software, and mobile apps, and sorts the alternatives by various criteria, including the number of registered users who have "Liked" each of them on AlternativeTo. Users can search the site to find better alternatives to an application they are using or previously have used, including free alternatives such as free web applications (cloud computing) which don't require any installation and can be accessed from any browser. == Differences == Unlike a number of other software directory websites, the software is not arranged into categories, but each individual piece of software has its own list of alternatives. However, users can also search by tag to find software, which offers an alternative way of finding related software. Users can also narrow their search by focusing on particular platforms and license types (such as "free for non-commercial use"). AlternativeTo lists basic information such as platform and license type at the top of each entry, but does not have comparison tables listing software features side by side. AlternativeTo does not host software for download but it provides links to official websites to where you can download or buy them. AlternativeTo allows anyone to register and suggest new alternatives, or to update the information held about existing entries. Suggestions and alterations are reviewed before being made publicly visible. Users can register using either email and password or OpenID. Login with Facebook has been discontinued. As AlternativeTo is itself a web application, it even has a page for alternatives to itself. == Features == Tweets from anyone mentioning particular pieces of software are also pulled in dynamically from Twitter. Each application has an RSS feed for notifying users of newly listed alternatives to that application. After a user has clicked the Like button next to an application, they are offered the opportunity to tell their friends on Facebook or their followers on Twitter that they liked it. The site also has a forum. For software developers, a JSON API used to be available, but has been taken down indefinitely.