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Ohh, you meant a romanticized well-behaved child in a permanent state of the kind of wonder actual children achieve three or four times a year.

Por Claudia Acuña y María del Carmen Varela

Hay algo de revolución en este día que hará Historia y es una de las clásicas, que deja al mismo tiempo perplejas a las bibliotecas, sacude las cabezas, cuestiona a la política partidaria y enciende los sentimientos sociales. Es, además, de aquellas alegres y rabiosas, pero sobre todo, poética. Es lógico: si hay alguien a quien atribuirle la primera puntada que hizo posible esta jornada imposible es a una bordadora de esas bellas artes. Susy Shock fue quien comenzó a señalar el horizonte de esta utopía con precisión: un frente antifascista. Lo repitió tanto y en tantos lados y durante tanto tiempo, que cuando llegó el momento de escoger una palabra para esta convocatoria brotó ese término, como una flor que nace con el riego de los tiempos urgentes.

A las trabajadoras sexuales de Constitución, en general, y en la voz de Georgina Orellano en particular –a quien días antes vimos azotada por las botas policiales– les debemos la  puntada que  la unió con la siguiente: antirracista.

Susy Shock (Fotos Lina Etchesuri y Nacho Yuchark).

A las travas históricas, el coraje y la memoria, que sonó como advertencia o como reto y que sintetizó la voz disonante expresada por Marlene Wayar: “Estamos cansadas de luchar porque sus manos son débiles”. 

El reloj, en cambio, lo marcaron las infancias y adolescencias: el sufrimiento concreto con el que castigaron sus vidas esas palabras crueles infringidas desde lo más alto del poder institucional.

(Fotos Lina Etchesuri y Nacho Yuchark).

Dirá hoy la actriz trans Flor de la V: “Ese es el límite. Desde que asumió este gobierno hace un año y meses, no paran de agredirnos, de decirnos cosas horribles sobre nuestras identidades y lo que sucedió en Davos fue la gota que rebalsó el vaso. Hasta ahí llegamos. Tenemos una ley de género que deben respetar y una de matrimonio igualitario que no pueden ignorar. La verdad es que hace décadas que nos bancamos el maltrato y el desprecio de una sociedad, pero hoy con leyes que nos reconocen, no lo vamos a permitir más”.

Flor de la V(Fotos Lina Etchesuri y Nacho Yuchark).

Juana y Agos, de El Teje –una organización autogestiva dedicada al cuidado de las infancias trans y no binarias– lo sintetizan así: “Había que decir basta para demostrar que la calle nos pertenece, que la palabra libertad nos pertenece, por sobre todas las cosas, para demostrar que las personas a quienes no quieren dejarnos existir somos aquellas que más unimos a esta sociedad”.

Poetas, putas, travas, infancias, adolescencias y juventudes trans y no binarias, las más empobrecidas, las más castigadas, las últimas de la fila se pusieron al frente y convocaron a mover este mundo horrible al que nos quieren condenar.

Lo siguiente fue la marea que emerge, brava y colorida, para desafiar las violencias. Ese tesoro social que tiene la Argentina y que nadie, nada, nunca, puede ni predecir ni controlar.

Una vez más el Nunca Más.

Fotos Lina Etchesuri y Nacho Yuchark.

El plan

Otra vez Juana: “Este ataque es parte de un plan económico que impone quién accede al capital y quién no, quién accede al trabajo y quién no, quiénes acceden a qué tipo de trabajo y quiénes no. Quiénes tienen que hacerlo en la prostitución, quiénes tienen que empobrecerse para que unos pocos puedan tener mucho acceso al capital”.

Agos: “Para frenar el fascismo y estos discursos de odio poner el cuerpo es una estrategia eficaz, por eso estamos todes acá, pero formar parte de El Teje me hizo darme cuenta de que una buena forma de enfrentarlo es parar la bola, escuchar y bajar el ego”.

Fotos Lina Etchesuri y Nacho Yuchark.

Juana: “Y armar red. Lo que propone el fascismo, lo propone desde la individualidad. Si logramos combatir este plan económico que nos obliga a tener dos, tres trabajos que nos sostengan, es a partir de preguntarle a la persona que tenemos al lado –no importa si es de nuestra comunidad o no– cómo  estás, qué necesitas, en qué te puedo ayudar”.

En la calle, los obreros de la UOCRA saludan eufóricamente a las columnas y los bancarios sacuden abanicos con los colores de la diversidad. Los jubilados y jubiladas bailan. Las parejas con canas sostienen carteles hechos con cartón que proclaman “Basta de fascismo” y un joven alza su cartulina escrita con marcador azul para recordar: “El pedófilo no era gay: era tu diputado”, en referencia a Germán Kiczka, el legislador de la oficialista La Libertad Avanza, cuya causa por abuso infantil fue elevada a juicio el 21 de enero.

El balcón es para dos estrellas, María Becerra y Lali Espósito, que saludan a la multitud mientras le cantan “¿Quiénes son?”, una complicidad espontánea y profunda, que sólo se comprende con el resto de la letra:

“Yo tiro flores, bebé.

No tengo tiempo pa`nada,

menos para atajar tu agresividad”.

(Fotos Lina Etchesuri y Nacho Yuchark).

(Fotos Lina Etchesuri y Nacho Yuchark).

(Fotos Lina Etchesuri y Nacho Yuchark).

(Fotos Lina Etchesuri y Nacho Yuchark).

Artificial intelligence (AI) is quickly becoming the backbone of modern software development, fueling developer efficiency and accelerating innovation. With the emergence of AI agents implementing code based on instructions from humans, we are learning that implementing AI-based features has its own unique set of security challenges. How do we protect access to the resources AI needs, protect confidentiality, and avoid privilege escalation? Few organizations are ready to answer these questions today. At GitLab, we are. We are introducing a new paradigm for identity management: composite identities.

When AI agents are integrated into your DevSecOps workflows, previously simple questions become difficult to answer: Who authored this code? Who is the author of this merge request? Who created this Git commit? We found we had to start asking new questions: Who instructed an AI agent to generate this code? What context did AI need to build this feature? What were the resources AI had to access and read to generate the answer?

To answer these questions, we need to understand some fundamental aspects of AI’s identity:

• Does an AI agent have its own distinct identity?
• What is the representation of this identity?
• How do we make it all secure?

Authentication and AI identity management

We are at the beginning of a paradigm shift in identity management in the software delivery lifecycle. Before the AI era, identity management was simpler. We had human user-based identities and machine-type identities using separate accounts.

With the emergence of AI and agentic workflows, the distinction between these two core types of identities has blurred. AI agents are supposed to work in an autonomous way, so it makes sense to think about them as machine-type accounts. On the other hand, AI agents are usually being instructed by human users, and require access to resources the human users have access to in order to complete their tasks. This introduces significant security risks — for example, the AI may provide human users with information they should not have access to. How do we avoid privilege escalation, provide auditability, and protect confidentiality in a world with AI agents?

The solution: Composite identities

A composite identity is our new identity principal, representing an AI agent’s identity that is linked with the identity of a human user who requests actions from the agent. This enhances our ability to protect resources stored in GitLab. Whenever an AI agent with a composite identity attempts to access a resource, we will not only authenticate the agent itself, but also link its principal with a human user who is instructing the agent, and will try to authorize both principals before granting access to a resource. Both principals need access; otherwise, the access will be denied. If an AI agent by itself can access a project, but a human user who instructed the agent to do so cannot, GitLab will deny the access.

The inverse is true as well — if a human user can access a confidential issue, but an AI agent can’t, then its service account will not be able to read the issue. We authorize access to every API request and for each resource an agent attempts to access this way. Composite identity without a request-scoped link to a human account will not be authorized to access any resource. For fully autonomous workloads we are also considering adding support for linking composite identities with other principals.

Composite identity and service accounts

We redesigned our authorization framework to support composite identities, allowing multiple principals to be evaluated simultaneously when determining access rights to a resource. We enhanced our security infrastructure by implementing scoped identities across our entire system — from API requests to CI jobs and backend workers. These identities are linked to an AI agent's composite identity account also through OAuth tokens and CI job tokens. This project yielded unexpected security benefits, particularly in GitLab CI, where we upgraded job tokens to signed JSON web tokens (JWTs). Additionally, we contributed code to several open source libraries to add support for scoped identities.

Composite identity with GitLab Duo with Amazon Q

In the GitLab 17.8 release, we made composite identity for service accounts support available for customers through our GitLab Duo with Amazon Q integration. Amazon Q Developer agent will have composite identity enforced, which will protect your confidential GitLab resources from unauthorized access.

What’s next?

To learn more, check out our composite identity docs.

TL;DR: Check out the product page

We all deserve a voice assistant that doesn’t harvest our data and arbitrarily limit features. In the same way Home Assistant made private and local home automation a viable option, we believe the same can, and must be done for voice assistants.

Since we began developing our open-source voice assistant for Home Assistant, one key element has been missing - great hardware that’s simple to set up and use. Hardware that hears you, gives you clear feedback, and seamlessly fits into the home. Affordable and high-quality voice hardware will let more people join in on its development and allow anyone to preview the future of voice assistants today. Setting a standard for the next several years to base our development around.

We’re launching Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition to help accelerate our goal of not only matching the capabilities of existing voice assistants but surpassing them. This is inevitable: They’ll focus their efforts on monetizing voice, while our community will be focused on improving open and private voice. We’ll support the languages big tech ignores and provide a real choice in how you run voice in your home.

The era of open, private voice assistants begins now, and we’d love for you to be part of it.

Table of contents

• Introducing Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition
  • Why Preview Edition
  • Built for Home Assistant
  • Advanced audio processing
  • Bringing choice to voice
  • Fully open and customizable
  • Community-driven
• Conclusion
  • See what voice can do today

Introducing Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition

Our main goal with Voice Preview Edition was to make the best hardware to get started with Assist, Home Assistant’s built-in voice assistant. If you’re already using other third-party hardware to run Assist, this will be a big upgrade. We prioritized its ability to hear commands, giving it an industry-leading dedicated audio processor and dual microphones - I’m always blown away by how well it picks up my voice around the room.

Next, we ensured it would blend into the home, giving it a sleek but unobtrusive design. That’s not to say it doesn’t have flair. When you get your hands on Voice Preview Edition the first thing you’ll notice is its premium-feeling injection-molded shell, which is semi-transparent, just like your favorite ‘90s tech. The LED ring is also really eye-catching, and you can customize it to your heart’s content from full gamer RGB to subtle glow.

It’s hard to convey how nice the rotary dial is to use; its subtle clicks paired with LED animations are hard not to play with. Most importantly, the dial lets anyone in your home intuitively adjust the volume. The same can be said for the multipurpose button and mute switch (which physically cuts power to the microphone for ultimate privacy). We knew for it to work best, it needed to be out in the open, and let’s just say that Home Approval Factor was very front of mind when designing it.

We also worked hard to keep the price affordable and comparable to other voice assistant hardware at just $59 (that’s the recommended MSRP, and pricing will vary by retailer). This isn’t a preorder, it’s available now!

Why Preview Edition

For some, our voice assistant is all they need; they just want to say a couple of commands, set timers, manage their shopping list, and control their most used devices. For others, we understand they want to ask their voice assistant to make whale sounds or to tell them how tall Taylor Swift is - this voice assistant doesn’t entirely do those things (yet). We think there is still more we can do before this is ready for every home, and until then, we’ll be selling this Preview of the future of voice assistants. We’ve built the best hardware on the market, and set a new standard for the coming years, allowing us to focus our development as we prepare our voice assistant for every home. Taking back our privacy isn’t for everyone - it’s a journey - and we want as many people as possible to join us early and make it better.

Built for Home Assistant

Many other voice assistants work with Home Assistant, but this one was built for Home Assistant. Unlike other voice hardware that can work with Assist, this doesn’t require flashing firmware or any assembly. You plug it into power, and it is seamlessly discovered by Home Assistant. A wizard instantly starts helping you set up your voice assistant, but critically, if you haven’t used voice before, it will quickly guide you through what you need to get the best experience.

Get up and running with Voice Preview Edition in minutes with our new wizard

This is not a DIY product. We’ve worked to make the experience as smooth as possible, with easy and fast updates and settings you can manage from the Home Assistant UI.

Advanced audio processing

If you have been following our work on voice, you know we’ve tried a lot of different voice assistant hardware. Most available Assist-capable hardware is bad at its most important job - hearing your voice and then providing audiovisual feedback. That was really what drove us to build Voice Preview Edition.

Voice Preview Editions mics and audio processors effortlessly hear commands through loud music it is playing

Our Assist software could only do so much with substandard audio, and its functionality is massively improved with clear audio. The dual microphones combined with the XMOS audio processing chip are what makes it so capable. Together, they allow Voice Preview Edition to have echo cancellation, stationary noise removal, and auto gain control, which all adds up to clearer audio. This combined with an ESP32-S3 with 8 MB of octal PSRAM - one of the fastest ESP and RAM combinations available - makes for an incredibly responsive device. This is the best Assist hardware you can buy today, and it will continue to give a great experience as Assist’s feature set expands in the years to come.

Bringing choice to voice

Assist can do something almost no other voice assistant can achieve - it can run without the internet 🤯. You can speak to your Voice Preview Edition, and those commands can be processed completely within the walls of your home. At the time of writing this, there are some pretty big caveats, specifically that you need to speak a supported language and have pretty powerful hardware to run it (we recommend a Home Assistant system running on an Intel N100 or better).

Diagram of cloud vs local speech processing

If you use low-powered Home Assistant hardware, there is an easy and affordable internet-based solution; Home Assistant Cloud. This privacy-focused service allows you to offload your speech-to-text and text-to-speech processing, all while being very responsive and keeping your energy bill low. Speech-to-text is the harder of the two to run locally, and our cloud processing is almost always more accurate for more languages (visit our language support checker here).

Our goal is for Assist to run easily, affordably, and fully locally for all languages. As someone who has seen the rapid development of this technology over the past several years, I’m optimistic that this will happen, but until then, many languages have a good range of choices that provide strong privacy.

Fully open and customizable

We are sharing the design files if you want to 3D print a new case... these ones were inevitable

We’re not just launching a new product, we’re open sourcing all of it. We built this for the Home Assistant community. Our community doesn’t want a single voice assistant, they want the one that works for them – they want choice. Creating a voice assistant is hard, and until now, parts of the solution were locked behind expensive licenses and proprietary software. With Voice Preview Edition being open source, we hope to bootstrap an ecosystem of voice assistants.

We tried to make every aspect of Voice Preview Edition customizable, which is actually pretty easy when you’re working hand-in-hand with ESPHome and Home Assistant. It works great with the stock settings, but if you’re so inclined, you can customize the Assist software, ESP32 firmware, and XMOS firmware.

Connecting Grove sensors allows you to use your Voice Preview Edition as a more traditional ESPHome device - here is it acting as a voice assistant and air monitor.

We also made the hardware easy to modify, inside and out. For instance, the included speaker is for alerts and voice prompts, but if you want to use it as a media player, connect a speaker to the included 3.5mm headphone jack and control it with software like Music Assistant. The included DAC is very clean and capable of streaming lossless audio. It can also be used as a very capable ESP32 device. On the bottom of the device is a Grove port (concealed under a cover that can be permanently removed), which allows you to connect a large ecosystem of sensors and accessories.

We’ve also made it quite painless to open, with easy-to-access screws and no clips. We even included exposed pads on the circuit board to make modifying it more straightforward. We’re providing all the 3D files so you can print your own components… even cartoon character-inspired ones. We’re not here to dictate what you can and can’t do with your device, and we tried our best to stay out of your way.

Community-driven

The beauty of Home Assistant and ESPHome is that you are never alone when fixing an issue or adding a feature. We made this device so the community could start working more closely together on voice; we even considered calling it the Community edition. Ultimately, it is the community driving forward voice - either by taking part in its development or supporting its development by buying official hardware or Home Assistant Cloud. So much has already been done for voice, and I can’t wait to see the advancements we make together.

Conclusion

Home Assistant values champions choice. Today, we’re providing one of the best choices for voice hardware. One that is truly private and totally open. I’m so proud of the team for building such a great working and feeling piece of hardware - this is a really big leap for voice hardware. I expect it to be the hardware benchmark for open-voice projects for years to come. I would also like to thank our language leaders who are expanding the reach of this project, our testers of this Preview Edition, and anyone who has joined in our voice work over the past years.

The hardware really is only half the picture, and it’s the software that really brings this all together. Mike Hansen has just written the Voice Chapter 8 blog to accompany this launch, and this explains all the things we’ve built over the past two years to make Assist work in the home today. He also highlights everything that Voice Preview Edition was built to help accelerate development.

See what voice can do today