Volete spendere 250 dollari su IndieGoGo (prezzo finale sarà 400) per un telefono 4G che fa poco, pochissimo? Light Phone II ha WiFi, Gps, schermo E-Ink, niente social, niente app, solo messaggi, forse mappe, forse qualche chat, e poco altro che oltretutto verrà definito nei prossimi mesi anche con le idee degli utenti. Arriverà più o meno tra un anno (probabilmente più tardi).

Lo strumento digital detox più hispter dell'anno, secondo me!

Money quote: "The Light Phone 2 will begin shipping by April of 2019 (one year from the completion of the campaign). Because of the three different models for the various regions globally, different models (A, B, or C) might ship slightly earlier or later than April of 2019. We will share more exact timelines as we kick off our testing/certification phases, as the timing may vary between models."

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/light-phone-2-smartphone-design#/

Toni Frissell è stata una delle donne fotografo che, dopo aver iniziato nella moda, hanno lavorato per l’esercito americano durante la guerra. Qui alcuni degli scatti che ti rimettono il cuore in pace e ti fanno vedere la bellezza del bianco e nero.

Money quote: “Her work took her to Europe, where she photographed soldiers and civilians affected by the war, including a famous series featuring the Tuskegee Airmen at an air base in Italy. In later years, she continued a career of photographing both famous and ordinary people for decades, amassing a collection of some 340,000 images”

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/photo/555155/

Non ho la più pallida idea di chi sia questo tizio ma mi sta già simpatico, e i suoi consigli su come informarsi mi piacciono molto.

Money quote: “5. Find sources you trust

Follow reliable, thoughtful, forward-looking publications and journalists online and let them do the heavy lifting, finding the most interesting info for you. If the publication or person is focused on thoughtful analysis and not panic news, you’ll hear worthwhile insights. Watson especially recommends perusing weekend editions of quality newspapers.”

https://qz.com/1222019/stop-reading-the-latest-news-if-you-want-to-be-better-informed/

Con la stampa 3D arrivano le fabbriche nello spazio - il mio articolo per Macity

https://www.macitynet.it/la-stampa-3d-arrivano-le-fabbriche-nello-spazio/

Letture domenicali: macchine e pupe. In questo caso Blondie, cioè la storia un po' trasversale di Debbie Harry

Money quote: "Blondie was a new start, christened by the nick name passer bys always called Debbie. She liked it, thought it was catchy and suitable for the kind of music she envisioned the new band playing. The Punk rock scene from England was starting to affect New York City clubs and Blondie was hanging around with early fans of the music including Richard Hell, The Ramones and Television. Blondie also remained friends with the New York Dolls and The Magic Tramps who represented the Glam Rock scene. Through this entire period of transition and growth towards becoming major music stars. Debbie Harry drove a classic pony car; a 1967 Chevrolet Camaro coupe."

http://phscollectorcarworld.blogspot.it/2013/02/lost-star-cars-cars-of-debbie-harry.html

Wired racconta come una squadra speciale della polizia olandese abbia inferto un colpo mortale al traffico di droga online

Money quote: “"When a dark market is taken down, everyone goes to the next one. It's a whack-a-mole effect," says Marinus Boekelo, one of the NHTCU investigators who worked on the Hansa operation. By secretly seizing control of Hansa rather than merely unplugging it from the internet, Boekelo says he and his Dutch police colleagues aimed not only to uncover more about Hansa's unsuspecting users, but to deal a psychological blow to the broader dark-web drug trade. "We thought maybe we could really damage the trust in this whole system," he says”

https://www.wired.com/story/hansa-dutch-police-sting-operation/

Graphite, la suite per la produttività basata su Blockchain - il mio articolo per Macity

https://www.macitynet.it/graphite-la-suite-la-produttivita-basata-blockchain/

Undici anni di iPhone ma soprattutto dieci anni del suo SDK. Vale la pena ricordare cosa è significato e cosa ha voluto dire la nascita di una nuova piattaforma globale e del primo, grande store online per il software.

Money quote: “For many of us, holding that first iPhone at the end of June 2007 was a glimpse of the future. We all wanted to know what was inside the glass and metal sitting in our pockets.

Apple had told us what the device could do, but said very little about how it was done. We didn’t know anything about the processor or its speed, how much memory was available, or how you built apps. In many ways, this new device was a black, and silver, box.”

https://blog.iconfactory.com/2018/03/a-lot-can-happen-in-a-decade/

Bisogna essere un po’ lontani per riuscire a vedere il quadro nel suo insieme. In questo caso la giornalista dell’Atlantic ce l’ha chiaro: l’Italia è un paese medioevale per quanto riguarda la parità di genere.

Money quote: “For the past few weeks I’ve been in Italy, covering the elections last Sunday which produced the biggest political change here in decades. It was my first reporting trip back here in a while. I lived in Rome for many years but moved away in 2013. Maybe I’ve changed since then, maybe it’s the #MeToo moment, but coming back to Italy this time, what struck me most wasn’t the political chaos, the populism, the dysfunction, or even the beauty, since a person can get used to all that. It was the fact that there were barely any women playing leading roles in the election coverage.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/555260/

Da Amleto a Tolstoj a Facebook, l’elogio della depressione e del suo compagno, il vuoto divertirsi.

Money quote: “È di fronte alla morte, che la crisi coglie Amleto. Non è la morte, ma ciò che la morte scoperchia, lacera, svela: il nulla dietro le cose. Se l’uomo deve morire, cosa valgono tutte le ambizioni che lo motivano a vivere? “L’ambizione, nella sua sostanza, non è altro che l’ombra di un sogno” notano Rosencrantz e Guildenstern nella tragedia shakespeariana: “Impalpabile e sottile, è l’ombra di un’ombra”. La sociologia novecentesca ha trovato mille altri nomi – la corsa per il riconoscimento, il consumo posizionale, la rivalità mimetica – per quella stessa trappola assurda che lo spirito barocco aveva denunciato. Il tardo capitalismo ha trasformato queste pulsioni aspirazionali in una fonte di energia capace di far girare un intero sistema economico”

http://www.iltascabile.com/societa/era-del-disagio/

Il 2018 sarà l’anno del consolidamento per gli smartphone? - il mio articolo per La Stampa

http://www.lastampa.it/2018/03/13/tecnologia/news/il-sar-lanno-del-consolidamento-per-gli-smartphone-lYFMvUsvz9a6sjPAx4iAEM/pagina.html

La dura vita del sistemista: aggiorna una serie di sistemi e sbaglia a premere il pulsante di spegnimento di un server in produzione (con l'installazione di SAP totale-globale). Però se ne accorge prima di rilasciare il pulsante di spegnimento: resta così per un'ora in attesa che i colleghi risolvano tutti i problemi e consentano di spegnere il server in sicurezza... ehhh...

Money quote: "At this point the nature of that power button became critical, because its design meant that so long as it was not released, the juice would flow.

And thankfully Jeremy's mate had pressed the button, but not released it."

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/05/who_me/

L’invenzione del capitale umano, un’arma concettuale della scuola di Chicago per combattere il comunismo.

Money quote: “In essence, the idea of human capital wasn’t new. Adam Smith had pointed out long before how the skills and abilities acquired by workers (eg, training, education, etc) can add economic value to an enterprise. But Schultz had only recently become intrigued by the idea. He actively encouraged new faculty and PhD students to build a more robust and formalistic theory of human capital. Legend has it that Schultz suddenly grasped its importance after visiting an impoverished farm. He asked the threadbare owners why they were so content. Because they’d managed to send their children to school, they replied. It would guarantee a secure income for the family long into the future”

https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-cold-war-led-the-cia-to-promote-human-capital-theory

Viviamo tempi difficili.

Money quote: “Ottenere, anche momentaneamente, anche parzialmente, questa lucidità vuol dire rimettersi un passo avanti rispetto a chi è invece alterato, stanco, nevrotizzato, delirante, ossia in una condizione psico-emotiva carente, uno standard che però è talmente diffuso da essere considerabile una norma. La lucidità è diventata tra le persone che conosco il bene posizionale per eccellenza.”

http://www.minimaetmoralia.it/wp/la-lucidita-bene-posizionale/

Morte al blog, viva Medium (urla il tizio che scrive su Medium)

Money quote: "I almost always give the same exact answer — stop writing at your own personal domain name or WordPress site and start posting on Medium instead. I don’t know if they ever listen, I just know they should.
Before I discovered this wonderful place my writing has called home for over the last year, I too dreamed of having my own domain name where I wrote at."

https://theascent.pub/how-medium-is-murdering-the-modern-blog-and-why-were-all-better-off-for-it-5be2160e5bbf

Ipnotico. Bellissimo

https://aeon.co/videos/a-quick-boat-trip-from-the-pacific-to-the-atlantic-by-way-of-central-america

Il tema della scomparsa delle pagine personali è l’altro lato della medaglia rispetto alla supremazia dei social e di Medium. Mattia, uno dei lettori di mostly, mi segnala questo articolo molto molto interessante.

Money quote: “Did I say we are witnessing the traditional personal site’s disappearance? That is inaccurate. We are the ones making our own sites disappear.”

https://medium.com/let-me-repost-that-for-you-zeldman/the-vanishing-personal-site-72103ffd521b

Il matto che aveva creato la più bella galassia di emulatori per giocare su Mac ai giochi delle console e homecomputer vari, Richard Bannister, e che mi ha fatto passare gli anni Novanta e i primi duemila con grande divertimento digitale, dieci anni dopo ci ha rimesso mano e li ha aggiornati. Pensa te!

Money quote: "As in times past the standard versions of these ports are completely free. Those of you who want more functionality have the option of installing Emulator Enhancer 3.0, which adds a number of extra features including HID device support, Full Screen Mode, Network Play, and a graphical Recent Games window. EE3 is available at no charge to EE2 customers who purchased on or after January 1, 2017."

http://www.bannister.org/software/index.htm

“Tomb Raider”, la recensione del nuovo film con Alicia Vikander | il mio articolo per Fumettologica

http://www.fumettologica.it/2018/03/tomb-raider-recensione-alicia-vikander/

L'America avverte un grande cambiamento alle porte. Davvero.

Money quote: "The next great reset in American history, the one that finally supplanted this system, was the mid 20th Century switch from traditional town design to the modernist approach. The ideas of modernism had been building in the first half of the 20th Century. Ideas like Corbusier’s Ville Radieusse, Howard’s Garden City, Wright's Broadacre City, and Futurama by General Motors. But we all know when these ideas exploded across the American landscape in various bastardized forms"

https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2018/02/26/next-great-urban-reset

Se pensate che i tappi di plastica forabile dei bicchieroni del caffè, quella cosa che fa tanto Starbucks, siano folkloristici ma non interessanti, ebbene non pensatelo più. E non solo perché Starbucks sta arrivando in Italia (perlomeno, a Milano), bensì perché la storia dei tappi è veramente interessante.

Money quote: "The coffee cup lid is one of those seemingly mundane inventions that are so fully integrated into modern life, they’re easy to overlook. But as Harpman details in the introduction to the new book she co-wrote with Specht, Coffee Lids: Peel, Pinch, Pucker, Puncture, there is a fascinating design history behind the objects."

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/coffee-lids-design-history