Big data. Crunching numbers. Milioni di ipotesi da falsificare per arrivare a una consapevolezza assoluta. Il momento migliore per comprare il biglietto aereo.

(No, non è il sabato mattina)

https://lifehacker.com/the-best-time-to-buy-fights-based-on-917-million-airfa-1824233023

Storie di donne nella letteratura popolare araba

Money quote: "A recurring theme is the bold young woman who resists her father’s will and takes matters into her own hands. She rides away dressed in men’s clothes or pretends to be a humble serving girl and devises any number of ingenious tricks to achieve her goal and eventually marry the man of her choice. Beyond the success of her plans, the girl’s ultimate vindication is to see her father’s tears and remorse when the family is finally reunited."

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/04/09/it-was-or-it-was-not-femininity-in-arabic-folktales/

Il desiderio di tornare ad avere uno spazio digitale nel web aumenta simmetricamente a quello di fare tutto da me. Articoli come questi, di piccoli cluster di Raspberry Pi, sono una specie di luce lontana nella notte...

Money quote: "I cloned an SD card from one of the Pi nodes and set up four almost identical SD cards. The only difference between them is the IP address in /etc/network/interfaces. I did a backup of my site from the dashboard of my CMS, and used a noscript to synchonize the content all worker nodes."

http://raspberrywebserver.com/raspberrypicluster/adding-more-nodes-to-the-cluster.html

Quando ho raccontato la storia di Apple e della Silicon Valley nel mio libro "Emozione Apple", dieci anni fa, ho esplorato la storia della "Valle delle delizie" nelle sue successive trasformazioni. Scoprire che il suo sottosuolo è marcio è stata una sorpresa ma, dopotutto, era logico immaginarselo.

Money quote: "From its origins as a manufacturer of silicon chips and semiconductors, Santa Clara County is riddled with 23 toxic Superfund sites, more than any county in the country. This was news to Ms. Armstrong, who lives a mile from one of the sites. Ms. Armstrong, a freelance photographer, moved to Silicon Valley eight years ago not because of tech but in spite of it — she and her husband had followed his career in agribusiness from Malaysia to the Netherlands and Japan. She could ignore the world of start-ups — until she couldn’t."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/lens/the-superfund-sites-of-silicon-valley.html

Quanto poco basta per farti passare la voglia di continuare a leggere...

Money quote: "When the word “Renaissance” is spoken, no one comes to mind faster than da Vinci. Not only was he the embodiment of an artist, but he was also a prolific inventor who..."

https://medium.com/personal-growth/leonardo-da-vinci-how-to-see-the-world-like-nobody-else-7eb9d60dacac

Apple produrrà una serie tv tratta dal ciclo della Fondazione di Asimov - il mio articolo per La Stampa

http://www.lastampa.it/2018/04/13/tecnologia/news/apple-produrr-una-serie-tv-tratta-dal-ciclo-della-fondazione-di-asimov-2pMDZe6m5XwkIeAczPC2DO/amphtml/pagina.amp.html

Eravamo diversi neanche tanto tempo fa, e non dovremmo dimenticarcelo quando pensiamo che le cose vadano peggio. Ad esempio, una volta la Delta Air Lines faceva campagne pubblicitarie come questa...

Si parla abbastanza spesso in questo periodo di moneta fiscale, i famosi "minibot", cioè di produrre moneta sul territorio nazionale senza però uscire dall'euro e quindi aggirando il monopolio della BCE. È una stupidaggine molto pericolosa. Spiega perché laVoce .info

Money quote: "Chi propone di immettere una quantità permanente di moneta fiscale pari a 100 o 200 miliardi (una cifra usuale tra i fautori di questa proposta) sta quindi proponendo esattamente di fare un taglio di tasse di 100 o 200 miliardi ogni anno, una cifra semplicemente pazzesca, considerato anche che si aggiungerebbe alle decine di miliardi delle altre proposte."

http://www.lavoce.info/archives/52448/la-sirena-della-moneta-fiscale/

Le scuse di Zuckerberg sono state "sentite" o no? La questione è meno banale di quanto non sembri e andrebbe messa nel giusto contesto. Che è quello del business.

Money quote:

Meaning is a complex process, and not at the beck and call of individuals. It depends not only on what we say, but what we don’t say, and what we do or don’t do.

It also depends on who we are in the scheme of things. Corporate CEOs are required by law to act in the best interests of shareholders.

So a corporate apology is always connected to the benefits it brings to the company. It is not a personal apology, it is a form of institutional positioning.

http://www.inkl.com/news/mark-zuckerberg-s-facebook-apology-is-the-linguistic-equivalent-of-shit-happens

Perché poi, alla fine, Zuckerberg è una persona molto riservata. Come dimostra il racconto del tizio che ha cercato (inutilmente) di frugare tra la sua spazzatura.

Money quote: "Mostly, though, it’s hard to ignore the irony of all of this. If only Mark Zuckerberg cared about the privacy of the rest of the world as much as he did his own."

https://theoutline.com/post/3994/it-is-weirdly-hard-to-steal-mark-zuckerbergs-trash

Uno Steve Jobs d'annata ancora inedito

Money quote: "“It takes around five years to create a commercial product that takes advantage of a [new] technical window opening up. Sometimes you start before the window is quite open, and you can’t quite get through it. You push it up. Sometimes it takes a lot of work. It took that long with the Apple II. It took that long with the Mac. You know, it took a [failure like the] Lisa along the way, $100 million. It takes a while. It’s expensive to push those windows open.”"

https://www.cultofmac.com/540697/unseen-steve-jobs-interview-shares-business-secrets/

Il 24 aprile Spotify cambia tutto: sempre più musica gratuita - il mio articolo per Macity

https://www.macitynet.it/il-24-aprile-spotify-cambia-tutto-sempre-piu-musica-gratuita/

Avete mai pensato alla simmetria e alla asimmetria? Ecco, se leggete questo poi ci penserete per sempre in maniera differente.

Money quote: "Like materials design, the act of telling stories is about breaking patterns. In fairy tales, we’re likely to come across three bears, three pigs or three sons; in modern times, an enduring joke-pattern involves three protagonists (think ‘an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman walk into a bar’) while comedians, improvisers and noscriptwriters speak of the ‘rule of three’. Why this obsession with the number three? The answer is simple: the first time, something happens; the second time, something similar happens, establishing a pattern; but the third time, something different happens, breaking the pattern. The first two of the king’s sons come to a sticky end, while the third slays the dragon, marries the princess, and lives happily ever after. There is nothing magical about the number three, but since a pattern has to have at least two elements, a series of three is the most efficient way of establishing a kind of symmetry in order to disrupt it."

https://aeon.co/ideas/why-symmetry-gets-really-interesting-to-physics-when-it-is-broken

Lasciar perdere i libri brutti non è sbagliato. Anzi.

Ovvero: “Ricordati che devi morire”

Money quote: “One, I realized literally NO ONE cares if I give up on a book except me. (And maybe the author, if I told them, which I wouldn’t do because…no.) Two, I realized that I’m going to die.”

https://electricliterature.com/its-okay-to-give-up-on-mediocre-books-because-we-re-all-going-to-die-1fed1e219b46

Serenity Caldwell ha recensito il nuovo iPad 9.7 e la Apple Pen. E lo ha fatto usando l'iPad stesso per filmare tutto, montare, editare e portare fuori.

Money quote: "Rene and I have filmed and edited reviews on Apple devices before, starting with the iPhone 6s review back in 2015. But this iPad review was a bit different: I shot only one piece of live-action footage (using my 10.5-inch iPad Pro to film me working on the 2018 iPad).

Instead, I used techniques I developed with my Linea review to "film" the screen of my iPad as I worked in apps and OS features across the device. I achieved this chiefly with iOS's built-in Screen Recorder, though I also used a few Procreate video replays of my line-drawings.

Screen Recorder will record pretty much anything save for copyrighted video, which makes it an incredible tool for making timelapses of drawings, workflows in Keynote, app experiences, and more."

https://www.imore.com/my-97-ipad-2018-review-drawn-written-edited-and-produced-ipad

Qui direttamente il video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfrAWqUPcFg

Due terzi dei cinguettii di Twitter sono robotici - il mio articolo per La Stampa

http://www.lastampa.it/2018/04/15/tecnologia/news/due-terzi-dei-cinguettii-di-twitter-sono-robotici-a3aZUam8wARrbH19dc1LtI/pagina.html

Un fallo alto cinque piani: è arte ma i vicini non ci stanno e lo fanno cancellare. Vittoria del quartiere o delle aziende di real estate che temono si svaluti la propria rendita?

Grazie a Roberto R., poeta residente di questo canale, per la segnalazione.

Money quote: ““Culture and art are important in developing interesting urban environments,” Camilla Klimt, the company’s marketing manager, told the paper. “Of course, we care about artistic freedom. But at the same time, we must respect neighbours’ opinions.””

Five-storey blue penis causes uproar among Stockholm residents | World news | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/13/five-storey-blue-penis-causes-uproar-among-stockholm-residents

E infine, per chiudere in bellezza la domenica nuvolosa...

C'è questo tizio, di cui fino ad ora avevo ignorato l'esistenza, che era un matto ma di genio. Si tratta di un sociologo tedesco, Niklas Luhmann, definito "Index Card's Emperor". Il metodo di gestione della conoscenza che voleva fermare su carta, utilizzando le schede che per esempio una volta si trovavano nelle biblioteche (il catalogo a schede) è affascianante e matto, appunto. Fa sembrare Umberto Eco e il suo "Come si scrive una tesi di laurea" una cosa per dilettanti allo sbaraglio.

Money quote: "Luhmann's notecard system is different from that of others because of the way he organized the information, intending it not just for the next paper or the next book, as most other researchers did, but for a life-time of working and publishing. He thus rejected the mere alphabetical organisation of the material just as much as the systematic arrangement in accordance with fixed categories, like that of the Dewey Decimal System, for instance. Instead, he opted for an approach that was "thematically unlimited," or is limited only insofar as it limits itself."

http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/luhmanns-zettelkasten.html

Qui avevo trovato il primo riferimento al suo metodo

http://nickpage.co.uk/stuff/the-joy-of-index-cards/

Alla fine, la grande rivoluzione della moneta è solo uno straordinario gesto anarchico? Ma - mi chiedo io - le rivoluzioni accadono anche quando non le capiamo? (come il rumore degli alberi che cadono nel pieno della foresta amazzonica, insomma)

Money quote: "As Bitcoin rises in value, the hunt for Satoshi will only intensify. He controls at least a million coins that have never moved from his original wallets. If VC Chris Dixon is right and Bitcoin rocket to $100,000 a coin, those million coins will shoot up to $100 billion. If it goes even higher, say a $1 million a coin, that would make him the world’s first trillionaire. And that will only bring the hammer down harder and faster on him. You can be 100% sure that black ops units would be gunning for him around the clock.

Wherever he is, my advice to Satoshi is this:

Stay anonymous until your death bed."

https://hackernoon.com/why-everyone-missed-the-most-mind-blowing-feature-of-cryptocurrency-860c3f25f1fb

Due terzi dei cinguettii di Twitter sono robotici - il mio articolo per La Stampa

http://www.lastampa.it/2018/04/15/tecnologia/news/due-terzi-dei-cinguettii-di-twitter-sono-robotici-a3aZUam8wARrbH19dc1LtI/amphtml/pagina.amp.html

Arrestato dal computer in mezzo alla folla - il mio articolo per La Stampa

http://www.lastampa.it/2018/04/16/tecnologia/news/arrestato-dal-computer-in-mezzo-alla-folla-e1ftiJotkhn1lLDmdtWBsI/amphtml/pagina.amp.html