La complessità del buddismo tibetano

Money quote: “Sure, compassion is central to the faith. But there’s room for violence as well. Medieval Tibetan tales describe religious teachers breaking students’ bones, then healing them magically to bring them insight; they tell of monks assassinating corrupt kings to save Buddhism in Tibet. Modern history brings us the stories, often neglected in the West, of the CIA-backed violent insurgency that Tibetan Buddhists waged against the Chinese occupation from the 1950s to the mid-1970s – and of an all-Tibetan refugee unit formed in India to fight the Chinese in a 1962 war”

https://aeon.co/essays/what-lies-behind-the-simplistic-image-of-the-happy-buddhist

C’è un sacco di hype sulle blockchain. Proprio tanta: studi, investimenti, startup. Soldi. E una grande incognita: la GDPR. Perché la normativa europea sul trattamento e protezione dei dati, che entra in vigore il 25 maggio, va proprio nella direzione opposta. Anzi, è la blockchain ad essere proprio incompatibile con l’idea di controllo dei propri dati.

Money quote: “By their very nature, transactions on a blockchain aren’t meant to be deleted but to be recorded permanently. It would also be difficult to stop every place transmitting a Bitcoin transaction. “This is by design,” Andries Van Humbeeck, co-founder and blockchain consultant at TheLedger.be, a Belgium company that provides blockchain-related training and advice, told The Verge. “It’s the basics of blockchain technology.””

https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/5/17199210/blockchain-coin-center-gdpr-europe-bitcoin-data-privacy

È morto a 65 anni l’attore Harry Anderson, che ha interpretato uno dei miei peronsaggi preferiti: il giudice di notte.

Money quote: “Night Court actor Harry Anderson died Monday morning in Asheville, North Carolina, the Asheville Police Department confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. He was 65.

"This morning at 6:41 a.m. the Asheville Police Department responded to the home of actor Harry Anderson where he was found deceased," Asheville PD's Public Affairs officer Christina Hallingse told THR. "No foul play is suspected."

The 1980s sitcom ran for nine seasons on NBC and earned seven Emmy Awards and 31 nominations, including three noms for Anderson, who starred as Judge Harry T. Stone alongside John Larroquette, who played assistant district attorney Dan Fielding.”

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/amp/news/harry-anderson-dead-night-court-actor-was-65-1103243

Comunque, è pazzesco che, tra i sei prodotti più vecchi che Apple vende ancora, ne trovo almeno quattro ottimi (e pure l'iPod Touch...) mentre il Mac Pro mi piace molto ma non è più attuale in quella fascia.

Money quote: "Una eternità tenendo presenti i numerosi lanci e rinnovi che avvengono nel mondo della tecnologia."

https://www.macitynet.it/i-sei-prodotti-piu-vecchi-che-apple-vende-ancora/

Una storia pazzesca, ottimamente raccontata dal Post. (Ottimi anche i commenti, come spesso capita là)

Money quote: "Intorno alle 11 di mattina di martedì il volo 1380 di Southwest Airlines partito dall’aeroporto La Guardia di New York e diretto a Dallas stava sorvolando la Pennsylvania, circa venti minuti dopo il decollo e a oltre tre ore e mezza dall’ora prevista per l’atterraggio. Alla guida dell’aereo c’era Tammie Jo Shults, che negli anni Ottanta era stata tra le prime donne pilota della Marina statunitense. All’improvviso, i 144 passeggeri hanno sentito uno scoppio provenire dal lato sinistro del Boeing 737, che aveva superato un controllo di routine soltanto due giorni prima. A circa diecimila metri di altitudine, il motore sinistro dell’aereo è esploso, senza nessun preavviso, e alcuni pezzi sono volati via."

https://www.ilpost.it/2018/04/19/tammie-jo-shults-volo-southwest-incidente/

Per finire la trilogia del "pazzesco", un'altra notizia big size. Per cercare di arginare il disastro, Shanghai ha deciso di mettere un limite alla popolazione urbana: 25 milioni. Perché dopo si diventa troppo grandi... Lo stesso limite se l'è posto anche Pechino (la vostra Beijing). Anche le conseguenze di una decisione di questo tipo non saranno gradevoli.

Money quote: "Migrant workers and the city’s poor would suffer the most, predicted Liang Zhongtang last year in an interview with state media, when Shanghai’s target was being drafted.

The government set a similar limit for Beijing in September, declaring the city’s population should not exceed 23 million by 2020. Beijing had a population of 21.5 million in 2014. Officials also want to reduce the population of six core districts by 15% compared with 2014 levels."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/26/chinas-shanghai-sets-population-25-million--big-city-disease

Arrestato grazie all’impronta digitale rilevata con WhatsApp - il mio articolo per La Stampa

http://www.lastampa.it/2018/04/21/tecnologia/arrestato-grazie-allimpronta-digitale-rilevata-con-whatsapp-efq0Mbobg2wo0gYp6NqBGJ/amphtml/pagina.amp.html

Fine anni sessanta, inizio anni settanta. Audizione per stripper in un locale americano. Centinaia di Polaroid oggi riesumate in una scatola da un antiquario per pochi dollari. Spettacolare. E se andate a leggervi i commenti, ancora di più!

Money quote: “Disturbing? Your clearly repressed sexuality, distrust of men, and patronising simplification of the motivation of every dancer on Earth is disturbing. You see women as weak, as victims, cowering before the mighty erection. I suggest you speak to someone about this.”

https://dangerousminds.net/comments/stripper_audition_polaroids_from_the_60s_and_70s

Siccome quelli di 1Password utilizzano alla grande il software open source, hanno deciso di rilasciare abbonamenti annuali gratuiti (perché 1Password, che è un fantastico gestore di password e non solo per Mac, Win, Linux, iOS, Android etc, non è più un prodotto ma un servizio con canone annuale) per il mondo open source. Applicare è abbastanza semplice.

Money quote: "To apply, you need to be a project lead or a core contributor for an active open source project that is at least 30 days old."

https://github.com/1Password/1password-teams-open-source

Cosa serve per capire meglio come funziona un DNS? Questa è una buona idea: scrivere i suoi messaggi a mano...

Money quote: "Writing binary sounds difficult, but I actually found it quite approachable. The DNS documentation is well written and easy to follow, and the message we’ll write is short - only 29 bytes long."

https://routley.io/tech/2017/12/28/hand-writing-dns-messages.html

In generale l’idea che sulla Terra ci sia stato tempo e spazio per un’altra civiltà industriale prima della nostra è considerata una stupidaggine. Ma forse non è proprio così.

Money quote: “Given that all direct evidence would be long gone after many millions of years, what kinds of evidence might then still exist? The best way to answer this question is to figure out what evidence we’d leave behind if human civilization collapsed at its current stage of development.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/557180/

La storia di Palantir. Peter Thiel doveva essere proprio un bel personaggio. Si cominciano a capire sempre più cose... bella inchiesta!

Money quote: “It all ended when the bank’s senior executives learned that they, too, were being watched, and what began as a promising marriage of masters of big data and global finance descended into a spying scandal. The misadventure, which has never been reported, also marked an ominous turn for Palantir, one of the most richly valued startups in Silicon Valley. An intelligence platform designed for the global War on Terror was weaponized against ordinary Americans at home”

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel/

Un approccio rinfrescante per come è minimalista e pulito: entrate nel mondo di YouTube dalla semplice porta di Tube (non affiliato al sito di Google)

https://tube.quinzel.tech

Per rilassarsi fra un aereo e l'altro: cosa meglio di una bella webcam puntata sulla pista di Malpensa?

Money quote: "GUARDATE IL TRAFFICO AEREO IN ARRIVO E PARTENZA SU MALPENSA IN TEMPO REALE"

http://www.girovaghi.it/webcam/malpensa/home.htm

È domenica, tempo per la storia di una foto particolare: la Terra Levante

Money quote: "In today’s visually bombarded world it’s hard to imagine the immediate, global impact of that single image. The picture that came to be known as “Earthrise” offered a precious moment of transcendence after a year of violence and turmoil. The following year it was made into a U.S. postage stamp, and it adorned the cover of the Whole Earth Catalog. Walter Cronkite used it as a backdrop on the “CBS Evening News.” Wilderness photographer Galen Rowell called it “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken,” and it’s no accident that 16 months after we saw ourselves from the Moon, the first Earth Day took place."

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/who-took-legendary-earthrise-photo-apollo-8-180967505/

Lettura per la domenica. La storia di una persona autistica e il modo con il quale chi ha delle disabilità mentali ma è comunque in parte funzionale può farcela: è compito della società creare i presupposti e l'accompagnamento. Perché si tratta di una cosa complessa.

Money quote: "A lot of disabled or mentally ill people are able to work a job, pay rent, and get by through an elaborate system of compromise and sacrifice. We may have abandoned career paths that were too demanding of our mental energy, or lost relationships that were too socially or emotionally taxing. We may neglect exercise or beloved hobbies in order to find the time to get work done and make the money we need to survive. We may devote ourselves to rigid schedules that allow us to be professionally productive, but make other life tasks impossible. Or we may be forced to isolate more often than we’d truly like, in order to recharge from the daily efforts of getting by."

https://medium.com/@dr_eprice/im-a-highly-functional-autistic-it-takes-a-lot-of-work-3b9a67ff36a5

È ora di pranzo

Due fake celebrities, in realtà due Bot, litigano di brutto perché uno ha hackerato l'altro, e si minacciano a vicenda. Il mondo sta diventando interessante ma anche molto, molto strano.

Money quote: "On Tuesday, the Instagram account of Miquela Sousa — also known as @LilMiquela, a 19-year-old Brazilian-American model, singer, and Instagram personality with almost a million followers — appeared to have been hacked by a blonde, pro-Trump troll named Bermuda, or @BermudaIsBae. Over the course of about eight hours, Bermuda wiped Lil Miquela’s account clean, posting photos of herself instead with threatening captions like: “You can’t have your account back until you promise to tell people the truth.”

But wait, it gets wilder: Neither Lil Miquela nor Bermuda are real people. They’re computer-generated avatars with anonymous creators."

Anche quelli "veri" non è che sono messi molto meglio.

C'è chi usa Anobii, chi usa GoodReaders, chi mette su un blog di recensioni e chi spara giudizi su Amazon o su Twitter. Questo tizio ha fatto un sito che... beh, se non altro è scenico. Ma quanto starà male, però?

Money quote: "Hi there! My name is Latish Sehgal, and I am a programmer living in Dallas, Texas. This site contains notes from some of the books that I have read over the last few years.

The book notes and ratings are rather subjective, based on where I was in my life when I read that book. These are not meant as a replacement for reading but perhaps they can help in giving you a few recommendations to add to your reading list."

https://www.readmybooknotes.com

The Earth is 4.6 billion years old. Let's scale that to 46 years. We have been here for 4 hours. Our industrial revolution began 1 minute ago. In that time, we have destroyed 50% of the world's forests. This isn't sustainable. Earth-Day

https://telegram.me/SalaAurora

C’è ancora speranza per i libri di carta?

Money quote: “According to the Library Map of the World, there are over two million public and school libraries on planet Earth. Of these, 103,325 are in the U.S. and 12,570 in my native Australia. Globally, the number of private libraries is much larger still—because who’s to say that even a humble shelf of Penguin or Pocket paperbacks doesn’t qualify as a private library?”

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/04/09/the-strange-magic-of-libraries/