Addio al 3D Touch: ne sentiremo la mancanza. O forse no - il mio articolo per Macity

https://www.macitynet.it/addio-al-3d-touch-ne-sentiremo-la-mancanza-o-forse-no/

Money quote (only): "Recently invited to speak at a conference and was asked which of my two affiliations I preferred to go on my name tag. Probably University of Central Lancashire, I replied. So that's what they put."

Ok, mi rendo conto che forse questo è un insieme di informazioni delle quali non c'è bisogno, sono cose che sappiamo tutti etc. Ma almeno per me questa sorta di ricetta su come si comincia in un posto di lavoro nuovo è veramente una cosa fenomenale. Sul serio, lo dico con tutta l'umiltà di cui sono capace.

Money quote: "The first step is to find someone on the team and ask for 30 minutes with them. In that meeting you have a simple agenda"

http://boz.com/articles/career-cold-start.html

Cinque domande sulla poesia al poeta residente di Mostly, I Write

Money quote: "4. Oralità, scrittura, virtualità: come interagiscono i differenti canali nella realizzazione del testo poetico?

Dal punto di vista comunitario, più che integrazione e dialogo, scorgo fazioni inasprite: i propugnatori della poesia orale-performata fronteggiano quelli della poesia lineare-scritta. Mesi fa si è tenuto un convegno sulla poesia che – mi riferiscono – ha avuto il suo culmine emotivo nell'epiteto «filologo del cazzo!» rivolto da poeta performativo a poeta lineare; la parte avversa risponde di solito dando del “rapper” al poeta performativo. "

http://www.emt.it/broca/broca107/questio/corsi.html

Smartphone Asus Zenfone 5, la prova interattiva - il mio test per La Stampa

http://www.lastampa.it/2018/04/29/tecnologia/smartphone-asus-zenfone-la-prova-interattiva-v23Fq8AHGIMXeQBQo8bmnO/pagina.html

A me da ragazzo piacevano modellini di plastica da montare e soldatini di plastica tipo Atlantic. Entrambi erano accumunati da una idea: li puoi colorare oppure no. A me piacevano "lisci", senza colore, ma non era l'uso per cui erano stati pensati e progettati. È così anche per l'arte antica: statute e templi al loro tempo erano colorati, invece adesso li viviamo in "marmo e nero". Proviamo a fare un salto nel passato, in un'estetica diversa. Insomma, un giro tra le sculture dell'antichità a colori

Money quote: "“We’re so used to seeing—because of museums, because of plaster casts, because of the way sculpture has come down to us—[classical sculptures] denuded of any color,” says Renée Dreyfus, Curator of Ancient Art and Interpretation at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, where she curated the recent exhibition Gods in Color: Polychromy in the Ancient World. Variations of this exhibition have been on display at a number of museums since 2003, and all of them are based on vibrant reconstructions of how the ancient world would have actually looked. Now, there is also a book, edited by Dreyfus, Brinkmann and Koch-Brinkmann, of the same name."

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/ancient-sculpture-color-polychromy

Susa Kare ha 64 anni e il suo contributo alla storia dell'informatico è stato il meno tecnico di tutti, eppure uno dei più influenti di sempre. Anni fa l'avevo definita, con poca originalità, la "mamma delle icone". In realtà è una designer di grande valore e il suo lavoro è davvero sensazionale e seminale al tempo stesso. Il New Yorker la racconta, molto meglio del sottoscritto.

Money quote: "Paola Antonelli, the senior curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art, was the first to physically show Kare’s original icon sketches, in the 2015 exhibit “This is for Everyone.” “If the Mac turned out to be such a revolutionary object––a pet instead of a home appliance, a spark for the imagination instead of a mere work tool––it is thanks to Susan’s fonts and icons, which gave it voice, personality, style, and even a sense of humor. Cherry bomb, anyone?” she joked, referring to the icon which greeted crashes in the original operating system. After working for Apple, Kare designed icons for Microsoft, Facebook, and, now, Pinterest, where she is a creative director. The mainstream presence of Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat, emoji, and gifs is a sign that the visual revolutionaries have won: online, we all communicate visually, piecing together sentences from tiny-icon languages."

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-woman-who-gave-the-macintosh-a-smile

Letture nerd del fine settimana. Una cosa utile per chi sviluppa front-end di siti web

Money quote "This is a guide that anyone could use to learn about the practice of front-end development. It broadly outlines and discusses the practice of front-end engineering: how to learn it and what tools are used when practicing it in 2018.

It is specifically written with the intention of being a professional resource for potential and currently practicing front-end developers to equip themselves with learning materials and development tools. Secondarily, it can be used by managers, CTOs, instructors, and head hunters to gain insights into the practice of front-end development.

The content of the handbook favors web technologies (HTML, CSS, DOM, and JavaScript) and those solutions that are directly built on top of these open technologies. The materials referenced and discussed in the book are either best in class or the current offering to a problem."

https://frontendmasters.com/books/front-end-handbook/2018/

A questo punto dovremmo tutti aver capito tutto dei Bitcoin, delle criptovalute e delle Blockchain. E invece, no. Però questo fenomenale articolo un po' di punti fermi li mette, perché la prende dal punto di vista storico-politico, anzichè da quello tecnologico

Money quote: "Bitcoin was the first decentralized cryptocurrency ever created. It was released in 2009 as the culmination of nearly two decades of discourse on the key concepts within the cypherpunk community. It was cited by the anonymous founder(s) Satoshi Nakamoto to be inspired by Bitgold by Nick Szabo and B-Money by Wei Dai, two earlier attempts by well-known members at creating functional electronic currency.

Most individuals within the Bitcoin community envision an endgame where an implementation of Bitcoin will be a massively adopted cryptocurrency that is both a store of value and a medium of exchange. They see bitcoin eventually being the predominant global currency. However, the ideology then diverges sharply on on how this can be accomplished, and which priorities should take precedence along the way."

https://medium.com/@muradmahmudov/the-many-faces-of-bitcoin-d144601050c6

Questo è un intrigante e inquietante problema: e se quei blob di tessuto celebrale umano che facciamo crescere in laboratorio per fare esperimenti e sviluppare nuove terapie farmacologiche prima di buttarli nella centrifuga e vaporizzarli poi fossero in realtà, oltre che tecnicamente "vivi", anche senzienti?

Money quote: "At what point would an organoid be worthy of moral status? Of respect?
“At what point is it reasonable to at least discuss the question of sentience? Or conscious experience? Pain? Pleasure?” asks Christof Koch from the Allen Institute, “We’re not there, but we have to start thinking about these possibilities.” Farahany, Koch, and 15 other leading ethicists and neuroscientists have now outlined some of those issues in a new paper, based on a workshop they held last May.
(The debate was vigorous: “Every one of the authors wordsmithed every line of this paper,” Farahany says.)"

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/what-happens-as-we-get-better-at-artificially-growing-brains/558881/

L’effetto Diderot: compri una cosa e poi ne compri altre dieci. È il consumismo, bellezza.

Money quote: “In the words of sociology professor Juliet Schor, “the pressure to upgrade our stock of stuff is relentlessly unidirectional, always ascending.””

https://medium.com/personal-growth/the-diderot-effect-why-we-want-things-we-dont-need-and-what-to-do-about-it-3b8d49ea968f

Spettacolare inchiesta del New Yorker sulla chinatown pratese, sull'immigrazione cinese, sul Made in Italy che non lo è, oppure, se lo è, lo è in senso razzista. E su tante altre cose. Da leggere con calma

Money quote 1: "I thought of a recent visit that I had made to Scandicci, the iconic Italian leatherwork village, just outside Florence. I’d met an artisan named Andrea Calistri, whose workshop was filled with mementos from three generations of leatherworkers. He told me that he had done jobs for Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, and Prada, but that he objected to their use of mills that violated labor laws. He had helped found an association, called “100% Made in Italy,” that focussed on insuring proper labor practices, but his rhetoric was unmistakably nativist. “ ‘Made in Italy’ means made by Italians! ” he told me. He was surrounded by shelves filled with maroon leather handbags. They were supple and gorgeous. Then again, so were the bags that Enrico’s employees were making."

Money quote 2: "The Chinese community in Prato is evolving rapidly. Many of the immigrants’ children, having lived in Italy since birth, are looking beyond the garment and leather-goods industries. “Our kids don’t want to make bags,” Arturo complained. A friend of his agreed, telling me, “They all want to go to the Bocconi now!” (The Bocconi is an élite private university in Milan.) I met one such girl, an eighteen-year-old named Luisa, at a pleasant Chinese bistro called Ravioli di Cristina. (The Italians call dumplings “Chinese ravioli.”) Her father sold coffee-vending machines to the Chinese mills. Chinese Pratans, she complained, thought only about money, so she had mostly Italian friends. When the young Chinese Pratan waiter, who was flirting with her, urged her to listen to a Korean pop song, she countered by recommending a song by the American d.j. duo the Chainsmokers. Her public school, Buzzi, on the eastern edge of Prato, has few Chinese students, and that—along with its specialization in engineering—was why she’d chosen it. “In the beginning, the other students ignore you,” she said. But she had gradually formed friendships. “They still sometimes say racist things—they call me Yellow Face—but I joke back at them,” she said."

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/16/the-chinese-workers-who-assemble-designer-bags-in-tuscany

Un genio assoluto che, a 86 anni, dice che siamo tutti condannati per via del riscaldamento globale, e che solo l'ipocrisia o l'ignoranza impediscono agli altri di ammetterlo. Dopodiché, ripeto, un genio totale.

Money quote: "“With doom ahead, making a case for cycling as the primary mode of transport is almost irrelevant,” he says. “We’ve got to stop burning fossil fuels. So many aspects of life depend on fossil fuels, except for music and love and education and happiness. These things, which hardly use fossil fuels, are what we must focus on.”"

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/26/were-doomed-mayer-hillman-on-the-climate-reality-no-one-else-will-dare-mention

La storia del biscugino di The Rock, che è anche il suo stuntman (e non solo il suo), raccontata bene e quasi tutta. Affascinante. Lettura ideal per giorni pigri.

Money quote: "The large bald man is sitting at a picnic table. Before him is a plate of Thai food. In his hand, the plastic fork he’s using looks like a child’s toy. Sitting next to him is an attractive woman. Like the man, she’s wearing workout clothes and appears to be in a peak state of physical fitness. The man is speaking in an appropriately private voice — about his football days, his work in Hollywood, his life growing up hereabouts with his grandma, who called him Stupid, one of the few English words she used with regularity."

https://melmagazine.com/not-quite-the-rock-914810ab7300

Primo maggio, festa dei lavoratori. Già, ma cos'è il lavoro e chi sono i lavoratori? Sono cambiate parecchie cose da quando è nata la festa. Mi va di pensare a esempi strani. Ad esempio, c'è questo artigiano francese che fa le valvole termoioniche a mano. Un documentario di venti minuti pubblicato qualche anno fa: ipnotico!

https://vimeo.com/47812871

Rimaniamo in tema festa dei lavoratori. Scusatemi se divento ombelicale (più del solito, perlomeno) e parlo della mia professione di giornalista freelance. Anzi, se faccio parlare qualcun altro della mia professione.

L’articolo che segue è rivolto al mercato degli Stati Uniti. In Italia i freelance non vengono pagati a parola ma a numero di battute (spazi inclusi) oppure a righe su giornale (50-60 battute spazi inclusi) o ancora (ma orami penso sia desueto) a “moduli”. E posso garantirvi che stiamo parlando di miserie, al punto che bisognerebbe riflettere sul valore che viene portato da chi scrive sulla base di quel che scrive (e non solo, perché bisogna fare anche molto altro, in alcuni casi anche l’impaginazione) e quello che riceve economicamente in cambio.

Money quote: “To research this article, I talked to about a dozen freelance writers and a handful of magazine editors about the present state of the job. These were mostly writers who have been doing this work for between 10 and 20 years, who write pieces of national and global importance, and who, from the outside, look like they have reached the top of their profession. I’m not talking about 24-year-olds cobbling together $250 paychecks for their TV recaps so they can afford a corner in a tiny three-bedroom (though I’ve been there, and they too deserve much better). I’m talking about writers you might recognize from their bylines on the covers of magazines or as guests on cable news and Morning Edition. They are mid-career professionals, many with spouses and children. These people are more successful than I or almost any freelance writer can hope to become. And not one of them had a nice word to say about their working conditions.”

https://medium.com/s/story/how-much-is-a-word-worth-7fcd131a341c

Il vero, grande problema con la tecnologia digitale di rete non è L privacy. È che siamo diventati dipendenti, nel senso di tossici

Money quote: “And that brings us to what we really talk about when we talk about tech.

We talk about the fact that we can’t get off this fucking machine.”

https://medium.com/@davepell/the-real-technology-problem-bc6aa27e526b

Se lo ritwittate, lui (forse) vi fa il mini-ritratto come omino stilizzato. È diventato un virale enorme.

Money quote: “As I write this, now deep into Day 4, the retweets have finally began trickling down to a manageable flow. The total number of retweets is currently at 5411, which means that with the likenesses of 315 people now down on paper, that just leaves another 5096 to go, which begs the question…
Right, who’s next?”

https://medium.com/@chazhutton/i-offered-to-draw-people-then-5000-people-said-yes-83cd7cecfdd7

Apple rispetta davvero la privacy? Dal cloud alle foto, che cosa succede ai nostri dati - la mia inchiesta per Il Sole 24 Ore

http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/tecnologie/2018-04-18/apple-rispetta-davvero-privacy-cloud-foto-che-cosa-succede-nostri-dati-182119.shtml

È il creatore del gioco per Commodore 64 con i cammelli che camminano. Vive da eremita nel Galles, ha un socio italiano e continua ad andare alla grande, anche se nessuno lo sa (e a lui decisamente non importa). Una bella intervista di Jaime D'Alessandro su Repubblica

Money quote:

D) Dieci anni dopo è arrivata la prima PlayStation con i suoi giochi cinematografici e sono nati fenomeni come Lara Croft. Eppure lei ha deciso di continuare nel solco della “psychedelia”, dell'astrazione. Ha deciso di starne fuori, proprio mentre sul settore iniziavano a piovere investimenti milionari . Oggettivamente: non le sembra una scelta discutibile?

R) Lo sa? In Galles allevo alcune pecore, un asino e un lama (la sua software house si chiama Llamasoft, ndr). E quando è una bella giornata smetto di lavorare e vado al mare o a farmi una passeggiata. No, non sono mai stato interessato alla carriera in una grande multinazionale. Scrivere codice, sviluppare un software, è una cosa molto personale. In due ci mettiamo a volte un anno a fare un gioco, altre volte due o tre mesi. Ma siamo sempre noi a scegliere."

http://www.repubblica.it/tecnologia/2018/04/30/news/jeff_minter_l_uomo_del_futuro_che_ha_scelto_di_vivere_nel_passato-195204956/