Questo tecnologo, Justin Garrison, ha scritto un libro per O’Reilly, che è uno dei maggiori editori di libri di tecnologia. Era il suo primo libro e ne racconta la dinamica e le vicissitudine con dedizione quasi ingenua. Mentre Mark Twain riteneva che gli editori fossero i peggiori banditi, è evidente che sono il banco del casinò: vincono sempre loro.

Money quote: “Post production took about a month to complete and then the book went off for printing. At the same time it was posted on Safari Books Online and immediately available. We each received 6 copies of the book in the mail shortly after it was available for sale.

All in all I worked from Feb — Oct for roughly 5 nights a week at 2–3 hours per night. I also worked about 3 weekends non-stop when a draft or final edits were due. Roughly I’d say I worked about 500 hours total. That was only my time and doesn’t include Kris’. I was lucky to have a co-author to share the load.”

https://medium.com/@rothgar/the-economics-of-writing-a-technical-book-689d0c12fe39

Il New Yorker racconta la storia della vera e unica rivista per hacker: “2600”. Una rivista di carta che va avanti da trent’anni e che vi consiglio di leggere, prima o poi (su archive. org qualcosa si trova).

Lo so, era una cosa da consigliare per il fine settimana, perché è una bella lettura. Ma voi la salvate su pocket o instapaper e il gioco è fatto, no?

Money quote: “2600—named for the frequency that allowed early hackers and “phreakers” to gain control of land-line phones—is the photocopier to Snowden’s microprocessor. Its articles aren’t pasted up on a flashy Web site but, rather, come out in print. The magazine—which started as a three-page leaflet sent out in the mail, and became a digest-sized publication in the late nineteen-eighties—just celebrated its thirtieth anniversary. It still arrives with the turning of the seasons, in brown envelopes just a bit smaller than a 401k mailer.

“There’s been now, by any stretch of the imagination, three generations of hackers who have read 2600 magazine,” Jason Scott, a historian and Web archivist who recently reorganized a set of 2600’s legal files, said. Referring to Goldstein, whose real name is Eric Corley, he continued: “Eric really believes in the power of print, words on paper. It’s obvious for him that his heart is in the paper.” (That love affair comes with a price: earlier this year, 2600 was in danger of closing after a distributor failed to pay the magazine. The case is still in court.)”

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/print-magazine-hackers

Dati per coltivare frutta e verdura, ecco la rivoluzione “vertical farming” - il mio articolo per CorCom

https://www.corrierecomunicazioni.it/digital-economy/dati-per-coltivare-frutta-e-verdura-ecco-la-rivoluzione-vertical-farming/

Se l'esercizio è quello di conquistarsi un pubblico, e nell'epoca del narcisismo preso sul serio certo che lo è, allora forse la strategia migliore è essere autentici e darsi una propria voce

Money quote: "Listen, future content creators of the world: strike the word “content” from your vocabulary. Write it on a post-it note, douse it in kerosene and set that bitch ablaze. You’re not here because you dream of one day stuffing the “Top Posts” section of the Medium newsletter. You’re here because you dream of creating pretty things that serve a purpose. Those bro-flakes are teaching you how to speak. I’m going to teach you how to fucking sing."

https://writingcooperative.com/where-my-writing-voice-comes-from-178af4e1b5e3

Con iPhone si aprono le camere degli hotel e le automobili - il mio articolo per La Stampa

http://www.lastampa.it/2018/05/29/tecnologia/con-iphone-si-aprono-le-camere-degli-hotel-e-le-automobili-GeewA9M68U7P9J4qVCnwjN/amphtml/pagina.amp.html

4,5 megabyte in 62.500 schede perforate. USA, 1955.

Sul come si scrive un libro, se a penna o con il computer

Money quote: "Ultimately, you will have to decide the best way for you to write a novel. I’ve experienced both and I will say that I type my novels directly into the computer now."

https://writingcooperative.com/writing-a-novel-longhand-b1e1a0d450e2

Una coppia di comici americani praticamente sconosciuta da noi, "Tim and Eric". Deliranti. Bellissimi. Da cercare, dopo aver letto l'intervista.

Money quote: "A show filled with hair snacks and too-tight shorts may not sound all that hilarious on the page. Off the page, maybe even less so. But the secret to Tim and Eric’s comedy is in the details. It’s not so much what their characters are saying, but the vacant look in their eyes, the extended silences, their clumsy attempts at sincerity. Even at its most bizarre, there’s something very human about Awesome Show’s cast of eccentrics and weirdos. There’s a frailty behind the madness that only becomes more evident the closer you dare look."

https://www.believermag.com/issues/200809/?read=interview_tim_and_eric

Facile facile, un giochino per rilassarsi. Sì, sì...

Money quote: "3 o'clock is the strange puzzle game where you try to figure out who or what killed the Canderwalt family. This game will take you through a 15 minute journey in the house where it happened. You will be able to point and click through the entire story, but there's a catch! You must uncover what happened by doing the crime yourself! Will you be able to solve the mystery?"

http://www.mind-circus.org

Apple prepara Star, l’ibrido Mac-iPad Pro - il mio articolo per La Stampa

http://www.lastampa.it/2018/05/30/tecnologia/apple-prepara-star-librido-macipad-pro-0licpgZ45L9KSD5rLmvY2I/amphtml/pagina.amp.html

La storia di Anna Delvey, l’influencer miliardaria che stregò vip, potenti, multimiliardari e mezza Manhattan distraendo tutti spostando sempre gli stessi pochi soldi come in un gioco delle tre carte, riuscendo così per qualche anno a pranzare nei migliori ristoranti e dormire nei migliori hotel, raccontata da un lungo pezzo del New York Magazine da non perdere.

Link: http://bit.ly/2L3oeWc

Questo tizio odia Slack. E non solo

Money quote:
"trello & jira
Are also things I hate."

https://abe-winter.github.io/plea%27s/help/2018/02/11/slack.html

GDPR

In Papua Nuova Guinea sono usciti da Facebook tutti insieme (per un mese). Me lo segnala il poeta residente R.R.Corsi.

Money quote: "The government aims to use the month-long ban to analyse how Facebook is being used and prosecute those breaching the country's 2016 cyber-crime law.

Mr Basil told the country's Post-Courier: "The time will allow information to be collected to identify users that hide behind fake accounts, users that upload pornographic images, users that post false and misleading information.""

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44290012?SThisFB

È uno di quegli articoli geniali e idioti al tempo stesso. Ma tutta la categoria dell'auto-aiuto è costruita così: acqua fresca e gocce di limone. Ti fregano con il limone, ma poi ti vendono sostanzialmente acqua fresca.

In particolare, i suggerimenti su come leggere un libro al giorno - ma poi perché leggere un libro al giorno? - vanno dall'idiota al geniale. Come da premessa, insomma.

Money quote: "Don’t start your reading marathon with a caffeinated beverage, unless you absolutely feel like you must. Save it for when you really start to drag and need a pick me up. It’s like a race in the “critically-acclaimed” film The Fast and the Furious: if you hit the nitrous too early, you’ll crash and you won’t win this race."

Money quote: "Naps vs. Coffee: Which Is Better When You're Exhausted?"

https://lifehacker.com/how-to-read-an-entire-book-in-a-single-day-1749070044

Seneca fra tutti è uno quelli che ha studiato di più la morte, come peraltro ha predicato costantemente. È al centro della vita, fa parte di noi, è oltretutto un punto di arrivo inevitabile e, nel caso dei consiglieri di gente come Caligola, Claudio e Nerone, è meglio abituarsi all'idea che ti possa toccare in qualsiasi momento. (Il Lamphams Quarterly si dimostra ogni numero fatto sempre meglio)

Money quote: "“Study death always,” Seneca counseled his friend Lucilius, and he took his own advice. From what is likely his earliest work, the Consolation to Marcia (written around AD 40), to the magnum opus of his last years (63–65), the Moral Epistles, Seneca returned again and again to this theme. It crops up in the midst of unrelated discussions, as though never far from his mind; a ringing endorsement of rational suicide, for example, intrudes without warning into advice about keeping one’s temper, in On Anger. Examined together, Seneca’s thoughts organize themselves around a few key themes: the universality of death; its importance as life’s final and most defining rite of passage; its part in purely natural cycles and processes; and its ability to liberate us, by freeing souls from bodies or, in the case of suicide, to give us an escape from pain, from the degradation of enslavement, or from cruel kings and tyrants who might otherwise destroy our moral integrity."

https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/study-death-always

Argomentando la liceità delle tasse, c'è un commentatore di Aeon che è andato letteralmente fuori di testa

Money quote: "In addressing the question of whether taxation is theft, it is important to distinguish two senses of ‘theft’: legal and moral. In 18th-century North America, it was possible to ‘own’ a slave, in the legal sense of ownership. If someone deprived me of my slave in order to give that slave liberty, then this constituted ‘theft’ in the legal sense. But of course the laws underpinning slavery were morally abhorrent, and hence few these days would class liberating a slave as ‘theft’ in any moral sense. Conversely, we can have cases of moral theft that are not legal theft. The laws of Nazi Germany enabled the authorities to seize the property of Jews who had been deported; although strictly speaking legal, such actions constituted ‘theft’ in a moral sense."

https://aeon.co/essays/if-your-pay-is-not-yours-to-keep-then-neither-is-the-tax

La morte degli album, ancora

Money qoute: "Jeremy Skaller, who produced Jay Sean's No. 1 hit "Down" and is also a manager at The Heavy Group, cites technology as a major factor behind the death of the LP. Thanks to Spotify, Pandora, Google Play and the dozens of other streaming services available, consumers don't have to commit to buying an entire album to hear the tracks that strike their curiosity."

http://toofab.com/2017/09/22/7-reasons-the-album-is-dead-fergie-visual-album-double-duchess-beyonce-lemonade-one-republic/

Gomblotto degli alieni: il nostro cervello cabbllato millenni prima per vedere il montaggio senza esplodere

Money quote: "It would seem that our evolutionary history did very little to prepare us for film cuts – so why don’t our brains explode when we watch movies?"

https://aeon.co/videos/for-millennia-wed-never-seen-anything-like-film-cuts-how-do-we-process-them-so-easily

Apple ha scelto di stare con i cattivi: “Apple non permette a Telegram di aggiornare l'app sul sistema operativo iOS in tutto il mondo da quando le autorità russe hanno ordinato ad Apple di rimuoverlo da App Store", ha denunciato il fondatore Pavel Durov.

Link: http://bit.ly/2J45zsq

Con il Fictional Design i colosso di internet si trasformano in delle specie di Casaleggio d’Oltreoceano.

Money quote: “At the core of speculative design, however, are unsettling visions, in the tradition of Brave New World, The Handmaid’s Tale, Blade Runner, or Black Mirror. Speculative dystopia is a tradition that can be traced back 200 years, to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but it’s a tradition limited, mostly, to the world of novels and fiction. Speculative designers work a similar vein but do so in the world of designed objects, be they physical or digital.”

https://www.wired.com/story/the-creepy-rise-of-real-companies-spawning-fictional-design