Dentro Amazon la cosa più importante sono le recensioni, perché spostano le persone da un prodotto all’altro e modellano i risultati delle ricerche. Amazon è gigantesca. L’economia delle recensioni false è un fenomeno gigantesco.
Money quote: “At just over $760 billion, Amazon is the world’s second most valuable company, behind Apple. CEO Jeff Bezos recently revealed the company counts more than 100 million paying Amazon Prime members globally, the $119-per-year membership that gets subscribers — the most devoted Amazon customers — free two-day shipping; music, TV, and movie streaming; access to an e-book library; and more. The company operates 13 third-party seller marketplaces around the world, and rents space to house those sellers’ inventory in more than 150 warehouses. In 2017, third-party merchants brought in $32 billion of revenue, and nearly 300,000 new sellers joined the marketplace last year alone.”
https://www.buzzfeed.com/nicolenguyen/amazon-fake-review-problem
Money quote: “At just over $760 billion, Amazon is the world’s second most valuable company, behind Apple. CEO Jeff Bezos recently revealed the company counts more than 100 million paying Amazon Prime members globally, the $119-per-year membership that gets subscribers — the most devoted Amazon customers — free two-day shipping; music, TV, and movie streaming; access to an e-book library; and more. The company operates 13 third-party seller marketplaces around the world, and rents space to house those sellers’ inventory in more than 150 warehouses. In 2017, third-party merchants brought in $32 billion of revenue, and nearly 300,000 new sellers joined the marketplace last year alone.”
https://www.buzzfeed.com/nicolenguyen/amazon-fake-review-problem
BuzzFeed News
Inside The Ecosystem That Fuels Amazon’s Fake Review Problem
A vast web of Amazon review fraud lives online, and it's designed to evade the company’s efforts to thwart it.
Non vi sbagliate, la “giapponesizzazione degli Stati Uniti” segue e non precede la “giapponesizzazione dell’Italia”. Grande articolo del New Yorker, btw.
Money quote: ”Stripped down to its most minimalist outlines (an approach that Kondo would surely approve), a life of uncluttered simplicity represents a fantasy. Why should Americans be so compelled by one from Japan? Close to twenty years ago, the answer would have been “because Japan is the global imagination’s default setting for the future,” as the author William Gibson wrote in 2001. “The Japanese seem to the rest of us to live several measurable clicks down the time line.” Gibson was referring to a Japan of trendy gadgets and services, such as high-tech cell phones and robot sushi bars, the flashy products of a hyper-consumer metropolis that inspired the creators of such films as “Blade Runner” and “The Matrix.” But what Gibson wrote about products was just as true about other, less visible trends in Japanese society: economic stagnation; a plunging fertility rate; a dramatic postponement of the “normal” milestones of adulthood, such as getting married or simply moving out of the family home; a creeping sense of ambivalence about what the future might hold. Seventeen years later, America has finally caught up. We don’t buy into Kondo’s life-changing magic just because we think Japan is cool; we also buy because our country is, in many ways, increasingly like Japan”
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-united-states-of-japan
Money quote: ”Stripped down to its most minimalist outlines (an approach that Kondo would surely approve), a life of uncluttered simplicity represents a fantasy. Why should Americans be so compelled by one from Japan? Close to twenty years ago, the answer would have been “because Japan is the global imagination’s default setting for the future,” as the author William Gibson wrote in 2001. “The Japanese seem to the rest of us to live several measurable clicks down the time line.” Gibson was referring to a Japan of trendy gadgets and services, such as high-tech cell phones and robot sushi bars, the flashy products of a hyper-consumer metropolis that inspired the creators of such films as “Blade Runner” and “The Matrix.” But what Gibson wrote about products was just as true about other, less visible trends in Japanese society: economic stagnation; a plunging fertility rate; a dramatic postponement of the “normal” milestones of adulthood, such as getting married or simply moving out of the family home; a creeping sense of ambivalence about what the future might hold. Seventeen years later, America has finally caught up. We don’t buy into Kondo’s life-changing magic just because we think Japan is cool; we also buy because our country is, in many ways, increasingly like Japan”
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-united-states-of-japan
The New Yorker
The United States of Japan
Hit Japanese products, from the Walkman to Pokémon, have long captivated us, but Japan’s most influential export might be its own lived experience.
Il senso di cosa sia l’informatica -e il computer- dal punto di vista del loro scopo sociale: uno strumento per potenziare la capacità della nostra mente, per sostituirsi a noi nel lavoro o per comunicare con altre persone? Le visioni di Google, Microsoft, Apple.
Money quote: “This is technology’s second philosophy, and it is orthogonal to the other: the expectation is not that the computer does your work for you, but rather that the computer enables you to do your work better and more efficiently. And, with this philosophy, comes a different take on responsibility. Pichai, in the opening of Google’s keynote, acknowledged that “we feel a deep sense of responsibility to get this right”, but inherent in that statement is the centrality of Google generally and the direct culpability of its managers. Nadella, on the other hand, insists that responsibility lies with the tech industry collectively, and all of us who seek to leverage it individually.”
https://stratechery.com/2018/techs-two-philosophies/
Money quote: “This is technology’s second philosophy, and it is orthogonal to the other: the expectation is not that the computer does your work for you, but rather that the computer enables you to do your work better and more efficiently. And, with this philosophy, comes a different take on responsibility. Pichai, in the opening of Google’s keynote, acknowledged that “we feel a deep sense of responsibility to get this right”, but inherent in that statement is the centrality of Google generally and the direct culpability of its managers. Nadella, on the other hand, insists that responsibility lies with the tech industry collectively, and all of us who seek to leverage it individually.”
https://stratechery.com/2018/techs-two-philosophies/
Stratechery by Ben Thompson
Tech’s Two Philosophies
Google and Facebook represent one philosophy, and Microsoft and Apple represent another; tech needs both, but ultimately platforms are more important than aggregators.
La passione per il “vino naturale” è il più grande scisma mai accaduto nel settore della vinicoltura. Potrebbe essere il colpo mortale che la farà sprofondare. Un articolo molto molto interessante del Guardian, se volete rendervi conto delle tendenze che stanno emergendo e delle loro conseguenze
Money quote: “As natural wine has grown, it has made enemies. To its many detractors, it is a form of luddism, a sort of viticultural anti-vax movement that lauds the cidery, vinegary faults that science has spent the past century painstakingly eradicating. According to this view, natural wine is a cult intent on rolling back progress in favour of wine best suited to the tastes of Roman peasants. The Spectator has likened it to “flawed cider or rotten sherry” and the Observer to “an acrid, grim burst of acid that makes you want to cry”.”
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/15/has-wine-gone-bad-organic-biodynamic-natural-wine
Money quote: “As natural wine has grown, it has made enemies. To its many detractors, it is a form of luddism, a sort of viticultural anti-vax movement that lauds the cidery, vinegary faults that science has spent the past century painstakingly eradicating. According to this view, natural wine is a cult intent on rolling back progress in favour of wine best suited to the tastes of Roman peasants. The Spectator has likened it to “flawed cider or rotten sherry” and the Observer to “an acrid, grim burst of acid that makes you want to cry”.”
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/15/has-wine-gone-bad-organic-biodynamic-natural-wine
the Guardian
Has wine gone bad?
The long read: ‘Natural wine’ advocates say everything about the modern industry is ethically, ecologically and aesthetically wrong – and have triggered the biggest split in the wine world for a generation
Un buon addestramento è quello che fa il successo delle AI di oggi. E i calcola con il tempo di compitazione. Che a livello planetario sta crescendo in maniera straordinaria. Le conseguenze stanno arrivando.
Money quote: “Three factors drive the advance of AI: algorithmic innovation, data (which can be either supervised data or interactive environments), and the amount of compute available for training. Algorithmic innovation and data are difficult to track, but compute is unusually quantifiable, providing an opportunity to measure one input to AI progress. Of course, the use of massive compute sometimes just exposes the shortcomings of our current algorithms. But at least within many current domains, more compute seems to lead predictably to better performance, and is often complementary to algorithmic advances.”
https://blog.openai.com/ai-and-compute/
Money quote: “Three factors drive the advance of AI: algorithmic innovation, data (which can be either supervised data or interactive environments), and the amount of compute available for training. Algorithmic innovation and data are difficult to track, but compute is unusually quantifiable, providing an opportunity to measure one input to AI progress. Of course, the use of massive compute sometimes just exposes the shortcomings of our current algorithms. But at least within many current domains, more compute seems to lead predictably to better performance, and is often complementary to algorithmic advances.”
https://blog.openai.com/ai-and-compute/
OpenAI
AI and Compute
We’re releasing an analysis showing that since 2012, the amount of compute used in the largest AI training runs has been increasing exponentially with a 3.4-month doubling time (by comparison, Moore’s Law had a 2-year doubling period).
Una lettera di un maestro ex leghista al ministro Salvini sul Fatto Quotidiano da leggere e da rileggere. Per cominciare bene la giornata.
Money quote: “Feci quell’esperienza con tutta la passione possibile, forse fin troppa. Avevo come lei ha ancora l “Albertino da Giussano” al bavero della giacca; adesivi ovunque sulla mia Fiat Panda e durante la campagna elettorale giravo con un altoparlante sull’auto che urlava una canzone: “Mi son lumbard, mi son lumbard e ai terun ghe spachi li ball” (lo scrivo senza gli accenti giusti, perdonatemi).
Se la ricorda Salvini? Pensi ho persino ancora una foto con Umberto Bossi…”
https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2018/06/05/lettera-di-un-maestro-ex-leghista-al-ministro-salvini/4404218/
Money quote: “Feci quell’esperienza con tutta la passione possibile, forse fin troppa. Avevo come lei ha ancora l “Albertino da Giussano” al bavero della giacca; adesivi ovunque sulla mia Fiat Panda e durante la campagna elettorale giravo con un altoparlante sull’auto che urlava una canzone: “Mi son lumbard, mi son lumbard e ai terun ghe spachi li ball” (lo scrivo senza gli accenti giusti, perdonatemi).
Se la ricorda Salvini? Pensi ho persino ancora una foto con Umberto Bossi…”
https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2018/06/05/lettera-di-un-maestro-ex-leghista-al-ministro-salvini/4404218/
Il Fatto Quotidiano
Lettera di un maestro ex leghista al ministro Salvini
Gentile ministro Salvini, le voglio raccontare una storia vera. Quando avevo 18 anni c’era ancora la Democrazia Cristiana e l’allora Pds. Ai tempi ero un giovane cattolico, cresciuto all’oratorio con il desiderio di darmi da fare per il mio paese. Ero arrivato…
Certo che scrivere su Medium perché non ha senso pagare per leggere gli articoli di Medium è veramente una doppia libidine con i fiocchi.
Money quote: “But what will I get if I subscribe to Medium for 5€/month?
Let’s start with the price, it is cheap, and I can afford more than that if I really think I need it, but here are the points that are not OK for me”
https://medium.com/writing-blog-2018/why-i-dont-pay-medium-membership-92c2c4afd9e9
Money quote: “But what will I get if I subscribe to Medium for 5€/month?
Let’s start with the price, it is cheap, and I can afford more than that if I really think I need it, but here are the points that are not OK for me”
https://medium.com/writing-blog-2018/why-i-dont-pay-medium-membership-92c2c4afd9e9
Medium
Why I Don’t Pay For Medium Membership
Yes, I read a lot, but that’s not a reason to pay for.
Un tizio va lungo disteso dal punto di vista professionale (anzi, imprenditoriale) e da questo trova lo spunto per scrivere che è riuscendo a uscire da queste secche che si diventa migliori. L’acqua calda invece la scopriamo settimana prossima.
Money quote: “One thing that helped me was realizing that we all have career low points. This thought gave me perspective”
https://medium.com/the-mission/how-to-deal-with-a-huge-low-point-in-your-career-47fa81ce67c4
Money quote: “One thing that helped me was realizing that we all have career low points. This thought gave me perspective”
https://medium.com/the-mission/how-to-deal-with-a-huge-low-point-in-your-career-47fa81ce67c4
Medium
How To Deal With A Huge Low Point In Your Career.
I’ve been going through a huge low point in my career. Other than leaving a startup I started with my brother, this would have to be the…
Forwarded from MacchiaChannel
La scelta della canzone che conclude l’ultimo episodio di “The Staircase” (un vero capolavoro che ha creato un genere, oggi rimandato in onda da Netflix con l’aggiunta di tre nuovi episodi che chiudono definitivamente una storia durata vent’anni e per vent’anni documentata dalla troupe che confezionava il documentario) è, ovviamente, un capolavoro.
Link: http://bit.ly/2Jw8Jtr
Link: http://bit.ly/2Jw8Jtr
Netflix
The Staircase | Sito ufficiale Netflix
Incidente o assassinio? Dopo la misteriosa morte della moglie, la vita dello scrittore Michael Peterson viene analizzata al microscopio.
Non solo Julia Evans mi ha fatto riscoprire le gioie dell’editing in batch di file di testo con “ed” (una opportunità anche per chi scrive prosa, oltre che per chi fa codice), ma mi ha fatto anche comprare un libro fantastico su come si usa “ed”.
Money quote: “In a surprising turn of events, I ended up using the ed editor to do this task, and it was really easy and simple to do! In this blog post I’ll make the case that if you have something you might normally accomplish with a Vim macro, you might conceivably want to use Ed for it!”
https://jvns.ca/blog/2018/05/11/batch-editing-files-with-ed/
Money quote: “In a surprising turn of events, I ended up using the ed editor to do this task, and it was really easy and simple to do! In this blog post I’ll make the case that if you have something you might normally accomplish with a Vim macro, you might conceivably want to use Ed for it!”
https://jvns.ca/blog/2018/05/11/batch-editing-files-with-ed/
La ricchezza dei romani incapsulata nei ghiacci della Groenlandia.
Money quote: “Modern people aren’t the only ones who’ve polluted the atmosphere. Two thousand years ago, the Romans smelted precious ores in clay furnaces, extracting silver and belching lead into the sky. Some of that lead settled on Greenland’s ice cap and mixed in with ever-accumulating layers of ice. Now, scientists studying annual deposits of those ice layers have found that spikes and dips in lead pollution during the Roman era mirror the timing of many historical events, including wars fought by Julius Caesar.”
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/rise-and-fall-roman-empire-exposed-greenland-ice-samples
Money quote: “Modern people aren’t the only ones who’ve polluted the atmosphere. Two thousand years ago, the Romans smelted precious ores in clay furnaces, extracting silver and belching lead into the sky. Some of that lead settled on Greenland’s ice cap and mixed in with ever-accumulating layers of ice. Now, scientists studying annual deposits of those ice layers have found that spikes and dips in lead pollution during the Roman era mirror the timing of many historical events, including wars fought by Julius Caesar.”
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/rise-and-fall-roman-empire-exposed-greenland-ice-samples
Science
Rise and fall of Roman Empire exposed in Greenland ice samples
Spikes and dips in lead pollution track wars and other historical events
Nella grande caccia alle streghe contro Facebook & c., durata pochi giorni, la “colpa” del social media di Mark Zuckerberg è stata monetizzare gli utenti. In realtà, come Cambridge Analityca dimostra, il problema ha più a che fare con la dimensione politica delle persone. Stiamo parlando di un’altra cosa, insomma.
La cronaca delle elezioni indiane dovrebbe spiegarlo meglio: una piattaforma tecnologica straniera che ospita e gestisce il dibattito politico di una nazione, riorganizzandolo con le priorità e schedando i partecipanti...
Money quote: “Yet the most intense political campaigning was not taking place on the streets. Instead, the action was happening on WhatsApp, a messaging service owned by Facebook that has about 250 million users in India.”
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/05/14/technology/whatsapp-india-elections.html
La cronaca delle elezioni indiane dovrebbe spiegarlo meglio: una piattaforma tecnologica straniera che ospita e gestisce il dibattito politico di una nazione, riorganizzandolo con le priorità e schedando i partecipanti...
Money quote: “Yet the most intense political campaigning was not taking place on the streets. Instead, the action was happening on WhatsApp, a messaging service owned by Facebook that has about 250 million users in India.”
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/05/14/technology/whatsapp-india-elections.html
NY Times
In India, Facebook’s WhatsApp Plays Central Role in Elections (Published 2018)
Unlike Facebook and Instagram, WhatsApp has received little attention for its influence on voters. But in one Indian state, the messaging service became a prime election tool.
Qui secondo me finisce male...
Money quote: “According to a pool report, President Trump responded by pointing to a window in the White House residence, and said: “She’s doing great. She’s looking at us right there.”
Reporters turned to look at the spot he indicated, but there was no sign of the first lady.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/trump-says-the-first-lady-is-doing-great-she-hasnt-been-seen-in-public-for-two-weeks/2018/05/25/b9107c60-5f97-11e8-a4a4-c070ef53f315_story.html
Money quote: “According to a pool report, President Trump responded by pointing to a window in the White House residence, and said: “She’s doing great. She’s looking at us right there.”
Reporters turned to look at the spot he indicated, but there was no sign of the first lady.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/trump-says-the-first-lady-is-doing-great-she-hasnt-been-seen-in-public-for-two-weeks/2018/05/25/b9107c60-5f97-11e8-a4a4-c070ef53f315_story.html
Washington Post
Trump says the first lady is ‘doing great.’ She hasn’t been seen in public for two weeks.
Melania Trump’s office has not said when she plans to resurface.
Elon Musk vuole aggiustare il giornalismo con la nuova Pravda. Sito web in cui i lettori votano gli articoli.
Vox riflette sul problema che solleva Musk.
Money quote: “The implication of his post appears to be that journalists are shaping their content in order to cater to advertisers, which … isn’t really how journalism works. Sure, publications rely on advertising dollars as a funding source — but journalists themselves aren’t in charge of getting that money or catering content to advertisers.
Plenty of journalists have spoken out saying as much.”
https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2018/5/24/17389388/elon-musk-twitter-pravda
Vox riflette sul problema che solleva Musk.
Money quote: “The implication of his post appears to be that journalists are shaping their content in order to cater to advertisers, which … isn’t really how journalism works. Sure, publications rely on advertising dollars as a funding source — but journalists themselves aren’t in charge of getting that money or catering content to advertisers.
Plenty of journalists have spoken out saying as much.”
https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2018/5/24/17389388/elon-musk-twitter-pravda
Vox
Elon Musk doesn’t know how journalism works — but thinks he can fix it
The tech leader took to Twitter to slam the media, proposing a new platform where people could rate articles on trustworthiness.
Commoventi foto di piccoli, piccoli treni tedeschi
Money quote: “The island of Nordstrandischmoor is connected to mainland Germany by a tiny narrow gauge railway, on which residents (at least those 15 years of age and older and holding a moped license) can drive private trains back and forth to and from Lüttmoorsiel. Each island house has its own wagon — some used to be wind-powered, using sails, but today they run on diesel.”
https://weburbanist.com/2018/05/08/tiny-trains-neat-narrow-gauge-rail-connects-german-island-to-mainland
Money quote: “The island of Nordstrandischmoor is connected to mainland Germany by a tiny narrow gauge railway, on which residents (at least those 15 years of age and older and holding a moped license) can drive private trains back and forth to and from Lüttmoorsiel. Each island house has its own wagon — some used to be wind-powered, using sails, but today they run on diesel.”
https://weburbanist.com/2018/05/08/tiny-trains-neat-narrow-gauge-rail-connects-german-island-to-mainland
WebUrbanist
Tiny Trains: Neat Narrow-Gauge Rail Connects German Island to Mainland
The island of Nordstrandischmoor is connected to mainland Germany by a tiny narrow gauge railway, on which residents (at least those 15 years of age and older and holding a moped license) can drive…
Se siete anche voi persi dentro Westworkd, questa timeline è una mano santa
Money quote: "To help "Westworld" fans better understand the events that have led up to the current season, INSIDER has put together a chronological timeline."
http://www.thisisinsider.com/westworld-timeline-spoilers-2018-4
Money quote: "To help "Westworld" fans better understand the events that have led up to the current season, INSIDER has put together a chronological timeline."
http://www.thisisinsider.com/westworld-timeline-spoilers-2018-4
Insider
An essential timeline of every important event on 'Westworld'
Insider created a linear timeline of HBO's sci-fi drama "Westworld," untangling the flashbacks and revelations from all three seasons.
Non seguo il calcio, ma se lo dovessi seguire, terrei d'occhio questa previsione automatica di chi vincerà...
Le valutazioni quantitative sono una cosa molto, molto brutta.
Money quote: “Contrary to commonsense belief, attempts to measure productivity through performance metrics discourage initiative, innovation and risk-taking. The intelligence analysts who ultimately located Osama bin Laden worked on the problem for years. If measured at any point, the productivity of those analysts would have been zero. Month after month, their failure rate was 100 per cent, until they achieved success. From the perspective of the superiors, allowing the analysts to work on the project for years involved a high degree of risk: the investment in time might not pan out. Yet really great achievements often depend on such risks.“
https://aeon.co/ideas/against-metrics-how-measuring-performance-by-numbers-backfires
Money quote: “Contrary to commonsense belief, attempts to measure productivity through performance metrics discourage initiative, innovation and risk-taking. The intelligence analysts who ultimately located Osama bin Laden worked on the problem for years. If measured at any point, the productivity of those analysts would have been zero. Month after month, their failure rate was 100 per cent, until they achieved success. From the perspective of the superiors, allowing the analysts to work on the project for years involved a high degree of risk: the investment in time might not pan out. Yet really great achievements often depend on such risks.“
https://aeon.co/ideas/against-metrics-how-measuring-performance-by-numbers-backfires
Aeon
Against metrics: how measuring performance by numbers backfires
A company culture built on metrics of success promotes short-termism, loses staff, and contributes to economic stagnation