In rete si trovano un sacco di recensioni. È un genere che, come autore, frequento anche io, ed è interessante vedere come vengono impostate rispetto al pubblico e all'oggetto da recensire. Beh, se la guardate con questa prospettiva, anche la seguente recensione della nuova release di Ubuntu è parecchio interessante per lo sforzo che fa di dare prospettiva e solidità temporale oltre che spaziale al sistema operativo basato su Linux.

Money quote: "This review is going to be a little bit different from others in that I am completely unfamiliar with the modern stock Ubuntu desktop since GNOME 2 was abandoned. I started on Ubuntu back in the "badger" days when it was basically a lightly modified GNOME 2 desktop. Once Ubuntu's default desktop switched to Unity and GNOME 3 was released at about the same time, I found immediately that neither of them would work for me. So I bounced around a bit between various desktops like Cinnamon and MATE before finally settling on XFCE via Xubuntu over the past few years. It's not quite where GNOME 2 was before it was abandoned but it's pretty darn close. Today, we're going to see if Ubuntu 18.04 ("Bionic Beaver" or as I like to call it, "The Beav") and its GNOME 3 desktop is usable for someone as finicky as me."

http://blog.bityard.net/articles/2018/April/in-beaver-we-trust-a-lengthy-pedantic-review-of-ubuntu-1804-lts.html

Maxiacquisizione di Broadcom: compra CA Technologies ed entra nel mondo del software aziendale - il mio articolo per La Stampa

http://www.lastampa.it/2018/07/12/tecnologia/maxiacquisizione-di-broadcom-compra-ca-technologies-ed-entra-nel-mondo-del-software-aziendale-aHqUqDOWPHFBLFTdovjTCL/pagina.html

Storia delle pagine-anteprima di Wikipedia, scritta da chi le ha fatte. Un'epopea nella tecnologia e nel codice collaborativo

Money quote: "A few days ago, my team completed the launch of “page previews”—a feature now deployed to hundreds of language editions of Wikipedia. We are seeing up to half a million hits every minute to our API to serve those cards that show when you hover over any link.

On the surface it looks quite simple. It’s something many websites have already. It has an image and some text and shows when you hover over a link. Hardly groundbreaking stuff … or so it may seem.

The original idea was conceived four years ago, based on an idea from a volunteer/editor many years before that.

It’s thus taken a few years for us to get this out to everyone. That might seem strange, but like an iceberg, once you start looking below it, it all makes sense."

https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/04/20/why-it-took-a-long-time-to-build-that-tiny-link-preview-on-wikipedia/

C'è questo tizio che ha speso letteralmente anni per progettare e poi costruire la città perfetta dentro Sim City 3000. Vincent Oscala, uno studente di architettura filippino di 22 anni, ha creato Magnasanti, una metropoli terrificante dove non vorreste mai vivere (ma che potrebbe diventare la megalopoli del futuro). È una storia di una decina di anni fa, ma vale la pena ripescarla: pensate quando ci metteremo sopra dei sistemi di machine learning che poi diventeranno urbanisti, paesaggisti o responsabili per la pianificazione del territorio. Voglio dire: del nostro territorio.

Money quote: "Moreover, the city he created was remarkably stable, with no abandoned buildings and no wasted space. There are no roads — all transit is mass transit. An omniscient police force has eliminated all crime in the city. Magnasanti’s water and power needs are supplied by neighboring cities, eliminating the need for much of the related infrastructure."

https://rumorsontheinternets.org/2010/10/14/magnasanti-the-largest-and-most-terrifying-simcity/

Un telefono Android in bianco e nero. Arriva la semplicità hipster

Money quote: "Blloc is a plain and minimalistic smartphone combining a power saving operating system with efficient hardware and an easy to use messaging platform, it’s built to be the perfect communication and productivity tool that you can rely on every day."

https://www.blloc.com

Siccome esce il fumetto di Blade Runner 2049

http://www.fumettologica.it/2018/07/blade-runner-fumetti/

colgo l'occasione per ricordare che per me il film è un capolavoro

http://www.fumettologica.it/2017/10/blade-runner-2049-recensione/

La meditazione ti salva la vita, non è facile, a volte ti scappa da ridere, altre vorresti aprire gli occhi, ma vale la pena provare metti che finisci in una grotta e non sai come uscirne. Io per esercitarmi sto partecipando a una challenge di meditazione di 40 giorni, per ora ne sono passati nove! 😇 https://www.facebook.com/139452422739093/posts/2291213134229667/ “La meditazione, infatti, crea un effetto calmante rallentando la frequenza cardiaca, la respirazione e il metabolismo, abbassando i livelli di utilizzo di cortisolo e ossigeno. Una persona che medita emetterebbe anche meno anidride carbonica”.

Pensiamo ai problemi e a come li affrontiamo. Soprattutto a come li affrontiamo: ci sono modi migliori. Sul serio.

Money quote: "Einstein once said, “You can’t solve a problem from the level of thinking that created the problem in the first place“."

https://medium.com/personal-growth/thinking-in-levels-how-to-dig-deeper-and-think-better-8909afbe4fed

A questo sviluppatore Scrum proprio non piace (e come dargli torto)

Money quote: "7. Scrum is very management heavy. Typical teams have Product Owners, Scrum Masters, and Team Leads. Innovative, motivated teams operate better with less management, not more."

https://medium.com/@ard_adam/why-scrum-is-the-wrong-way-to-build-software-99d8994409e5

Sul Clarin, Mario Vargas Llosa y Lanata spiega e conclude il suo pensiero

Money quote: "El autor, de 82 años, resumió el inicio de ese camino: “Cuando era joven era difícil no pensar que el socialismo iba a ser la solución al gravísimo problema de opresión y pobreza que sufría Perú”, dijo. “Fui por libre elección a la Universidad de San Marcos, que tenía una tradición de rebeldía muy marcada, convencido de que allí iba a encontrar a los comunistas que salvarían al país. Fui militante durante un año, y lo que me salvó del dogmatismo estalinista fue el existencialismo, principalmente de Sartre, a quien leía con enorme admiración y creyéndole todo. Tanto leía al filósofo francés que mis amigos me llamaban 'el sartrecillo valiente'”."

https://www.clarin.com/cultura/vargas-llosa-lanata-autor-volvio-ferviente-liberal_0_rJQwitG6f.html

Notevole ritratto del New Yorker di H. R. McMaster, generale della cavalleria meccanizzata (leggi: carri armati leggeri e veloci) e consigliere per la sicurezza di Donald Trump.

Money quote: "In the years that followed, the nature of warfare changed, as urban insurgencies and terrorist cells became the dominant threats. McMaster, with his nimble intellect, prodded the Army to absorb these changes. He grew concerned that, after the Gulf War, the military had been seduced by the promise of quick conflicts in which the U.S. could rely on its superior hardware and technology to rout any adversary. He was an outspoken critic of a phenomenon that he saw as a form of cognitive dissonance: military leaders’ insisting on fighting the war they wanted to be fighting, rather than the war they actually were fighting. He called it the triumph of “theory over practice.”"

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/mcmaster-and-commander

Cos'è che nel 1971 fece innamorare della tecnologia e di un certo spirito hacker i giovani Steve Jobs (16 anni) e Steven Wozniak (25)? Furono i phone phreakers, nati dieci anni prima e raccontati all'epoca da un famoso articolo dal mensile americano Esquire. Fu dalla scoperta di quel mondo di "curiosi ed esploratori delle reti telefoniche" che nacque l'idea da parte della coppia dei due Steve di costruire (e vendere) le blue box, le scatoline magiche per telefonare gratuitamente in tutto il mondo. E poi fondare Apple, nel 1976.

Il resto, come si dice, è storia.

In questo documentario la ricostruzione di quella fase della vita di Jobs.

Money quote: "“If we hadn’t made those little blue boxes, there might never have been an Apple computer.” — Steve Jobs"

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/before-they-created-apple-jobs-and-wozniak-hacked-the-phone-system/

L'articolo è particolarmente critico sull'ignoranza apparente di Mark Zuckerberg relativamente alle cose che hanno a che fare con il giornalismo. Non sono completamente d'accordo però. Comunque, lettura affascinante.

Money quote: "Zuckerberg runs a media company that distributes news, but doesn’t have a proper newsroom. He runs a media company that has—with Google’s help—dominated the vast majority of digital ad dollars and eviscerated the journalism industry’s business model, all while preaching about the importance of journalism. He runs a media company that, he says, believes deeply in the need to sustain independent journalism, but won’t pay publishers to license journalistic content. And he runs a media company that has decided to show its users less news from professional outlets—it’s really not what people want to see, he says—in favor of more individual opinions."

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/mark-zuckerberg-doesnt-understand-journalism/559424/

Un progetto interessante: una macchina fotografica e una stampante. Nel mezzo, una rete neurale. Le foto sono in realtà disegni fatti dal computer...

Money quote: "Instant cameras are a classic that still delights today. There is something eternally amusing about a physical, unique image, that is uniquely different to digital. Playing with neural networks for object recognition one day, I wondered if I could take the concept of an instant camera one step further, and ask the camera to re-interpret the image, printing out a cartoon instead of a faithful photograph."

http://danmacnish.com/2018/07/01/draw-this/

Domenica artistica. Ecco Sleep, l'opera fuori di testa del pittore Vincent Desiderio che ha fatto da ispirazione per il video fuori di testa di Kayne West del 2016.

Money quote: ""When we make a painting we are building a psychologically charged sensual space of possibilities," Desiderio said in a 2014 interview with Painting Perceptions. "We can build it as a prison or as an observatory. I prefer the latter.""

https://www.npr.org/2016/07/03/484402517/a-chat-with-the-painter-whose-work-inspired-kanye-wests-famous

http://www.thefader.com/2016/06/25/vincente-desiderio-sleep-kanye-west-famous-video

http://www.thefader.com/2016/06/24/kanye-wests-famous-video-premiere-stream

Una volta era lo standard del giornalismo americano. Adesso sta morendo male. Time, il gruppo e il settimanale, raccontato in una agghiacciante storia orale.

Money quote: "There were gentlemen writers and editors and women researchers who stayed up late and often had affairs. People just stayed in the office and would make drinks, or people would go out to long dinners. You felt like you were in some movie version of an elegant magazine."

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/19/business/media/time-inc-oral-history.html

Al confine tra Usa e Canada due americani di origine messicana parlano spagnolo. E vengono arrestati. Motivo? Parlano spagnolo.

Money quote: "“We were just talking, and then I was going to pay,” Suda told The Washington Post. “I looked up and saw the agent, and then after that, he just requested my ID. I looked at him like, ‘Are you serious?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, very serious.’ ”

Suda said she felt uncomfortable and began recording the encounter with her cellphone after they had moved into the parking lot. In the video Suda recorded, she asks the agent why he is detaining them, and he says it is specifically because he heard them speaking Spanish.

“Ma’am, the reason I asked you for your ID is because I came in here, and I saw that you guys are speaking Spanish, which is very unheard of up here,” the agent can be heard saying in the video."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/post-nation/wp/2018/05/20/a-border-patrol-agent-detained-two-u-s-citizens-at-a-gas-station-after-hearing-them-speak-spanish/

I BitCoin sono una cosa brutta e cattiva

Money quote: "In 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto served the world an entirely new kind of currency. It was one that people could move over the internet instantaneously and nearly free of charge."

https://medium.com/mit-technology-review/lets-destroy-bitcoin-3211861ce7a3

L’immagine della settimana è una fake news deliziosa

Viviamo immersi in una montagna di articoli cialtroni di autoaiuto e di pseudoesperimenti per migliorare e potenziare le nostre capacità. Non parliamo poi di quei casi di pseudo-gonzo journalism in cui il tizio o la tizia di turno provano a vivere in prima persona le esperienze di cui vogliono parlare. Ecco. In realtà certe cose, certi esperimenti, si possono fare e anche bene. Si chiama giornalismo di qualità. BBC?

Money quote: "One recent winter, I decided to find out. Working with sleep researchers Derk-Jan Dijk and Nayantara Santhi at the University of Surrey, I designed a programme to go cold-turkey on artificial light after dark, and to try to maximise exposure to natural light during the day – all while juggling an office job and busy family life in urban Bristol.

The discoveries I've made have revolutionised my attitude to light ­­­– and how I live my life during the night and day. I now make simple, daily choices that can transform how I sleep, how I feel and perhaps even my cognitive abilities. Could you be doing the same?"

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180424-what-i-learnt-by-living-without-artificial-light

Sempre più spesso trovo l'orgoglio di programmatori front e backend che si ribella contro tutta questa enfasi sulla intelligenza artificiale, machine learning e trucchi e trucchetti legati a questo approccio. In realtà, si è sempre potuto fare molto con gli strumenti che ci sono da tanto tempo...

Money quote: "In a former life, I used to write SQL to extract customer of the week. Basically, select from orders table where basket size is the biggest. We will then email a nice thank you note to this customer and attach a small coupon/voucher....

...Guess what? 99% of these people became repeat customers. We never needed ML. We just wrote a simple SQL and got this information. We did the same thing for customers who last shopped 3 or so months ago...."

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/987602838594445312.html