Amazon entra nel business dei satelliti artificiali - il mio articolo per Il Sole 24 ORE

https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/tecnologie/2018-11-28/amazon-entra-business-satelliti-artificiali--100153.shtml?uuid=AEIN5moG

Nasce RoboMaker, l’idea di Amazon di reinventare il robot intelligente - il mio articolo per Il Sole 24 ORE

https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/tecnologie/2018-11-27/nasce-robomaker-l-idea-amazon-reinventare-robot-intelligente-093111.shtml?uuid=AEtVpinG

Gente che fa le diete digiunando. Secondo me c’è un problema...

Money quote: “For the past year and a half, Keith Taylor and his wife have adopted a lifestyle that includes fasting on a regular basis. "For six days per week we don't eat until around 5 pm, but eat as much as we want and whatever we want from 5 pm until we go to bed. It is not a diet in the classic sense -- we do not restrict WHAT we eat or HOW MUCH we eat, but rather just WHEN we eat," Taylor said in an email.

Since the Taylors have been intermittently fasting, often called just IF, they've maintained a healthy body weight, been more alert and energetic, experienced less stress, and are less prone to getting sick”

https://edition-m.cnn.com/2018/10/01/health/fasting-longevity-food-drayer/index.html

Siamo i primi esseri umani a vedere un tramonto su Marte. Pensateci.

Il lato economico di Jane Austen. Ebbene sì, lo faceva anche per soldi!

Money quote: “Austen, too, was a fortune hunter, after a fashion. Like any author, she wrote for many reasons—personal artistic expression, to entertain herself and her beloved sister Cassandra, to comment on the world around her in the guise of mere stories—but also for money. She made efforts to get herself a publisher, and did”

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/375486/

Qual è il futuro dell’informatica dopo la fine della legge di Moore? - Il mio articolo per La Stampa (a pagamento)

https://www.lastampa.it/2018/11/29/tecnologia/qual-il-futuro-dellinformatica-dopo-la-fine-della-legge-di-moore-LLWlBXgrE3B2eESZVK3eML/premium.html

Un effetto collaterale del test del dna - va di moda a scopo genealogico - è che fa scoprire cose che un tempo non erano immaginabili. Come certi tradimenti femminili antichi per il tramite delle loro conseguenze: i propri figli sono in realtà generati da altri padri. Questa è la storia di uno dei padri che ha scoperto che sua figlia non è in realtà sia figlia. Tredici anni dopo.

Money quote: “Yes. I can say she’s my daughter without feeling that pain anymore. Used to be, I’d say, “Oh, you’re my daughter,” and my heart would just hurt, and now I just say, “You’re my daughter,” and I’m fine.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/571684/

L’avaro di Moliere in salsa di soia: Chow Yun-fat fa una vita spartana in vista del trapasso e della beneficienza postuma.

Money quote: “Chow’s wife, Jasmine Tan, says that her husband manages to live so frugally in one of the world’s most expensive cities by frequenting street food stalls and rarely buying new things, according to an Oriental Daily report from last week. For example, for 17 years, Chow stuck with his trusty Nokia flip phone, only recently purchasing a new smartphone when his old device finally stopped working.”

https://shanghai.ist/2018/10/15/chow-yun-fat-lives-on-just-100-a-month-will-leave-entire-714-million-fortune-to-charity

Per tutti noi impallinati della fotografia analogica, a Hong Kong c’è un tesoro.

Money quote: “David believes he has the largest range of second hand gear in the world. Yes, the world. I am not sure that I can argue with him on this point… He has quite a few storefronts in Champagne Court – everyone of which is full from ceiling to floor with gear.

Beware – this post has heaps of photos – so, keep scrolling!”

https://melbournestreetphotography.com.au/2015/03/23/hong-kong-analogue-camera-trail-david-chan-champagne-court/

La «nuvola» di Amazon Aws cambia pelle e diventa più «fisica» - il mio articolo per Il Sole 24 ORE

https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/tecnologie/2018-11-30/l-ai-arriva-tutti-servizi-ecco-come-amazon-aws-ha-cambiato-pelle--151816.shtml?uuid=AEKufMqG

Le lingue ci condizionano. E noi condizioniamo i linguaggi. Che non sono tutti uguali: ci sono lingue più prolisse e altre più succinte. Ci sono anche più cose, tra cielo e terra...

Money quote: "So does the contrast between Riau Indonesian’s “chicken eat” and Kabardian’s “they saw me and it affected me, not now, and I really mean it” mean that each language gives its speakers a different way of looking at the world? It’s an intriguing idea, first formulated by anthropologist and linguist Edward Sapir and amateur linguist (and fire inspector!) Benjamin Whorf. If it were correct, an English-speaker would generally think about the past more than a Chinese-speaker would, while Germans would think more about movement than Americans or Brits."

Money quote 2: "By contrast, only a few languages have been taken up as vehicles of empire and imposed on millions of unsuspecting and underqualified adults. Long-dominant Mandarin, then, is less “busy” than Cantonese and Taiwanese, which have been imposed on fewer people. English came out the way it did because Vikings, who in the first millennium forged something of an empire of their own in northern and western Europe, imposed themselves on the Old English of the people they invaded and, as it were, mowed it. German, meanwhile, stayed “normal.”"

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-world-s-most-efficient-languages-1335759500

Credo ci manchi il senso, le categorie, in una certa misura anche lo storytelling. Non ne sappiamo praticamente niente. Non ne capiamo il senso, il significato sociale, esistenziale. E le immagini che parlano per noi in realtà ci dicono cose che cerchiamo di capire utilizzando categorie difettate.

Prendete ad esempio questi hangar, uffici open pieni di ragazze e ragazzi cinesi che guardano immagini e le etichettano per dare forma alle masse di dati che vengono girate ai sistemi di training delle intelligenze artificiali. Cervelli usati in batteria per fornire mangime a cervelli artificiali. Ma di cosa stiamo parlando? Cosa stiamo vedendo? Quali confini di eticità, quali margini di competenza e conoscenza abbiamo?

Money quote: "Inside, Hou Xiameng runs a company that helps artificial intelligence make sense of the world. Two dozen young people go through photos and videos, labeling just about everything they see. That’s a car. That’s a traffic light. That’s bread, that’s milk, that’s chocolate. That’s what it looks like when a person walks.

“I used to think the machines are geniuses,” Ms. Hou, 24, said. “Now I know we’re the reason for their genius.”

In China, long the world’s factory floor, a new generation of low-wage workers is assembling the foundations of the future. Start-ups in smaller, cheaper cities have sprung up to apply labels to China’s huge trove of images and surveillance footage. If China is the Saudi Arabia of data, as one expert says, these businesses are the refineries, turning raw data into the fuel that can power China’s A.I. ambitions."

Ps: come giornalista che si occupa di innovazione e tecnologia, mi lacrimano gli occhi di felicità e genuina invidia quando leggo articoli così.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/25/business/china-artificial-intelligence-labeling.html

Come una sorta di pendolo, il fuoco degli appassionati di orologi si muove attorno a una serie di riferimenti sempre in movimento: un anno è Rolex, un anno Panerai, un anno lo Smart Watch, un anno l’orologio artigianale che costa come un appartamento in centro, un anno è lo Zenith vintage o l’Omega che è stato sulla Luna.

Adesso è il momento dei Grand Seiko, i Rolex giapponesi.

Money quote: “Once one of Japan’s best kept secrets, Grand Seiko was born from Seiko’s desire to show the world what Japanese watchmaking could do. And in the years since, the innovative brand has become one of the most influential. Still, as Felix put it last month, “there remains an air of mystique around the Japanese brand”. And while his excellent video explained some of the essentials, I thought I’d add some more meat to its bones with this list of 11 key models from the collection, and just why they matter.”

https://timeandtidewatches.com/list-11-of-the-greatest-grand-seikos-and-why-they-matter/

Tutto ma proprio tutto sulla melatonina. Articolo un po' soporifero. Ma forse è un effetto collaterale voluto.

Money quote: “The most popular circadian rhythm disorder is “being a teenager”. Teenagers’ melatonin cycle is naturally shifted later, so that they don’t want to go to bed until midnight or later, and don’t want to wake up until eight or later. This is an obvious mismatch with school starting times, leading to teenagers either not getting enough sleep, or getting their sleep at times their body doesn’t want to be asleep and isn’t able to use it properly. This is why every reputable sleep scientist and relevant scientific body keeps telling the public school system to start later.”

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/E4cKD9iTWHaE7f3AJ/melatonin-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know

Collettivo anonimo produce le sue medicine hi-tech. Sembra la trama di un romanzo di fantascienza (peraltro ne esistono di esattamente così) ma è solo una lunga e gustosa lettura per la domenica.

Money quote: “In the last decade, Four Thieves has run afoul of the Food and Drug Administration, billionaire pharma executives, doctors, and chemists at some of the United States’ most prestigious universities. Indeed, Laufer and his collaborators can’t stop pissing off powerful people because Four Thieves is living proof that effective medicines can be developed on a budget outside of institutional channels.”

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/43pngb/how-to-make-your-own-medicine-four-thieves-vinegar-collective

Ampere è una nuova azienda che produce microprocessori basati su architettura ARM per il mercato dei server. Ha dietro parecchi soldi e ambizioni solide.

Money quote: “Renee James, former president of Intel and CEO of Ampere, said in an interview with VentureBeat that customers can now order the chip from the company’s website. The chips are aimed at hyperscale cloud and edge computing, using the ARMv8-A cores. The chips target big data and in-memory databases.”

https://venturebeat.com/2018/09/18/ampere-launches-its-first-arm-based-server-processors-in-challenge-to-intel/

Se scrivete un minimo di codice, l'editor di testo che utilizzate dice molto di voi. Già, ma cosa dice?

Money quote:

Ed

Ed is the standard text editor. Enough said. You are in fact, too fucking awesome for this article. You have yet to meet a person who would be worth your respect. Every person you ever worked with was a fucking clueless n00b. You are a BOFH and proud of it. On the systems you administrate you symlink vi, emacs and nano to ed just to watch the lusers squirm in their seats and hit Ctrl+C repeatedly. You are likely to have a big bushy beard, and are probably wearing a T-shirt with a cryptic joke that only people with unix background will understand."

http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2007/08/14/what-does-your-favorite-text-editor-say-about-you/

Quando internet arriverà tra le nuvole: le conseguenze dell’aereo connesso - il mio articolo per Nova del Sole 24 Ore

https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/tecnologie/2018-12-03/quando-internet-arrivera-le-nuvole-conseguenze-dell-aereo-connesso-174636.shtml?uuid=AEEDMAoG

Non sono sicuro che il fisco italiano o comunque il nostro sistema permetterebbe una vita di rendita come quella ipotizzata in questo articolo. Personalmente sono sempre stato contrario all'idea della rendita contrapposta al reddito da lavoro. Però, messa in questo modo, acquista un altro sapore. Ovviamente per noi amaro.

Money quote: "Let’s say you want to be able to spend $40,000 per year, for life, and have that spending allowance continue to grow with inflation. And you never want to make another dollar from work in your lifetime.

In this situation, the following three sentences represent the entire universe of probability for you:

- If you retire with $800,000 in investments, you will probably make it through your whole life without running out of money (a 5% withdrawal rate)
- If you start with a $1 million nest egg (a 4% withdrawal rate), you will very likely never run out of money
- If you start with $1.2 million chunk (a 3% withdrawal rate), it is overwhelmingly certain that you’ll have a growing surplus for life."

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2018/11/29/how-to-retire-forever-on-a-fixed-chunk-of-money/

Videogiochi e lavoro: perché un’azienda dovrebbe assumere un gamer - il mio articolo per Wired

https://www.wired.it/economia/lavoro/2018/12/04/videogiochi-lavoro-gamer/

Vivete una parte della vostra giornata dentro il terminale? Beh, è arrivato il momento di provare una retro-console nuova e divertirsi un po'. Prendetela come un'idea natalizia.

Money quote: "cool-retro-term is a terminal emulator which mimics the look and feel of the old cathode tube screens. It has been designed to be eye-candy, customizable, and reasonably lightweight."

https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term