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Mostly, I Write
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Storie e pensieri suoi e di altri, raccolti da Antonio Dini http://www.antoniodini.com
Per contatti su Telegram: @antoniodini
Per iscriversi alla newsletter Mostly Weekly: https://tinyletter.com/MostlyIWrite
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Se vi siete mai chiesti dove stiano guadagnando i musicisti, Rolling Stone fornisce una articolata risposta.

Money quote: "All of the above is by no means a comprehensive list of ways that modern artists make money; keep in mind that it’s also now easier than ever to switch lanes and become a producer or writer for someone else’s music, as is the case with Bebe Rexha’s journey from songwriting to recording or American R&B hitmakers’ move to South Korea’s K-pop industry (which complicates the royalties splits a bit by involving copyright law from overseas, but nonetheless brings back significant money). The sheer number of different revenue streams available to musicians is higher than it’s ever been in the past.
And yet, the average modern artist is still strapped for cash."

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/how-musicians-make-money-or-dont-at-all-in-2018-706745/
Lettura lunga. Il ragionamento dell'Economist è molto semplice ma secondo me contiene degli errori. L'idea dell'articolo è che Internet sta trasformando radicalmente il modo con il quale le persone si incontrano e si mettono assieme. E su questo siamo d'accordo. Aumentano i match, aumentano le coppie multirazziali, aumentano le coppie gay ufficiali (però è grazie alle nornative degli ultimi dieci anni), aumentano le coppie che durano. Su quest'ultimo punto non sono tanto d'accordo, perché dipende dal tipo di campione e di analisi. Se il tasso di divorzi non cresce più e anzi cala negli Usa forse dipende da altri fattori che non il dating digitale. Visto anche che altrove si dice che l'eccesso di scelta portata da Internet fa aumentare le infeltà più che i matrimoni.

Money quote: "For most people, however, digital dating offers better outcomes. Research has found that marriages in America between people who meet online are likely to last longer; such couples profess to be happier than those who met offline. The whiff of moral panic surrounding dating apps is vastly overblown. Precious little evidence exists to show that opportunities online are encouraging infidelity. In America, divorce rates climbed until just before the advent of the internet, and have fallen since."

Money quote: "This new world of romance may also have unintended consequences for society. The fact that online daters have so much more choice can break down barriers: evidence suggests that the internet is boosting interracial marriages by bypassing homogenous social groups. But daters are also more able to choose partners like themselves. Assortative mating, the process whereby people with similar education levels and incomes pair up, already shoulders some of the blame for income inequality. Online dating may make the effect more pronounced: education levels are displayed prominently on dating profiles in a way they would never be offline. It is not hard to imagine dating services of the future matching people by preferred traits, as determined by uploaded genomes. Dating firms also suffer from an inherent conflict of interest. Perfect matching would leave them bereft of paying customers."

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/08/18/modern-love
Auguri a tutti i lettori di questo canale.

Vi ricordo che oggi esce anche la newsletter Mostly Weekly!

Buona Pasqua.
Buona Pasqua. Le hanno seguite per 13 anni e hanno scoperto che le coppie sposate da più tempo sono più felici. Chissà se hanno guardato anche quelle che si sono separate.

Money quote: “The first few years of a marriage are rife with conflicts, but the emotional weather eventually changes, according to a new study by psychology researchers at UC Berkeley. In time, humor—friendly teasing, jokes, and silliness—becomes more prevalent, and bickering and criticisms decline.

These findings, which must be among the sweetest to enter the crowded field of relationships research, were reached after psychologists analyzed videotaped interactions of 87 couples who had been married 15 to 35 years, and followed them over 13 years.”

https://qz.com/quartzy/1488362/researchers-found-one-way-that-marriages-get-happier-over-time/
Come fare ad avere una copia di Assassin’s Creed Odyssey gratuitamente grazie a Google e al suo Project Stream

Money quote: “The Project Stream test from Google is based on a fully playable version of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Participants will receive 1,000 Helix credits for free which they can spend in the game. Moreover, any players than spend a minimum of an hour playing the game in Project Stream will receive a free copy of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey for PC or Mac through Ubisoft’s Uplay platform.”

https://www.ubergizmo.com/2018/12/get-assassins-creed-odyssey-free-project-stream/
Anni fa - nel 2004 o al massimo nel 2005, se ricordo bene - in una conversazione con un giovane sistemista che mi chiedeva se alla fine il FOSS (free and open source software) ce l'avrebbe ancora fatta, risposi che sì, ce l'avrebbe fatta sicuramente.

La risposta oggi sarebbe più complicata. E quel che segue è un ottimo esempio del perché: se ricodate Sun Microsystems e il suo "The network is the computer", potete applicare anche il pounto di vista di chi vuole trasformare tutto in software propreitario di più alto livello.

Money quote: "You could reasonably call cloud services the crowning achievement in the world of Free and Open Source software. Linux and Free and Open Source software killed proprietary UNIXes in bare metal data centers and went on to dominate cloud services to such a point that it has even caused Microsoft to completely change their stance and embrace Linux and Free and Open Source software or risk the future of Azure and arguably the future of their company.

Yet in many ways, this dominance has also bred complacence in the community. On top of all of those Linux instances are many proprietary services, abstraction layers and APIs that make cloud services easy to use for developers, but also turn them into the largest-scale proprietary operating system on the planet, where the network is the computer. Left unchecked, this proprietary operating system has the potential to undo the achievements Open Source software has made in the past two decades."

https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/cloud_is_another_sun/

Aggiungo una piccola nota: anche per la produttività personale "alternativa" bisognerebbe pensare di più alla versione desktop di FreeBSD o simili, anziché sempre e solo Linux.
Amazon si starebbe comprando una catena di cinema indipendenti. A pensarci, visto che producono e distribuiscono digitalmente film e telefilm in competizione con Netflix (e a quanto pare Apple) la cosa potrebbe avere molto, molto senso. Un po' come comprarsi una catena di supermercati, insomma...

Money quote: "Pushing into movie theaters would follow Amazon’s expansion into myriad other forms of media, including a film and TV studio and music service. With Landmark, it gets a chain focused on independent and foreign films with more than 50 theaters in 27 markets, including high-profile locations in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-16/amazon-is-said-to-be-in-running-to-acquire-landmark-movie-chain
Ha catturato uno dei primi hacker e ha scritto un bel libro. Tuttavia, nessuno è perfetto, soprattutto quando cerca di prevedere il futuro. Neanche Cliff Stoll. Ecco ripubblicato nel 2015, con abbondanti critiche il suo classico di predizioni sballate. "Claim chowder" for him.

Money quote: "The internet turned 25-years-old this week. However, some people didn't think it'd last that long. Here's an article from 1995 predicting that the web is just a fad."

https://thehustle.co/clifford-stoll-why-the-internet-will-fail

Qui il video di una sua audizione del 1989 a una commissione del Senato americano che fa pensare che Stoll sia un pazzo o quantomeno un perfetto impersonatore del prototipo di scienziato per l'immaginario collettivo dell'epoca (stile "Back to the Future" per capirci).

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4594226/epic-testimony-hacking-cliff-stoll-1989