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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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Ho adorato il Basic, che oltre a essere il primo linguaggio di programmazione che ho mai conosciuto è anche quello che ho sentito più "mio" come solo un bambino può sentire. Però, miei cari, GOTO non è un comando, è una aberrazione.

(Dopodiché, evviva la lapide a Dartmouth!)

Money quote: "It took 10 months to get it done, but the Granite State is now officially a Geeky State: The latest New Hampshire Historical Highway Marker, celebrating the creation of the BASIC computer language at Dartmouth in 1964, has officially been installed.

Everybody who has ever typed a GOTO command can feel proud."

https://www.concordmonitor.com/BASIC-Dartmouth-Kemeny-time-sharing-historical-26164409
L'Economist cambia grafica. E non è cosa da poco.

Money quote: "The last time The Economist’s pages were redesigned, George W. Bush was settling into the White House, the dotcom bubble had just burst and Geri Halliwell sat atop the British charts with “It’s Raining Men”. All editorial pages in The Economist became full colour and were furnished with a new typeface. At the time Bill Emmott, the newspaper’s editor, wrote: “Good design, like good writing, should blend into the background; it should be the servant of editors and readers alike, not their master.”"

https://medium.economist.com/how-to-redesign-a-175-year-old-newspaper-42c6d6479980
Un po' di giornalismo ambientale americano: ritorna a Camp Lejeune, dove è cresciuto, per indagare cosa è successo dopo il disastro.

Money quote: "The place was Camp Lejeune, a United States Marine Corps base wrapped around the New River in Onslow County that served as an amphibious training base where Marines learned to be "the world's best war fighters," picking up skills that would allow them (for example) to make surprise landings on the shores of far away countries. From the 1950s until at least 1985, the drinking water was contaminated with toxic chemicals at levels 240 to 3400 times higher than what is permitted by safety standards."

https://psmag.com/environment/what-happened-at-camp-lejeune
Microsoft: sono morti alcuni libri

Chi in passato aveva acquistato eBook presso il Microsoft Store, da ieri, non ha più l’accesso ai libri. Hanno smesso di funzionare.

Quando si acquista un eBook occorre immaginarlo come un libro chiuso con un lucchetto, la cui chiave è concessa solamente a coloro che ne hanno acquisito il diritto. Il concetto stesso di proprietà viene meno, poiché sostituito dal concetto di diritto d’accesso e di fruizione. Quel che sta succedendo ai libri venduti tramite Microsoft Store equivale a cancellare le chiavi per aprire i lucchetti: come annunciato ad aprile il sistema di Digital Right Management è stato disattivato.

La questione mette in evidenza un principio di enorme importanza: parole come “acquisto”, “possesso” o “proprietà” sono stati annullati nel mercato digitale e ci si trova con in mano acquisti che potrebbero essere “disattivati”.
Forwarded from Scrivere zen
Sto collezionando lunghe liste di libri da leggere. Sarà che ho fatto la tessera in biblioteca e posso leggere quanto mi va senza mandare il conto in rosso 💸. Qui https://armadioverde.it/blog/libri-per-le-vacanze-e-non-solo la lista di Rossella Calabrò che oltre a essere una scrittrice è anche un’insegnate di scrittura deliziosa.
Matta, ma con metodo.

Money quote: “In 1975, Stokes got a Betamax magnetic videotape recorder and began recording bits of sitcoms, science documentaries, and political news coverage. From the outset of the Iran Hostage Crisis on November 4, 1979, “she hit record and she never stopped,” said her son Michael Metelits in Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, a newly released documentary about his mother and the archival project that became her life’s work.”


https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/marion-stokes-television-news-archive
Alla fine, sono terroristi solo quelli la cui rivoluzione ha fallito

Money quote: “Generally, we agree that it’s wrong to lie, cheat, steal, deceive, manipulate, destroy property or attack people. But few of us think that the prohibitions against such actions are absolute. Commonsense morality holds that such actions are permissible in self-defence or in defence of others (even if the law doesn’t always agree). You may lie to the murderer at the door. You may smash the windows of the would-be kidnapper’s car. You may kill the would-be rapist”

https://aeon.co/ideas/when-the-state-is-unjust-citizens-may-use-justifiable-violence
Riassuntoni dei migliori paperi sull'intelligenza artificiale del 2018

Money quote: “To help you catch up, we’ve summarized 10 important AI research papers from 2018 to give you a broad overview of machine learning advancements this year. There are many more breakthrough papers worth reading as well, but we think this is a good list for you to start with.”

https://www.topbots.com/most-important-ai-research-papers-2018/
E se le auto che si guidano da sole fossero solo propaganda?

Money quote: “there are some who believe that the autonomous future has been oversold—that even if driverless cars are coming, it won’t be as fast, or as smooth, as we’ve been led to think. The skeptics come from different disciplines inside and out of the technology and automotive industries, and each has a different bear case against self-driving cars. Add them up and you have a guide to all the ways our autonomous future might not materialize.”

7 Arguments Against the Autonomous-Vehicle Utopia - The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/578638