La grande asta della fantascienza illustrata - il mio articolo per Fumettologica

https://www.fumettologica.it/2019/08/asta-fantascienza-glynn-crain/

Carter’s, un impero sull’abbigliamento low cost per bambini. Solo negli Usa, a quanto pare.

Money quote: “Ninety percent of millennial parents — and 80 percent of baby boomer grandparents — have shopped at Carter’s in the past year, according to market research firm Kantar. The company has exclusive lines at Walmart, Target and Amazon, and also sells its clothing at department stores, high-end malls and 1,060 of its own stores and outlets. Analysts say the brand is as popular among low-income shoppers as it is among high earners.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/07/26/billion-dollar-baby-how-carters-became-staple-just-about-every-childs-wardrobe/

Che prezzo dà il mercato a un account di Facebook? Se lo sono chiesti questi ricercatori che hanno verificato a quale prezzo le persone accetterebbero di chiudere il proprio account per un anno.

Money quote: “Facebook, the online social network, has more than 2 billion global users. Because those users do not pay for the service, its benefits are hard to measure. We report the results of a series of three non-hypothetical auction experiments where winners are paid to deactivate their Facebook accounts for up to one year. Though the populations sampled and the auction design differ across the experiments, we consistently find the average Facebook user would require more than $1000 to deactivate their account for one year. While the measurable impact Facebook and other free online services have on the economy may be small, our results show that the benefits these services provide for their users are large.”

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0207101

Di Oklahoma City sappiamo moltissimo. Perché sappiamo quando è iniziata (spoiler alert: con una corsa, anzi una "land run")

Money quote: "When does a city begin?

In most cases, we have no idea. We are forced to invent origin stories: wolves raising twins, eagles carrying snakes. The volcano god belches: civilization.

We want the birth of a city to make sense, to be grand. We want it to lend its citizens meaning. But the reality is almost always far less dramatic. Cities creep into existence, like algae. (Lewis Mumford: “The city is a fact in nature, like a cave, a run of mackerel or an ant-heap.”) It’s silly to talk about beginnings. No one is standing there firing a starting gun. There is no primordial boom. It happens in slow motion, over generations, by accident. Even if we do happen to know the general outlines — a European explorer found a promising bay, and eventually other Europeans followed him there — almost all the specifics are lost. We’ll never know what most cities were like during their very first hour, minute, second. It doesn’t even really make sense to ask. Cities are not microwave popcorn.

Unless you are talking about Oklahoma City."

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/08/how-oklahoma-city-was-born-in-a-day.html

Uber taglia i costi: blocco delle assunzioni tech negli Usa - il mio articolo per CorCom

https://www.corrierecomunicazioni.it/digital-economy/uber-taglia-i-costi-blocco-delle-assunzioni-tech-negli-usa/

Dropbox rallenta, ma il Ceo Houston rilancia: "Margini di crescita per l’anno" - il mio articolo per CorCom

https://www.corrierecomunicazioni.it/digital-economy/cloud/dropbox-rallenta-ma-il-ceo-houston-rilancia-margini-di-crescita-per-lanno/

"Mooncop": il primo (e solo) poliziotto sulla Luna - la mia recensione per Fumettologica

https://www.fumettologica.it/2019/08/mooncop-tom-gauld-recensione/

La meraviglia vera della programmazione è l’ampiezza della scala concettuale all’interno quale deve muoversi il programmatore. Come in questo progetto per far lavorare una AI con Tetris: serve prendere decisioni di altissimo livello e determinare specifiche di bassissimo, particolarissimo livello, incluso ma non solo quelle della scrittura del codice.

È una sfida intellettuale meravigliosa, ma decisamente non per tutti. Per questo l’enfasi sui vari “code.org” mi pare sbagliata: il codice non è una lingua straniera, ma fa parte di un modo di pensare. A quello dovremmo fare riferimento, non alla meccanica del linguaggio del giorno

Money quote: “This article describes how a computer can play the classic video game Tetris by getting information about the board, determining good actions, and performing those actions.

This article includes software capable of playing Tetris in real time. The software includes the best real-time Tetris-playing algorithm in the public domain.

This article defines rules for "Standard Tetris", a specification based on the original 1986 pre-commercial version of Tetris for the Personal Computer (PC).”

https://www.colinfahey.com/tetris/tetris.html

Cbs-Viacom: trovato l'accordo economico per la fusione - il mio articolo per CorCom

https://www.corrierecomunicazioni.it/media/cbs-viacom-trovato-laccordo-economico-per-la-fusione/

Lavoro minorile, Amazon sotto accusa in Cina - il mio articolo per CorCom

https://www.corrierecomunicazioni.it/digital-economy/lavoro-minorile-per-produrre-alexa-amazon-sotto-accusa-in-cina/

La distanza fra un sito o una app come Pocket, Nuzzle o Refind, che permettono di aggregare o trovare e leggere contenuto di altre testate, e Uncrate, è minima. Però nei dettagli è enorme: Uncrate è anche un sito/app di ecommerce dedicata agli uomini (si immagina, tendenzialmente bianchi e sulla quarantina) che vogliano essere virilmente maschili. Ecco, tra l’altro gli ci è voluto del tempo ma alla fine mi ha trovato (ora, se solo capissi come togliermela di torno, sarei più felice).

Dal punto di visita dell’analisi, però, è chiaro che il meccanismo è sostanzialmente lo stesso. Sono i piccoli dettagli che cambiano a fare la differenza nel senso complessivo.

Money quote: “Uncrate is the leading buyer's guide for men. With over 9,000 items covered and more than 1.5 million monthly readers, Uncrate is widely known for digging up the best of the best men's products. With new gear posted every weekday, Uncrate has quickly become one of the largest men's publications, both online and in print, with over 10 million page views each month. Since 2005, Uncrate's dedicated readers have visited multiple times per day to find out about the latest stuff for guys. Uncrate's insightful and daily updates, with near real-time coverage of new product launches, has gained the site an audience of discerning men who turn to Uncrate for the next great thing.”

https://uncrate.com/about/

Trade war, gli Usa posticipano i dazi sul tech cinese - il mio articolo per CorCom

https://www.corrierecomunicazioni.it/digital-economy/trade-war-gli-usa-posticipano-i-dazi-sul-tech-cinese/

Snap lancia Spectacles 3, i nuovi occhiali per la realtà aumentata - il mio articolo per CorCom

https://www.corrierecomunicazioni.it/digital-economy/snap-lancia-spectacles-3-i-nuovi-occhiali-per-la-realta-aumentata/

Buon Ferragosto!

Queste storie dei test del dna che fanno scoprire cose inimmaginabili in un altro tempo, mi affascinano. Dal mio punto di vista sono un esempio di cosa voglia dire vivere un cambio di paradigma. Chissà quando cominceranno a venire fuori anche da noi articoli come questo. Se mai accadrà. (Ma accadrà accadrà)

Money quote: “But not all biological parents want to be found. In conversations and correspondence with more than two dozen people for this story, I heard of DNA tests that unearthed affairs, secret pregnancies, quietly buried incidents of rape and incest, and fertility doctors using their own sperm to inseminate patients. These secrets otherwise would have—or even did—go the grave. “It’s getting harder and harder to keep secrets in our society,” says CeCe Moore, a prominent genetic genealogist who consults for the television show Finding Your Roots. “If people haven’t come to that realization, they probably should.””


The Secret Facebook Groups for Shocking DNA Tests - The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/dna-test-misattributed-paternity/562928/

Trovo LinkedIn odioso. È vero che non produce quell’odio tipico dei social convenzionali, ma è comunque particolarmente urticante per me. Questa spiegazione mi pare una delle più interessanti.

Money quote: ““Everyone at work has two jobs, and the other is the job of looking good,” she said. “These rules are largely oriented toward the second job.”

Scaling job two — looking good at work — up to a social network creates a new sort of venue: a non-office office, with thousands of bosses, none of them yours, all of them potentially watching.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/08/style/linkedin-social-media.html

Alibaba corre più della Cina: le vendite superano le previsioni degli analisti - il mio articolo per CorCom

https://www.corrierecomunicazioni.it/digital-economy/ecommerce/alibaba-corre-piu-della-cina-le-vendite-superano-le-previsioni-degli-analisti/

Instagram in campo contro le fake news: gli utenti potranno segnalarle - il mio articolo per CorCom

https://www.corrierecomunicazioni.it/media/fake-news/instagram-in-campo-contro-le-fake-news-gli-utenti-potranno-segnalarle/

Storia e retroscena dei 100 milioni di dollari che Netflix ha pagato per ‘Friends’

Money quote: “But Netflix wasn’t the only streamer interested in “Friends.” Other bidders for the show included Hulu, the streaming service currently owned by Disney, Fox, NBCU and … WarnerMedia, as well as Apple, which doesn’t have a streaming service yet, but also plans on launching one next year.”

https://www.recode.net/2018/12/4/18126596/friends-netflix-warnermedia-att-hulu-apple-deal

Cerchiobottismo in salsa americana

Money quote: “So to get the most out of innovations and avoid betting on the also-rans, my inaugural advice to readers was to follow these steps: Buy hardware from Apple. Use online services made by Google. And get digital media from Amazon”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/28/technology/how-to-survive-the-next-era-of-tech-slow-down-and-be-mindful.html

Se non puoi evitarli, unisciti a loro e diventa il migliore. La strategia di Apple per la GDPR

Money quote: “Apple is a prime example of a major tech giant taking steps to improve data transparency for its users. It recently launched a portal where customers can sift through all the data the company has on them, and CEO Tim Cook has been very vocal about data protection. He recently called it a "fundamental human right" and commended the implementation of GDPR, calling on tech companies to not only embrace the spirit of the EU laws, but to support the introduction of similar legislation across the US.”

https://www.itpro.co.uk/general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/32509/apples-transparent-data-policy-is-a-lesson-in-how-to