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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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È possibile che un genitore non-partoriente (cioè il maschietto o l'altra femmina) di una coppia che ha avuto un figlio possa soffrire di depressione post-parto? Ebbene sì, e si chiama depressione post-natale (PND), perché non ha partorito. O è una follia solo pensarlo?

Money quote: "Some studies estimate that as many as one in 10 men may suffer from PND. But it’s still routinely left out of medical literature on the topic.

Neither postpartum nor postnatal depression has its own listing in the DSM-V (the definitive resource for psychological diagnosticians). In order for a diagnosis to be made, the sufferer first must meet all the criteria established for a “major depressive episode,” and then meet the qualifier that the depression begin during pregnancy or in the first four weeks after delivering a baby.

This, of course, leaves no official recognition of non-birthing parents who suffer from postnatal depression."

https://gay.medium.com/the-weather-a0ee3b988ed5
Possiamo chiamarla "l'economia dell'estorsione" o "l'economia del ransomware". In pratica, le assicurazioni delle città (soprattutto americane) che vengono bloccate da attacchi con il ransomware obbligano a pagare il riscatto perché conviene pagare quello anziché i danni di un eventuale risarcimento a tutti i titolari dei vari dati perduti. In questo omdo però stanno alimentando il mercato del ransowmare, tanto che adesso le città che vengono prese di mira sono prevalentemente quelle assicurate. Ma la cosa non si dice molto e anzi, aumenta la paura e quindi il numero di città che sentono il bisogno di assicurarsi. Conviene a tutti, no? No: solo ai ladri e alle assicurazioni. Ai contribuenti non conviene per niente.

Money quote: "“Our insurance company made [the decision] for us,” city spokesman Michael Lee, a sergeant in the Lake City Police Department, said. “At the end of the day, it really boils down to a business decision on the insurance side of things: them looking at how much is it going to cost to fix it ourselves and how much is it going to cost to pay the ransom.”"

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-extortion-economy-how-insurance-companies-are-fueling-a-rise-in-ransomware-attacks
Intere fortune costruite in maniera predatoria, violenta, schiavista e magari sfruttando debolezze o fragilità umane e del sistema (e anche dell'ambiente). Soldi sporchi. Che però diventano una forma di beneficio per l'umanità grazie alla sponsorizzazione di istituzioni accademiche. In un momento di grande confusione etica, questo articolo ripercorre la storia di una famiglia che ha costruito un impero miliardario sul dolore, e sul modo con il quale in America l'etica protestante "lava" i peccati dei suoi figli prediletti.

Money quote: "When the Met was originally built, in 1880, one of its trustees, the lawyer Joseph Choate, gave a speech to Gilded Age industrialists who had gathered to celebrate its dedication, and, in a bid for their support, offered the sly observation that what philanthropy really buys is immortality: “Think of it, ye millionaires of many markets, what glory may yet be yours, if you only listen to our advice, to convert pork into porcelain, grain and produce into priceless pottery, the rude ores of commerce into sculptured marble.” Through such transubstantiation, many fortunes have passed into enduring civic institutions. Over time, the origins of a clan’s largesse are largely forgotten, and we recall only the philanthropic legacy, prompted by the name on the building."

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/the-family-that-built-an-empire-of-pain
Il mistero dell'X-37, la nave spaziale segreta (e senza equipaggio) del governo americano

Money quote: "There’s no crew on board operating X-37B, but the vehicle can autonomously descend back through Earth’s atmosphere and land horizontally on a runway, just like the NASA Space Shuttle used to do when it was in operation."

https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/26/experimental-u-s-air-force-space-plane-breaks-previous-record-for-orbital-spaceflight/
Il presidente e Ceo della News Media Alliance ha parole dure per i big dell'internet e suggerimenti radicali più in generale. Tipo: pagate per le vostre news.

Money quote. "We can start with the fact that “free” isn’t a good business model for quality journalism. Facebook and Google flatly refuse to pay for news even though they license many other types of content. Both companies have deals to pay music publishers when copyrighted songs play on their platforms. And the companies also aggressively bid to stream live sports and entertainment content to run on Facebook Watch and YouTube. These deals are varied and often secret, but none of them are based on “free.” Why are the platforms so unwilling to pay news publishers for access to the quality journalism that users need and value?"

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/opinion/google-facebook-fake-news-journalism.html
La storia dei Captcha (dietro l'acronimo c'è una dei nomi più assurdi che abbia mai incontrato: Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart). E cosa significano per l'intelligenzaa artificiale.

Money quote: "Because CAPTCHA is such an elegant tool for training AI, any given test could only ever be temporary, something its inventors acknowledged at the outset. With all those researchers, scammers, and ordinary humans solving billions of puzzles just at the threshold of what AI can do, at some point the machines were going to pass us by. In 2014, Google pitted one of its machine learning algorithms against humans in solving the most distorted text CAPTCHAs: the computer got the test right 99.8 percent of the time, while the humans got a mere 33 percent."

https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/1/18205610/google-captcha-ai-robot-human-difficult-artificial-intelligence
Silenzio, parla l'hacker

Money quote: "What is it about the computer that makes it become such an obsession for young guys?

Well, it's power at your fingertips. You can control all these computers from the government, from the military, from large corporations. And if you know what you're doing, you can travel through the internet at your will, with no restrictions. That's power; it's a power trip."

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/hackers/interviews/anon.html
Per i più interessati a seguire le mie peripezie giornalistiche, mentre settimana scorsa ero a Shanghai ho continuato a scrivere per CorCom, ma il grande firewall della Cina mi ha impedito di acchiappare le notizie pubblicate e rimetterle qui. Rimedio in giornata, pian piano