Gli effetti della gamification come strategia utilizzata dalle aziende per amplificare e potenziare l'effetto dell'engagement è che siamo diventati tutti ludopati (qualsiasi cosa voglia dire).

Money quote: "Take a moment to reflect on the feeling you get when you see a headline, factoid, or meme that is so perfect, that so neatly addresses some burning controversy or narrative, that you feel compelled to share it. If it seems too good to be true, maybe you’ll pull up Snopes and check it first. But you probably won’t. And even if you do, how much will it really help? Everyone else will spread it anyway. Whether you retweet it or just email it to a friend, the end effect on your network of like-minded contacts — on who believes what — will be the same."

https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/reality-is-just-a-game-now

È molto, molto peggio di quel che sembrava. Questo articolo clamoroso del New York Times mette in scena l'errore strettivo gigantesco di Putin, che adesso rischia moltissimo. Un errore che lo ha reso disperato, e le persone disperate sono molto pericolose.

Money quote: "Russian invasion plans, obtained by The New York Times, show that the military expected to sprint hundreds of miles across Ukraine and triumph within days. Officers were told to pack their dress uniforms and medals in anticipation of military parades in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

But instead of that resounding victory, with tens of thousands of his troops killed and parts of his army in shambles after nearly 10 months of war, Mr. Putin faces something else entirely: his nation’s greatest human and strategic calamity since the collapse of the Soviet Union."

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/16/world/europe/russia-putin-war-failures-ukraine.html?unlocked_article_code=l-AiWQ3EeH8yEb3p_vE0hOPiJW02MO3FHEbcTryGd6ASUOkYqKfuF1wVtLSJ32S2WTgLcgBa07RgpH7zBaZxqN6v8n3pWykX7uqDvgIXU-k79ONqdK6Rv3PVvqCHoS_Up1oOW52WUSUHBa4WU95E05t-4WXGJ_ErqkGKATzapbMC3FVo7xbEt1pAoacAqm_T072IeEO1o3YyO-MLPZCTFSjqAm8yX4-wwUupDfxIgAhibMk1bZFnaN5cIU1rLoeWj8kLYe7L2KbO1xYNhfRmAVmXB2iWNA_8JGcwEX2m9Cjy-GSM330V3IiP7BNTF-qeiOymeEL-6aNvr_rj0Z_fOikC10-Q8Doqt9D5TgK63ZHr236qSEiXZHnW5nt-UGrGWg&smid=tel-nytimes

Siamo sei miliardi ma il nostro cervello non è fatto per percepire questi numeri. In rete, quello che pensiamo essere una intelligenza collettiva della folla in realtà è l'opera solitaria e nevrotica di pochi folli. Cioè, la maggior parte dei contenuti come i commenti ai libri sono scritti da persone che sono probabilmente clinicamente matte come cavalli.

Money quote: "I don't know how that author identified the most prolific reviewer at the time but I found one reviewer with 20.8k reviews since 2011. That's just under 3,000 reviews per year, which comes out to around 8 per day. This man has written an average of 8 reviews on Amazon per day, all of the ones I see about books, every day for seven years. I thought it might be some bot account writing fake reviews in exchange for money, but if it is then it's a really good bot because Grady Harp is a real person whose job matches that account's denoscription. And my skimming of some reviews looked like they were all relevant to the book, and he has the "verified purchase" tag on all of them, which also means he's probably actually reading them.

The only explanation for this behavior is that he is insane. I mean, normal people don't do that. We read maybe 20 books a year, tops, and we probably don't write reviews on Amazon for all of them. There has to be something wrong with this guy."

https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most_of_what_you_read_on_the_internet_is_written/

Conferme empiriche di teorie assodate: miliardi e miliardi di galassie con miliardi e miliardi di soli in ognuna, con miliardi e miliardi di pianeti. Vuoi che non ce ne siano miliardi e miliardi come il nostro?

Money quote: "Solar power: Sulfur dioxide was a “mystery molecule” because, when researchers first looked at the Webb data, they saw something they didn’t expect, and it wasn’t until later that they were able to attribute the strangeness to sulfur dioxide.

This marks the first discovery of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere of any exoplanet, and its presence suggests that the light from WASP-39b’s star is triggering chemical reactions in its atmosphere — the process is similar to the one that creates Earth’s ozone layer.

“This is the first time we see concrete evidence of photochemistry — chemical reactions initiated by energetic stellar light — on exoplanets,” said Shang-Min Tsai, a researcher working with the Webb data at the University of Oxford."

https://www.freethink.com/space/gas-giant-wasp-39b

C'è un buco nero per quanto riguarda l'industria editoriale: non c'è un accesso ampio e gratuito ai dati delle vendite. E questo crea una distorsione enorme nella percezione e nello studio del settore, che invece è rilevante e critico per la società. Il consumo di libri è fondamentale ma non può ridursi a una pratica commerciale analoga a quella della vendita dei latticini o delle guarnizioni per sanitari. O no?

Money quote: "The problem with book sales data may not, at first, be apparent. Every week, the New York Times of course releases its famous list of “bestselling” books, but this list does not include individual sales numbers. Moreover, select book sales figures are often reported to journalists—like the fact that Station Eleven has sold more than 1.5 million copies overall—and also shared through outlets like Publishers Weekly. However, the underlying source for all these sales figures is typically an exclusive subnoscription service called BookScan: the most granular, comprehensive, and influential book sales data in the industry (though it still has significant holes—more on that to come)."

https://www.publicbooks.org/where-is-all-the-book-data/

Siamo quasi alla fine dell'anno. Per tutti quelli che vogliono sostenere il canale ho preparato un omaggio: la cartolina di Mostly Happy New Year 2023!

Voi donate e io ve la spedisco per posta con il francobollo e tutto. Scritta a mano da me. Con gli auguri. Come si faceva una volta, insomma.

Trovate tutto qui:

https://antoniodini.com/cartolina/

Jack Ma è praticamente in esilio a Tokyo: sta fuggendo dalla Cina e dai lockdown.

Money quote: "Since his fallout with Chinese authorities, Ma has been spotted in various countries including Spain and the Netherlands. Spending less time in his home in China means the billionaire has avoided the tough Covid-19 quarantines imposed on anyone entering the country, as well as thorny political issues arising from his previous push to build influence in the country’s halls of power."

https://archive.ph/vNnhK#selection-1955.0-1959.321

Prima dei licenziamenti i segnali c'erano. Ma adesso, rileggendo cosa è successo e le varie tappe, si capisce meglio che siamo alla fine di un paradigma di internet dei contenuti social. O no?

Money quote: "Tech companies focused on creators are laying off workers, shelving products and curbing perks such as cash advances for online influencers. Funding for U.S. creator startups in the third quarter sank 53% from the year-ago period, the third straight quarter of annual decline."

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-buzz-over-creator-economy-dulls-to-a-quiet-roar

Notizie che non lo erano. A settembre un tribunale texano sembrava avesse messo in ginocchio la rete. Però anche no, non è vero.

Money quote: "Earlier this month, the court upheld a preposterous Texas law stating that online platforms with more than 50 million monthly active users in the United States no longer have First Amendment rights regarding their editorial decisions. Put another way, the law tells big social-media companies that they can’t moderate the content on their platforms. YouTube purging terrorist-recruitment videos? Illegal. Twitter removing a violent cell of neo-Nazis harassing people with death threats? Sorry, that’s censorship, according to Andy Oldham, a judge of the United States Court of Appeals and the former general counsel to Texas Governor Greg Abbott."

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/09/netchoice-paxton-first-amendment-social-media-content-moderation/671574/

Chi è il diavolo? Satana, Satanasso e poi le varie declinazioni nella nostra letteratura sono in realtà qualcosa di molto recente. Il diavolo dell'Antico Testamento era tutta un'altra cosa.

Money quote: "To understand the Devil of 19th-century literature, it’s important to understand the Satan of the Bible. In the Book of Job he is called ‘a son of God’, and he roams the earth as a disinterested – and inconspicuous – supervisor of human affairs. At one point, after making his rounds, Satan returns to the court of the Lord and suggests that Job, God’s most loyal follower, only has faith because he was blessed with material advantages. The heavenly father agrees to an experiment: He will suspend the protection that surrounds the exemplary man and see whether his faith survives."

https://psyche.co/ideas/the-devil-you-dont-know-the-satan-of-the-19th-century

Lo faccio tutti gli anni, è un'abitudine e l'unica promozione (ci metto la faccia) di un servizio esterno. State per partire per le vacanze? Staccare tutto? Fate backup. Per il mio MacBook faccio il doppio backup: Time Machine locale (su un disco che resta sempre a casa) e backup cloud continuo ovunque con BackBlaze. Costa poco e ne vale la pena: se usate il mio referral avete tre mesi gratuiti voi e io. Mi ha salvato in passato e lo consiglio a tutti, a prescindere.

https://secure.backblaze.com/r/01ti3i

Buon Natale a tutti gli iscritti a Mostly, I Write!

È uscita Tilde ~ 23, la quarta puntata della seconda stagione!

Titolo: Riccardo trafficante e Antonio amanuense, ChatGPT, edizioni da collezione.

"Puntatona natalizia dove si scoprono cose come l'Odissea in prosa, la voglia di fare libri a mano, e l'NFC mancato."

→ tilde ~ su Spotify
→ tilde ~ su Apple Podcast
→ tilde ~ su Google Podcast

Potete ascoltare il podcast da Spotify, Google Podcast o Apple Podcast, oppure dal sito: tilde.show. Buon ascolto e buon Natale!

P.S. Anche la copertina di questa puntata è stata generata da Dall-E!

Auguri ancora!

E se volete fare una cosa speciale, rifatevi le unghie con lo spirito giusto!

Money quote: “Ai colori della tradizione, rosso, oro e argento, è d'obbligo aggiungere una pioggia di glitter e, perché no, tanti piccoli disegni a tema natalizio, simpatici e allegri. Ecco una selezione di idee e ispirazioni”

https://tg24.sky.it/spettacolo/2022/12/14/unghie-natale-2022-idee-piu-belle-tendenza

Il record di volo continuo sono 64 giorni per un Cessna 172. Semplicemente folle.

Money quote: “The long flying hours, high work load, and poor sleep began to wear on the crew over time. On January 9 around 2:55 AM, Timm fell asleep while flying over Blythe, California, a few minutes before the end of his 4-hour shift. Cook remained asleep, and Timm eventually woke up at 4 a.m, with the aircraft having flown itself for over an hour with the wing-levelling Mitchell autopilot keeping the plane in the air. Speaking to a reporter after the flight, Timm noted “I made a vow to myself that I would never tell John what had happened.””

https://hackaday.com/2021/10/25/the-longest-ever-flight-was-over-64-days-in-a-cessna-172/

Pensierino natalizio. Sapete una cosa? È più soddisfacente l'erotismo di duemila anni fa che la pornografia onnipresente di oggi, in 4K e dolby surround. Strano eh? Ma ci sono dei motivi.

Money quote: "Sappho’s restraint remains strangely gratifying today, when sexuality is so intensely visual, imposed top-down through the peculiar marriage of pornography and pop culture. Her verses are themselves pornographic, of course, but we’d be shortsighted in aligning them with the music videos, high-street adverts and internet clips that dominate our sexual imaginations today. Modern porn is, on the whole, relentlessly present-tense, populated by anonymous bodies performing athletic feats for the instant gratification of a voyeuristic audience. That Sappho’s work – intimate, reflective, euphemistic – maintains its allure against such a backdrop is surely significant, then. What does her work provide that modern porn cannot? And what does this tell us about our sexual imaginations more generally?"

https://aeon.co/essays/how-ancient-poetry-can-revitalise-our-erotic-imaginations

Le cuffiette in-ear (gli auricolari dei telefonini) a quanto pare sfasciano l'udito. Stiamo preparando una generazione o due di sordi

Money quote: "Alison M. Grimes, Director of Audiology and Newborn Hearing Screening at UCLA Health, says that two main factors contribute to noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL): how loud the sound is and the duration of that sound. “The ear doesn’t care if it’s Tchaikovsky or Grateful Dead,” she says. “It’s all about sound pressure level in the ear canal.”"

https://elemental.medium.com/something-you-dont-want-to-hear-about-earbuds-d554e85696b5

Se la stampa sta scomparendo, quale tipo di lavoro alternativo possono trovare i giornalisti? A quanto pare il venture capitalist (che peraltro in Italia praticamente non esiste).

Money quote: "“Journalism is helpful because you are often parachuted into stories that you know absolutely nothing about. I found the fact that I had been trained to make up my mind about a confusing set of information extremely helpful,” Michael Moritz , chairman of Sequoia Capital and former Time bureau chief."

https://medium.com/@jdromberg/why-the-molested-journalist-to-venture-capitalist-path-actually-makes-sense-adecb54b8d78

La parte più intrigante di Tetris: la funzione che genera la discesa dei blocchi con un ordine casuale

Money quote: "In Tetris, a randomizer is a function which returns a randomly chosen piece. Over the years, the rules of how pieces are chosen has evolved, affecting gameplay and actual randomness.

Several of them have been reversed engineered and documented. I’ve curated a list of ones that I believed to be important and show how the state of Tetris has changed over the years."

https://simon.lc/the-history-of-tetris-randomizers

A quando risale quel palazzo? E quell'altro? In Olanda si vede che la domanda la facevano in molti e di frequente, perché hanno tirato su un database con la data di costruzione di quasi tutti gli edifici presenti nel Paese, e l'hanno messo online in un GIS che ha come base la mappa del territorio urbano nazionale. Una bomba.

Money quote: "All 10 million or so buildings in the Netherlands. Building heights and date of construction from 3D BAG (Basisregistratie Adressen en Gebouwen) data."

https://parallel.co.uk/netherlands/

Chiudiamo l'anno con una domanda: esiste vita fuori dalla Terra? Il punto con gli alieni è che non hanno punti di contatto con la vita della Terra. E quindi per cercarli dovremmo dimenticare quel che sappiamo e partire con un approccio molto più aperto. Ammesso che li vogliamo trovare, gli alieni.

Money quote: "The search for exotic life therefore must begin close to home. The moons of Saturn and Jupiter offer a test case of whether biology could exist without an atmosphere. Jupiter’s Europa and Saturn’s Enceladus both have inner oceans and internal heat sources. Enceladus spews huge geysers of water vapour from its south pole; Europa appears to puff off occasional plumes as well. Future space missions could fly through the plumes and study them for possible biochemicals. NASA’s proposed Europa lander, which could launch in about a decade, could seek out possible microbe-laced ocean water that seeped up or snowed back down onto the surface."

https://aeon.co/ideas/to-find-aliens-we-must-think-of-life-as-we-dont-know-it