Il Vaticano e i suoi problemi di cybersicurezza.

Money quote: "In general, though, "the same security principles apply everywhere." The Vatican would need sufficient endpoint security, he says, alongside network security, physical security, "and perhaps an underestimated angle: training and awareness in an organization that is not particularly technology savvy.""

https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities-threats/pope-mobile-security-vatican-mdm-move

Giochi da fare in spiaggia con il telefonino

: https://neal.fun/password-game/

Troppa, veramente troppa roba da fare in troppo poco tempo.

Money quote: "The following are five common self-sabotaging mistakes overwhelmed people tend to make. There are practical solutions for each that will help you feel like you're on top of things and do a better job of navigating your most important tasks and solving problems."

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/5-mistakes-we-make-when-we-re-overwhelmed

I ritagli di giornale. Nel 2023.

Strane abitudini.

Money quote: "Sharing newspaper clippings used to be common before the internet disrupted everything. It wasn't just the move from snail mail to email. There are now a lot fewer printed newspapers and magazines to clip from.

Peter Butkus said when he was growing up his father must have subscribed to as many as six newspapers and more than a dozen magazines. "It looked like a dentist's office in our house," said Butkus, a 39-year-old hedge-fund manager in Barrington, R.I. The elder Butkus doesn't dispute it.

During the golden age of print, when newspapers were generally regarded as having the last word, people regularly passed around articles on shared interests or to settle arguments in I-told-you-so missives. Parents often mailed clippings as thinly veiled advice or criticism to grown children."

https://archive.is/OQP5m

Speciale 4 di luglio: se stasera avete voglia di mangiare americano, cioè un hambuger, ecco qualche ricetta valida.

Money quote: "The slugburger is not alone. From a Prohibition-era speakeasy that still slings bitters-filled patties to a roadside stand that’s carrying on a century-old tradition of steaming burgers, American history is filled with unusual burgers born of unusual times."

https://www.atlasobscura.com/lists/unique-burger-ideas

La casa d'aste Sotheby’s si è comprata un palazzo storico di New York, il Breuer Building. Chissà come lo ridurrà.

Money quote: "Sotheby's will take over the Breuer in September 2024, before ultimately relocating in 2025. The auction house plans to "sensitively review the internal spaces and maintain key elements such as the building's striking lobby," as the new space will boast updated galleries, exhibition space, and a reimagined auction room. The galleries will be free and open to the public.

Sotheby's will retain ownership of its current headquarters in New York's Lenox Hill neighborhood, where it has been since 1980, for the time being."

https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/sothebys-buys-whitney-museums-iconic-breuer-building-1234670229/

Vivere alla Magnum, P.I. - il mio articolo per Fumettologica

https://fumettologica.it/2023/07/magnum-p-i-tom-selleck-serie-tv/

Arrivano le vacanze. Tempo di fare le valigie. I consigli degli esperti.

Money quote: "So here is our most comprehensive roundup of all the great travel packing tips we've given over the years, all in one place. Whether you're looking for help packing a carry on, packing tips for international travel, or even suitcase packing tips, we can help you. So sit down, relax, and get packing!"

https://packhacker.com/blog/general/packing-tips/

Chi e come sta inseguendo la supremazia quantistica - il mio articolo per Guerre di Rete

https://www.guerredirete.it/chi-e-come-sta-inseguendo-la-supremazia-quantistica/

Quando mi sono laureato in diritto internazionale, una vita fa, era semplicemente inimmaginabile. Oggi avere accesso liberamente a tutti gli atti del tribunale di Norimberga in formato digitale da qualsiasi parte del mondo è incredibile.

Money quote: "The Taube Archive of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg, 1945-46 archival collection provides access to a digital version of Nuremberg IMT courtroom proceedings and documentation, including evidentiary films, full audio recordings of the proceedings, and approximately 250,000 pages of digitized paper documents. These documents include trannoscripts of the hearings in English, French, German and Russian; written pleadings; evidence exhibits filed by the prosecution and the defense; documents of the Committee for the Investigation and Prosecution of Major War Criminals; the judgment. All 9,920 collection items are searchable and viewable in digital form."

https://virtualtribunals.stanford.edu/nuremberg

Poi a un certo punto scopri che sei diventato vecchio perché il volume della musica è diventato troppo alto, no? No, le cose non stanno esattamente così. E comunque, viviamo (noi che viviamo in città) in un mondo che è diventato rumorosamente pericoloso per la nostra salute, non solo per l'udito. Il troppo rumore uccide, come ogni forma di inquinamento.

Money quote: "Unpleasant noise enters your body through your ears, but it is relayed to the stress detection center in your brain. This area, called the amygdala, triggers a cascade of reactions in your body. If the amygdala is chronically overactivated by noise, the reactions begin to produce harmful effects. The endocrine system can overreact, causing too much cortisol, adrenaline and other chemicals to course through the body. The sympathetic nervous system can also become hyperactivated, quickening the heart rate, raising blood pressure, and triggering the production of inflammatory cells. Over time, these changes can lead to inflammation, hypertension and plaque buildup in arteries, increasing the risk of heart disease, heart attacks and stroke."

https://archive.is/APMLv

Quando esce un nuovo iPhone, ad esempio, e le persone si stracciano le vesti perche costa troppo, c'è sempre in differenziale che non viene considerato. Cioè che in Europa, e in italia in particolare, abbiamo un costo della vita completamente diverso. Sono generalizzazioni, ma fino a un certo punto.

Money quote: "In Orange County, one-person households making less than $80,000 a year are considered low-income, according to the California Department of Housing and Community Development.

That's up from just under $76,000 last year, and puts Orange County as the most expensive of the Southern California counties."

https://abc7.com/what-are-the-low-income-limits-in-california-how-much-do-people-make-i-qualify-for-affordable-housing-income/13419469/

Secret Invasion è una serie tv e una serie a fumetti della Marvel. La sequenza iniziale è fatta dalla ai. Perché? Perché si può ed è espressivamente adatta a quel che segue. Il cubismo alieno.

Money quote: "This is a denoscription of the plot of the new Marvel Cinematic Universe show on Disney Plus (as well as its comic book counterpart), which follows Nick Fury as he uncovers -- what else? -- a secret invasion by the Skrull population on Earth. But the concept of shape-shifting is also seen in the series' very different approach to its opening credits, which look like a sort of watercolor rendering of the key players and themes of _Secret Invasion_.

As we see a sort of jittery and ominous sequence of the Skrull green taking over more and more of the world, it looks a lot like if an AI was prompted with the concept of "Skrull cubism" -- which, actually, isn't that far off of what it is. As director and executive producer Ali Selim tells Polygon, the intro sequence was designed by Method Studios using artificial intelligence, something he thinks plays with the very themes of the show.

"When we reached out to the AI vendors, that was part of it -- it just came right out of the shape-shifting, Skrull world identity, you know? _Who did this? Who is this?_" Selim says."

https://www.polygon.com/23767640/ai-mcu-secret-invasion-opening-credits

Secondo me Corrado Guzzanti è un genio

https://youtube.com/watch?v=P7Sp4UVGjgc

Perché siamo antipatici? Anzi, peggio che antipatici, proprio della brutta gente? È una questione di percezione della realtà. Che può essere cambiata. Questa analisi sperimentale è molto interessante e dice un paio di cose che vale la pena ricordarsi.

Money quote: "Rahwan directs the Center for Humans and Machines at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, where, according to his website, he’s focused on understanding “how intelligent machines impact humanity.” Given that avenue of curiosity, it seems inevitable that Rahwan would be inspired by the imaginatively bleak scenarios Black Mirror brings to life. And that’s exactly how his new paper, co-authored with social psychologist Nils Köbis and others, came about. The research explores a more benign version of the situation the Black Mirror episode “Men Against Fire” dramatizes. As Rahwan and his colleagues describe the episode, “soldiers perceive the world through a real-time AI filter that turns their adversaries into monstrous mutants to overcome their reluctance to kill.”"

https://nautil.us/how-were-becoming-bigger-jerks-online-311312/

Questa cosa della gente che viene pagata per addestrare le AI (lavoraccio) e che per massimizzare passa il lavoro di addestramento ad altre AI è meravigliosamente "meta", ma pieno di problemi.

Money quote: "A significant proportion of people paid to train AI models may be themselves outsourcing that work to AI, a new study has found.

It takes an incredible amount of data to train AI systems to perform specific tasks accurately and reliably. Many companies pay gig workers on platforms like Mechanical Turk to complete tasks that are typically hard to automate, such as solving CAPTCHAs, labeling data and annotating text. This data is then fed into AI models to train them. The workers are poorly paid and are often expected to complete lots of tasks very quickly.

No wonder some of them may be turning to tools like ChatGPT to maximize their earning potential. But how many? To find out, a team of researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) hired 44 people on the gig work platform Amazon Mechanical Turk to summarize 16 extracts from medical research papers. Then they analyzed their responses using an AI model they’d trained themselves that looks for telltale signals of ChatGPT output, such as lack of variety in choice of words. They also extracted the workers’ keystrokes in a bid to work out whether they’d copied and pasted their answers, an indicator that they’d generated their responses elsewhere."

https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/06/22/1075405/the-people-paid-to-train-ai-are-outsourcing-their-work-to-ai/

Cosa succede nei giornali adesso che arrivano le AI generative? Ecco la policy del Guardian (la prima che ho letto finora e anche l'unica)

Money quote: "For the benefit of readers

GenAI tools are exciting but are currently unreliable. There is no room for unreliability in our journalism, nor our marketing, creative and engineering work. At a simple level, this means that the use of genAI requires human oversight. We will seek to use genAI tools editorially only where it contributes to the creation and distribution of original journalism. We will guard against the dangers of bias embedded within generative tools and their underlying training sets. If we wish to include significant elements generated by AI in a piece of work, we will only do so with clear evidence of a specific benefit, human oversight, and the explicit permission of a senior editor. We will be open with our readers when we do this."

https://www.theguardian.com/help/insideguardian/2023/jun/16/the-guardians-approach-to-generative-ai

Qual è il futuro del trasporto aereo civile? Ciclicamente scrivo articoli su questo argomento, basandomi su fonti molto diverse: segnalazioni di startup, comunicati delle grandi aziende produttrici, paper delle università e centri di ricerca. Qui sotto, un comunicato Nasa rimaneggiato dal sito che lo pubblica. Interessante.

Money quote: "Earlier this year, NASA announced that it would be working with Boeing to create an aircraft with a dramatic new look, and it could be strutting down a runway in about five years. Called the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator, it has long, thin wings that are supported by trusses to give them the stability they need. Between those wings and other efficiency tweaks, the plane could be 30 percent more fuel efficient than similar-sized aircraft today, like the single-aisle Boeing 737 or Airbus A320, according to the aeronautics and space agency.

This week, NASA said that the aircraft, which doesn’t yet exist, has received an X-plane designation from the Department of Defense. It’s now officially the X-66A, meaning that it’s an experimental research aircraft. NASA already has two ongoing X-plane programs, so the X-66A makes three of them. Here’s what to know about all three."

https://www.popsci.com/technology/nasa-x-planes/

Un articolone che tocca un tema fondamentale: avere una casa piena di libri. Sono consigli di interior design da parte di una esperta, ma è anche una riflessione su chi siamo e come funziona la nostra vita di noialtri che ci riempiamo la casa di libri.

Money quote: "As a feng shui consultant and design magazine editor and lifelong book obsessive, I am often asked by clients what to do when a collection of books moves from a state of abundance into what feels like a design problem. That moment arrives when people notice they are emotionally overwhelmed by the visual of overflowing bookshelves, or when they have encountered advice elsewhere about how to style shelves and the visual example shelf has only three books on it.

First, let’s all agree that for passionate readers, a personal library is nothing less than a soulful archive of the ever-changing self. We book lovers catalog our transformations, our influences, our ways of being, and our interests through our volumes and develop relationships—perceived or existing—with the people who created them.

Where once a library might have been a way to signal status to visiting society, today, a room full of books tells us a story about us: Where we came from, how we have struggled, what has lifted us, what we know for sure."

https://lithub.com/what-to-do-if-your-house-is-overflowing-with-books/

L'emozione di vedere l'ultimo film di Miyazaki a Tokyo - sono andato a vederlo a Tokyo e ne ho scritto qui su Fumettologica

https://fumettologica.it/2023/07/kimi-tachi-wa-do-ikiru-ka-ultimo-film-miyazaki/

È passato un po' di tempo, ma questo ragionamento sulla strategia di Apple nei confronti dei suoi utenti è carino.

Money quote: "That was the setup: Apple is helping users help themselves, giving them tips and tricks and tools for managing modern life. Then, after a beat, Tim Cook returned to the stage to deliver the punchline in the form of an all-new product: the Vision Pro, a $3,500 computer that straps directly to your face."

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/apple-keeps-trying-to-fix-its-users.html