C'è chi pensa che molta automazione aiuti e c'è chi pensa che pensare a quel che si fa molto aiuti. A giudicare dai risultati, è abbastanza chiaro come funziona in realtà.
Money quote: "André took on the job of design, implementation, and test of the VTOC manager. He started by sitting at his desk and drawing a lot of diagrams. I was the project coordinator, so I used to drop in on him and ask how things were going. "Still designing," he'd say. He wanted the diagrams to look beautiful and symmetrical as well as capturing all the state information. I was getting nervous about the schedule, so I was glad when he finally began writing code. He wrote in pencil, at his desk, instead of using a terminal. He declined offers of typing help, and just kept writing away in pencil. He rewrote parts, copied things over, erased and rewrote.
Finally André took his neat final pencil copy to a terminal and typed the whole program in. His first compilation attempt failed; he corrected three typos, tried again, and the code compiled. We bound it into the system and tried it out, and it worked the first time.
In fact, the VTOC manager worked perfectly from then on. Only one bug was ever found in it, and that was my fault: André had asked me the calling sequence for an error procedure, and I'd guessed instead of looking it up, so it crashed the first time it hit an error. Beyond that the program was perfect."
https://multicians.org/andre.html
Money quote: "André took on the job of design, implementation, and test of the VTOC manager. He started by sitting at his desk and drawing a lot of diagrams. I was the project coordinator, so I used to drop in on him and ask how things were going. "Still designing," he'd say. He wanted the diagrams to look beautiful and symmetrical as well as capturing all the state information. I was getting nervous about the schedule, so I was glad when he finally began writing code. He wrote in pencil, at his desk, instead of using a terminal. He declined offers of typing help, and just kept writing away in pencil. He rewrote parts, copied things over, erased and rewrote.
Finally André took his neat final pencil copy to a terminal and typed the whole program in. His first compilation attempt failed; he corrected three typos, tried again, and the code compiled. We bound it into the system and tried it out, and it worked the first time.
In fact, the VTOC manager worked perfectly from then on. Only one bug was ever found in it, and that was my fault: André had asked me the calling sequence for an error procedure, and I'd guessed instead of looking it up, so it crashed the first time it hit an error. Beyond that the program was perfect."
https://multicians.org/andre.html
multicians.org
It Can Be Done
A story about quality from the development of the Multics operating system.
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La Gen Z legge. E legge sui libri di carta. E questo vuol dire tante cose, a partire dal fatto che forse c'è una possibilità (ma solo se si ripensano i libri).
Money quote: "“Books have always been the great love of my life,” she added. “Reading is so sexy.”
Gerber isn’t alone. Last year in the UK 669m physical books were sold, the highest overall level ever recorded. Research from Nielsen BookData highlights that it is print books that gen Z favour, accounting for 80% of purchases from November 2021 to 2022. Libraries are also reporting an uptick in gen Z users who favour their quiet over noisy coffee shops. In the UK in-person visits are up 71%."
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/feb/09/reading-is-so-sexy-gen-z-turns-to-physical-books-and-libraries
Money quote: "“Books have always been the great love of my life,” she added. “Reading is so sexy.”
Gerber isn’t alone. Last year in the UK 669m physical books were sold, the highest overall level ever recorded. Research from Nielsen BookData highlights that it is print books that gen Z favour, accounting for 80% of purchases from November 2021 to 2022. Libraries are also reporting an uptick in gen Z users who favour their quiet over noisy coffee shops. In the UK in-person visits are up 71%."
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/feb/09/reading-is-so-sexy-gen-z-turns-to-physical-books-and-libraries
the Guardian
‘Reading is so sexy’: gen Z turns to physical books and libraries
Book sales boom as readers escape the ‘oversaturation and noise of the wild west digital landscape’
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La rivoluzione dei processori per le AI realizzata dalla statunitense Tachyum è tanta roba. Ma si tratta comunque di una soluzione da mettere dentro i server nei centri di calcolo.
Money quote: "La statunitense Tachyum vuole trasformare l’economia dei carichi di lavoro di AI, HPC, cloud pubblico/privato e anche metaverso con Prodigy, il primo processore universale al mondo. Prodigy unifica le funzionalità di una CPU, una GPU e un TPU in un unico processore, o meglio in una soluzione multicore di ampie dimensioni, per questo definita “half-die” con contrapposizione al “full die” di Cerebras."
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tachyum-prodigy-arriva-il-processore-universale-leo-sorge-ukl5f/
Money quote: "La statunitense Tachyum vuole trasformare l’economia dei carichi di lavoro di AI, HPC, cloud pubblico/privato e anche metaverso con Prodigy, il primo processore universale al mondo. Prodigy unifica le funzionalità di una CPU, una GPU e un TPU in un unico processore, o meglio in una soluzione multicore di ampie dimensioni, per questo definita “half-die” con contrapposizione al “full die” di Cerebras."
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tachyum-prodigy-arriva-il-processore-universale-leo-sorge-ukl5f/
Linkedin
Tachyum Prodigy: arriva il processore universale
English version here Aggiornato il 29/02/24 La tecnologia e l'innovazione nel campo dei semiconduttori hanno fatto passi da gigante negli ultimi anni, ma poche novità hanno suscitato tanta attesa quanto il lancio dei processori Tachyum Prodigy. Questi chip…
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Quel che non serve per fare un buon film d'animazione - la mia ricorda su Fumettologica
https://fumettologica.it/2024/02/film-animazione-digitale-mano/
https://fumettologica.it/2024/02/film-animazione-digitale-mano/
Fumettologica
Quel che non serve per fare un buon film d'animazione
Digitale e a mano non sono ovviamente la stessa cosa, ma il risultato però non è sconvolgente. Anzi, potrebbe essere persino contraddittorio.
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La memoria del futuro? È il DNA.
Money quote: "The rate of information production is increasing faster than the storage density of tape. Using current technologies will mean that, in the coming decades, we will need exponentially more magnetic tape, disk drives, and flash memory - as well as the factories to produce the storage media. DNA is cheap, readily available, and stable at room temperature for millennia. Organizations around the world are already taking the first steps towards building a DNA drive that can both read and write DNA data."
https://spectrum.ieee.org/dna-data-storage
Money quote: "The rate of information production is increasing faster than the storage density of tape. Using current technologies will mean that, in the coming decades, we will need exponentially more magnetic tape, disk drives, and flash memory - as well as the factories to produce the storage media. DNA is cheap, readily available, and stable at room temperature for millennia. Organizations around the world are already taking the first steps towards building a DNA drive that can both read and write DNA data."
https://spectrum.ieee.org/dna-data-storage
IEEE Spectrum
The Quest for a DNA Data Drive
The world is running out of data storage. Here’s how DNA can save us.
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Affascinante quanto siano differenti le valutazioni sui vaccini in generale e su quelli basati su mRNA. C'è un movimento di senza-testa da una parte che sostiene che siano veleno, mentre dall'altra la realtà è siamo di fronte a una delle più grandi realizzazioni della scienza moderna.
Money quote: "Much of the fundamental groundwork needed to make mRNA vaccines a practical reality had been available years before it was used to fight COVID-19. That Operation Warp Speed was able to quickly resolve many issues of vaccine design and manufacturing within months is indicative. It suggests that the primary limitation to achieving mRNA vaccines was resourcing, rather than fundamental barriers of understanding or technology.
This paper reckons with this incongruity: post hoc, mRNA vaccines were clearly a major breakthrough. But for a long period, investigators like Karikó and Weissman and startups like Moderna and BioNTech languished in relative obscurity. Why were mRNA vaccines not developed and made practical for use significantly earlier?"
https://ifp.org/progress-deferred-lessons-from-mrna-vaccine-development/
Money quote: "Much of the fundamental groundwork needed to make mRNA vaccines a practical reality had been available years before it was used to fight COVID-19. That Operation Warp Speed was able to quickly resolve many issues of vaccine design and manufacturing within months is indicative. It suggests that the primary limitation to achieving mRNA vaccines was resourcing, rather than fundamental barriers of understanding or technology.
This paper reckons with this incongruity: post hoc, mRNA vaccines were clearly a major breakthrough. But for a long period, investigators like Karikó and Weissman and startups like Moderna and BioNTech languished in relative obscurity. Why were mRNA vaccines not developed and made practical for use significantly earlier?"
https://ifp.org/progress-deferred-lessons-from-mrna-vaccine-development/
Institute for Progress
Progress Deferred: Lessons From mRNA Vaccine Development | IFP
We can restructure science funding to help breakthrough research translate more quickly
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Bere alcool vuol dire bere troppo. Negli Usa, così come nei paesi del nord e dell'est Europa, c'è infatti un problema sostanziale con l'alcool. Qualcosa di profondo e difficile da relativizzare, visto che la nostra tradizione alimentare lo vedeva integrato nella dieta mediterranea mentre i media lo hanno completamente sbilanciato con un approccio narrativo problematico tutto nordamericano. Che confusione. Ora siamo diventati mezzi alcolizzati anche noi. Però leggersi questo racconto sulla via della sobrietà con un notevole twist finale è tutta un'altra cosa.
Money quote: "You take various online quizzes about whether or not you drink too much. Your drinking doesn’t interfere with your work! You’re able to quit for three weeks every January! You never drink during the day! You don’t usually drink hard alcohol! You don’t drink secretly and most nights you only drink two beers even though they’re massive and strong and each one is really probably more like two. Plus, you love drinking! You’re funny when you drink and, when you’re not being belligerent, happy. Is this good or bad? You’re not sure. “If you’re taking a quiz about whether you drink too much, you probably drink too much” you read somewhere, unhappily."
https://cupofjo.com/2024/02/14/do-i-drink-too-much/
Money quote: "You take various online quizzes about whether or not you drink too much. Your drinking doesn’t interfere with your work! You’re able to quit for three weeks every January! You never drink during the day! You don’t usually drink hard alcohol! You don’t drink secretly and most nights you only drink two beers even though they’re massive and strong and each one is really probably more like two. Plus, you love drinking! You’re funny when you drink and, when you’re not being belligerent, happy. Is this good or bad? You’re not sure. “If you’re taking a quiz about whether you drink too much, you probably drink too much” you read somewhere, unhappily."
https://cupofjo.com/2024/02/14/do-i-drink-too-much/
Cup of Jo
I Kept Wondering: Do I Drink Too Much?
A chicken recipe calls for a half cup of red wine, but…
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Una caratteristica di Franz Kafka era la fame. Una fame insaziabile per motivi diversi, cupi, profondi, esistenziali. Valerie Stivers, sulla Paris Review, ha preso spunto dalla sua opera e dai piatti che la attraversano per cucinarli e farci capire cosa è riuscito a saziare K. e cosa no (la maggior parte delle cose).
Money quote: "The tension in Kafka between appetite and its fulfillment is a crucial aspect of the writer’s work. Kafka’s characters are often hungry—the performer from “A Hunger Artist” has made starving himself into an art; Gregor Samsa from The Metamorphosis slowly stops eating and wastes away. But their hunger is often not for the foods of this world. Gregor refers to himself as hungering as for “an unknown nourishment.” The hunger artist’s last words are a confession that fasting was not difficult for him because, he says, “I couldn’t find the food I liked. If I had found it, believe me, I should have made no fuss and stuffed myself like you or anyone else.” Instead the characters seek the deeper forms of sustenance—emotional, societal, sexual, spiritual—and don’t find them."
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2024/02/22/cooking-with-franz-kafka/
Money quote: "The tension in Kafka between appetite and its fulfillment is a crucial aspect of the writer’s work. Kafka’s characters are often hungry—the performer from “A Hunger Artist” has made starving himself into an art; Gregor Samsa from The Metamorphosis slowly stops eating and wastes away. But their hunger is often not for the foods of this world. Gregor refers to himself as hungering as for “an unknown nourishment.” The hunger artist’s last words are a confession that fasting was not difficult for him because, he says, “I couldn’t find the food I liked. If I had found it, believe me, I should have made no fuss and stuffed myself like you or anyone else.” Instead the characters seek the deeper forms of sustenance—emotional, societal, sexual, spiritual—and don’t find them."
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2024/02/22/cooking-with-franz-kafka/
The Paris Review
Cooking with Franz Kafka - The Paris Review
“Kafka’s characters are often hungry.”
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Per la prima volta da cinque anni a questa parte il controvalore dei denti di latte pagato dalle fatine (o dai topolini) è in calo. Panico alle scuole elementari.
Money quote: "The tooth fairy's national average gift value for a single lost tooth dropped 6% to $5.84 from $6.23 last year, according to a Delta Dental survey.
It's still the second highest value for a lost tooth and a 349% increase from 1998 when a lost tooth fetched $1.30 on average."
https://www.axios.com/2024/02/22/tooth-fairy-going-rate-2024-lost-tooth
Money quote: "The tooth fairy's national average gift value for a single lost tooth dropped 6% to $5.84 from $6.23 last year, according to a Delta Dental survey.
It's still the second highest value for a lost tooth and a 349% increase from 1998 when a lost tooth fetched $1.30 on average."
https://www.axios.com/2024/02/22/tooth-fairy-going-rate-2024-lost-tooth
Axios
The Tooth Fairy's going rate for lost teeth has dropped for first time in 5 years
How much the Tooth Fairy gives for a lost tooth in 2024 has dropped with cooling inflation.
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In Spagna stanno pestando sul fenomeno delle influencer che mettono bambini nei video, aggirando così i vincoli di età, per i prodotti cosmetici.
È tutto un discorso complicato ma da capire secondo me. Il nome del fenomeno è quello dei “Sephora Kids”
Money quote: “El fenómeno se ha extendido principalmente entre las mujeres y en rango de edad hasta alcanzar a las más pequeñas. Las tiendas de belleza ahora están inundadas de niñas y preadolescentes enganchadas a cosméticos que no necesitan, y esa práctica no solo altera las conductas esperables de esta edad, sino que puede tener efectos en la salud. Los expertos de la piel advierten de un aumento de casos de irritación, acné y dermatitis entre los más jóvenes, como reacción a los potentes principios activos que contienen los productos que utilizan para imitar a los influencers.”
https://elpais.com/tecnologia/2024-02-21/la-explosion-de-los-sephora-kids-la-obsesion-por-las-rutinas-cosmeticas-alcanza-a-los-ninos.html
https://archive.is/6oiyC
È tutto un discorso complicato ma da capire secondo me. Il nome del fenomeno è quello dei “Sephora Kids”
Money quote: “El fenómeno se ha extendido principalmente entre las mujeres y en rango de edad hasta alcanzar a las más pequeñas. Las tiendas de belleza ahora están inundadas de niñas y preadolescentes enganchadas a cosméticos que no necesitan, y esa práctica no solo altera las conductas esperables de esta edad, sino que puede tener efectos en la salud. Los expertos de la piel advierten de un aumento de casos de irritación, acné y dermatitis entre los más jóvenes, como reacción a los potentes principios activos que contienen los productos que utilizan para imitar a los influencers.”
https://elpais.com/tecnologia/2024-02-21/la-explosion-de-los-sephora-kids-la-obsesion-por-las-rutinas-cosmeticas-alcanza-a-los-ninos.html
https://archive.is/6oiyC
El País
La explosión de los ‘Sephora kids’: la obsesión por las rutinas cosméticas alcanza a los niños
Los preadolescentes llenan las tiendas de cosméticos por la popularidad de las rutinas de belleza en las redes, con efectos nocivos para la piel y la salud mental
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La cosa divertente di questo tipo di "incidenti" è che capitano sempre dove meno te lo aspetti. Sono come delle slabbrature nel tessuto sociale che lasciano immaginare un altrove, un dietro le quinte dove succedono cose che neanche ci immaginiamo. Altro che teoria del complotto: è puro e semplice controllo sociale spesso a fini di lucro.
Money quote: "Canada-based University of Waterloo is racing to remove M&M-branded smart vending machines from campus after outraged students discovered the machines were covertly collecting facial-recognition data without their consent.
The scandal started when a student using the alias SquidKid47 posted an image on Reddit showing a campus vending machine error message, "Invenda.Vending.FacialRecognitionApp.exe," displayed after the machine failed to launch a facial recognition application that nobody expected to be part of the process of using a vending machine."
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/vending-machine-error-reveals-secret-face-image-database-of-college-students/
Money quote: "Canada-based University of Waterloo is racing to remove M&M-branded smart vending machines from campus after outraged students discovered the machines were covertly collecting facial-recognition data without their consent.
The scandal started when a student using the alias SquidKid47 posted an image on Reddit showing a campus vending machine error message, "Invenda.Vending.FacialRecognitionApp.exe," displayed after the machine failed to launch a facial recognition application that nobody expected to be part of the process of using a vending machine."
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/vending-machine-error-reveals-secret-face-image-database-of-college-students/
Ars Technica
Vending machine error reveals secret face image database of college students
Facial-recognition data is typically used to prompt more vending machine sales.
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È morto Akira Toriyama
https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/live/2024/03/08/mort-d-akira-toriyama-auteur-de-dragon-ball-partagez-vos-souvenirs-nos-journalistes-repondent-a-vos-questions_6220861_4408996.html
https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/live/2024/03/08/mort-d-akira-toriyama-auteur-de-dragon-ball-partagez-vos-souvenirs-nos-journalistes-repondent-a-vos-questions_6220861_4408996.html
Le Monde.fr
Mort d’Akira Toriyama, auteur de « Dragon Ball » : « Je me revois enfant, à faire des kaméhaméha devant le miroir »
L’auteur de « Dragon Ball » et « Dr Slump » est mort à l’âge de 68 ans. Son œuvre a accompagné plusieurs générations. Nos journalistes Pauline Croquet et Morgane Tual, spécialistes des mangas, ont répondu à vos questions.
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Dopo dieci anni forse siamo qualche centimetro più vicini a risolvere il mistero di dove sia finito il volo MH370 di Malaysian Airlines, scomparso dai radar l'8 marzo 2014. Grazie a dei piccoli molluschi.
Money quote: "Better still, the flaperon carried with it evidence that may help locate the plane and solve the mystery once and for all: a population of gooseneck barnacles called Lepas anatifera. Like the rings of a tree, their shells contain a record of their life. Decode that information and it may be possible to trace their path on the flaperon backward to the impact site and the mystery would be solved."
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/mh370-search-debris-barnacles.html
Money quote: "Better still, the flaperon carried with it evidence that may help locate the plane and solve the mystery once and for all: a population of gooseneck barnacles called Lepas anatifera. Like the rings of a tree, their shells contain a record of their life. Decode that information and it may be possible to trace their path on the flaperon backward to the impact site and the mystery would be solved."
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/mh370-search-debris-barnacles.html
New York
The Sea Creatures That Opened a New Mystery About MH370
Could freaky barnacles do what advanced technology couldn’t — find the missing plane?
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Ancora non è disponibile, ma se fa davvero quel che promette, è un passo enorme verso la programmazione zero code.
Money quote: “Similar to Sora, Genie's creators call it a "world model," but unlike Sora, it's an "actionable-controllable world model." Trained on over 200,000 hours of publicly available 2D platformers that exist across the internet, Genie can take prompts, sketches, and other images and create virtual worlds for users to play around in — creating assets from scratch and generating pixels based on player actions.”
https://mashable.com/article/google-genie-can-create-video-games-2d-platformers
Money quote: “Similar to Sora, Genie's creators call it a "world model," but unlike Sora, it's an "actionable-controllable world model." Trained on over 200,000 hours of publicly available 2D platformers that exist across the internet, Genie can take prompts, sketches, and other images and create virtual worlds for users to play around in — creating assets from scratch and generating pixels based on player actions.”
https://mashable.com/article/google-genie-can-create-video-games-2d-platformers
Mashable
Google Genie lets users generate AI outputs resembling video games
It's not 'Sora for video games,' but it's a step in that direction
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È domenica, ho appena mandato Mostly Weekly. Da domenica scorsa ho un nuovo provider email. Se ci sono problemi, segnalatemelo. Se invece non sapete cos'è e volete iscrivervi, ecco qua:
https://antoniodini.com/iscrizione/
https://antoniodini.com/weekly/262/
https://antoniodini.com/iscrizione/
https://antoniodini.com/weekly/262/
Mostly Here
Iscrizione
Iscriversi a Mostly Weekly è facile: basta mettere la propria mail e premere invio
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Le conseguenze del Vision Pro potrebbero essere "interessanti" (certo che per tirare su due click in più un povero tizio che gestisce un sito di news business deve proprio inventarsele tutte).
Money quote: "That, unfortunately, could have some very weird and very messy consequences for the human brain. Researchers have found that widespread, long-term immersion in VR headsets could literally change the way we perceive the world — and each other. "We now have companies who are advocating that you spend many hours each day in them," says Jeremy Bailenson, director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford. "You've got many, many people, and they're wearing it for many, many hours. And everything magnifies at scale.""
https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-vision-pro-experiment-brain-virtual-reality-side-effect-2024-2
Money quote: "That, unfortunately, could have some very weird and very messy consequences for the human brain. Researchers have found that widespread, long-term immersion in VR headsets could literally change the way we perceive the world — and each other. "We now have companies who are advocating that you spend many hours each day in them," says Jeremy Bailenson, director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford. "You've got many, many people, and they're wearing it for many, many hours. And everything magnifies at scale.""
https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-vision-pro-experiment-brain-virtual-reality-side-effect-2024-2
Business Insider
Beware: The Apple Vision Pro may rewire our brains in unexpected ways
Apple's new VR goggles are really cool — but they also have an alarming side effect.
Non ci sono solo i deepfake e il revenge p*rn fatto con le foto simulate delle compagne di scuola, le colleghe di lavoro o delle vicine di casa. Ci sono anche quelli che invece le donne le rivestono quando "sono sconce" grazie all'AI. È il movimento «DignifAI». Mah
Money quote: "L’idée est née sur 4chan, un forum anonyme parmi les plus populaires – et les moins modérés – du Web. « Nous allons leur montrer la vie qu’elles n’auront jamais. Nous les forcerons à contempler l’image de la vraie beauté, que nous avons rétablie à partir de leurs visages dépravés. Nous ramènerons la décence dans ce monde », peut-on lire dans un message anonyme. DignifAI s’est ensuite répandu sur d’autres espaces, comme X, et un site Internet créé spécialement fournit un mode d’emploi pour trafiquer par IA les images de son choix."
https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2024/03/09/dignifai-des-internautes-rhabillent-les-femmes-en-utilisant-l-intelligence-artificielle_6221059_4408996.html
Archivio: https://archive.is/EBAqe
Money quote: "L’idée est née sur 4chan, un forum anonyme parmi les plus populaires – et les moins modérés – du Web. « Nous allons leur montrer la vie qu’elles n’auront jamais. Nous les forcerons à contempler l’image de la vraie beauté, que nous avons rétablie à partir de leurs visages dépravés. Nous ramènerons la décence dans ce monde », peut-on lire dans un message anonyme. DignifAI s’est ensuite répandu sur d’autres espaces, comme X, et un site Internet créé spécialement fournit un mode d’emploi pour trafiquer par IA les images de son choix."
https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2024/03/09/dignifai-des-internautes-rhabillent-les-femmes-en-utilisant-l-intelligence-artificielle_6221059_4408996.html
Archivio: https://archive.is/EBAqe
Le Monde.fr
« DignifAI » : des internautes rhabillent les femmes en utilisant l’intelligence artificielle
Les outils de l’IA sont détournés pour modifier des images de femmes jugées « dépravées », en leur ajoutant des vêtements, mais aussi parfois des enfants et des maris blancs. Une pure opération de « trolling ».
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Bill e Hillary Clinton hanno ricominciato a fare politica, dietro le quinte. La vittoria di Donald Trump si fa sempre più certa.
Money quote: "Hillary wasn’t part of that conversation, but she was on the plane, too — along with Michelle Obama and Jill Biden — and she had plenty of her own thoughts as Biden entered 2024 running behind her old foe in the polls. In recent months, the former secretary of state has begun convening groups of friends and political allies for private dinners to talk through the coming election season and to drum up badly needed support for Democratic candidates, starting with the president. The sessions are occasionally at the Clintons’ primary home in Chappaqua, but more often at their house in Washington, not far from the residence of Vice-President Kamala Harris, with whom she has quietly been keeping in touch."
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/bill-clinton-hillary-clinton-joe-biden-2024-election.html
Money quote: "Hillary wasn’t part of that conversation, but she was on the plane, too — along with Michelle Obama and Jill Biden — and she had plenty of her own thoughts as Biden entered 2024 running behind her old foe in the polls. In recent months, the former secretary of state has begun convening groups of friends and political allies for private dinners to talk through the coming election season and to drum up badly needed support for Democratic candidates, starting with the president. The sessions are occasionally at the Clintons’ primary home in Chappaqua, but more often at their house in Washington, not far from the residence of Vice-President Kamala Harris, with whom she has quietly been keeping in touch."
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/bill-clinton-hillary-clinton-joe-biden-2024-election.html
New York
The Return of the Clintons
Bill talks economics with Biden. Hillary gives pointers to Harris. The former First Couple is as deep in politics as they have been since Trump won.
Una bella riflessione su uno dei temi che è epidemico nel mondo occidentale: la fine dell'amore. E se ne facessimo a meno sin dal principio? Intrigante. Mi chiedo però quanto controllo sociale ci voglia perché questi matrimoni organizzati anziché frutto dell'amore spontaneo non siano solo delle facciate. Forse funzionano in India (ammesso che funzionino) perché ci sono caste e rigidità culturali che da noi non esistono? Sempre più intrigante.
Money quote: "In India, in those days and even now, almost all marriages are arranged. Parents select potential mates for their children, taking great care to find someone from within their religious, socioeconomic, and cultural circles, so that there will be little cause for disharmony. Growing up in India, I remember always telling my friends with some pride that my parents instead had a “Love Marriage,” sickeningly enthusiastic that this would put all their parents’ “Arranged Marriages” to shame. All through my teenage years and beyond, I was fascinated by this idea of the love marriage. Seeing someone across a room, maybe even falling in love at first sight. And that is what my parents had done. They became smitten with each other in their College faculty room. And now he was telling me that perhaps he should have had an arranged marriage after all".
https://www.thesmartset.com/arranging-love/
Money quote: "In India, in those days and even now, almost all marriages are arranged. Parents select potential mates for their children, taking great care to find someone from within their religious, socioeconomic, and cultural circles, so that there will be little cause for disharmony. Growing up in India, I remember always telling my friends with some pride that my parents instead had a “Love Marriage,” sickeningly enthusiastic that this would put all their parents’ “Arranged Marriages” to shame. All through my teenage years and beyond, I was fascinated by this idea of the love marriage. Seeing someone across a room, maybe even falling in love at first sight. And that is what my parents had done. They became smitten with each other in their College faculty room. And now he was telling me that perhaps he should have had an arranged marriage after all".
https://www.thesmartset.com/arranging-love/
The Smart Set
Arranging Love
Years after my mother had died, on a visit to my father in his childhood home in Nagercoil, India, where he had settled after his retirement, he told me he had always wanted to marry a Tamil girl
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Purtroppo è mancato Giuseppe Granieri, persona squisita e amico sempre troppo lontano. Dal 1996, quando aveva fondato bookcafe.net (uno dei primi siti letterari italiani) aveva cominciato a vivere oltre che a spiegare l'evoluzione digitale del nostro tempo.
https://www.repubblica.it/cultura/2024/03/11/news/giuseppe_granieri_e_morto_pioniere_della_cultura_digitale_aveva_56_anni-422292194/
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Granieri
https://www.repubblica.it/cultura/2024/03/11/news/giuseppe_granieri_e_morto_pioniere_della_cultura_digitale_aveva_56_anni-422292194/
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Granieri
la Repubblica
Giuseppe Granieri è morto. Pioniere della cultura digitale, aveva 56 anni
Nato a Potenza, aveva scritto diversi saggi per Laterza. Fu uno dei primi a riflettere sull’intelligenza artificiale
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In Irlanda ci sono 82 dacenter, che consumano circa il 18% della corrente elettrica di quel Paese. Questo articolo è molto interessante perché fa il punto non solo sul presente (piuttosto critico) dell'Irlanda, ma anche sul suo passato e su come siamo arrivati sino a questo punto. La "tigre celtica" deve tutto a una politica di incentivi fiscali che ha due anime, non troppo positive.
Money quote: "Since the 1960s, Ireland’s Industrial Development Agency has had a policy of aiming to attract international investment through low corporate tax rates, starting with an initial rate of 0%. Ireland has long been home to tech companies: IBM and Ericsson offices opened in the 1950s, and factories owned by Dell, Intel, HP and Microsoft followed in the 1970s and 1980s. The focus of these operations was hardware. The pivot to software development coincided with the boom years of the early 2000s, when Ireland became known as the “Celtic Tiger”. Google’s European headquarters opened in Dublin in 2004, and since then, the country has become home to 16 of the 20 largest global tech companies."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/15/power-grab-hidden-costs-of-ireland-datacentre-boom
Money quote: "Since the 1960s, Ireland’s Industrial Development Agency has had a policy of aiming to attract international investment through low corporate tax rates, starting with an initial rate of 0%. Ireland has long been home to tech companies: IBM and Ericsson offices opened in the 1950s, and factories owned by Dell, Intel, HP and Microsoft followed in the 1970s and 1980s. The focus of these operations was hardware. The pivot to software development coincided with the boom years of the early 2000s, when Ireland became known as the “Celtic Tiger”. Google’s European headquarters opened in Dublin in 2004, and since then, the country has become home to 16 of the 20 largest global tech companies."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/15/power-grab-hidden-costs-of-ireland-datacentre-boom
the Guardian
Power grab: the hidden costs of Ireland’s datacentre boom
The long read: Datacentres are part of Ireland’s vision of itself as a tech hub. There are now more than 80, using vast amounts of electricity. Have we entrusted our memories to a system that might destroy them?
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