La domanica succedono tante cose. Una di queste è (quasi sempre) Mostly Weekly, la mia newsletter. Tutto sugli effetti collaterali della meritocrazia e le invasioni dei libri orribili

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/276/

Le AI possono percepire le emozioni "guardando" il volto delle persone? Microsoft e altri ci stanno provando. E quindi? Molto semplicemente: no, non funziona.

Money quote: "In 2019, the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest engaged five senior scientists, including me, to examine the scientific evidence for the idea that people express anger, sadness, fear, happiness, disgust and surprise in universal ways. We came from different fields—psychology, neuroscience, engineering and computer science—and began with opposing views. Yet, after reviewing more than a thousand papers during almost a hundred videoconferences, we reached a consensus: In the real world, an emotion like anger or sadness is a broad category full of variety. People express different emotions with the same facial movements and the same emotion with different facial movements. The variation is meaningfully tied to a person’s situation.

In short, we can’t train AI on stereotypes and expect the results to work in real life, no matter how big the data set or sophisticated the algorithm. Shortly after the paper was published, Microsoft retired the emotion AI features of their facial recognition software."

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/think-ai-can-perceive-emotion-think-again-2b4c7d29

Quei fantastici test giornalistici che non hanno niente di scientifico ma diventano più popolari dei risultati del telescopio Hubble. Ecco a voi qual è l'intelligenza artificiale discorsiva più affidabile (rullo di tamburi)

Money quote: "With the help of Journal newsroom editors and columnists, we crafted a series of prompts to test popular use cases, including coding challenges, health inquiries and money questions. The same people judged the results without knowing which bot said what, rating them on accuracy, helpfulness and overall quality. We then ranked the bots in each category.

We also excerpted some of the best and worst responses to prompts, to give a sense of how varied chatbots’ responses can be."

Money quote 2: "What did these Olympian challenges tell us? Each chatbot has unique strengths and weaknesses, making them all worth exploring. We saw few outright errors and “hallucinations,” where bots go off on unexpected tangents and completely make things up. The bots provided mostly helpful answers and avoided controversy.

The biggest surprise? ChatGPT, despite its big update and massive fame, didn’t lead the pack. Instead, lesser-known Perplexity was our champ. “We optimize for conciseness,” says Dmitry Shevelenko, chief business officer at Perplexity AI. “We tuned our model for conciseness, which forces it to identify the most essential components.”"

https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/ai-chatbots-chatgpt-gemini-copilot-perplexity-claude-f9e40d26

Archivio: https://archive.is/jxENy

4 ore e 40 minuti di documentario, con diverse interviste mai tradotte prima, sullo sviluppo e la commercializzazione di Sega Rally Championship per Saturn. Devo aggiungere altro?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CEdmZ5P0jA&t=2224s

Per chi vuole cambiare lettore di ebook oppure usarne uno nuovo per questa estate, ho testato il Kobo Libra Colour con la penna. Non super economico ma permette di fare un paio di cose interessanti, tipo scrivere e tipo leggere i fumetti a colori

https://www.italian.tech/2024/06/18/news/la_prova_di_libra_colour_il_nuovo_lettore_di_ebook_a_colori_di_kobo-423248585/

Un modo per spiare il traffico di informazioni del pianeta? Infilare un sondino da qualche parte nelle migliaia di migliaia di chilometri di cavi in fibra ottica sottomarini. A quanto pare sta succedendo.

Money quote: "U.S. officials have told companies, including Google and Meta, about their concerns that Chinese companies could threaten the security of U.S.-owned cables, a person familiar with the briefings said. In some cases, the conversations have included discussion of Shanghai-based S.B. Submarine Systems, the person said.

Senior Biden administration officials have also received briefings in recent months about the risks posed by Chinese companies, including SBSS, working on repairs to undersea cables, according to the person."

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/china-internet-cables-repair-ships-93fd6320

Cosa ne penso della nuova serie di Star Wars, The Avolyte, spiegato bene per Fumettologica

https://fumettologica.it/2024/06/the-acolyte-la-seguace-serie-tv-recensione-star-wars/

Certo che abbiamo un modo tutto nstro per cercare di risolvere i problemi, noi esseri umani. Si va per tentativi. Alle volte tremendi e faticosi. Come i 100 anni passati cercando di fare le bottiglie di carta.

Money quote: "The paper-bottle push comes as paper is growing in popularity as a substitute for plastic packaging, with companies already using it to sell chocolate, ice cream, chewing gum and chips.

“People have a very good perception of paper,” said Ron Khan, head of drinks packaging at PepsiCo decrease, which has run tests to gauge consumers’ appetite for a paper bottle. “The minute consumers saw it we didn’t have to explain the sustainability credentials.”"

https://www.wsj.com/business/the-100-year-quest-to-make-a-paper-bottle-6670bc8c

Archivio https://archive.is/z2tjV

In Giappone, ma anche negli Usa, vanno tutti pazzi per queste retro fotocamere digitali. Fatte su licenza Kodak, sono praticamente nate vecchie di vent'anni o quasi. Ma nella folle ossessione della "memoria", le vogliono tutti. Anche perché le punta e scatta di oggi o non si trovano o costano un rene.

Money quote: "The FZ55 is a blast from the past. It features a small 16-megapixel sensor and a five-times zoom lens that is 28mm at its widest. Small and compact, it is reminiscent of the point and shoot camereas from the mid-2000s through the early 2010s — and it very well could be. It looks remarkably similar to multiple Sony CyberShot cameras from the early 2010s, including the Cyber-Shot W650, although the case is slightly different as are the internals (it might be using the sensor from the inside of an old Minolta). The retail price of this and the other two cameras that lead sales charts can best be described as “dirt cheap,” so the actual components inside have to be very old."

https://petapixel.com/2024/05/29/kodak-branded-cameras-with-decade-old-tech-are-outselling-all-others-in-japan/

Se n'è andato Donald Sutherland, star di ‘M*A*S*H’ e molti altri film. Aveva 88 anni.

- The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/20/movies/donald-sutherland-dead.html

Dev'essere stato veramente un personaggio difficile, Stanley Kubrik. Il libro che non volle far uscire si chiama "The Magic Eye: The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick" di Neil Hornick. Questa è la storia di quella battaglia di quasi mezzo secolo fa.

Money quote: "Stanley Kubrick, the relentless perfectionist who directed some of cinema’s greatest classics, was so sensitive to criticism that, in 1970, he threatened legal action to block publication of a book which dared to discuss flaws in his films.

The director of Spartacus and 2001: A Space Odyssey, warned the book’s author and publisher that he would fight “tooth and nail” and “use every legal means at his disposal” to prevent its publication – and he did.

Now, 25 years after his death, the book Kubrick did not want anyone to read is being published, more than half a century late."

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/apr/21/stanley-kubrick-director-book-block-flaws-films-published

C'è un'area di sovrapposizione nella nostra mente tra il dolore fisico e il dolore sociale. Essere tagliati fuori dal gruppo, sentirsi esclusi, è veramente un problema, non è una "fisima per femminucce". Ci sono studi ed esperimenti, come quello che segue.

Money quote: "The premise is simple: Participants play a virtual game of ball toss with (supposedly) two or more other players. In reality, they’re using a program designed to include or exclude them to various degrees. Researchers have manipulated different variables across experiments, from the number of players to the length of the game—and the lesson of Cyberball across the board? It doesn’t matter if it’s as low stakes as throwing around a fake ball with strangers we’ll never meet—we hate feeling left out.

Like, really hate it. According to Dr. Williams, he and his team have even rigged the game so people earned money when they were excluded. “But even if they were left with the reward, it still made them feel just as bad,” he says."

https://www.self.com/story/feeling-left-out-tips

Un articolo illuminante sulle malattie mentali, dalla depressione al bipolare. La psicologa clinica e autrice Kay Redfield Jamison esplora i disturbi dell'umore dall'antichità a oggi, mescolando scienza, storia e memorie personali. Notevolissimo, se posso dire.

Money quote: "The physicians of antiquity knew depression, mania, and psychosis well. Thousands of years ago, they described these conditions in their patients and instructed their students in how best to diagnose and treat them.2 One medical historian states that manic and depressive psychoses are the “scarlet threads” most clearly discernable throughout the “twisted strands of history.”3 Long before the time of Hippocrates, 500 years before Christ, physicians and priests in Egypt, China, India, and Persia described patients with melancholy, who slept poorly, ruminated ceaselessly on death, obsessed about their unworthiness, lacked will and the energy to act, were irritable, confused, and wished only to die. Their manic patients, on the other hand, needed little sleep and were grandiose and psychotic; in their exaltation, they believed themselves to be gods, kings, or prophets, and thought themselves to be invincible, at one with the universe. They were irrational and uninhibited; they talked, ran, approached others indiscriminately, and danced without restraint. They were indefatigable, quick to rage, impulsive, suspicious, and at times violent; their thoughts and words sped in all directions."

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/in-their-own-words-narratives-of-mania-and-depression/

Questa settimana su Mostly Weekly
~277 qualche consiglio utile: ricordatevi di scrivere la mattina presto, andare a letto sempre alla stessa ora, imparare nuove parole e ascoltare sempre tutti.

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/277/

L'intervista che è stata fatta un po' di mesi fa al numero uno di Rolex, Jean-Frédéric Dufour. È molto raro che si faccia intervistare, quindi anche se è un po' vecchia fatevela durare ancora un bel po'.

Money quote: "Question: Two or three years ago, watches were seen more as an investment than a dream. Cryptocurrency millionaires, for example, converted some of their money into real assets.

Dufour: I don’t like it when people compare watches to stocks. It sends the wrong message and is dangerous. We make products, not investments."

https://www.nzz.ch/english/watches-and-wonders-2024-rolex-ceo-on-cooling-markets-and-the-idea-behind-the-watch-fair-ld.1825387

Prendetela con un po' di spirito. L'idea è che siamo tutti devastati dall'eccesso di interruzioni e micro-cose da fare (cose di "manutenzione") e non si riesce più a trovare il tempo per concentrarsi e fare le cose che servono veramente e che richiedono parecchia attenzione: il cosiddetto "Deep Work". Ecco, questo articolo cerca di affrontare questo problema suggerendo alcune soluzioni. La chiave di lettura secondo me è che non siamo solo noi a essere nelle peste: è un fenomeno reale ed è diventato epidemico: è davvero difficile lavorare sul serio.

Money quote: "Accessing that kind of deep work zone can feel nearly impossible. If you’re busy with multiple tasks, finding a solid chunk of time for uninterrupted productivity may be utterly unrealistic. Fortunately, there are methods to optimise the limited ‘deep work’ time we have, plan for interruptions and produce meaningful work despite competing demands for our attention."

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-the-busiest-people-get-deep-work-done

Il modo in cui sono fatti i complessi per appartamenti di New York è sempre la stessa minestra sciapa e priva di personalità. Magari la facciata (qualche volta) è interessante, ma dentro no, sono sempre cubi su cubi su cubi collegati da porte. Fino ad ora, perlomeno. Perché c'è chi cerca di fare le case diversamente.

Money quote: "I don’t know whether this hodgepodge of references was conscious, but it’s surely not coincidental. SO-IL has been working for years to deconstruct a building’s mass to make it seem less like a monolith and more like a town. If that still qualifies as a radical move, it’s because the typical New York apartment building is a closed box crisscrossed by hollow passages. Even architecturally ambitious towers, like those by Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, and David Adjaye, work essentially the same way before the surfaces go on, reserving innovation for the final fit-out."

https://www.curbed.com/article/architecture-review-so-il-brooklyn-chapel-warren-vanderbilt.html

Stanisław Lem è un autore notevolissimo e molto celebrato tra chi ama la buona letteratura. Trascende il genere della fantascienza, anche se non ne fuoriesce completamente. Forse per questo alcune delle sue traduzioni in italiano sono problematiche?

Money quote: "Qualcuno potrebbe pensare che questa mia postilla alle prefazioni/postfazioni italiane di Solaris nasca da una petulante pignoleria filologica più o meno fine a sé stessa, quindi di natura nevrotico-masturbatoria. Ma non è così, perché purtroppo la stessa storia delle traduzioni italiane di Solaris si rivela teatro di inesattezze, per non dir peggio, francamente inaccettabili."

https://www.indiscreto.org/storia-indiscreta-di-solaris-in-italia/

Chi ha dato il volto a James Bond? È il tema della mia rubrica per Fumettologica.

https://fumettologica.it/2024/06/james-bond-volto-fumetti/

Lo sapevate che fine ha fatto la città dei pirati per definizione, cioè Porth Royal? Io no. Ma qui l'ho scoperto. E vorrei andarla a vedere, un giorno.

Money quote: "Located on the southeast coast of Jamaica, the natural harbor at Port Royal became the center of English life in Jamaica. By the late 1600s it had become one of the largest European cities in the new world, second only to Boston. It had also become the infamous home of pirates, sex workers, and Englishmen on the make. Far from home, they made their livings off of the slave trade, slave labor in plantations, and the money that the pirates brought in from their looting forays against the Spanish."

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/sunken-pirate-stronghold-at-port-royal