Sta arrivando la stagione dell'anti-influenzale negli Usa. Stagione interessante come sempre perchè là funziona in maniera diversa che qua da noi.

Money quote: "This year’s flu shots are trivalent, meaning they protect against three flu viruses: two versions of influenza A and one type of influenza B. For more than a decade, flu shots in the U.S. also protected against a fourth strain of influenza B, but that strain hasn’t circulated since March 2020, so the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory committee elected this year to exclude it."

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/flu-shot-when-covid-vaccine-rcna169364

Dietro ogni grande uomo c'è un fratello geniale. O qualcosa del genere.

Money quote: "While Pavel was the muscular, jet-setting face of the operation, a Russian tech prince flirting with the limelight, Nikolai was his technical pillar, as Woz was to Steve Jobs during Apple's early days.

It was Nikolai who drew up the MTProto protocol that has attracted so many users with the promise of security — including those with nefarious intentions — and become a headache for the French authorities."

https://www.politico.eu/article/nikolai-durov-brother-telegram-ceo-pavel-durov-tech-platforms-privacy-safety-encryption/

Affilate le unghie perché Mostly Weekly è tornato proprio mentre l'estate sta finendo (cantavano i Righeira). Questa settimana c'è di mezzo Mozart, il ceo di Ford, il ritorno del nero (inteso come colore) e quello di Goldrake (inteso come robottone). E questa è solo la punta dell'iceberg settimanale. Tutto free ovviamente.

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/290/

Letture per la domenica

A quanto pare parlare con un chatbot come ChatGPT può servire a diminuire le idee del cavolo nella testa di chi crede alle teorie della cospirazione. Semplicemente scrivendo la frase precedente mi vengono in mente almeno una decina di idee sul perché la notizia potrebbe essere vera e terribile al tempo stesso.

Money quote: "The issue is that "conspiracy theories just vary a lot from person to person," said co-author Thomas Costello, a psychologist at American University who is also affiliated with MIT. "They're quite heterogeneous. People believe a wide range of them and the specific evidence that people use to support even a single conspiracy may differ from one person to another. So debunking attempts where you try to argue broadly against a conspiracy theory are not going to be effective because people have different versions of that conspiracy in their heads."

By contrast, an AI chatbot would be able to tailor debunking efforts to those different versions of a conspiracy. So in theory a chatbot might prove more effective in swaying someone from their pet conspiracy theory."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/09/study-conversations-with-ai-chatbots-can-reduce-belief-in-conspiracy-theories/

Il ventesimo anniversario di quando la televisione è cambiata per sempre: "Lost" è stato trasmesso oggi nel 2004. È la nascita delle serie tv moderne.

Money quote: "Un 22 de septiembre de hace 20 años, la tele cambió: se estrenó Perdidos, lo que inició el motor de las series como el primer entretenimiento de masas global. Ese mismo año también llegaron Mujeres desesperadas, Anatomía de Grey, House, Battlestar Galactica, Veronica Mars y The Office"

https://elpais.com/television/2024-09-22/perdidos-cumple-20-anos-2004-la-temporada-que-revoluciono-las-series.html

Archivio: https://archive.is/RpHh9

L'epoca dell'eccesso e della personalizzazione di massa: era una promessa che è stata mantenuta. Solo che, tra tutte le categorie di prodotti, si è realizzata nelle bibite fredde o calde.

Money quote: "At Starbucks, the world’s second-largest restaurant chain, one-quarter of all custom drinks it sells in the United States have more than three modifications — like an extra shot of espresso, a pump of flavored syrup or a cap of the chain’s wildly popular cold foam, a company spokeswoman said.

Consumers increasingly expect everything from their social media feeds to the drinks in their hands to be tailored to their tastes, said Nik Modi, a co-head of consumer research at RBC Capital Markets, an investment bank in Toronto. And as America’s demographics shift and its tastes diversify, the flavor combinations possible in a single drink have grown exponentially."

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/16/dining/drinks/customized-drinks.html

Mi cito da solo ma ogni tanto non fa male. Una storia sulla fine della privacy in rete.

Money quote: "Tutto comincia con una di quelle forme di gamificazione della nostra esistenza che la rete ha ampliato in maniera folle. Il 27 gennaio 2020 l’utente finlandese di Reddit “u/TontsaH” posta sul subreddit r/TipOfMyTongue una richiesta di aiuto per identificare una serie di celebrità stampate su un telo che dice di aver acquistato in un negozio locale “forse nel 2008”.

“Challenge accepted”, rispondono un numero crescente di utenti di Reddit. E comincia la caccia ai volti. Alcuni sono facili da identificare, altri meno. Delle otto facce presenti sette vengono subito “capiti”: Josh Holloway, Jessica Alba, Travis Fimmel, Ian Somerhalder, Orlando Bloom e Adriana Lima, che è presente ben due volte. Non è una foto di gruppo ma un collage.

Ne manca una però: la Celebrity Numero 6, per l’appunto."

https://www.macitynet.it/la-storia-della-numero-6-e-la-fine-della-privacy/

Il documentario su Prince che non vedremo mai. Praticamente una miniserie per lo streaming che gli eredi hanno deciso non possa andare in onda. Maledetti.

Money quote: "The film took Edelman almost five years to finish, and it nearly broke him. Whenever he makes a documentary, he told me, “It’s like willingly walking into the jail or locking myself up into a box like Houdini and being like, ‘Can I get out?’ ” But he had been locked in for a long time, often working nights and weekends, chasing down recalcitrant subjects who seemed haunted by their friendships with Prince and researching in Prince’s personal archive, which was filled with gaps and elisions. Prince kept slipping away from him. “How can you tell the truth about someone who, when you’re talking to people, they all had different things to say?” Edelman told me. “How can you tell the truth about someone who never told the truth about himself?”"

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/08/magazine/prince-netflix-ezra-edelman-documentary.html

Gli Usa e l'Opus Dei: l'organizzazione cattolica sta cercando di attirare a sé J.D. Vance e buona parte dei politici americani disponibili. È la il cattolicesimo di destra degli Usa, non è maggioritario ma è piuttosto attivo.

C'è un libro in uscita, di cui si parla in questo articolo, che racconta la storia dell'Opus Dei negli Usa: l'ha scritto il giornalista finanziario britannico Gareth Gore e si intitola: "Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy Inside the Catholic Church"

(Il titolo è in effetti tutto un progamma)

Money quote: "A great deal has been written this year about the resurgence of the Catholic right in America. This is not President Biden’s liberal Catholicism. In surveys, American Catholics as a whole are firmly in the mainstream in their political opinions, from contraception to divorce, gay marriage to abortion rights. But there is an elite vanguard on the rise that holds much more conservative views — many of these elites have some association with Opus Dei — and has sought to influence policies that might be enacted in a second Trump presidency. The now-infamous Project 2025 was cooked up under the auspices of the Heritage Foundation’s conservative Catholic and Opus Dei–connected president, Kevin Roberts. All three of the Trump-appointed Roe-wrecking Supreme Court justices (two of whom are Catholic) got there thanks in part to the tireless dark-money-funded efforts of the right-wing Catholic Leonard Leo, a major CIC donor who has also become the go-to conservative disburser of anonymously donated big bucks to political causes. The three other justices in the Dobbs majority are hard-right Catholics. Beyond the high court, current and former Washington power lawyers and influencers have Opus Dei connections."

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/opus-dei-members-catholic-washington-dc-politicans-jd-vance.html

Archivio: https://archive.is/k92wM

Un po' scherza, un po' fa sul serio, e un po' è bello prolisso (ho preso il pezzetto alla fine, il viaggio per arrivarci è lungo ma ne vale abbastanza la pena).

Tuttavia l'idea è potente: il culto del CLOUD

Money quote: "All this is to say I have changed my mind. Those tourists that have been pissing me off from Edinburgh to Istanbul, enjoying not the place they have travelled to see, but the screens through which they document and consume their experience — they are not vain. They are not foolish. Instead, they are devout. For who would the Sky Father favour most, if not those who feed Him?

For the CLOUD is always hungry. He knows no satisfaction, no happy state of glut. He is never sated, never gorged to the full. All we can do is feed Him more, and hope that it’s enough.

We know little about the Proto-Indo-European belief for sure. But, in the traditions that have come down to us, there are traces of an eschaton — an End of Days battle, fought between the forces of Good and Evil. As more and more of us turn to recording every moment of our lives and beaming it up to the CLOUD, it feels like we’re approaching THE END. Why else would we spend so much of our lives feverishly uploading, instead of living?"

https://cosmographia.substack.com/p/all-hail-the-cloud

Alcuni brevi e interessanti pensieri sul debito dell'autore di libri finanziari Morgan Housel. Mi piace l'inquadramento del debito che porta a meno opzioni e possibilmente a una diminuzione della speranza. Tuttavia, vale la pena aggiungere avvertimenti come il fatto che non è sempre colpa loro se sempre più persone si trovano ad avere quantità enormi di debiti.

Money quote: “I love the quote from author Kent Nerburn that, ‘Debt defines your future, and when your future is defined, hope begins to die.’ ... I’m not an anti-debt zealot. There’s a time and place, and used responsibly it’s a wonderful tool. But once you view debt as narrowing what you can endure in a volatile world, you start to see it as a constraint on the asset that matters most: having options and flexibility.”

https://collabfund.com/blog/how-i-think-about-debt/

La mia recensione del film per giovani e non solo.

https://fumettologica.it/2024/09/transformers-one-recensione-film/

Torna anche questa settimana Mostly Weekly, la mia newsletter. Si parla di follie cinematografie di anziani uomini bianchi oltre al vino del futuro

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/291/

Lettura per la domenica

Che abbiamo un problema con l'intelligenza artificiale (la tecnologia precedentemente conosciuta come "machine learning") è evidente. Costa un sacco e non si sa che vantaggi reali (ed economici) porti.

Il super filosofo italiano Luciano Floridi lancia il guanto di sfida con questo articolo. Vediamo che succede.

Money quote: "This article argues that the current hype surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) exhibits characteristics of a tech bubble, based on parallels with five previous technological bubbles: the Dot-Com Bubble, the Telecom Bubble, the Chinese Tech Bubble, the Cryptocurrency Boom, and the Tech Stock Bubble. The AI hype cycle shares with them some essential features, including the presence of potentially disruptive technology, speculation outpacing reality, the emergence of new valuation paradigms, significant retail investor participation, and a lack of adequate regulation. The article also highlights other specific similarities, such as the proliferation of AI startups, inflated valuations, and the ethical concerns associated with the technology. While acknowledging AI's transformative potential, the article calls for pragmatic caution, evidence-based planning, and critical thinking in approaching the current hype. It concludes by offering some recommendations to minimise the negative impact of the impending bubble burst, emphasising the importance of focusing on sustainable business models and real-world applications, maintaining a balanced perspective on AI's potential and limitations, and supporting the development of effective regulatory frameworks to guide the technology's design, development, and deployment."

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4960826

Una riflessione di un antropologo su quanto l'uso dei nuovi super telescopi per esplorare visivamente le profondità dello spazio riveli non solo dei misteri del cosmo, ma anche della nostra natura umana e del nostro bisogno di vedere e dare un nome alle cose.

Money quote: "It would seem, indeed, that the JWST is a telescope fit for today’s Instagram generation—a generation that demands ever more powerful visual technologies, from high-megapixel phone cameras to high-definition television screens.

What does this preoccupation with capturing the most high-definition images of outer space say about us? By turning the telescope lens back to Earth, so to speak, we can learn a lot about ourselves and our societies—how we create knowledge about the universe and what we might be missing in the process."

https://www.sapiens.org/culture/jwst-image-processing/

Un racconto affascinante che spiega come mai non ci sono più le prese per i mini-jack su molti smartphone. Anzi, quasi tutti. Complotto? No, direi un piano ben orchestrato.

Money quote: "Some manufacturers claimed that the presence of the headphone jack made it difficult to keep their phones waterproof; but there's a whole range of good-quality phones from around 2019-2020 that are waterproof to a reasonable degree, without sacrificing the jack.

No. All of these weak excuses are simply distractions from the *real* reason Apple, Samsung, and Google dropped the headphone jack: they all have a substantial investment in the manufacture of wireless headphones.

Apple owns Beats -- this was a multi-billion dollar investment, in a company that manufactures Bluetooth headphones.

Samsung owns Harmon, which is know for the Harmon-Kardon and JBL audio brands. Again, these were multi-billion dollar acquisitions for Samsung, in companies with a strong interest in wireless audio.

Google owns Synaptics, Dysonics, RevX, and Tempow, all of which are active in the development of wireless audio. Google also hired Peter Liu from Bose, who was one of the original developers of the Bluetooth Low Energy specification.

It is very much in the interest of companies like Apple, Samsung, and Google to encourage their customers to buy into wireless Bluetooth headphones. Or, better yet, to force them to do so, by taking away the means to do anything else. After all, their executives have to justify the billions of dollars they've spent, acquiring suppliers and developers of wireless audio equipment."

https://kevinboone.me/headphonejack.html

Com’è come non è che GitHub ha vinto. Spiegato da uno dei suoi fondatori. (cioè, perché lui è convinto che queste siano le ragioni).

Money quote: "If you want a very short read, here is the quick version of why *I* believe GitHub won and why you're probably using the site to this day.

I can boil it down to exactly two reasons that happened to resonate with each other at the perfect frequency.

1. GitHub started at the right time
2. GitHub had good taste"

https://blog.gitbutler.com/why-github-actually-won/

Questo post è un po' strano: è una raccolta di immagini di composizioni di diatomee (che manco sapevo che esistessero). Le diatomee sono alghe unicellulari che hanno un guscio di materiale vitreo, che rifrange la luce in bellissimi colori se viste al microscopio. Sono un soggetto comune per la microscopia grazie alle loro forme uniche. Ma si usano per fare cose incredibili, anche se molto piccole.

Money quote: "They are like tiny specks of dust, barely visible to the naked eye. And the amount of dexterity and patience that is necessary to create even one of these miniature art pieces is astonishing and there are only a handful of people in the world who practice this curious form of art. Collecting, cleaning, arranging, and fixing the diatoms is a process that can take days or even weeks.

But in the end, the result of all this work is absolutely worth it."

https://www.trebeljahr.com/posts/diatoms

È morto Pierre Christin, uno dei più importanti sceneggiatori di fumetti francesi, co-creatore della celebre serie di fantascienza Valérian et Laureline (da noi nota come Valérian).
👉 https://fumettologica.it/2024/10/pierre-christin-morto-fumetti/

I gusti sono dettati dalla tecnologia, in parte. Ad esempio, il caffè. L'espresso piace perché è veloce da fare anche sul momento, il caffè americano invece lo preparano prima perché ci mette una vita. Però adesso non più, a quanto pare.

Money quote: "Pour-over is a challenge for coffee shops. Many are proud to offer it, but the time-consuming process interrupts service and often produces inconsistent results. How to brew the perfect cup of coffee remains a vexing question. Like es­presso, new technologies might be poised to revolutionize coffee brewing at home and in the café."

https://worksinprogress.co/issue/how-pour-over-coffee-got-good/

"Joker: Folie à Deux" delude e annoia - la mia recensione non tenera per Fumettologica

https://fumettologica.it/2024/10/joker-folie-a-deux-recensione-film/