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Mostly, I Write
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Storie e pensieri suoi e di altri, raccolti da Antonio Dini http://www.antoniodini.com
Per contatti su Telegram: @antoniodini
Per iscriversi alla newsletter Mostly Weekly: https://tinyletter.com/MostlyIWrite
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La simulazione si è rotta, dobbiamo riavviarla: un po' di pensiero divergente per Fumettologica durante questi tempi strani e sempre più oscuri

https://fumettologica.it/2025/02/la-simulazione-si-e-rotta-dobbiamo-riavviarla/
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Un articolo dell'Economist pre-DeepSeek che però spiega bene le dinamiche economiche del modello costruito da OpenAI e dagli altri

Money quote: "High marginal costs mean the model-builders will have to generate meaningful value in order to charge premium prices. The hope, says Lan Guan of Accenture, a consultancy, is that models like o3 will support ai agents that individuals and companies will use to increase their productivity. Even a high price for use of a reasoning model may be worth it compared with the cost of hiring, say, a fully fledged maths phd. But that depends on how useful the models are."

https://www.economist.com/business/2025/01/20/openais-latest-model-will-change-the-economics-of-software

archivio: https://archive.is/IDsnQ
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Le startup di oggi, veramente tantissime (una cultura insopportabile a tratti) non sono l'eccezione o la novità, ma la regola. È che abbiamo passato un periodo in cui invece non lo erano, ma quella sarebbe l'eccezione secondo Paul Graham.

Money quote: "In 1960, most of the people who start startups today would have gone to work for one of them. You could get rich from starting your own company in 1890 and in 2020, but in 1960 it was not really a viable option. You couldn't break through the oligopolies to get at the markets. So the prestigious route in 1960 was not to start your own company, but to work your way up the corporate ladder at an existing one."

https://paulgraham.com/richnow.html
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Cosa sono le finestre che si spostano? Nel nuovo numero di Mostly Weekly provo a spiegare la teoria della finestra di Overton applicata a Donald Trump (ma funziona anche da noi) e varie altre cose incluso il perché dei tabù culturali

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/311/
Letture per la domenica.

Come si fa a scrivere un best seller, ammesso che interessi ancora a qualcuno? Ecco qui le ricetta secondo l'Economist.

Money quote: "Publishing is an odd business. It is worth around $37bn in Britain and America alone, but you would not know this from the literature that it produces, which focuses on books in the brainy vein rather than anything so vulgar as volumes that actually sell. One authoritative history of English literature contains 60-odd mentions of “Shakespeare”; ten on “the sublime”; eight on “blank verse”—but a blank silence for words such as “business” and “turnover”.
In another literary history, popular novels—those “jam tarts for the mind” as William Thackeray, the British novelist, called them—are mentioned, but with a wince, under the heading: “Problems of popular culture”. When Gore Vidal wrote an article on bestsellers it opened with the observation that “shit has its own integrity”—and became more dismissive from there.
The book business, however, depends on those despised bestsellers."

https://www.economist.com/culture/2023/08/25/how-to-write-a-bestseller

archivio: https://archive.is/FormG

Ma nel mio piccolo ho tradotto un paio di articoli di Ian Fleming e Kurt Vonnegut che spiegano molto bene il loro approccio.

https://antoniodini.com/otto-regole-vonnegut/

https://antoniodini.com/come-si-scrive-un-best-seller/
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Accaparrare le miglia dei programmi frequent flyer: è divertente, è una pratica utile, alle volte una mania, in generale un meccanismo di fidelizzazione gamificato che dà pure dipendenza (credetemi, se prendete spesso l'aereo, è così). Ma ne vale realmente la pena? Una prospettiva americana.

Money quote: "Here are questions to ask when pursuing airline status. No traveler’s situation, even if you fly out of the same airport and maintain a similar travel frequency, is the same as anyone else’s. How far will you go to earn miles and eventual status with an airline? Or is it like gambling, that you know to stop when you’re already ahead and before you’re financially in the hole?"

https://www.fodors.com/news/photos/is-earning-airline-status-actually-worth-the-hassle
Scrivere un romanzo è già abbastanza difficile. Progettare anche la copertina è un'attività sovrumana.

Money quote: "The authors are not in control. It’s a collaborative process, but not really, because the author is not the expert. As with professional hair and makeup, the recipient is, uncomfortably, witness to an artistic process that is about them, centered on them, yet almost entirely devoid of their participation.

But I seem to have overextrapolated from Na Kim and understood that all first book cover designs are drafts. So when my agent suggested playing with different concepts, and asked if I had some ideas or covers I liked as inspiration, my ambient productivity anxiety took over—did I ever!"

https://lithub.com/on-trying-and-really-failing-to-design-my-own-book-cover/
Grandi passi in avanti in classici problemi informatici che stanno arrivando alla soluzione perfetta. Ad esempio, il "library sorting problem".

Money quote: "“It’s a very important problem,” said Seth Pettie (opens a new tab), a computer scientist at the University of Michigan, because many of the data structures we rely upon today store information sequentially. He called the new work “extremely inspired [and] easily one of my top three favorite papers of the year.”"

https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-book-sorting-algorithm-almost-reaches-perfection-20250124/
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Abbiamo immerso talmente tanto il discorso del cambiamento climatico e della trasformazione energetica nell'arena politica che adesso è diventato totalmente manipolato. Tutti abbiamo un'opinione. E sono saltati (come era pianificato che succedesse) i progetti di grande cambiamento. Tranne che in alcuni paesi, come la Norvegia. La quale potrebbe agire forse come "memento", se avessimo voglia di ascoltare queste informazioni.

Money quote: "Despite being a major oil and gas producer, Norway aims for all new cars sold to be "zero emission" starting in 2025, which is 10 years ahead of the goal set by the European Union, of which Norway is not a member.

In contrast to Brussels' plans, Oslo has not banned the sale of cars with internal combustion engines, having instead opted for a system of generous tax breaks that have made them competitive against heavily taxed internal combustion cars.

They have also benefitted from toll exemptions, free parking in public car parks, and the use of public transport traffic lanes."

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250203-norway-nears-100-goal-of-all-electric-cars
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L'angolo tech.
Per i progammatori. Javanoscript sta per abbandonare il sistema piuttosto deficitario che utilizza finora per gestire il tempo.

Money quote: "To understand Temporal, we can look at JavaScript's "Date" object. When JavaScript was created in 1995, the "Date" object was copied from Java's early, flawed java.util.Date implementation. Java replaced this implementation in 1997, but JavaScript is stuck with the same API for almost 30 years, despite known problems.

The major issues with JavaScript's "Date" object are that it only supports the user's local time and UTC, and there's no time zone support. Additionally, its parsing behavior is very unreliable, and Date itself is mutable, which can introduce hard-to-trace bugs. There are other problems like calculations across Daylight Saving Time (DST) and historical calendar changes, which are notoriously difficult to work with."

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/blog/javanoscript-temporal-is-coming/
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A proposito di giudicare un libro dalla copertina. John Updike, oltre a essere stato un notevolissimo scrittore, è stato anche il progettista o comunque il primo critico di molte copertine dei suoi libri. Questo articolo è molto interessante e spiega tutto il processo, con testimonianze importanti.

Money quote: "John Updike was one of the most celebrated and prolific American writers of the twentieth century. He is best known for his Rabbit series: four novels and a novella tracing the life of Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a middle class white man who feels alienated from the modern world. Rabbit is Rich, the third book in the series, was also its most decorated, winning the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. Updike also published more than fifty other books, including novels, short stories, poetry, children’s books, and collections of art and literary criticism. His prominence as a writer has mostly eclipsed the other role he played in the publication of his work: designing the covers for several of his books and heavily art directing almost all of the rest. "

https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/heres-why-john-updike-designed-his-own-book-covers/
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Arriva domani nelle inbox ma l'anteprima è adesso: Mostly Weekly questa settimana parla degli sfigati al comando, il caos che ci aspetta, i segnali brutti dalla Spagna e la differenza (forse) tra lettura e letteratura. Buona lettura

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/312/
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Letture per la domenica.

Per chi ha un sacco di negativi scattati dai genitori o dai nonni (tipo scatole piene) da scannerizzare e archiviare in modo sensato in digitale, qui c'è una che ha fatto tutto il giro ed offre interessanti considerazioni metodologiche, pratiche ed emotive.

Money quote: "I have spoken with several people who have similar family photo archives, so let me begin by describing I went about the project.

Before I began, I had an inexpensive Wolverine slide scanner but I knew a manual unit would not cut it. I bought a heavy-duty slide scanner to help me process the images. It’s a Canon CanoScan 9000F. I like it, in case you’re shopping for an affordable unit; in particular, I do not loathe the built-in software, which sets it apart from other scanners I’ve used.

The project, which took me about a year, became a background process. I could scan a box of slides while I was reading my daily morning e-mail, then clean up and share the images during moments of down-time (such as waiting for poky websites to load site statistics). Over a weekend I usually could get through five or six boxes of slides."

https://estherschindler.medium.com/the-old-family-photos-project-lessons-in-creating-family-photos-that-people-want-to-keep-ea3909129943
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Dopo l'idea che la matematica sia sterile e priva di fantasia, c'è quella che il programmatore sia un iperpianificatore che procede dal grande verso il piccolo. Mica tanto. Cioè, mica sempre.

Money quote: "In writing (particularly fiction writing), there is a generally accepted distinction between authors who start by writing an outline and those who discover their stories through the process of writing. For some reason, we have no such distinction in programming, so I am here to introduce it."

https://jimmyhmiller.github.io/discovery-coding
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Il licenziamento, che per la nuova generazione di americani che lavorano attorno alla tecnologia è qualcosa di inedito e surreale.

Money quote: "One of the earliest indicators was the sudden cancellation of team events. When I heard from other teams that their off-site events were canceled without any clear explanation, it immediately raised red flags. These cancellations often signal that the company is going to announce something about the team structure and doesn’t want you to be with your team in the same place. This is because one of your teammates—or you—might be impacted, and you’d need to cancel flights, hotels, etc. To avoid dealing with these logistical issues, the company preemptively cancels the event."

https://mertbulan.com/2025/01/26/once-you-are-laid-off-you-will-never-be-the-same-again/
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Abbiamo scoperto una nuova Terra. Forse è un pianeta realmente abitabile (altro che Marte) che per certo non vedremo mai di persona. Non noi viventi oggi, perlomeno. Tuttavia, l'articolo e le animazioni della pagina sono davvero piacevoli.

Money quote: "The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the Universidad de La Laguna (ULL) has confirmed the discovery of a super-Earth orbiting in the habitable zone of HD 20794, a nearby Sun-like star. This discovery, the result of over two decades of observations, opens a window to future studies of Earth-like planetary atmospheres."

https://www.iac.es/en/outreach/news/iac-confirms-existence-super-earth-habitable-zone-sun-star
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Dopo l'assurda vicenda dell'aeroporto di Tegel, a Berlino, in ritardo sul ritardo, ce n'è un altro che è nel caos più totale. Signore e signori, ecco a voi la cattedrale peruviana nel deserto: il nuovo aeroporto di Lima.

Money quote: "A highway meant to whisk travelers to the $2 billion terminal has yet to be built, even though flights are supposed to begin operating in just seven weeks. A bridge to get across a river that runs along the grounds was never constructed. There’s a subway stop labeled “Airport” planned for Lima’s new metro system, but that station is set to be built (three years from now) much closer to the old airport that’s being decommissioned."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-02-07/how-a-new-2-billion-airport-in-lima-turned-into-a-debacle-for-peru

archivio: https://archive.is/8aJ5J
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Un giochino per passare il tempo nel browser.

Money quote: "A minesweeper game that requires observation."

https://danielben.itch.io/dragonsweeper
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Tutto normale, niente di strano. Solo dei bambini prepotenti che si sono portati via la fabbrica di Willy Wonka

Money quote: "Last month, Meta admitted to torrenting a controversial large dataset known as LibGen, which includes tens of millions of pirated books. But details around the torrenting were murky until yesterday, when Meta's unredacted emails were made public for the first time. The new evidence showed that Meta torrented "at least 81.7 terabytes of data across multiple shadow libraries through the site Anna’s Archive, including at least 35.7 terabytes of data from Z-Library and LibGen," the authors' court filing said. And "Meta also previously torrented 80.6 terabytes of data from LibGen."

"The magnitude of Meta’s unlawful torrenting scheme is astonishing," the authors' filing alleged, insisting that "vastly smaller acts of data piracy—just .008 percent of the amount of copyrighted works Meta pirated—have resulted in Judges referring the conduct to the US Attorneys’ office for criminal investigation.""

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/meta-torrented-over-81-7tb-of-pirated-books-to-train-ai-authors-say/
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Lofi Girl, il rifugio digitale che ha conquistato la Generazione Z: ne ho parlato su Fumettologica

https://fumettologica.it/2025/02/lofi-girl-youtube-musica-streaming/
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È praticamente domenica e torna come sempre Mostly Weekly. Questa settimana c'è un cattivo di James Bond che conoscete tutti benissimo (sopresa!)

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/313/
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