Letture per la domenica

Le interviste a Cory Doctorow sono sempre un piacere da leggere perché sembra caricato a molla: ne ha mille da dire e altre mille pronte per domani. Il problema è che spesso ci azzecca.

Money quote: "“Penso che l’ipotesi del capitalismo della sorveglianza sia profondamente sbagliata, perché rigetta il fatto che le aziende ci controllino attraverso il monopolio, e non attraverso la mente”, spiega Doctorow a Guerre di Rete. Il giornalista fa l’esempio di uno dei più famosi CEO delle Big Tech, Mark Zuckerberg: “A maggio, Zuckerberg ha rivelato agli investitori che intende recuperare le decine di miliardi che sta spendendo nell’AI usandola per creare pubblicità in grado di aggirare le nostre capacità critiche, e quindi convincere chiunque ad acquistare qualsiasi cosa. Una sorta di controllo mentale basato sull’AI e affittato agli inserzionisti”."

https://www.guerredirete.it/enshittification-il-progressivo-degrado-delle-piattaforme-digitali/

Sta finendo l'epoca nella quale postavamo tutto quanto online: pranzi, cene, tramonti, animali domestici, selfie e tutto il resto? Adesso stiamo lentamente rallentando? I Millennial si stanno dando una calmata? Chissà.

Money quote: "There is a generational element to this sea change: millennials who grew up on social media are moving into middle age and perhaps seeking more privacy in their lives; once you’ve settled down with a partner and children, perhaps there’s less obvious incentive to project your personality online. “I think people are more suspicious of oversharing, generally, some of which is probably a useful and healthy correction from how much we were all sharing a decade ago,” Emma Hulse, a thirtysomething lawyer acquaintance of mine, told me. But, during conversations with dozens of people about their current posting habits, many Zoomers and users even younger told me that they felt an aversion to putting their lives on social media. They, too, are suffering from posting ennui."

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/are-you-experiencing-posting-ennui

Archivio: https://archive.is/GHw7y

Intervista video a Satya Nadella (il ceo di Microsoft) che spiega la strategia di Microsoft per l'AGI, la fantomatica intelligenza artificiale più intelligente di noi.

Money quote 1: "As part of this interview, Satya Nadella gave Dylan Patel (founder of SemiAnalysis) and me an exclusive first-look at their brand-new Fairwater 2 datacenter.

Microsoft is building multiple Fairwaters, each of which has hundreds of thousands of GB200s & GB300s. Between all these interconnected buildings, they’ll have over 2 GW of total capacity. Just to give a frame of reference, even a single one of these Fairwater buildings is more powerful than any other AI datacenter that currently exists.

Satya then answered a bunch of questions about how Microsoft is preparing for AGI across all layers of the stack."

https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/satya-nadella-2

Qui sotto, invece, la strategia spiegata passo passo.

Money quote 2: "Now Microsoft’s investments in AI are back, and the AI giant has never had such high demand for Accelerated Computing. The Redmond titan has woken up to it going down the wrong path and has dramatically shifted course. With the newly announced OpenAI deal, Azure growth is set to Accelerate in the upcoming quarters as forecasted by our Tokenomics model."

https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/microsofts-ai-strategy-deconstructed

Non conosevo Polis, un software che permette di far funzionare le comunità e creare consenso (o raccoglierlo)

Money quote: "Polis is a real-time system for gathering, analyzing and understanding what large groups of people think in their own words, enabled by advanced statistics and machine learning."

https://pol.is/home

Il mini documentario della BBC che spiega cos'è e come funziona (partendo dal caso di Taiwan).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbCZvU7i7VY

A cosa serve un social media? A massimizzare il profitto e distruggere la democrazia, ovviamente. Non ve ne eravate accorti?

Money quote: "I’m a political scientist who researches aspects of technology that support democracy and social cohesion, and I’ve observed how the design of social media platforms affects them.

Democracy is in crisis globally, and technology is playing a role. Most large platforms optimize their designs for profit, not community or democracy. Increasingly, Big Tech is siding with autocrats, and the platforms’ designs help keep society under control.

There are alternatives, however. Some companies design online platforms to defend democratic values."

https://www.niemanlab.org/2025/07/social-media-can-support-or-undermine-democracy-it-comes-down-to-how-its-designed/

Nessuno paga più le richieste di ransomware, di conseguenza adesso gli aggressori hanno trovato un nuovo obiettivo...

Money quote: “Fewer and fewer companies are capitulating to ransomware payment demands, with success rates for this criminal industry reaching a historic low of 23%. According to a Q4 2025 report published by Coveware, a cybersecurity firm that tracks the trends and movements of ransomware groups, ransomware payments made were at their highest — in around 85% of attacks — back in 2019. With the exception of a handful of quarterly spikes, the success rate of ransomware blackmail and extortion attempts has continued to drop. For example, the researchers say that in Q1 2025, approximately 27% of victim organizations paid up. This dropped to 26% in Q2 and slid further to 23% in Q3 2025.”

https://www.zdnet.com/article/no-one-pays-ransomware-demands-anymore-so-attackers-have-a-new-goal/

Mostly Weekly 352 parte da un errore di Colombo per raccontare come ci ostiniamo a vedere ciò che vogliamo vedere anche quando ci sbagliamo. Va detto però che questa settimana il mondo è più strano (e più interessante) del solito

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/352/

Il problema di quelli che non riescono a fare i respiri profondi, e la sua presunta soluzione: la tecnica delle cinque dita.

Money quote: "For some people, deep breathing exercises work like a charm. For others, not so much. If you fall into the latter category, you might enjoy the “five-finger breathing” technique, which adds a little something extra into the mix.

On TikTok, creators are sharing their love for five-finger breathing, including user @mindfullymadetherapy, who said, “Sometimes just breathing isn’t enough, and you need a coping skill that’s multi-sensory [or] involving other senses to help distract or calm down the brain.”"

https://www.bustle.com/wellness/five-finger-breathing-technique

Lettura per la domenica

Insopportabile come sempre e lunghissimo, ma interessante: la proposta di Friedman per definire la nostra epoca.

Money quote: "I was musing about all this one day with Craig Mundie, the former head of research and strategy at Microsoft. I told him that in nearly every domain I was writing about lately, the old binary left-right systems were giving way to multiple interconnected ones, and, in the process, shattering the coherence of both the Cold War and post-Cold War paradigms.

At one point Mundie said to me, “I know what you should call this new era: the Polycene.”"

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/10/opinion/era-technology-poly-epoch.html

archivio: https://archive.is/Fllmp

Paolo, vecchio amico e collega, riprende in mano il discorso più famoso di Steve Jobs, intitolato "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish". Il discorso fila, compresa la critica alla traduzione, "siate affamati, siate folli", che ahimé è opera del sottoscritto (ma non glielo dite).

Money quote: "Oggi, vent'anni dopo, le parole di Jobs continuano ad essere ricordate, discusse, analizzate. «Stay hungry, stay foolish» è passato da essere un invito ai laureati di una università d'elite degli Stati Uniti a un monito globale nel rimanere aperti al cambiamento e alle sfide.

Tanto che la traduzione letterale più diffusa in Italia, «siate folli, siate affamati» continua a rimanere ampiamente inadatta nel riassumere i concetti dell'originale (che Jobs prese di peso da Whole Earth Catalog di Stewart Brand, rivista cult della controcultura americana a cui il fondatore di Apple si abbeverò). «Mai sazi, mai ragionevoli» oppure «Non smettete di cercare, non smettete di sognare» sono possibili traduzioni proposte da chi ha affrontato l'argomento, molto meno letterali ma più affini allo spirito dell'originale.

Ma forse non c'è più nemmeno bisogno di cercare una traduzione, perché vent'anni dopo, «Stay hungry, stay foolish» è diventato uno slogan perfettamente comprensibile in ogni parte del mondo."

https://www.corriere.it/tecnologia/25_giugno_13/stay-hungry-stay-foolish-il-discorso-di-steve-jobs-ha-20-anni-fa-la-nuova-versione-in-hd-i-segreti-su-come-fu-scritto-8490879e-cfe5-41c6-8156-10998d041xlk.shtml

Ho saputo solo oggi che la traduzione italiana di "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish", "Siate affamati, siate folli", è di Antonio.

Non scherzo: risale al 2006, alla prima traduzione italiana del famoso discorso di Stanford, ed è ancora online sul sito de L'Espresso. È una delle tante impronte non banali lasciate da Antonio in 30 anni larghi di attività online.

L'articolo originale: https://lespresso.it/c/-/2006/12/27/siate-curiosi-siate-folli/29868

Se avessi un podcast dedicato al culto Apple gli chiederei un'intervista per farmi spiegare la scelta di quelle parole ecc ecc.

Deepwiki è uno strumento web che, grazie ovviamente all'intelligenza artificiale, permette di "parlare" con il contenuto dei repository di GitHub. Interessante.

Money quote: "Which repo would you like to understand?"

https://deepwiki.com/

Harry Kuril, un cartografo e appassionato di outdoor, ha utilizzato i dati della NASA, NOAA e di altre fonti per creare una mappa che evidenzia i luoghi migliori per vedere l'aurora boreale. Combinando i dati sul flusso di energia, la copertura nuvolosa e l'inquinamento luminoso, Kuril ha sviluppato un punteggio aurora per identificare le aree con condizioni di visione ottimali. Tuttavia, nonostante abbia usato la mappa per pianificare un viaggio in Norvegia, Kuril non è stato in grado di vedere l'aurora a causa della copertura nuvolosa.

Money quote: "Mapped in a polar azimuthal projection, it’s clear that auroras are not symmetrical. Depending on the night, time, and solar activity, some areas will be bathed in a river of light while others see no indication of the aurora. Cloudy regions and those illuminated by infrastructure offer poor chances to see an aurora even during strong events. But a linear color palette that moves from black to blue to green-yellow highlights prime viewing locations."

https://www.maps.com/using-maps-pinpoint-aurora/

Sono riuscti a fare un materiale che ripara lo smalto dei denti. Per dire, in caso di piccola caria rimette il materiale che bisogna asportare. È una rivoluzione.

Money quote: "The gel can be rapidly applied to teeth in the same way dentists currently apply standard fluoride treatments. However, this new protein-based gel is fluoride free and works by mimicking key features of the natural proteins that guide the growth of dental enamel in infancy. When applied, the gel creates a thin and robust layer that impregnates teeth, filling holes and cracks in them. It then functions as a scaffold that takes calcium and phosphate ions from saliva and promotes the controlled growth of new mineral in a process called epitaxial mineralization. This enables the new mineral to be organized and integrated to the underlying natural tissue while recovering both the structure and properties of natural healthy enamel."

https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/news/new-gel-restores-dental-enamel-and-could-revolutionise-tooth-repair

Cargo a vela. Spettacolare e soprattutto ecologico. Molto RoRo.

Money quote: "The world’s largest cargo sailboat, Neoliner Origin, completed its first transatlantic voyage on 30 October despite damage to one of its sails during the journey.

The 136-metre-long vessel had to rely partly on its auxiliary motor and its remaining sail after the aft sail was damaged in a storm shortly after departure.

The French-built roll-on/roll-off (RoRo) cargo ship, which has two semi-rigid sails, first stopped at Saint Pierre and Miquelon, a French overseas territory near Canada, before continuing its journey to Baltimore in the United States."

https://www.marineinsight.com/shipping-news/worlds-largest-cargo-sailboat-completes-historic-first-atlantic-crossing/

È arrivata l'anteprima di Mostly Weekly 353, come al solito. Questa settimana c’è un dettaglio che nessuno vuole guardare, ed è proprio lì che inizia la storia

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/353/

Letture per la domenica.

Tra le simpatiche ossessioni che la stampa pensa di individuare all'interno delle generazioni, c'è quella della GenZ contro i leggins. Non gli piacciono.

Money quote: "Looking for answers and some outrage, I went to the front lines of where the battle is being fought: gyms, run clubs, group fitness classes, and the social media feeds of millennial trainers and fitness influencers. What I found was a tension between mortality and vanity, a clash where popularity meets coolness, and a strong belief that the demise of leggings might be overblown.

We may not live forever, but leggings might."

https://www.vox.com/culture/468361/gen-z-leggings-athleisure-millennials-gym-fashion

Archivio: https://archive.is/zo1mT

Una volta le foto si mandavano senza bisogno del computer, via telefono. Una volta tanto tempo fa, intendo.

Money quote: "First, you place a print on the drum and start the transmitter. The drum then rotates at a consistent speed while a scanning beam would move slowly across the photo, scanning one line at a time. Transmitting the analog signal required a connection to a phone line. The Dallas Morning News shares this photo showing how the UPI 16-S could be connected to a rotary phone"

https://petapixel.com/2015/07/26/this-is-how-press-photos-were-transmitted-back-in-the-1970s/

Questo aneddoto su come Steve Jobs costruì l'interfaccia della prima calcolatrice per il Macintosh del 1984, peraltro già conosciuto, in realtà apre una interessante finestra: Chris Espinoza ancora lavora per Apple (chissà che diavolo fa).

Money quote: "Chris Espinosa started working for Apple at age 14 in 1976 as the company’s youngest employee. By 1981, while studying at UC Berkeley, Jobs convinced Espinosa to drop out and work on the Mac team full time.

Believe it or not, Chris Espinosa still works at Apple as its longest-serving employee. But back in the day, as manager of documentation for the Macintosh, Espinosa decided to write a demo program using Bill Atkinson’s QuickDraw, the Mac’s graphics system, to better understand how it worked. He chose to create a calculator as one of the planned “desk ornaments,” which were small utility programs that would ship with the Mac. They later came to be called “desk accessories.”

Espinosa thought his initial calculator design looked good, but Jobs had other ideas when he saw it. Hertzfeld describes the scene: “‘Well, it’s a start,’ Steve said, ‘but basically, it stinks. The background color is too dark, some lines are the wrong thickness, and the buttons are too big.'”"

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/11/original-mac-calculators-design-came-from-letting-steve-jobs-play-with-sliders-for-ten-minutes/

L'idea di essere pronti ad andarsene, cioè con tutte le cose a posto, è un modo non solo per essere pronti ad andarsene, ma anche a migliorare la propria qualità del lavoro.

Money quote: "By the time I had the exit interview with HR, it was a formality. When they asked “Is there something we can do to change your mind?” I answered: “You already tried everything. We’ve already talked.”

The conversation was over. We just discussed notice periods and bureaucracy.

Here’s what surprised me: the practices that made my exit smooth weren’t “exit strategies.” They were professional habits I should have built years earlier—habits that made work better even when I was staying."

https://andreacanton.dev/posts/2025-11-08-always-ready-to-leave/