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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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Forwarded from Riccardo
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.
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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/
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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/
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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
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se incontrate errori e down un po’ ovunque sul web: oggi ci sono nuovi problemi con Cloudflare
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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/
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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/
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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
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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/
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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/
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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/
Cos'è l'ufficio virtuale? Una risposta la dà Zed Industries, che utilizza il suo editor collaborativo, Zed, per tutte le operazioni aziendali, comprese le riunioni settimanali. Le funzionalità di collaborazione di Zed, costruite su CRDT, consentono un lavoro di squadra senza soluzione di continuità e a bassa latenza, eliminando la necessità di strumenti esterni. La struttura basata sul canale dell'azienda supporta sia le discussioni a livello aziendale che la collaborazione specifica del progetto, promuovendo un ambiente di ufficio virtuale.

Money quote: "We've been dreaming of building the ultimate collaborative editor for years. The roots of this vision go back to Nathan's early days at Pivotal Labs, where pair programming with two keyboards plugged into the same computer was the standard practice. We set out to recreate that seamless collaboration experience—but for distributed teams.

But wait... doesn't this technology already exist in other editors?

Yes! If you've been a developer long enough, you might recall the teletype package for Atom—both built by Zed's founders. Teletype enabled developers to share "portals" into their workspaces, which was an initial step towards Zed's collaborative vision. Despite attempts to make Atom—an Electron application—more responsive, it never reached the performance standards the team yearned for. Nathan left the Atom team and eventually began work on gpui, Zed's GPU-accelerated UI rendering framework, written in Rust, and Atom would later be sunset by GitHub after. No more Atom, no more Teletype."

https://zed.dev/blog/zed-is-our-office
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Vi ricordate Weird Tales? È una rivista pulp statunitense di racconti horror e fantastici, pubblicata per la prima volta nel marzo del 1923. Il periodico fu fondato a Chicago da J. C. Henneberger, un ex giornalista con il gusto per il macabro. Edwin Baird fu il primo direttore del mensile, aiutato da Farnsworth Wright. Qui su Internet Archive li ritrovate praticamente tutti.

Ah, c'è anche una nuova edizione, che è un po' come dire: "noi redivivi e voi redimorti".

Money quote: "From the sewers and swamps of this strange earth come creatures whispered about in alleys and around campfires.

The new Weird Tales is here. Pre-order before it sells out."

https://archive.org/search?query=subject%3A%22weird+tales%22

https://www.weirdtales.com
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Yann LeCun ha inventato molti componenti fondamentali dell'AI moderna. È uno bravo, insomma. Adesso è convinto che la maggior parte della ricerca nel suo campo sia stata portata fuori strada dal canto della sirena dei grandi modelli linguistici. Che, insomma, gli LLM siano un vicolo cieco. Ha sempre avuto ragione, negli ultimi 40 anni. Ora che è convinto che tutti si sbaglino, ha ancora ragione?

Money quote: "LeCun, by his choice, has taken a different direction. He has been telling anyone who asks that he thinks large language models, or LLMs, are a dead end in the pursuit of computers that can truly outthink humans. He’s fond of comparing the current start-of-the-art models to the mind of a cat—and he believes the cat to be smarter. Several years ago, he stepped back from managing his AI division at Meta, called FAIR, in favor of a role as an individual contributor doing long-term research."

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/yann-lecun-ai-meta-0058b13c

archivio: https://archive.is/sEEP0
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Letture per la domenica

La ricostruzione della verginità di William, principe senza cognome (come i tutti i suoi parenti).

Money quote: "At a time when the British royal family has been convulsed by drama, infighting and a tendency by some royals to over-share, Prince William has remained largely aloof — loath to reveal the kinds of details found in “Spare,” the memoir by his estranged brother, Prince Harry.

Yet William, too, has lifted the veil in recent weeks, in his own carefully managed way. Appearing with the Canadian comic actor, Eugene Levy, on an episode of his travel series, and later with a woman who lost her husband to suicide, William has shown a more personal side, speaking about his desire to change the monarchy after he becomes king and tearing up over another family’s tragedy.

The two glimpses of William, 43, have hardly remade the public image of the eldest son of King Charles III. But they have filled in some blanks in the portrait of a man who has carefully cultivated the profile of a middle-aged husband and father, determined to shield himself and his family from undue scrutiny."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/world/europe/prince-william-interviews-mental-health-monarchy.html

archivio: https://archive.is/evM7g
I browser lanciati dai produttori di AI, che tipicamente sono versioni customizzate di Chrome/Chromium, sono molto poco sicuri. Non è una sorpresa, ma dovrebbe essere un monito.

Money quote: "Building on our previous disclosure of the Perplexity Comet vulnerability, we’ve continued our security research across the agentic browser landscape. What we’ve found confirms our initial concerns: indirect prompt injection is not an isolated issue, but a systemic challenge facing the entire category of AI-powered browsers. This post examines additional attack vectors we’ve identified and tested across different implementations.

On request, we are withholding one additional vulnerability found in another browser for now. We plan on providing more details next week."

https://brave.com/blog/unseeable-prompt-injections/

E poi i dettagli:

https://brave.com/blog/prompt-injection-flaw-opera-neon/
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Lo sapevate che nella Silicon Valley si usa sempre più spesso l'AI open source cinese? Costa meno e funziona meglio, per questo Airbnb e Thinking Machines Lab la usano nei loro prodotti. Il modello low cost cinese è molto efficiente e rischia di mettere in crisi il faraonico sistema americano.

Money quote: "Data from Hugging Face’s platform compiled by the ATOM Project, a US coalition in support of open-source AI, confirmed that. Chinese models have overtaken the US in terms of cumulative downloads by developers. The shift happened slowly, then all at once: In early 2024, Meta Platforms Inc.’s Llama had 10.6 million downloads to Alibaba Qwen’s meager half a million. By last month, Qwen had had 385.3 million cumulative downloads compared to Llama’s 346.2 million. And derivative systems built on Qwen now account for more than 40% of new language models posted on Hugging Face, while Meta’s share has fallen to 15%."

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-11-09/how-much-of-silicon-valley-is-built-on-chinese-ai

archivio: https://archive.is/PZJYo
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La globalizzazione prometteva un mondo senza confini, ma gli algoritmi digitali hanno frammentato le persone in bolle di pensiero simili, rafforzando l'omofilia e la polarizzazione. Anche se la diversità è a portata di mano, molti preferiscono la sicurezza emotiva delle comunità chiuse, il che aumenta la sfiducia nei confronti del diverso. Questa tendenza, guidata dalla preferenza degli algoritmi per contenuti emotivi e polarizzanti, minaccia la capacità di dialogo e consenso nella società. Tradotto: sono cazzi.

Money quote: "Internet anunció el fin de las fronteras, pero el algoritmo nos fragmenta en una infinidad de burbujas, islotes que nos confirman en nuestros sesgos; ¿han nacido nuevos límites que separan más que los geográficos?"

https://www.lanacion.com.ar/ideas/de-vuelta-al-calor-de-la-tribu-en-un-mundo-globalizado-nid08112025/
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Era talmente ovvio che quasi non c'era bisogno di dirlo. I ricchi si sposano tra loro (e i poveri? Anche).

Money quote: "La clase social atraviesa todos los aspectos de la vida y el amoroso no iba a ser menos. En España las parejas no se forman al azar, sino que suelen estar determinadas por cuestiones socioeconómicas, lo que se traduce en que una persona se junta con quien más se parece a sí misma en términos de ingresos y riqueza. En la parte alta de la tabla, la tendencia se dispara. Quienes más ganan y más tienen se encuentran con una intensidad que triplica lo que ocurriría en una sociedad en la que los enlaces se produjeran de manera completamente aleatoria."

https://elpais.com/economia/2025-11-16/los-ricos-se-casan-con-los-ricos-como-el-amor-perpetua-la-desigualdad.html

archivio: https://archive.is/PVS1L
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Il film Legend of Zelda, tirato fuori dal'omonimo videogioco, arriverà tra un po', ma forse ne vale davvero la pena

Money quote: "Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto, who is producing the film, revealed the casting of Link and Zelda over the summer, writing in a social media post: “I am pleased to announce that for the live-action film of ‘The Legend of Zelda,’ Zelda will be played by Bo Bragason-san, and Link by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth-san. I am very much looking forward to seeing both of them on the big screen.”

English actor Bragason is known for her roles in the BBC One series “Three Girls” and “The Jetty,” as well as Disney+’s “Renegade Nell.” Last year, she starred in Euros Lyn’s vampire comedy film “The Radleys.” Ainsworth, who is also English, was the voice of Pinocchio in Robert Zemeckis’ live-action “Pinocchio” and played Miles in the Netflix series “The Haunting of Bly Manor.” He also stars in the Canadian comedy series “Son of a Critch” and appeared in an episode of Netflix’s “The Sandman.”"

https://variety.com/2025/film/news/legend-of-zelda-movie-first-look-link-zelda-live-action-1236583595/
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E se molti super-centenari (quelli con più di 110 anni) in realtà fossero dei fake?

Money quote: "Tutto è cominciato a gennaio, quando la rivista scientifica Rejuvenation Research ha pubblicato un articolo del matematico russo Nikolay Zak secondo cui alla morte della madre, nel 1934, Yvonne Calment ne avrebbe preso l’identità per evitare di pagare una gran quantità di tasse di successione. L’argomentazione di Zak si basa sul confronto tra le fotografie disponibili di Yvonne e quelle di Jeanne Calment prima e dopo la morte della figlia, su varie incongruenze nelle interviste rilasciate da Calment da anziana, oltre che su un’analisi statistica secondo cui sarebbe poco plausibile che nel 1997 una persona abbia raggiunto i 122 anni di vita."

https://www.ilpost.it/2019/09/28/scetticismi-supercentenari-jeanne-calment/
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