Qui spiegano quanto e come i chatbot ci conoscano, analizzandone la memoria. Perché le aziende che li fanno non lo dicono tranne quando sono costrette dalla legge. Il GDPR sarà anche imperfetto, ma almeno c'è e ci difende.

Money quote: "To enable personalized and context-aware interactions, conversational AI systems have introduced a new mechanism: Memory. Memory creates what we refer to as the Algorithmic Self-portrait—a new form of personalization derived from users’ self-disclosed information divulged within private conversations. While memory enables more coherent exchanges, the underlying processes of memory creation remain opaque, raising critical questions about data sensitivity, user agency, and the fidelity of the resulting portrait.

To bridge this research gap, we analyze 2,050 memory entries from 80 real-world ChatGPT users. Our analyses reveal three key findings: (1) a striking 96% of memories in our dataset are created unilaterally by the conversational system, potentially shifting agency away from the user; (2) Memories, in our dataset, contain a rich mix of GDPR-defined personal data (in 28% memories) along with psychological insights about participants (in 52% memories); and (3) A significant majority of the memories (84%) are directly grounded in user context, indicating faithful representation of the conversations. Finally, we introduce a framework—Attribution Shield—that anticipates these inferences, alerts about potentially sensitive memory inferences, and suggests query reformulations to protect personal information without sacrificing utility."

https://arxiv.org/html/2602.01450

Perché l'amore è la cosa più importante (più o meno).

Money quote: "“Who, being loved, is poor?” witty master of aphorisms Oscar Wilde once wondered. Though it might be an overstatement to say “all you need is love,” ancient philosophers and contemporary science agree that satisfying relationships are a crucial component, if not the crucial component, of human happiness. In one of the longest studies of its kind, the Harvard Study of Adult Development followed 724 men in hopes of discovering the secrets to a good life. Over the course of nearly 80 years, they observed their defeats and triumphs, their careers and love lives. What they found was astonishing: more than IQ, social class, or genetics, quality relationships, particularly marriages, were the number one determiner of a fulfilling existence. Not only did a harmonious matrimony dictate their overall life satisfaction— it had a far-reaching impact on their health. Those in loving marriages, not those who had achieved wealth or prestige or our societal ideal of social status, were found to live longer than both their unmarried and unhappily married counterparts. In fact, those who were most satisfied in their relationships at age fifty were the healthiest group at eighty. Marital contentment was even a better predictor of later health than cholesterol."

https://asialenae.com/2019/03/15/proust-on-how-to-be-happy-in-love/

Nei giorni scorsi è uscita la versione 1.2 di CrossPoint, il firmware open source, creato dalla comunità e alternativo a quello di serie per il micro lettore EInk di libri X4 (che ho ribattezzato "il mio tesssoro"). Numerosi miglioramenti a un progetto già ottimo.

Money quote: "CrossPoint Reader is a purpose-built firmware designed to be a drop-in, fully open-source replacement for the official Xteink firmware. It aims to match or improve upon the standard EPUB reading experience."

https://github.com/crosspoint-reader/crosspoint-reader

Qui il come si fa e perché:

https://concretedog.blogspot.com/2026/04/xteink-x4-with-open-source-firmware.html

https://www.hackster.io/news/give-your-xteink-x4-a-firmware-makeover-6b3d36f396b8\

Breve guida per arredare la fine del mondo con J.G. Ballard - la mia fantastica rubrica su Fumettologica

https://fumettologica.it/2026/04/j-g-ballard-libri-fantascienza/

Ci sarebbero così tante cose da dire sui diamanti che l'angolo scelto da questo articolo fa quasi tristezza. Per casalinghe disperate, direi: riduce tutto alla (relativa) perdita di valore degli anelli di fidanzamento. Ah, gli americani.

Money quote: "A $7,000 stone that passes for a $70,000 one would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Today, it’s transforming the diamond industry, with even local jewelers at the highest end selling pieces made with lab-grown stones. “Lab-grown diamonds tend to resonate because they allow [buyers] to invest in something that’s still certified and has a quality design,” says Alyson Iarrusso, who runs New England–based Cove Fine Jewelry. “It’s really gone from ‘What can I afford?’ to ‘What do I want?’” Which, if you think about it, is a pretty big shift in a business that has always depended on the distance between those two questions."

https://www.bostonmagazine.com/life-style/2026/04/05/lab-grown-diamonds-engagement-rings/

Internet sta cambiando pelle. Meno anonimato, più identità forzata, mentre l’AI prende la parola al posto nostro: questo è altro su Mostly Weekly 372

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/372/

Letture per la domenica

Cosa potrebbe succedere se uno spegnesse tutte le notifiche del telefono e andasse in modalità Do Not Disturb? (premetto che io non ho notifiche attive a parte la suoneria). Un giornalista ha fatto la prova. Non gli è cambiata la vita ma in compenso tutti i suoi amici e parenti si sono incavolati. La generazione dopo la mia sta messa proprio bene, eh sì.

Money quote: "I’VE DISCOVERED THE secret to a happy life in this era of constant connection: ignoring everyone that I know and love. Well, at least ignoring their push notifications on my smartphone by living in “Do Not Disturb” mode.
With Do Not Disturb switched on, you still receive each new notification, but your phone doesn’t ping, buzz, or blip to tell you about it. It’s a trendy yet divisive pivot away from the always-on norm. Tongue-in-cheek fancams celebrating Do Not Disturb mode rack up millions of views on TikTok, alongside viral videos calling out users of the feature as rude.
For one week, I proudly joined the growing tribe of Do Not Disturb maximalists who have their notifications silenced 24/7. My experience as part of the DND crew felt transcendent, albeit a bit annoying for everyone trying to get in touch with me."

https://www.wired.com/story/my-blissful-unbothered-life-as-a-do-not-disturb-maximalist/

archivio: https://archive.is/HsUnZ

Usiamo sempre di più l'AI per chiedere cose e cercare consigli. L'AI è lecchina e questa cosa ci piace tantissimo. Ma attenzione perché l'attitudine "sycophantic" delle AI (tutte le GenAI) non è solo un fastidio, è un problema vero che andrebbe regolato e risolto.

Money quote: "Cheng and her team started by measuring how pervasive sycophancy was among AIs. They evaluated 11 large language models, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek. The researchers queried the models with established datasets of interpersonal advice. They also included 2,000 prompts based on posts from the Reddit community r/AmITheAsshole, where the consensus of Redditors was that the poster was indeed in the wrong. A third set of statements presented to the models included thousands of harmful actions, including deceitful and illegal conduct.

Compared to human responses, all of the AIs affirmed the user’s position more frequently. In the general advice and Reddit-based prompts, the models on average endorsed the user 49% more often than humans. Even when responding to the harmful prompts, the models endorsed the problematic behavior 47% of the time."

https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2026/03/ai-advice-sycophantic-models-research

Tim Cook fa un passo di lato. Il nuovo ceo di Apple è John Termus

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260420318241/en/Tim-Cook-to-become-Apple-Executive-Chairman-John-Ternus-to-become-Apple-CEO

Slop non è un termine rivolto solo ai contenuti AI "umani", cioè discorsi a caso in rete. Invece, ha a che fare anche con la scrittura del codice. Man mano che crescono le pratiche di vibe coding e le altre forme di programmazione legate all'uso dell'AI. La cosa che dice questo articolo: attenzione, non è detto che il futuro sia slop. Con l'AI si può scrivere buon codice, molto semplice e pulito. Il futuro potrebbe essere molto positivo. (I miei 50 centesimi? Ahahahah. Basta come risposta?)

Money quote: "I want to argue that AI models will write good code because of economic incentives. Good code is cheaper to generate and maintain. Competition is high between the AI models right now, and the ones that win will help developers ship reliable features fastest, which requires simple, maintainable code. Good code will prevail, not only because we want it to (though we do!), but because economic forces demand it. Markets will not reward slop in coding, in the long-term."

https://www.greptile.com/blog/ai-slopware-future

Visto che siamo tutti sommersi da un'onda anomala (e interminabile) di contenuti generati dall'AI, con alcune sentite eccezioni come questo canale e la mia newsletter (metto il link sotto: è interesante, conviene iscriversi, nell'archivio ci sono tutti i numeri arretrati). \
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Dicevo: visto eccetera eccetera, sarebbe il caso (dice Alex Woods) di darci un taglio e scrivere in modo diverso. Anche usando l'AI, ma non facendoci sostituire dall'AI.

Money quote: "There are social effects to LLM-generated writing too. When I send somebody a document that whiffs of LLM, I’m only demonstrating that the LLM produced something approximating what others want to hear. I’m not showing that I contended with the ideas.

It undermines my credibility as a person who could lead whatever initiative comes out of this document. That’s unfortunate. I could have used this opportunity to establish credibility."

https://alexhwoods.com/dont-let-ai-write-for-you/\

https://antoniodini.com/mostly-weekly/
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https://antoniodini.com/iscrizione/

Un'idea creativa: un router fatto in casa. Perché qualsiasi computer può essere un router. È un articolo un po' tecnico, divertente da leggere in ogni caso (secondo me), ma se non sapete cos'è un router allora non è l'articolo per voi.

Money quote: "I don’t like to cover “current events” very much, but the American government just revealed a truly bewildering policy effectively banning import of new consumer router models. This is ridiculous for many reasons, but if this does indeed come to pass it may be beneficial to learn how to “homebrew” a router.

Fortunately, you can make a router out of basically anything resembling a computer."

https://nbailey.ca/post/router/

Doom, il gioco che è diventato il benchmark della portabilità (gira ovunque). Adesso, ulteriore passo in avanti, gira anche nel browser usando solo il CSS (e Javascript per una parte, ok). Comumque: "CSS is DOOMed" è un titolo figo oltre che furbo.

Money quote: "The first proof-of-concept I created was completely hand crafted and was created around the idea of doing as much as possible in CSS, even game state, game logic and calculations. Now that didn’t turn out to be feasible. Rendering? Yes. Absolutely. Game state… yeah, you could if you wanted to. Logic? No. Too complicated. So I split the project in two. Once I’ve proven to myself that rendering was feasible, I used Claude to create an approximate version of the game loop in JavaScript based on the original DOOM source, which to me is the least interesting part of the project. The C code is public and has been for years, so nothing new and challenging about that. So why waste time porting that over by hand. This allowed me to focus on the best parts: the CSS."

https://nielsleenheer.com/articles/2026/css-is-doomed-rendering-doom-in-3d-with-css/

Nel nuovo Mostly Weekly 373 provo a mettere a fuoco cosa sta cambiando davvero: non è l’intelligenza artificiale il problema, bensì la statistica.

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/373/

Super letture per la domenica, Anzi, proprio una bella analisi di "Paperino Pendolare", una delle mie storie preferite dei paperi scritta e disegnata da Marco Rota per l'Almanacco Topolino di maggio 1977.

La stazione è ovviamente quella di Milano (altro che Paperopoli)

Money quote: "Un incipit di grande impatto può fare miracoli. Se riesce a farci provare curiosità per un romanzo di seicento pagine, per un kolossal di tre ore o per uno spettacolo teatrale in quattro atti, figuriamoci quanto può incidere sull’equilibrio di un fumetto autoconclusivo poco più breve di 40 tavole."

https://fumettologica.it/2024/02/paperino-pendolare-marco-rota-fumetto-disney/

La copertina:

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1045175684320708&set=maggio-1977-questa-copertina-dellalmanacco-di-marco-rota-introduce-paperino-pend

Un po' di sano orrore: gente che vende l'anima all'AI

Money quote: "These gig AI trainers – who upload everything from scenes around them to photos, videos and audio of themselves – are at the frontlines of a new global data gold rush. As Silicon Valley’s hunger for high-quality, human-grade data outpaces what can be scraped from the open internet, a thriving industry of data marketplaces has emerged to bridge the gap. From Cape Town to Chicago, thousands of people are now micro-licensing their biometric identities and intimate data to train the next generation of AI.

But this new gig economy comes with trade-offs. In exchange for a few dollars, its trainers are fueling an industry that may eventually render their skills obsolete, while leaving some of them vulnerable to a future of deepfakes, identity theft and digital exploitation that they are only just beginning to understand."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/21/ai-trainers-identity-cost

Non sono d'accordo con la tesi e il modo con il quale viene sviluppato, ma il titolo ovviamente è acchiappaclick: c'è dentro Apple, ci vanno tutti.

Money quote: "Oggi per avviare una startup simile è difficile che qualcuno parta da zero. Solitamente ci si rivolge fin dall’inizio a venture capitalist e angel investor (investitori specializzati in aziende innovative ad alto rischio), o si tenta di entrare a far parte di un acceleratore di startup, un’organizzazione che aiuta le aziende nelle prime fasi della loro vita. Questo tipo di investitori è attivo nell’area da tempo – uno di questi, Sequoia Capital, finanziò Apple nel 1978 – ma negli ultimi decenni i capitali a loro disposizione sono cresciuti enormemente, così come la loro influenza nel settore.

Un’altra ragione è più prosaica: il prezzo degli immobili nella zona attorno a San Francisco è cresciuto molto negli ultimi decenni, fino a diventare tra i più alti degli Stati Uniti e a causare una grave emergenza abitativa. La vecchia casa della famiglia Jobs oggi sarebbe un patrimonio immobiliare fuori portata per la maggior parte delle persone: basti pensare che da alcuni anni si sono diffuse nella zona «le startup di coinquilini», i cui dipendenti e fondatori vivono assieme per ridurre le spese."

https://www.ilpost.it/2026/04/01/apple-garage-oggi/

A quanto pare l'AI che sta veramente spaccando, dal punto di vista commerciale è Claude di Anthropic.

Money quote: "An examination of billions of anonymized credit card transactions from about 28 million U.S. consumers, conducted for TechCrunch by Indagari, a consumer transaction analysis company, shows Claude gaining paid subscribers in record numbers."

https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/28/anthropics-claude-popularity-with-paying-consumers-is-skyrocketing/

L'ennesima storia di due ragazzi che hanno cambiato il mondo.

Money quote: "Before there was an iPod, an iPhone, an iPad, or an Apple Watch—before there was a Macintosh or Apple II or even an Apple-1—there were a couple of kids who came of age in Silicon Valley in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were brought together by a shared fascination with electronics. Supported by friends, family, and a burgeoning community of hobbyists, technologists, and entrepreneurs, just as the microprocessor was ushering in a new era, they channeled their strikingly different skills into joint projects."

https://www.fastcompany.com/91514404/apple-founding-50th-anniversary-apple-1-apple-ii-jobs-wozniak?mvgt=E5Loo3fO74zl

Per fortuna è tornato Stargate SG-1 - ne parlo su Fumettologica

https://fumettologica.it/2026/04/stargate-sg-1-serie-tv/

Una sorta di speed dating della psicoterapia: una sola seduta basta e avanza.

Money quote: "The therapy is what it sounds like: one session, typically an hour, where a counselor helps the client identify concrete steps toward relieving a specific problem. The intention is not to completely solve a problem, but rather to help clients walk away with a toolbox of strategies on how to approach it.

“Those strategies made all kinds of sense,” Hart said. “But you can’t identify them when you’re in it.”"

https://apnews.com/article/single-session-therapy-35f87c10746da33e090546b86fa828bb