Perché le stroncature, l'epoca dell'amore universale via internet, generano solo odio e minacce.

Money quote: "Later that month, fellow longtime critic Jeff Weiss, writing on behalf of The Washington Post, attended Post Malone’s inaugural Posty Fest in Dallas and did not care for it at all. (Opening lines: “Him? The most popular young artist in the most unpopular young nation is a rhinestone cowboy who looks like he crawled out of a primordial swamp of nacho cheese. Post Malone is a Halloween rental, a removable platinum grill, a Cubic Zirconium proposal on the jumbo screen of a last-place team.”) The result, as Weiss recounts now, was death threats, amid an avalanche of Twitter invective that included Post Malone’s own father referring to Weiss as “a petty little cuck.”"

https://www.theringer.com/pop-culture/2019/1/10/18176366/bad-reviews-jeff-weiss-a-o-scott-greta-van-fleet-post-malone-bohemian-rhapsody

La riflessione in realtà è più profonda e tocca un tema - quello della critica ma anche quello della manifestazione delle proprie idee - che è piuttosto complesso. Ci possiamo anche chiedere: alle volte forse è meglio non esprimere un giudizio negativo.

Ehi mi ero quasi dimenticato: come ogni domenica è uscita Mostly Weekly. Eccola qui.

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/141/

La storia degli ultimi rinoceronti bianchi del mondo, raccontata da Sam Anderson, uno dei migliori giornalisti del New York Times di questa generazione.

Money quote: "In the last years of his life, Sudan had become a global celebrity, a conservation icon. He lived, like an ex-president, under the protection of 24/7 armed guards. Visitors traveled from everywhere to see him. Sudan was a perfect ambassador: He weighed more than two tons but had the personality of a golden retriever. He would let people touch him and feed him snacks — a whole carrot, clamped in his big boxy mouth, looked like a little orange toothpick. Tourists got emotional, because they knew they were laying hands on a singular creature, a primordial giant about to slide off into the void. Many hurried back to their cars and cried."

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/magazine/the-last-two-northern-white-rhinos-on-earth.html

Programmare è contemporaneamente qualcosa di molto diverso da quello che la maggior parte delle persone pensa e qualcosa di molto più diffuso di quel che non si crede. Oltre ad avere a che fare più con i dati che non con il codice. Questo articolo è un interessante (e provocatorio) punto di partenza.

Money quote: "Code culture can be solipsistic and exhausting. Programmers fight over semicolon placement and the right way to be object-oriented or functional or whatever else will let them feel in control and smarter and more economically safe, and always I want to shout back: Code isn't enough on its own. We throw code away when it runs out its clock; we migrate data to new databases, so as not to lose one precious bit. Code is a story we tell about data."

https://www.wired.com/story/databases-coding-real-programming-myth

Chissà, magari un giorno mi rifaccio il sito e lo faccio tutto con questa grafica, che ne dite? Perché partendo dai font di una volta non ci vuole niente ad arrivare alle "interfacce pseudo-grafiche a riga di comando" stile Ms-Dos e Apple II (in alto a destra potete provare sei vecchi font quasi originali: in totale ce ne sono più di 200).

Money quote: "The Ultimate Oldschool PC Font Pack started out with the idea of paying tribute to ancient PCs and their bitmapped, pre-GUI typography (if you can call it that). It was inspired by similar efforts that cover other vintage machines: classic system fonts from the Amiga, C64, Apple II, Mac, ZX Spectrum, Atari 8-bit/ST etc. are all celebrated. On the other hand, the IBM PC and its clones seem to get little love... except for that one VGA text mode font (which has been remade numerous times, to varying degrees of success).

This collection is here to remedy that, and to bring you pixel-perfect remakes of various type styles from text-mode era PCs - in modern, multi-platform, Unicode-compatible TrueType form (plus straight bitmap versions)."

https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/readme/

Siete topolini da batteria? State scalando la gerarchia della fabbrica del formaggio? Qualche consiglio utile per capire come mai è più facile essere il capo di 4 persone che di una persona sola.

Money quote: "It’s easier to manage 4 people than it is to manage one person. The primary reason for this is the inherent over-reliance in the relationship between a manager and a single report. Let’s dive deeper."

https://staysaasy.com/management/2020/07/24/Managing-One-Person.html

Video di una conferenza a Stanford in cui si ripensa il computer. Cose facili oggi, insomma.

Money quote: "While our software systems have become increasingly elastic, the physical substrate available to run that software (that is, the computer!) has remained stuck in a bygone era of PC architecture. Hyperscale infrastructure providers have long since figured this out, building machines that are fit to purpose -- but those advances have been denied to the mass market. In this talk, we will talk about our vision for a new, rack-scale, server-side machine -- and how we anticipate advances like open firmware, RISC-V, and Rust will play a central role in realizing that vision."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvZA9n3e5pc&list=PLoROMvodv4rMWw6rRoeSpkiseTHzWj6vu

Mamma, ho perso la scorciatoia di tastiera, il mio articolo per Macity

Money quote: "Stamattina chi scrive si è seriamente innervosito: lavorando alla prova del nuovo MacBook Pro 14, che sarà pubblicata tra qualche giorno, siamo per l’ennesima volta incappati nel problema che abbiamo da due settimane: la nostra scorciatoia di tastiera preferita non funziona più. Il nuovo Mac usa Monterey, ci sta che cambino le scorciatoie di tastiera da una versione all’altra del sistema operativo, la cosa però è molto fastidiosa"

https://www.macitynet.it/mamma-ho-perso-la-scorciatoia-di-tastiera/

Sta emergendo un lato da Grande Fratello di Microsoft che prima non era così. Invece, adesso non solo fanno software tremendo, mal programmato e con pessime logiche e interfacce. Adesso stanno diventando anche quelli che controllano tutto

Money quote: "Teams that don’t communicate. Market disruption. Unidentified logjams. Employee burnout. Lost efficiency. As part of a group of data scientists, management consultants, and engineers at Microsoft, we help companies harness behavioral data to measure and solve these kinds of challenges — the kinds that firms feel but usually cannot see.

Four months ago we realized that our company, like so many others, was undergoing an immediate and unplanned shift to remote work. We all scrambled to set up home offices, situate newly homeschooled kids, juggle customer calls and cat antics, and, in many ways, rethink how to do our jobs."

https://hbr.org/2020/07/microsoft-analyzed-data-on-its-newly-remote-workforce

Le generazioni a un certo punto scoprono di essere invecchiate. I videogiochi sono un punto di riferimento perché dagli anni Ottanta sono una costante per molti contesti diversi. Anche il terrorismo in Irlanda del Nord.

Money 1uote: "Street Fighter II (1991) was just a game, in the sense that it was designed to eat as many coins as any other, yet it was so much more. It constituted an intense competitive arena in which the young people of the neighbourhood, and a multitude of others around the world, could test their skills and assert themselves. It also provided a sanctuary when you walked in and found you had the game all to yourself for as long as you could afford to play it. Play is a form of engagement with the world and a way of finding your place in it, a means of establishing community but also sovereignty; it offers you the ability to escape, be alone and enjoy it. "

https://frieze.com/article/street-fighter-ii-wasnt-just-game-it-was-portal

Un ministro che non ha peli sulla lingua a quantro pare è quello tedesco della Salute:

Money quote: “ "Quasi tutti" i tedeschi "alla fine dell'inverno saranno vaccinati, guariti o morti". Lo ha detto il ministro della Salute Jens Spahn in conferenza stampa a Berlino”

Una dopo l'altra se ne vanno tutte le vecchie glorie della tv americana. Come JoAnna Cameron

Money quote: “Who’s afraid of being typecast as a superhero?” she responded. “If you have to be typecast, take superhero. Or Egyptian goddess.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/05/arts/television/joanna-cameron-dead.html?smid=tw-share

È arrivato in italia HomePod mini. La mia recensione sul Post.

https://www.ilpost.it/antoniodini/2021/11/23/homepod-mini/

Firenze è una strana città. (E io ho avuto un'adolescenza complicata)

Money quote: "Abbiamo spesso clienti americani e quella sera, di possibili Michael Jordan, ne individuo almeno tre. Vado verso il più vicino, che si è appena seduto con due amici alti come lui, portandogli il menù. Parlano tedesco. Un altro condivide il tavolo con una donna e due bambini. Ha figli, Michael Jordan? Non ne ho idea. Un cameriere che ha già preso le loro ordinazioni mi dice che sono americani. Raggiungo il terzo che, per fortuna, è ancora intento nello studio del menù. Parla inglese. Sul cibo ha le idee chiare, due chili di bistecca. Per quanto riguarda il vino si affida ai miei consigli. Gli chiedo di indicarmi un range di prezzo. «Range illimitato», mi risponde. «Grazie Mister Jordan – ribatto prontamente – ci penso io». Sorride. Anche questa volta ci siamo salvati!"

Money quote 2: "Mio dio, il livello di presunzione e sbruffonaggine di questi due è allucinante. Sono inspportabili."

https://www.editorialedomani.it/idee/storia-a-lieto-fine-di-autobus-pugni-bottoni-e-ristoranti-lnmtliba

Stanno riorganizzando la stazione di Shibuya a Tokyo. Ed è un'ottima occasione per capire come è nata quella complessità.

Money quote: "Even in Japan, a country where tangled, disordered stations are common, Shibuya is an outlier. Switching from the Ginza to the Fukutoshin line, for example, involves navigating from the third floor, the station’s top level, to the fifth underground level. In between is a maze of stairs, elevators, and escalators, with no direct way up or down."


https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/1757/

C’è un’ipotesi che potrebbe spiegare la natura dell’universo. Ed è sorprendente.

Money quote: “The cosmological razor idea has one further startling implication. It suggests that the fundamental law of the Universe is not quantum mechanics, or general relativity or even the laws of mathematics. It is the law of natural selection discovered by Darwin and Wallace. As the philosopher Daniel Dennett insisted, it is ‘The single best idea anyone has ever had.’ It might also be the simplest idea that any universe has ever had.”

https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-simplicity-so-unreasonably-effective-at-scientific-explanation

Sto rimettendo a posto un po' di cose sparpagliate qua e là tra e ho ripescato questa storia sulla riparazione della mia Tivoli Model One. Il problema di sintonia in realtà si risolve facendo su e giù con la manopola per tre minuti. Però qui c'è di più, molto di più.

https://antoniodini.com/riparazione-tivoli-model-one-1/

Ripensare la coda lunga, parecchi anni dopo

Money quote: ““The Long Tail” was Anderson’s catchy name for a set of observations about the economics of internet markets — observations that are as resonant as ever in today’s “passion economy,” in which anyone can try their hand at turning their specialized interests into sources of income. In his article and book, building on the work of academics like Erik Brynjolfsson, Jeffrey Hu, Michael Smith, and Anita Elberse, Anderson observed that brick-and-mortar stores were constrained by limited shelf space, and therefore aimed to carry only the most popular products. In sharp contrast, online platforms like Amazon and Netflix had infinite shelf space. The tech journalist’s thesis: This radical shift would have far-reaching effects, from the media and entertainment industries that were his main focus, to the markets for everything from crafts to kitchen appliances.”

https://marker.medium.com/the-failed-promise-of-the-long-tail-6ba8a3afb9b1

Pensare come un detective, spiegato bene

Money quote: “When I first started as a police officer, none of my fellow detectives, police academy teachers or criminal investigation department bosses were seemingly able, nor interested, in telling me in practical terms how to think like a detective. Instead, they talked about attitude, talent and experience. Most of all, they liked talking about old cases they’d solved. They never spoke about the cases they failed to solve or the next challenge. The most crucial tool of any successful investigator – namely, sharp reasoning skills – was also never mentioned. We were all very keen on formulating mental profiles of offenders. Yet, strangely, the idea of profiling the effective detective was almost taboo. It’s as if the ability to think like an expert detective was taken for granted.”

https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-solve-problems-by-thinking-like-a-detective

Un camionista americano spiega l'apocalisse della logistica che sta per travolgerci tutti.

Money quote: "So when the coastal ports started getting clogged up last spring due to the impacts of COVID on business everywhere, drivers started refusing to show up. Congestion got so bad that instead of being able to do three loads a day, they could only do one. They took a 2/3 pay cut and most of these drivers were working 12 hours a day or more. While carriers were charging increased pandemic shipping rates, none of those rate increases went to the driver wages. Many drivers simply quit. However, while the pickup rate for containers severely decreased, they were still being offloaded from the boats. And it’s only gotten worse."

https://medium.com/@ryan79z28/im-a-twenty-year-truck-driver-i-will-tell-you-why-america-s-shipping-crisis-will-not-end-bbe0ebac6a91

Lo sapevate che J.R.R. Tolkien disprezzava profondamente Walt Disney? Tutta colpa dei nani di Biancaneve

Money quote: “Consider the context here: Tolkien’s book The Hobbit was first released in the U.K. in September of 1937, just a couple of months before Snow White hit theaters in the U.S. Both works highlighted a gaggle of dwarves as major supporting characters, but they could hardly have been more different. Disney’s dwarfs were jolly, goofy miners (hey, Dopey), rooted in the stories of the Brothers Grimm; Tolkien’s dwarves were a grim, mythical race (although not wholly without whimsy), born from Nordic myth. “Isn’t it interesting that Tolkien and Disney, almost concurrently, came up with dwarves that are not evil?” notes Lambert. “I researched, is there any possibility that there was a connection? And there’s not.””

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/tolkien-cs-lewis-disney-snow-white-narnia-hobbit-dwarves