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
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Si parla sempre della censura cinese, che io trovo affascinante soprattutto dal punto di vista di come si ottiene. Se ci pensate, il censore è una persona ed è esposto proprio al tipo di "male" da cui vuole curare la società. Ecco, questo è uno dei pochissimi articoli che racconta la storia da questo punto di vista. Cioè, è l'unico articolo che in effetti racconta una storia.

Money quote: "Mr. Li works for Beyondsoft, a Beijing-based tech services company that, among other businesses, takes on the censorship burden for other companies. He works in its office in the city of Chengdu. In the heart of a high-tech industrial area, the space is bright and new enough that it resembles the offices of well-funded start-ups in tech centers like Beijing and Shenzhen. It recently moved to the space because customers complained that its previous office was too cramped to allow employees to do their best work.

“Missing one beat could cause a serious political mistake,” said Yang Xiao, head of Beyondsoft’s internet service business, including content reviewing. (Beyondsoft declined to disclose which Chinese media or online companies it works for, citing confidentiality.)"

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/02/business/china-internet-censor.html
Cari i miei paranoici digitali: ripulite casa vostra da tutte le cimici digitali e le videocamere nascoste. Su su...

Money quote: "The simple strategies that we are going to show you will effectively clear most rooms for hidden cameras and bugs without having to use super expensive countersurveillance gear or an outside company."

https://www.senteltechsecurity.com/blog/post/how-to-find-hidden-cameras/
È un tema quasi metafisico ma potrebbe avere delle conseguenze enormi. Si sta spaccando in due il mondo degli sviluppatori front-end.

Money quote: "Let’s say there is a divide happening in front-end development. I feel it, but it's not just in my bones. Based on an awful lot of written developer sentiment, interviews Dave Rupert and I have done on ShopTalk, and in-person discussion, it’s, as they say... a thing.

The divide is between people who self-identify as a (or have the job title of) front-end developer, yet have divergent skill sets."

https://css-tricks.com/the-great-divide/
Contrordine compagni: basta assoluti, cercate tutti la via di mezzo (il revival di Tony Blair, praticamente)

Money quote: "Many of us ask ourselves such questions. Work is a conundrum. We cannot measure the consequences of our choices against the alternatives that have passed us by. We can only try to be thoughtful and humble, empathise, observe others – sometimes a painful exercise – and speculate about what might have been."

https://aeon.co/essays/dont-quit-your-day-job-the-benefits-of-being-a-bifurcator
Portate gli occhiali? (io no). Sappiate che vi stanno derubando. Tipo, davvero.

Money quote: "It’s a question I get asked frequently, most recently by a colleague who was shocked to find that his new pair of prescription eyeglasses cost about $800.
Why are these things so damn expensive?

The answer: Because no one is doing anything to prevent a near-monopolistic, $100-billion industry from shamelessly abusing its market power.

Prescription eyewear represents perhaps the single biggest mass-market consumer ripoff to be found."

https://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-why-are-eyeglasses-so-expensive-20190122-story.html
Posso testimoniare, se non altro perché sono passato un po' di volte da delle età con il 9, che in effetti qualcosa di vero c'è.

Money quote: "I first came across the concept of the “nine-ender” in Daniel Pink’s recent book When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. The term was coined by marketing psychologists Adam Alter and Hal Hershfield, who in 2015 published a paper arguing that people who are staring down the end of a decade engage in “meaning-seeking behaviors” — both positive and self-destructive — more frequently than they do at other ages.
It started with greeting cards. The researchers wondered: Why is the supermarket greeting-card rack dominated by cards commemorating big milestone birthdays?"

https://medium.com/s/reasonable-doubt/the-mysterious-impact-of-being-an-age-that-ends-in-9-dcb7e8ec3602
Ritorniamo ai fondamentali: altro che robot intelligenti, perdi il lavoro se sei senza una laurea

Money quote: "The forecast of an America where robots do all the work while humans live off some yet-to-be-invented welfare program may be a Silicon Valley pipe dream. But automation is changing the nature of work, flushing workers without a college degree out of productive industries, like manufacturing and high-tech services, and into tasks with meager wages and no prospect for advancement."

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/04/business/economy/productivity-inequality-wages.html
Una regina africana tremenda, potentissima, solida, temuta. Capace di tenere a bada i portoghesi nell'epoca della massima schiavitù. La sua storia è uno spaccato del mondo alla fine del Cinquecento visto da un'altra prospettiva. Che storia enorme.

Money quote: "Njinga was her father’s clear favorite throughout her childhood. She was 10 when Mbande became the ngola, or king, of Ngondo (“Angola” comes from the Portuguese misunderstanding the meaning of ngola and thinking it was the name of the kingdom). He often involved her in his official duties: she attended many of the legal councils that her father oversaw, received military training, and participated in the ritual activities that were so vital to their culture. The fact that she was a girl and not even the child of his principal wife made all of this very unusual, but then again maybe this explains why Mbande a Ngola felt comfortable to display his preference so publicly. It would have been unheard of to lavish that kind of individual attention on any of his sons; to do so meant risking jealousy not only among them, but also among their mothers, many of whom came from powerful families. A daughter, though, was different — for one thing, no one really viewed her as direct competition. Besides, everyone agreed that Njinga was special. She outperformed her brothers in every capacity, including with the battle axe, which was the royal weapon of choice."

https://longreads.com/2019/10/03/queens-of-infamy-njinga/
Un sistema per interrogare direttamente il database di Foto sui dispositivi Apple. Perché in realtà c'è parecchio, ben nascosto.

Money quote: "As with most Apple software, Photos uses SQLite under the hood. The underlying database is undocumented and clearly not intended as a public API, but it exists. And I’ve wanted to gain access to what’s in it for years."

https://simonwillison.net/2020/May/21/dogsheep-photos/
Le emozioni sono virus e possono far ammalare le persone, soprattutto quelle giovani

Money quote: "When we hear the word ‘contagion’, our minds are immediately drawn to the viruses and bacteria spread through coughing and sneezing. This narrow view prioritises the biological, yet contagion is not unique to the spread of microorganisms. There is a growing body of scientific evidence showing that our internal mental states, including our emotions, might also be socially transmissible. Understanding the nature and dynamics of this emotional contagion is crucial in highlighting how social interactions might impact on our wellbeing. Within my field of research – adolescent development – this is a particular concern: approximately 75 per cent of all mental health conditions start before the age of 24, and adolescents are especially sensitive to peer influence. Exploring how mood spreads from person to person could help us better understand how mental illness develops."

https://psyche.co/ideas/for-young-people-emotions-are-highly-contagious-social-viruses
Quanto candore: questa giovane ragazza prende appunti strutturati come una cavia corre sulla ruota e si sente meglio: le gioie di un universo procedurale. Vallo a capire.

Money quote: "It’s that straightforward. Acquiring intelligence doesn’t require an Einstein-level IQ. You only need a desire to learn and a system. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be the one to solve the latest problem at work or comes up with a fresh idea when everyone else is feeling stuck. If anything, you’ll certainly look like the smartest person at the next party."

https://forge.medium.com/how-this-note-taking-system-can-elevate-your-intelligence-897aee747b17
Utile, Vim Killer si presenta come una utility tridimensionale che offre un bottone-ultima-risorsa per uscire da Vim. Il regalo di compleanno perfetto

Money quote: "VIMKiller is a button on-top of an arduino wrapped in a 3-D printed enclosure. It is expertly crafted. When the button is pressed it sends a message over your serial port to kill VIM. Now, at this point, you need to have the Julia VIMKiller script running in the background. It may be best to have this script run at start-up (easy-fix). The Julia script listens for this serial message and returns in kind by killing all VIM processes on your Linux machine. Easy, and practical - right?"

https://github.com/caseykneale/VIMKiller
Lucrezia Borgia, figura femminile estrema per molti versi, diventata oggi l'esempio della seduzione e poi delle donne di potere, è in realtà una figura molto più sfaccettata e complessa.

Money quote: "People have called Lucrezia many things over the years: seductress, murderess, femme fatale of the Borgia cabal. The attributes assigned to her didn’t come out of nowhere; as we shall see — and as Lucrezia noted herself — many of the men around her came to unfortunate ends. In portrayals where she escapes the villainess role, she’s often made out to be another hapless aristocratic daughter traded off into various political marriages, someone with no agency or ambitions of her own. The reality, of course, is much more nuanced. While Lucrezia was indeed married off several times to further her family’s agenda, as an adult she proved herself to be a skilled ruler loved and respected by her subjects."

https://longreads.com/2020/05/28/queens-of-infamy-lucrezia-borgia/
I poster sovietici, durante la rivoluzione di ottobre e la successiva guerra civile. Rivederne la storia oggi è affascinante.

Money quote: "During the Civil War, "ROSTA Windows" ("Okna ROSTA") - a famous project by the Russian Telegraph Agency, brought together artists who turned telegrams Okna Rosta from Red Army soldiers into posters within hours of receiving them from the front lines. Renowned poet, Vladimir Mayakovsky, became the soul of this undertaking. He produced texts based on the most recent telegrams and accompanied them with sketches. Mikhail Cheremnykh was also actively engaged in the project. Soviet artists frantically produced dozens of posters overnight, and every morning "Okna ROSTA" were posted in the empty storefronts and windows (hence the project's name), informing the citizens of the latest news in vivid and sharp-witted form.

Victor Deni, a superb master of political caricature of his day, introduced smashing satire to the Soviet propaganda art. His posters mercilessly ridiculed capitalists, corrupt politicians and spineless yes-man."

https://www.sovietposters.com/
Durante il lockdown americano la Nintendo Switch è diventata un elemento fondamentale del kit base di sopravvivenza. Al punto che c'è chi ha deciso di ripararla da solo in caso di piccole rotture (il maledetto drifting joycon, per dire). Questo ha generato una interessante esplosione di riparazioni DIY.

Money quote: "Urquidi’s decision not to send the controller to Nintendo turned out to be prescient. Although he wasn’t aware of it at the time, the company had announced in late March that all of its North American repair centers would be closed “until further notice” due to the coronavirus. Worse, any Joy-Cons Nintendo received during lockdowns might be forwarded to a warehouse “for temporary storage until repair services resume.”"

https://onezero.medium.com/desperate-nintendo-switch-owners-are-learning-to-repair-their-own-busted-systems-c34841976f32
Un bel museo multimediale e multi esperienziale ad Atlanta. Tutto sull'hip-hop e non solo. Non è il mio mondo ma le immagini sono più che gradevoli e sarei curioso di visitarlo.

Money quote: "Today, the space operates as a museum and event space, as well as an active hair salon. A portion of the building is dedicated to Madam C.J. Walker, including hair tools from the 1940s and 1950s that were discovered in the old salon space. Another part is dedicated to WERD, and thousands of vinyl records decorate the walls. De Forest has also curated a collection of historic items for the space, such as Jim Crow-era signs and vintage cameras."

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/madam-cj-walker-museum-werd-radio
Brutto schianto causato dall'autopilota della Tesla Model 3 a Taiwan. Per fortuna non si è fatto male nessuno, ma il video fa davvero impressione.

Money quote: "Earlier today, on Taiwan’s National Highway 1 near the Zhongshan High Chiayi Water Section, a Tesla Model 3 crashed right smack into the roof of an overturned truck trailer. It appears that the wreck was caused by the Tesla’s Autopilot system not detecting the large rectangular object right in front of it, in broad daylight and clear weather. We have seen Autopilot failures like this before, especially ones involving large, immobile objects."

https://jalopnik.com/tesla-model-3-drives-straight-into-overturned-truck-in-1843827507