Cose interessanti da scoprire sui propri padri: erano attori porno.
Money quote: "“I don’t want to talk about your father,” my Mom said.
They had a bitter breakup in the 90s, after I was born. It was probably my fault; I was as much a pain as a toddler as I am as an adult. He took off with a woman my Mom called “The Slut.” I never saw much of my Dad. He spent most of his time climbing mountains. He did K2, Everest, all that shit. Like he was trying to prove something to somebody. I was never much impressed.
But this. Being a porn star. This was impressive. I had to see more. I wondered what his porn name was. I called up my Mom again."
https://medium.com/slackjaw/hazards-of-watching-vintage-porn-36f0df94c397
Money quote: "“I don’t want to talk about your father,” my Mom said.
They had a bitter breakup in the 90s, after I was born. It was probably my fault; I was as much a pain as a toddler as I am as an adult. He took off with a woman my Mom called “The Slut.” I never saw much of my Dad. He spent most of his time climbing mountains. He did K2, Everest, all that shit. Like he was trying to prove something to somebody. I was never much impressed.
But this. Being a porn star. This was impressive. I had to see more. I wondered what his porn name was. I called up my Mom again."
https://medium.com/slackjaw/hazards-of-watching-vintage-porn-36f0df94c397
Medium
Hazards Of Watching Vintage Porn
You might see something horrifying.
Se avete bambini piccoli o grandi, una cosa a cui pensare (il post è di dieci anni fa)
Money quote: "Late last night, inspecting Santa’s handiwork, a simple thought occurred to me. A decade or so from now, when, say, I’m waiting for my son to come home from college for his winter break, and, when he does, he wants to spend his time going out with his friends — how much will I be willing to pay then to be able to go back in time, for one day, to now, when he’s eight years old, he wants to go to movies and play games and build Lego kits with me, and he believes in magic?
How much then, for one day with what my family has right now? How much? Everything.
The truth is, I’m the luckiest person in the world today. I hope you are too."
https://daringfireball.net/2011/12/merry
Money quote: "Late last night, inspecting Santa’s handiwork, a simple thought occurred to me. A decade or so from now, when, say, I’m waiting for my son to come home from college for his winter break, and, when he does, he wants to spend his time going out with his friends — how much will I be willing to pay then to be able to go back in time, for one day, to now, when he’s eight years old, he wants to go to movies and play games and build Lego kits with me, and he believes in magic?
How much then, for one day with what my family has right now? How much? Everything.
The truth is, I’m the luckiest person in the world today. I hope you are too."
https://daringfireball.net/2011/12/merry
Daring Fireball
Merry
The truth is, I’m the luckiest person in the world today.
Da Etcd a Kubernetes, il mondo non è necessariamente un miglioramento continuo. Anzi, il software sta diventando sempre più inutilmente complicato e scritto male, oltre ad introdurre layer di approfondimento e relazione anziché di astrazione.
Money quote: "In 2015, an unrelated tool called Kubernetes was released by Google (but, really, by Xooglers). I would go so far as to say that Kubernetes (or, as the "cool kids" say, k8s) is the worst thing to happen to system administration since systemd. It's a comprehensive suite that promises to simplify operating clusters of software and give something like the experience of Google's borg cluster manager. What it really does is:
- Add hundreds of new failure modes to your software
- Move you from writing portable software configuration to writing thousands of lines of k8s-specific YAML
- Ensnare you in a mesh of questionably-good1 patterns like containerization and software defined networking"
Money quote 2: "That's it. That's the story. Popular modern technology is taken over by expats from a megacorp and made worse in the service of a hyper-specialized (and just plain over-hyped) orchestration platform. That's the world today. Anything that has a simple and elegant feature-set ends up coöpted by people who just want to build big ungainly architecture and ends up inheriting features from whatever megacorp the coöpters came from9. The software development world would prefer to use their multi-gigabyte IDEs running on ElectronJS to build thousand-dependency Java applications targeting ungainly APIs on hard-to-operate systems than support something simpler and better. Quality is, alas, a dying art."
https://www.roguelazer.com/2020/07/etcd-or-why-modern-software-makes-me-sad
Money quote: "In 2015, an unrelated tool called Kubernetes was released by Google (but, really, by Xooglers). I would go so far as to say that Kubernetes (or, as the "cool kids" say, k8s) is the worst thing to happen to system administration since systemd. It's a comprehensive suite that promises to simplify operating clusters of software and give something like the experience of Google's borg cluster manager. What it really does is:
- Add hundreds of new failure modes to your software
- Move you from writing portable software configuration to writing thousands of lines of k8s-specific YAML
- Ensnare you in a mesh of questionably-good1 patterns like containerization and software defined networking"
Money quote 2: "That's it. That's the story. Popular modern technology is taken over by expats from a megacorp and made worse in the service of a hyper-specialized (and just plain over-hyped) orchestration platform. That's the world today. Anything that has a simple and elegant feature-set ends up coöpted by people who just want to build big ungainly architecture and ends up inheriting features from whatever megacorp the coöpters came from9. The software development world would prefer to use their multi-gigabyte IDEs running on ElectronJS to build thousand-dependency Java applications targeting ungainly APIs on hard-to-operate systems than support something simpler and better. Quality is, alas, a dying art."
https://www.roguelazer.com/2020/07/etcd-or-why-modern-software-makes-me-sad
Roguelazer
roguelazer's website: etcd, or, why modern software makes me sad
musings on tech, politics, music, and more
Era una storia che ci tenevo a raccontare: il figlio illegittimo di una fugace notte d'amore tra un Casio e un Patek Philippe, tra un G-Shock e un Royal Oak
Money quote: "L’orologio, soprattutto questo tipo di modelli che sono di grosse dimensioni e tendenzialmente portati da uomini più che da donne, sono gli unici gioielli che storicamente vengono portati dai maschi oltre alla vera nuziale. Certo, c’è chi ha anelli, catenine e braccialetti, persino orecchini e piercing (siamo pur sempre nel XXI secolo, signora mia) ma l’orologio è sempre stato l’accessorio che definisce l’uomo e che mostra la sua vanità."
https://www.macitynet.it/casioak-il-regalo-piu-analogico-del-2021/
Money quote: "L’orologio, soprattutto questo tipo di modelli che sono di grosse dimensioni e tendenzialmente portati da uomini più che da donne, sono gli unici gioielli che storicamente vengono portati dai maschi oltre alla vera nuziale. Certo, c’è chi ha anelli, catenine e braccialetti, persino orecchini e piercing (siamo pur sempre nel XXI secolo, signora mia) ma l’orologio è sempre stato l’accessorio che definisce l’uomo e che mostra la sua vanità."
https://www.macitynet.it/casioak-il-regalo-piu-analogico-del-2021/
macitynet.it
Casioak, il regalo più analogico del 2021
Casio
Una bella ripulita al MacBook dopo quasi un decennio d'uso. Mamma mia cosa c'era dentro!
Money quote: "I estimated that I had used my mac for approximately 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year, for 7 years straight, for a total for whopping 16800 hours. I have written the first versions of most of the software components of my startup using this computer. And all this time, this machine worked without a hiccup. It was never repaired, and I never opened the back cover. However, its battery is getting swollen, so it is a good time to upgrade to a newer machine. Before recycling the machine, I decided to open it for once and vacuum the fans to see if it makes a difference. Oh boy, did it make a difference! You can find the fan test in the video if you want to check it out."
https://quanticdev.com/articles/cleaning-macbook-after-16800-hours-of-use
Money quote: "I estimated that I had used my mac for approximately 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year, for 7 years straight, for a total for whopping 16800 hours. I have written the first versions of most of the software components of my startup using this computer. And all this time, this machine worked without a hiccup. It was never repaired, and I never opened the back cover. However, its battery is getting swollen, so it is a good time to upgrade to a newer machine. Before recycling the machine, I decided to open it for once and vacuum the fans to see if it makes a difference. Oh boy, did it make a difference! You can find the fan test in the video if you want to check it out."
https://quanticdev.com/articles/cleaning-macbook-after-16800-hours-of-use
Letture per le vacanze. A Milano c'è Gigi Carminati, un vecchio riparatore di apparecchi fotografici che ancora sa come si fa a mettere le mani in cose di un secolo e mezzo. E farle funzionare ancora.
https://antoniodini.com/il-meccanico-della-fotografia/
https://antoniodini.com/il-meccanico-della-fotografia/
Mostly Here
Gigi Carminati
Torna di moda la fotografia a pellicola. Le emulsioni ancora si trovano ma le vecchie macchine? Cosa succede quando si guastano? Per fortuna c'è ancora chi le sa riparare
La storia che Tolkien avrebbe voluto raccontare, ma che ha solo abbozzato
Money quote: "Like much of Tolkien’s fiction, Roverandom was not published during his lifetime, finally appearing in print in the 1990s. It is little-known, except among serious devotees. But it does help to show the way in which Tolkien’s imagination tended to work, and how his ideas developed. Roverandom blends the mundane with the magical, taking familiar places or people and making them part of a much larger and stranger canvas."
https://unherd.com/2020/06/is-this-tolkiens-vision-of-england
Money quote: "Like much of Tolkien’s fiction, Roverandom was not published during his lifetime, finally appearing in print in the 1990s. It is little-known, except among serious devotees. But it does help to show the way in which Tolkien’s imagination tended to work, and how his ideas developed. Roverandom blends the mundane with the magical, taking familiar places or people and making them part of a much larger and stranger canvas."
https://unherd.com/2020/06/is-this-tolkiens-vision-of-england
UnHerd
Tolkien's mythic plan for England
The author wanted to write a great saga that would fill a gap in the nation's pre-history
La Microsoft House dietro casa mia è una specie di cattedrale del lavoro senza più un posto. Lo pensavo prima della pandemia e a maggior ragione anche adesso. Il parallelo tra il lavoro straniante delle archistar e i processi produttivi delle multinazionali non mi è venuto benissimo, questo è uno di quegli articoli con un po' troppe cose dentro che avrei dovuto "lavorare" di più. Però, ehi: è tutto gratuito, quindi di cosa ci lamentiamo?
https://antoniodini.com/microsoft-house/
https://antoniodini.com/microsoft-house/
Mostly Here
Microsoft House
Perché il posto di lavoro non è più un posto? Non c'è bisogno di andare fino nella Silicon Valley per capirlo, basta passare da Chinatown a Milano
Non amo particolarmente Londra e non mi piacciono le cose troppo "meccanicose", ma questa mappa illuminata delle linee della metro di Londra fatta con lucette sulla basetta di un circuito stampato è una delizia
Money quote: "Fancy a tube map with a difference? How about one made from a circuit board – with lights that show live train movements?
I can hear the geeky squeals of delight already."
https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2020/06/23/check-out-this-london-tube-map-made-from-a-working-circuit-board
Money quote: "Fancy a tube map with a difference? How about one made from a circuit board – with lights that show live train movements?
I can hear the geeky squeals of delight already."
https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2020/06/23/check-out-this-london-tube-map-made-from-a-working-circuit-board
ianVisits
Check out this London tube map made from a working circuit board
Fancy a tube map with a difference? How about one made from a circuit board - with lights that show live train movements?
La tesi di dottorato perduta di Dennis Ritchie, ritrovata
Money quote: "It may come as some surprise to learn that until just this moment, despite Ritchie’s much-deserved computing fame, his dissertation—the intellectual and biographical fork-in-the-road separating an academic career in computer science from the one at Bell Labs leading to C and Unix—was lost. Lost? Yes, very much so in being both unpublished and absent from any public collection; not even an entry for it can be found in Harvard’s library catalog nor in dissertation databases."
https://computerhistory.org/blog/discovering-dennis-ritchies-lost-dissertation
Money quote: "It may come as some surprise to learn that until just this moment, despite Ritchie’s much-deserved computing fame, his dissertation—the intellectual and biographical fork-in-the-road separating an academic career in computer science from the one at Bell Labs leading to C and Unix—was lost. Lost? Yes, very much so in being both unpublished and absent from any public collection; not even an entry for it can be found in Harvard’s library catalog nor in dissertation databases."
https://computerhistory.org/blog/discovering-dennis-ritchies-lost-dissertation
CHM
Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation
Until recently, across a half-century perhaps fewer than a dozen people had ever had the opportunity to read Dennis Ritchie’s dissertation—the intellectual and biographical fork-in-the-road separating an academic career in computer science from the one at…
Concordo sulla tesi di quest'articolo: dovremmo rileggere il Paradiso Perduto di John Milton
Money quote: "Milton gained a reputation in Europe for his erudition and rhetorical prowess in defence of England’s radical new regime; at home he came to be regarded as a prolific advocate for the Commonwealth cause. But his deteriorating eyesight limited his diplomatic travels. By 1654, Milton was completely blind. For the final 20 years of his life, he would dictate his poetry, letters and polemical tracts to a series of amanuenses – his daughters, friends and fellow poets."
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170419-why-paradise-lost-is-one-of-the-worlds-most-important-poems
Money quote: "Milton gained a reputation in Europe for his erudition and rhetorical prowess in defence of England’s radical new regime; at home he came to be regarded as a prolific advocate for the Commonwealth cause. But his deteriorating eyesight limited his diplomatic travels. By 1654, Milton was completely blind. For the final 20 years of his life, he would dictate his poetry, letters and polemical tracts to a series of amanuenses – his daughters, friends and fellow poets."
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170419-why-paradise-lost-is-one-of-the-worlds-most-important-poems
Bbc
Why you should re-read Paradise Lost
The greatest epic poem in the English language, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, has divided critics – but its influence on English literature is second only to Shakespeare’s.
A qualcuno servono delle mappe?
Money quote: "Dungeon Scrawl is a mapping tool developed by Keir, aka @ProbableTrain. It aims to be an easy-to-grasp tool with a high skill ceiling, empowering artists by automatically taking care of the most time-consuming stuff. Thanks to overwhelming support from Patreon and elsewhere, he is able to release it for free for everyone. Enjoy scrawling!"
https://dungeonscrawl.com
Money quote: "Dungeon Scrawl is a mapping tool developed by Keir, aka @ProbableTrain. It aims to be an easy-to-grasp tool with a high skill ceiling, empowering artists by automatically taking care of the most time-consuming stuff. Thanks to overwhelming support from Patreon and elsewhere, he is able to release it for free for everyone. Enjoy scrawling!"
https://dungeonscrawl.com
Dungeonscrawl
Dungeon Scrawl | Old-School Maps in Minutes
Free online mapmaking tool for tabletop rpgs like Dungeons & Dragons - no sign up required. Create battlemaps with ease, export as an image or PDF, use them in rpg adventures!
Un corso base per imparare a usare le espressioni regolari, aka regex. Utilissimo
Money quote: "Regular expressions are extremely useful in extracting information from text such as code, log files, spreadsheets, or even documents. And while there is a lot of theory behind formal languages, the following lessons and examples will explore the more practical uses of regular expressions so that you can use them as quickly as possible."
https://regexone.com
Money quote: "Regular expressions are extremely useful in extracting information from text such as code, log files, spreadsheets, or even documents. And while there is a lot of theory behind formal languages, the following lessons and examples will explore the more practical uses of regular expressions so that you can use them as quickly as possible."
https://regexone.com
Regexone
RegexOne - Learn Regular Expressions - Lesson 1: An Introduction, and the ABCs
RegexOne provides a set of interactive lessons and exercises to help you learn regular expressions
Una bella riflessione sulla consapevolezza e sulla capacità di occuparsi veramente di quello che vorremmo: della cosa vera
Money quote: "When you examine case studies of people who have had major accomplishments, you expect there to be some trick or shortcut. Some amazing technique they used that others weren’t clever enough to recognize.
More often, however, the strategy used is dead simple: doing the real thing."
https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2020/05/04/do-the-real-thing/
Money quote: "When you examine case studies of people who have had major accomplishments, you expect there to be some trick or shortcut. Some amazing technique they used that others weren’t clever enough to recognize.
More often, however, the strategy used is dead simple: doing the real thing."
https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2020/05/04/do-the-real-thing/
Scott H Young
Do the Real Thing - Scott H Young
Success in most things boils down to a simple, but easily ignored distinction: do the real thing and stop doing fake alternatives instead.
Si finisce per parlare spesso di qualità del software, da queste parti. Quasi sempre in maniera critica. Per fortuna c'è ancora chi ha dell'entusiasmo.
Money quote: "No, seriously. It’s so simple I thought I missed something. But no. After you run that binary, you have a fully operational node of Syncthing. It’s ready to sync with any other Syncthing node, no other setup necessary. There’s no installers, no package management (but there are packages if you want to), no registration, no email, no logins, no password creation, no 2FA, no consents, no user agreements. Just download and run. Heck, setting up autostart on Linux server was more complex than just running the app itself!"
https://tonsky.me/blog/syncthing
Money quote: "No, seriously. It’s so simple I thought I missed something. But no. After you run that binary, you have a fully operational node of Syncthing. It’s ready to sync with any other Syncthing node, no other setup necessary. There’s no installers, no package management (but there are packages if you want to), no registration, no email, no logins, no password creation, no 2FA, no consents, no user agreements. Just download and run. Heck, setting up autostart on Linux server was more complex than just running the app itself!"
https://tonsky.me/blog/syncthing
tonsky.me
Computers as I used to love them
File synchronization can be fun and painless if you don’t have to deal with corporate bullshit.
Cosa significa hackerare qualcosa? Significa trovare nuovi modi per usarlo, oppure raggiungere lo scopo che ci si è prefissi in maniera più diretta. Ad esempio, l'uso di "vs" nelle ricerche con Google...
Money quote: "This got me thinking — if you passed the autocompleted terms from a Google ‘vs’ search back into another ‘vs’ search and kept going, you’d end up with a pretty graph network of terms that are linked."
https://medium.com/applied-data-science/the-google-vs-trick-618c8fd5359f
Money quote: "This got me thinking — if you passed the autocompleted terms from a Google ‘vs’ search back into another ‘vs’ search and kept going, you’d end up with a pretty graph network of terms that are linked."
https://medium.com/applied-data-science/the-google-vs-trick-618c8fd5359f
Medium
The Google ‘vs’ Trick
How ego graphs can help you learn about AI, play chess, eat healthier, buy a dog and find love.
Personalmente identifico il cambiamento con "la fine della famiglia". Mi riferisco alla mia famiglia di origine, borghese urbana e laureata, innestata in una serie di gerarchie sociali fatte da funzioni e altre famiglie. Tutti i ruoli, le combinazioni e soprattutto i giudizi su questo venivano di conseguenza. Adesso, non è più così. L'eccentrico è diventato il nuovo centro.
Money quote: "My real education as a teenager was:
1. Books I chose to read myself
2. Learning to program computers (taught myself)
3. Video games (found them myself)
4. Maths (school)"
https://nabeelqu.co/education
Money quote: "My real education as a teenager was:
1. Books I chose to read myself
2. Learning to program computers (taught myself)
3. Video games (found them myself)
4. Maths (school)"
https://nabeelqu.co/education
Nabeel Qureshi
Video Games are the Future of Education
Video games provide a much deeper understanding of most subjects than classical education does.
Sui negozi fisici della Apple ho anche scritto un libro. Ma su quelli di Microsoft non ho mai avuto l'ispirazione. Adesso che è annunciata la chiusura di tutta la catena (un centinaio di punti vendita nel mondo) capisco anche perché
Money quote: "L’annuncio della multinazionale di Windows spiega le motivazione di questa scelta indicando alcune ragioni principali: la continua espansione e successo dei negozi online e digitali e lo stop forzato per Coronavirus che ha comunque spinto dipendenti ed esperti di prodotto e tecnologie Microsoft a svolgere il proprio lavoro di assistenza e supporto ai clienti direttamente online e da remoto, attività che continueranno ad eseguire dagli uffici delle varie sedi Microsoft."
https://www.macitynet.it/microsoft-chiude-tutti-i-suoi-negozi-nel-mondo/
Money quote: "L’annuncio della multinazionale di Windows spiega le motivazione di questa scelta indicando alcune ragioni principali: la continua espansione e successo dei negozi online e digitali e lo stop forzato per Coronavirus che ha comunque spinto dipendenti ed esperti di prodotto e tecnologie Microsoft a svolgere il proprio lavoro di assistenza e supporto ai clienti direttamente online e da remoto, attività che continueranno ad eseguire dagli uffici delle varie sedi Microsoft."
https://www.macitynet.it/microsoft-chiude-tutti-i-suoi-negozi-nel-mondo/
macitynet.it
Microsoft chiude tutti i suoi negozi nel mondo
Apple Store, Coronavirus, e-commerce, Finanza, Internet, Mercato, Microsoft