Ci siamo: Mostly Weekly 393

L’arte di conversare da sé esemplificata.

Umberto Eco, gli studenti che diventano più scemi con i chatbot, un romanzo di 1.300 pagine, le casette di KLM, Gloria Steinem e tanto altro.

Questa settimana mi sono proprio divertito!

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/393/

Letture per la domenica

Finalmente uno che parla chiaro. Avere tanti libri non ti rende più colto: ti pone un problema di logistica. E io ne so qualcosa...

Money quote: "The number sounds impressive. People hear it and assume a certain grandeur — a private library with rolling ladders, mahogany shelving, one of those brass lamps that appear in photographs of Oxford colleges. The reality is more prosaic. Twenty-eight thousand books, at an average thickness of roughly 2.5 centimetres, is 700 linear metres of shelving. That's the length of seven football pitches, or — in the metric that matters — considerably more shelf space than exists in my house.

This is the first thing you learn when your collection crosses from "large" into "logistical situation": the books will outgrow any space you put them in. Not eventually. Quickly. The relationship between books and shelf space is not linear; it is exponential, because you are always acquiring faster than you are shelving, and the shelving itself takes space that could hold more books. It is a problem with no equilibrium. I have been solving it for twenty years, and I am further from a solution now than when I started."

https://www.shelvd.org/blog/28000-books

Le migliori interfacce della fantascienza.

Money quote: "The Fritzes award honors the best interfaces in a full-length motion picture in the past year. Interfaces play a special role in our movie-going experience, and are a craft all their own that does not otherwise receive focused recognition. (Looking at you, Academy.) Awards are given for Best Believable, Best Narrative, and Best Interfaces (overall). Sometimes I like to call out other things I spotted in my survey."

https://scifiinterfaces.com

C’è una nuova versione del formato Png. Tanta roba.

Money quote: "this is exciting news. PNG is back to its former glory after its progress stalled for over two decades. Did you know the U.S. Library of Congress, Library and Archives Canada, and the National Archives of Australia recommend PNG? It is important that we keep PNG current and competitive. After 20 years of stagnation, PNG is back with renewed vigor!"

https://www.programmax.net/articles/png-is-back/

Imparare a programmare in codice macchina, perché no? Per noi che eravamo ragazzi alla fine degli anni Settanta-inizio anni Ottanta, era l’altra metà della mela (la prima metà era il Basic nelle sue mille varianti)

Money quote: "One problem with machine code is that there isn't simply one standard. There are many different "instruction sets" depending on the processor. Most modern PCs use x86-64 machine code, but newer Macs, Raspberry Pis, and most mobile devices use ARM. There are other architectures out there, especially as you go back in time. The goal of this article won't be to give you a deep understanding of any particular instruction set, but instead, to give you enough information about how machine code typically works so you cannot be afraid of machine code. So we will start by having our examples be in ARM 64-bit (also written as aarch64). Once we have a decent understanding of that, we will talk a bit about x86-64."

https://jimmyhmiller.com/machine-code-isnt-scary

A casa non uso una smart tv. Invece, uso un grande schermo-monitor non smart e senza neanche il decoder del digitale terrestre, collegato con un buon cavo alla mia Apple Tv. Per vari motivi, tra i quali sicurezza e privacy. Ecco qui perché la privacy.

Money quote: "One of the simplest ways Apple TVs ensure better privacy is through their setup process, during which you can disable Siri, location tracking, and sending analytics data to Apple. During setup, users also receive several opportunities to review Apple's data and privacy policies. Also off by default is the boxes' ability to send voice input data to Apple."

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/06/all-the-ways-apple-tv-boxes-do-and-mostly-dont-track-you/

Il tuo amico chatbot è stato progettato e costruito per manipolarti. Questa è la triste realtà.

Money quote: "The findings add to evidence that the tech industry's drive to make chatbots more compelling may cause them to become manipulative or harmful in some conversations. Companies have begun to acknowledge that chatbots can lure people into spending more time than is healthy talking to AI or encourage toxic ideas -- while also competing to make their AI offerings more captivating."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/05/31/ai-chatbots-user-influence-attention-chatgpt/

Il nuovo film di Resident Evil fa finalmente paura - la mia recensione per Fumettologica

https://fumettologica.it/2026/09/resident-evil-zach-cregger-recensione-film/

Quand'è che un articolo diventa «il solito spiegone»? E quando lo scroolling diventa doomscrolling? E l'AI ci terminerà tutti?

Il numero 394 di Mostly Weekly è pieno di domande. L'anteprima:

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/394/

Lettura per la domenica

Come funzionano le videocamere per la sorveglianza che le amministrazioni non solo americane comprano a tonnellate? Ecco, maluccio, diciamo: sono piene di contraddizioni e mancate regole che permettono forme incontrollate di sorveglianza non si da parte di chi.

Money quote: "Flock’s cameras photograph passing vehicles and send the images and other data to the company’s servers. There, Flock’s system presumably reads the license plate and can identify characteristics such as the vehicle’s color, make, and model. Flock then makes these time-stamped records searchable by whichever local agency owns or has access to the cameras. But in many cases, Flock’s system also allows other police departments from all over the country to search those cameras too, as part of the company’s national network. In Alpharetta, Georgia, for example, WIRED found that records from the city’s Flock cameras were accessible to more than 2,000 agencies, including police departments, colleges, airports, and, inexplicably, the Office of Inspector General for the federal General Services Administration."

https://www.wired.com/story/hackers-flock-camera-data-shows-how-system-works/

archivio: https://archive.is/Xy8dz

Di epidemie sociali ne abbiamo viste tante, ma come la mania di essere stati rapiti dagli alieni, secondo me no. (Potrei chiosare dicendo che l’America è un grande paese, ma anche no).

Money quote: "Alien abduction sparked not only interest but controversy -- and on multiple fronts. The claims of witnesses tested the limits of how far society should respect the testimony and beliefs of others. Questions were raised about just how reliable personal memories were. And academics debated which experts and which methods were best suited to determine the truth."

https://aeon.co/essays/the-short-dramatic-history-of-alien-abduction-in-the-us

Cloudflare ha fatto quello che secondo me dovrebbe essere lo sforzo maggiore da parte di tutti quelli che scrivono codice: ha ottimizzato alla grande salvando 100 terabyte di spazio grazie ai nuovi approcci sulla cache di 1.1.1.1 (se non sapete cos'è un DNS, e che potete usare questo gratuitamente, è il momento di chiedere lumi a ChatGPT).

Money quote: "Big Pineapple, the platform behind 1.1.1.1, Gateway DNS, DNS Firewall, AS112, and several other Cloudflare DNS services, stores over 250 billion DNS cache entries at any given time. At that scale, wasting a single byte per entry costs more than 250 gigabytes of memory across our fleet.

Five successive changes to how cache entries are stored in memory cut the per-entry footprint by over 50%. Across our fleet, these changes freed up roughly 100 terabytes of memory, equivalent to the amount of RAM in 130 of our Gen 13 servers. The cache also got faster. Insert throughput rose 43% and lookup latency dropped 19%, as fewer allocations and better memory locality meant we did not trade speed for space."

https://blog.cloudflare.com/dns-cache-memory-optimization-1111/

Io mi sono inventato le mie "trabahanze" metà lavoro e metà vacanza, ma El Pais invece aveva fatto di meglio trovando le "coolcations", concetto che mi sconfinfera molto sopratutto con questo gran caldo.

Money quote: "Cuando agobia el calor tórrido, los granos de arena actúan como brasas y el agua está más caliente que el aire, muchos sufridos veraneantes elevan la vista al norte de España en busca de vacaciones refrescantes y reparadoras. El acrónimo de moda se llama *coolcations*, acrónimo de *cool *(fresco y guay) y *vacations *(vacaciones), que alienta ese creciente éxodo veraniego al norte peninsular pese al riesgo de lluvias y alguna que otra ola de calor que la humedad convierte en insoportable"

https://elpais.com/elviajero/escapadas/espana/2025-07-25/de-san-vicente-de-la-barquera-a-zarautz-10-playas-de-la-costa-norte-de-espana-refrescantes-y-gastronomicas.html

Vietiamo o quantomeno mettiamo i paletti all'intelligenza artificiale per chi scrive libri o fa film. Alé.

Money quote: "E qui sta il cuore del dilemma. Perché ci scandalizziamo per un libro scritto da una macchina? Forse perché ci sentiamo un po' presi in giro. Forse perché anche se viviamo in un mondo parallelo di connessioni e social e di realtà generate dagli algoritmi, nel profondo crediamo ancora nel primato dell'essere umano. Forse perché l'intelligenza artificiale saprà anche scrivere un libro bellissimo, e allo stesso modo saprà fare un film altrettanto bello, scegliendo i tasti giusti per piacere al lettore/spettatore medio, perché l'algoritmo è potenzialmente onnisciente e tende alla perfezione. Ma la vera letteratura, il vero cinema, la vera arte, è proprio lo scarto dalla perfezione. È lo scarto da ciò che è già stato creato, è la ricerca dell'insondabile.

E qui casca l'asino. Perché l'algoritmo questo non saprà mai farlo. Impedire alle macchine di scrivere come gli essere umani è impresa impossibile. Difendere l'autenticità della creazione umana (e quindi mettere dei paletti, dire per esempio che si può usare l'Ai nelle fasi di ricerca per un testo, oppure delimitare le aree di utilizzo dell'Ai nella produzione di un film) è l'unico modo per impedire all'essere umano di creare (e quindi di pensare) come una macchina. Su questo credo che dovremmo essere tutti d'accordo."

https://www.lastampa.it/cultura/2026/09/03/news/l_algoritmo_non_sa_creare_vera_arte_l_autenticita_sta_nell_imperfezione-15728685/

https://archive.is/s0UpS

Quando la fantascienza diventa un mattone: i romanzi più lunghi di sempre - per quelle volte che avete proprio tanta voglio di leggere. Ovviamente per Fumettologica

https://fumettologica.it/2026/09/fantascienza-mattoni-romanzi-piu-lunghi/

Avete presente l'eclisse di sole? Iberia ha auto una bella idea e ha portato un po di giornalisti e altre persone in volo per vederla. Qui il servizio video di El Pais. Divertente e veloce.

Money quote: "Este 12 de agosto, 99 personas sabían que las nubes no iban a impedirles ver el eclipse solar total en España, porque iban a poder observarlo por encima de ellas. Todos ellos viajaban en el vuelo especial que Iberia ha fletado para contemplar este fenómeno a 10.000 metros de altura."

https://elpais.com/videos/2026-08-13/vivir-el-eclipse-solar-desde-un-avion-no-se-puede-explicar-con-terminos-cientificos-es-un-sentimiento.html

In Finlandia si preparano al peggio. Anche le donne. E lo fanno da tempo.

Money quote: "The training course, known as Nasta, is one of 40 put on by the Women's National Emergency Preparedness Association around Finland. Others include cybersecurity, mental resilience, wilderness skills, snowmobile driving and information influencing. After the invasion of Ukraine, applications for the courses soared. Not only does Finland have a history of war with its neighbour, but they also share a 830-mile land border."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/23/fires-first-aid-and-guns-meet-the-finnish-women-training-for-war-with-russia

Letture per la domenica

Una cosa che rende la vita un po' più interessante e amara al tempo stesso è parlare con gli scienziati e usare un po' di metodo scientifico per fare calcoli, proiezioni eccetera. Ma tanto il riscaldamento globale non esiste, no?

Money quote: "A climate scientist half-jokingly once told me that if billionaires really wanted to save the planet, they would buy everyone a heat pump, the ingenious appliance that extracts heat from even frigid winter air to warm a home, then reverses in the summer to act like an air conditioner. A heat pump is far more efficient than even the most efficient of gas furnaces. And because heat pumps just need electricity to run, you can plug them into a grid powered by renewable energy and avoid burning fossil fuels altogether"

https://grist.org/energy/heat-pumps-expensive-bought/

Gli articoli che spiegano come e perché mangiamo e come e perché dovremmo fare diversamente tirano sempre un casino, lo so. Secondo me è per questo che ne scrivono così tanti.

Money quote: "Rigid industry-dictated slots for eating in turn created opportunities for tycoons to mould our tastes and behaviours, including John Harvey Kellogg, who did much to influence breakfast as we know it. He and fellow members of the Seventh-day Adventist church set up sanatoriums in the US in the late 19th century as part of the “healthy living” movement and it was here that the promotion of bland breakfasts like cereal – “a pale pabulum made of wheat”, as Fisher had it – became linked with teachings on moral correctness. This lighter breakfast was also handy for employers who didn’t want their workers full on hearty food as it was thought to make them sluggish. A century or so later the entrepreneurs behind the now ubiquitous pre-packaged sandwich created the conditions for captains of industry like Alan Sugar to boast about how lunch for his staff, if anything, was a “sandwich slung on their desk” as they worked."

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/07/should-we-ditch-the-idea-of-three-meals-a-day

E se l'AI avesse una traiettoria paragonabile a quella di Kubernetes? (una roba un po' tecnica da sapere prima, lo ammetto, però il concetto se leggete l'articolo viene fuori chiaro chiaro)

Money quote: "Once that happened, innovation moved to Kubernetes. Whatever the platform was missing, someone started building: networking, storage, observability, deployment tools, policy engines. A large number of startups were created, and legacy vendors joined in as well. Almost every component required to run Kubernetes in production became available as open source. Cloud providers and companies including Mesosphere/D2iQ, Rancher, Red Hat and Nutanix then built businesses around integration, enterprise features, support and operations.

Kubernetes did not win simply because its repository was public. It became a neutral substrate that engineers, cloud providers and enterprise vendors could all extend to fit their customers’ needs. Common interfaces and vendor-neutral governance gave everyone confidence that they could build on it.

The lesson I took away wasn’t that open source always wins. It was that once an open platform that people can customize becomes the industry’s center of gravity, no single vendor can match the combined rate of innovation around it.

I think AI is approaching the same point."

https://tobi.knaup.me/2026-07-25-open-weight-ai-is-having-its-kubernetes-moment/