Papa Francesco, le ostie senza glutine e un problema di dottrina che sembra banale ma tale, per il credente, non è.

Money quote: "Now, Francis and the Church that he presides over are taking steps to ensure that the holy ceremony of the Eucharist is not besmirched by any gluten-free products. In a recent letter to bishops written by Cardinal Robert Sarah, "at the request of Pope Francis," gluten-free bread is deemed "invalid matter" for the celebration of the Eucharist.

The Eucharist, or Holy Communion, is the ceremony instituted by Jesus Christ himself at the Last Supper, which consists of consuming bread and wine in order to commemorate Christ's sacrifice. Catholics believe that bread and wine are converted into the body and blood of Christ through a process called transubstantiation."

https://munchies.vice.com/en_us/article/bjx7z4/vatican-takes-a-stand-against-gluten-free-communion

Automattic, quelli di Wordpress, hanno chiuso il loro super ufficio di San Francisco, che più che un ufficio però era un bellissimo spazio di appoggio per dipendenti da sempre abituati a considerare il loro MacBook il vero posto di lavoro. Interessanti considerazioni strategiche su questo particolare aspetto dello smart working: il nomadismo

Money quote: "Automattic has always given its 550 employees the choice of working remotely; the San Francisco space was an optional co-working space, spokesman Mark Armstrong said. The company maintains similar offices in Cape Town, South Africa, and outside Portland, Maine, and gives employees a $250-a-month stipend if they want to use commercial co-working offices elsewhere. And if they’d rather work at Starbucks, Automattic will pay for their coffee."

https://qz.com/1002655/the-company-behind-wordpress-is-closing-its-gorgeous-san-francisco-office-because-its-employees-never-show-up/

Bentornato, Sanantonio - Un mio vecchio articolo per Il Post

http://www.ilpost.it/antoniodini/2013/05/23/bentornato-sanantonio/

Alieni, pianeti abitati, universi paralleli e multipli. Ecco le piccole sorprese che vengono da alcuni filosofi e studiosi medioevali che cercavano di non farsi scomunicare rimettendo in discussione alcuni elementi centrali del pensiero di Aristotele.

Money quote: "But this 13th century disagreement between two university departments, arts and theology, would prompt medieval thinkers to consider ideas that might seem surprisingly modern. By rejecting a key Aristotelian principle, Tempier inspired later medieval scholars to develop a multiverse theory and to consider the possibilities of faraway planets and alien beings."

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/medieval-multiverse-theory

Cercasi stagista in Social Media per la Night’s Watch.

Money quote: "If you love telling brand stories through digital mediums, can think very conceptually about social media, and love working alongside hardened criminals wearing identical black cloaks, then this might be the perfect step in beginning your career"

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/social-media-intern-wanted-at-the-nights-watch

Il nuovo capitolo de Il pianeta delle scimmie non è un film leggero: racconta un’America profondamente mutata, in cui noi siamo diventati loro, le scimmie.

L'articolo di Antonio Dini: http://www.fumettologica.it/2017/07/war-pianeta-scimmie-recensione-film/

L'orgasmo come non l'avete mai né pensato né sperimentato (se siete donne).

Money quote: "Orgasm works its ecstatic ways by triggering some of the deepest regions of the brain, such as the amygdala and the hypothalamus, to produce neurotransmitters that cause pleasure, such as dopamine and oxytocin as well as endorphins. In fact, scientists say that an orgasm is the most powerful event that can happen in the brain short of an epileptic seizure, which to a large degree it resembles"

https://aeon.co/essays/delayed-orgasm-the-sexual-technique-thats-better-than-sex

È morto George A. Romero. Un ricordo di Sentieri Selvaggi

Money quote: "Se in questi giorni hai già letto qualche articolo commemorativo in sua memoria, sono sicuro che ti sarai appuntato tutti i titoli da vedere. Non lasciartene sfuggire nessuno, mi raccomando, è importante. Ma se stai leggendo da uno smartphone, com’è probabile che sia, allora non perdere per nessun motivo al mondo Diary of the Dead, e sono sicuro che guardandolo capirai perché."

http://www.sentieriselvaggi.it/in-memoria-di-george-a-romero/

La linguistica ha un problema. Come scienza non funziona. E le cose si stanno facendo sempre più complicate. Anche perché si regge tutto su Noam Chomsky, a quanto pare. E noi non riusciamo neanche a capire se il linguaggio sia una necessità biologica o un costrutto sociale.

Money quote: "You might think that a simplifying turn would be easy to explain to a lay audience, but unfortunately that’s not the case. Even linguists have trouble understanding it. Frankly I’m not sure I really understand it myself. The drive toward minimalism here is actually a drive toward abstraction. Not boiling down the facts to see what they all share in common, but abstracting away from observations until what we have is so remote that it defies appeals to concrete models, metaphors or even formal, mathematical-type statements"

https://aeon.co/essays/is-the-study-of-language-a-science

Se quando modero un evento me ne trovo uno del pubblico che fa così, gli faccio spegnere il microfono, altroché

Money quote: "When you stand up, speak to the attendees, not just the speaker. Take the opportunity to connect with the audience. If you are sitting towards the front of the room, angle yourself so you can look at others."

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/07/heres-how-you-can-make-an-impact-at-a-conference

Se ne parla poco - da noi piace di più riempirsi la bocca con la "app economy" - ma c'è un problema. Il modello emergente di abbonamento anziché vendita (al limite distribuzione gratuita con acquisti in-app) sta creando non pochi mal di pancia. Le app (mi riferisco a quelle per iOS e macOS) date con un canone mensile si trasformano in servizi ma tali, in realtà, non sono quasi mai.

Money quote: "Subscription-based pricing isn’t a suitable model for every app, and it places a big burden on developers. They must iterate and update frequently to justify the cost of a subscription, but they must not alienate existing customers by doing too much — consider every angry tweet and status update every time Twitter or Facebook make a major change."

https://pxlnv.com/linklog/harmer-lightroom-manifesto/

Non ho avuto tempo di segnalarlo ieri, ma se n'è andato Martin Landau, l'attore aveva 89 anni e da noi lo ricordiamo soprattutto per "Spazio 1999".

Money quote: "The lanky, offbeat-looking veteran of the Actors Studio, for he which he was currently West Coast co-artistic director, had many ups and downs in his career. His greatest successes (three Oscar nominations and one win) came later in life when he returned to character roles like the one that first won him notice, as James Mason’s sinister gay henchman in Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest.”

He was Emmy-nominated five times, and most of his leading man roles came on television, most notably as Rollin Hand, a master of disguise on “Mission: Impossible.” He later spent a couple of years starring in syndicated sci-fi series “Space: 1999,” on which, as with “Mission: Impossible,” he co-starred with then-wife Barbara Bain."

http://variety.com/2017/film/news/martin-landau-dead-dies-ed-wood-mission-impossible-1202497128/

Come vengono interpretati i parametri provenienti dalla riga di comando? Una cosa per nerd nerd nerd. (*nix, Windows e C/C++)

Money quote: "On *nix, you launch a program using the execve API (or it's cousins execvp, execl, execlp, execle, and execvp). The interesting thing about these APIs is that they allow the caller to specify each of the command line arguments"

http://daviddeley.com/autohotkey/parameters/parameters.htm

L'America rurale, quella delle infinite periferie, delle piccole città sospese tra le due coste, è completamente flippata. E Donald Trump la sta ulteriormente trasformando

Money quote: "During the campaign, Trump’s descriptions of inner-city crime and hopelessness often seemed cartoonish to urban residents, but not to rural voters—in Mesa County, Trump won nearly sixty-five per cent of the vote. Pueblo, another large rural Colorado county, has a steel industry that’s been on the wane since the nineteen-eighties. Its county seat now has the state’s highest homicide rate, and last election the county switched from blue to red. Far from Denver and Boulder, there are many places where an atmosphere of decline has lasted for two or more generations, leaving a profound impact on the outlook of young people. Matt Patterson told me that as a boy he had always hoped to escape his home town. In 1985, when he was twelve, almost fifteen per cent of the homes in Grand Junction were vacant, because of the effects of Black Sunday."

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/24/how-trump-is-transforming-rural-america

L'etica della startup, spiegata bene

Money quote: "As you can probably tell by looking around, every employee at our startup is 23 years old. On the morning of your 24th birthday, the barcode on your employee ID stops working and you can no longer enter our building. We do this to ensure our company has a ceaseless, youthful energy. We believe old people are displeasing to look at and also, bad at ideas."

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/welcome-to-our-startup-where-everyone-is-23-years-old-because-we-believe-old-people-are-visually-displeasing-and-out-of-ideas

Parlavamo ieri di cose nerd nerd nerd? Beh, che ne dite di una guida metodologica per principianti (con indicazione degli strumenti appropriatI) al reverse engineering? Ottima lettura per il fine settimana, no?

Money quote: "So, here we are, you downloaded your first binary and now … what to do ? RE requires two types of analysis, static and dynamic. The static analysis will help you to have a better overview and understanding on what going on within the binary, whereas the dynamic analysis will allow you to follow, step by step, the changing that occurs within each register, which system calls are used, etc."

https://0x00sec.org/t/re-guide-for-beginners-methodology-and-tools/2242

Una guida passo passo per utenti macOS all'installazione e uso di Tor.

Money quote: "The easiest way to install the Tor software on your Mac is to download the Tor Bundle form the Tor website. Visit the Tor Bundle Download Page. The website should recognize that you are on a Mac, and offer up a link to click to begin the download. Just click that rather large purple button to begin the download."

http://www.mactrast.com/2017/07/install-user-tor-browser-mac/

Il mondo non è in bianco e nero, per cui molti esempi, incluso quello che segue, possono apparire estremi o "stonati", o in quel che modo fuori fuoco. Ma la realtà sottostante rimane ed è più che tangibile.

Il lavoro definisce le persone (è anche nella nostra costituzione) ma metterlo davanti alla propria vita privata, alla propria famiglia (partner e figli), ai mille aspetti della propria personalità e identità che non sono definibili da una prestazione lavorativa contestualizzata, vuol dire andare a investire in un tipo di felicità piuttosto rischiosa e squilibrata. Il lavoro non è la nostra famiglia. Ma c'è chi non lo capisce o preferisce non capirlo.

Money quote: "Besides, don’t you already have a family or group of friends who feel like blood relations? The modern company isn’t a street gang filled with orphans trying to make it in the tough, tough world. Trying to supplant the family you likely already have is just another way to attempt to put the needs of the company above the needs of your actual family. That’s a sick ploy.
The best companies aren’t families. They’re supporters of families. Allies of families. There to provide healthy, fulfilling work environments so when workers shut their laptops at a reasonable hour, they’re the best husbands, wives, parents, siblings, and children they can be."

https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-company-isnt-a-family-d24f26c3f3fe

Volete usare Slack (o strumenti analoghi) per il vostro gruppo di lavoro e magari non siete particolarmente tecnici e votati all'analisi. Beh, la cosa migliore in questi casi è vedere come fanno gli altri e cercare di capire se hanno esigenze simili e che si adattano. In questo tipo di esercizio io trovo stimolante ma anche utile cercare template fuori dall'ordinario: alle volte serve a capire meglio l'astrazione che sta dietro certe scelte.

Che ne dite di guardare come viene usato Slack da un dipartimento di polizia americano per coordinare il lavoro degli agenti?

Money quote: "Citta notes that the way law enforcement units have organized themselves in Slack mirrors the way they work in the real world, with police officers and investigators statewide congregating in channels like #narcotics, #crimes, and #ctwide-intel. The #BOLO channel (code for “Be on the lookout”) is like a communal bulletin board where officers post information about suspects they’re looking for who might be on the move."

https://slackhq.com/fighting-crime-with-slack-fbd296bc31db