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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Se siete artisti con una buona conoscenza della matematica e il pallino della programmazione, questo sistema per generare un Little Planet può essere la vostra nuova passione. Buon divertimento.

Money quote: "This is a handbook meant to explain the concepts and execution behind the "Little Planet Procedural" project, my directed study midterm project.

As some background, the project is meant as a case study of how code can create diverse and infinite art through basic techniques of procedural generation. It is inspired by the likes of No Man's Sky."

http://alanluo.com/procgen/midterm.html
Pensiamo in prospettiva, ma basandoci su dei numeri reali. Negli Usa si stanno ponendo una domanda: se il mondo sta cambiando così velocemente grazie alla quarta rivoluzione industriale - quella digitale - al punto che non sappiamo quali saranno i temi forti tra dieci-venti anni, come possiamo formare i giovani a scuola? La risposta è meno scontata del problema stesso, anche se risente in modo eccessivo secondo me dell'approccio quantitativo e neopragmatico tipico degli Usa.

Money quote: "In fact, forty percent of American undergraduates now major in business and management-related subjects, reading mainly textbooks and short articles, and rarely writing a paper longer than three pages. Further, the social bonds and skills formed in college today often center on extracurriculars that have little connection to cognitive development and collaborative problem-solving"

Domanda retorica per il pubblico: secondo voi chi se ne occupa dalle nostre parti di questo tipo di problemi in modo così esplicito? Il nostro sistema scolastico e la costruzione culturale che lo regge lo consentono?

https://qz.com/994810/the-most-forward-thinking-future-proof-college-in-america-teaches-every-student-the-exact-same-things/
Cerchiamo di avere un rapporto più sensato con le scienze. Impariamo ad esempio come si legge (e come si capisce) un paper di ricerca.

Money quote: "Reading a scientific paper is a completely different process than reading an article about science in a blog or newspaper. Not only do you read the sections in a different order than they’re presented, but you also have to take notes, read it multiple times, and probably go look up other papers for some of the details. Reading a single paper may take you a very long time at first. Be patient with yourself. The process will go much faster as you gain experience."

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2016/05/09/how-to-read-and-understand-a-scientific-paper-a-guide-for-non-scientists/
Breve storia orale di Crash Bandicoot. Ho detto breve? No, volevo dire interessante, ma breve direi proprio di no. Però quelli di Polygon sono parecchi bravi

Money quote: "To learn more about what happened along the way, we recently spoke to the entire development team, contractors, musicians, marketers and others, hearing a story of long nights, groundbreaking technology, unbearable crunches and expensive parties. However, not every story lines up the same way, with some feeling that Naughty Dog discredited their contributions by burying who actually created the flagship character."

https://www.polygon.com/2017/6/22/15820540/crash-bandicoot-an-oral-history
Tesla accelera con la Model 3. Ce la farà?

Money quote: "Despite all of these achievements in range, technology, and safety, Musk sounded grave about the road ahead. “The biggest challenge that we face here is ‘S Curve’ manufacturing,” he said, describing a ramp up of production that starts slow, then increases dramatically before tapering off. “That ‘S’ portion is us going through hell, basically.”"

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-29/tesla-s-model-3-arrives-with-a-surprise-310-mile-range
Scrivener 3: Il mio articolo per Macity
Prima che arrivi la censura in rete e la scelta degli argomenti che vogliamo approfondire o solo incrociare venga limitata, ecco un breve corso su come hackerare un'automobile. Perché è parecchio semplice, sapete? E ci sono più modi diversi per farlo.

Money quote: "The following is by no means an exhaustive tutorial. It instead aims to provide just enough information to get you up and running. If you want to dig deeper you can checkout the must-reads at the end."

https://medium.freecodecamp.org/hacking-cars-a-guide-tutorial-on-how-to-hack-a-car-5eafcfbbb7ec
Nella sua "monday note" Jean-Louis Gassée, ex prodigio di Apple, saluta la lunga carriera di Walt Mossberg, che coincide con la rivoluzione tecnologica della nostra epoca e l'ha raccontata in maniera unica

Money quote: "I’m taken back to my early days in the Valley and the miraculous sound of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Mercury News, and San Francisco Chronicle landing on my doorstep in the early morning. (Miraculous isn’t an exaggeration: There are no newspaper routes in Paris.) For a voracious reader, four news papers with coffee on the kitchen counter, this was heaven. For a geek it was doubly so: From 1991 on, it was an opportunity to revel in the wisdom of Walt Mossberg’s Personal Technology column in the WSJ."

https://mondaynote.com/a-salute-to-walt-mossberg-e3c562288f03
Breve storia del jailbreaking, ieri e oggi

Money quote: "The world's first jailbreaking step-by-step procedure, discovered in 2007, was posted online for all to see. Subsequent jailbreaks were used by millions of people. At one point, there was even a website—called jailbreakme.com—that was free for all to use and jailbroke your phone simply by visiting it."

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8xa4ka/iphone-jailbreak-life-death-legacy
Per tutti voi che siete intrappolati in qualche ufficio o in rapporti lavorativi gerarchizzati, una storia interessante su come emanciparsi ed evitare di commettere il peggiore errore che un neo impiegato possa commettere: cercare di sconfiggere il proprio capo (che ti ha detto che ti odia) al suo stesso gioco.

Money quote: "I endured a whole year’s worth of passive-aggressive power games, micromanagement, white-anting, factionalism, gaslighting, procedural pivots, bizarre performance measurements, and faint praise. It was like Westworld, only set in an open plan office, and instead of dying, you just had another performance review."

https://medium.com/@chrismayhap/i-quit-my-career-and-wrote-a-bad-novel-8be6b4005acb

Ah, poi la storia piega sul desiderio di scrivere un romanzo fantasy, che viene fuori davvero tremendo. Ma nella vita non tutte le ruote sono tonde, no?
Il mito dei nativi digitali. Cioè: i nativi digitali non esistono, e anzi sono pippe come quelli che li hanno preceduti. Disperatamente incapaci di fare multitasking, oltretutto.

Questa secondo me è una tesi molto interessante, degna di nota. E viene fuori per di più da un paper di ricerca, che la motiva in maniera abbastanza convincente. Per la scuola potrebbe essere una piccola rivoluzione, visto che l'approccio oggi è sempre basato su filosofie e non sulla ricerca.

Money quote: "Education policy is particularly vulnerable to political whims, fads and untested assumptions. From swapping evolution for creationism to the idea that multiple types of intelligence demand multiple approaches, generations of children are schooled according to dogma, not evidence. Surveys show, for example, that teachers and education experts subscribe to dozens of different and opposing ‘learning styles’. Under these, children can be categorized as activists or theorists, organizers or innovators, non-committers or plungers, globalists or analysts, deep or surface learners, and so on. Could the latest example be altering access to, and the provision of, technology in the classroom, simply because a new cohort is believed to be more familiar with it?"

http://www.nature.com/news/the-digital-native-is-a-myth-1.22363
Un audio/video che spiega Socrate, anzi il discorso di Diotima di Mantinea e la scala che porta dal desiderio carnale alla bellezza e alla moralità: tutto preso ovviamente dal Simposio di Platone. È una riduzione fatta da Radio 4 della Bbc.

Money quote: "Can sexual desire lead us to something that transcends the physical act? Socrates seemed to think so. In Plato’s Symposium, Socrates recalls the words of his apparent teacher of erotics, the priestess Diotima of Mantinea, who instructed him that lust was the first rung on a ladder leading upwards towards an appreciation of the form of beauty itself and, further, to morality and virtue."

https://aeon.co/videos/why-socrates-believed-that-sexual-desire-is-the-first-step-towards-righteousness
Vodafone ha messo online una bella mappa interattiva che permette di vedere la sua infrastruttura tecnologica e capire che tipo di connessione potete trovare dove siete, ovunque siate

http://globalnetworkmap.vodafone.com/