Altra settimana, altro giro fuori porta. Questa volta sto partendo per gli Stati Uniti, costa occidentale. Fino a domenica prossima quindi gli aggiornamenti saranno più saltuari.

A New York sta arrivando rapidamente il giorno del giudizio per le licenze dei tassisti: la bolla cresciuta con il monopolio appaltato agli autisti-padroncini è sradicata da Uber e dagli alri servizi. E chi ha fatto debiti per investire in un “medallion”, una licenza, adesso è rovinato.

Money quote: “Owning a yellow cab has left Issa Isac in deep debt and facing a precarious future.

It was not supposed to turn out this way when Mr. Isac slid behind the wheel in 2005. Soon he was earning $200 a night driving. Three years later, he borrowed $335,000 to buy a New York City taxi medallion, which gave him the right to operate his own cab.

But now Mr. Isac earns half of what he did when he started, as riders have defected to Uber and other competitors. He stopped making the $2,700-a-month loan payment on his medallion in February because he was broke. Last month, it was sold to help pay his debts.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/10/nyregion/new-york-taxi-medallions-uber.html

Se le quattro del mattino sono l’ora migliore per lavorare, forse siamo veramente in difficoltà e bisognerebbe invece cambiare il resto del giorno, quello che non riesce più ad essere produttivo. Comunque, da Tim Cook in giù, ecco la razza di quello che si svegliano alle tre perché la loro vita nel l’orario normale non ci sta più dentro (secondo me è quello il problema e la risposta non è alzarsi alle tre, ma comunque...)

Money quote: “Early mornings are all about good decisions for Karen Schwalbe-Jones, the 48-year-old owner of Harmony Studios, a Pilates-based gym in West Hollywood, Calif. She says she started waking up at 4 a.m. about 13 years ago, when her son was born, as a way to fit in her own workout before shifting into business-manager mode.

She used to sleep until 5 a.m. and hope to fit in a run or Pilates session in the afternoon, but says the day would inevitably slip away from her, and by 2 p.m. she was irritable. “It wasn’t good for anyone,” she recalls”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-4-a-m-is-the-most-productive-hour-1471971861

A 91 anni è morto Hugh Hefner, il “più ricco copy-editor del pianeta”, fondatore dell’impero di Playboy, un personaggio strabiliante, unico, discusso, estremamente rilevante, dallo stile di vita unico. Lo racconta un ottimo obituary del New York Times. Quest’uomo è stato un pezzo importante della storia del costume americano e mondiale, il cui ruolo e soprattutto il cui impatto non devono essere sottovalutati. E comunque, what a life!

Money quote:

In an editorial in Playboy’s inaugural issue, the young publisher purveyed another life:

“We enjoy mixing up cocktails and an hors d’oeuvre or two, putting a little mood music on the phonograph and inviting in a female acquaintance for a quiet discussion on Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex.”

This scene projected an era’s “premium boys’ style,” Todd Gitlin, a sociologist at Columbia University and the author of “The Sixties,” said in an interview. “It’s part of an ensemble with the James Bond movies, John F. Kennedy, swinging, the guy who is young, vigorous, indifferent to the bonds of social responsibility.”

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/27/obituaries/hugh-hefner-dead.html

“Marvel’s Inhumans”, una serie tv sontuosa e infantile, con poco da dire | la mia stroncatura per Fumettologica

http://www.fumettologica.it/2017/09/marvel-inhumans-recensione-serie-tv/

Non è una verità assoluta, ovviamente, ma a me piace molto

È incredibile che così pochi abbiano fatto così tanto per la rivoluzione digitale. In questo caso Claude Shannon. Ma cosa sono alla fine i bit di informazione?

Money quote: "Shannon – mathematician, American, jazz fanatic, juggling enthusiast – is the founder of information theory, and the architect of our digital world. It was Shannon’s paper ‘A Mathematical Theory of Communication’ (1948) that introduced the bit, an objective measure of how much information a message contains. It was Shannon who explained that every communications system – from telegraphs to television, and ultimately DNA to the internet – has the same basic structure. And it was Shannon who showed that any message could be compressed and transmitted via a binary code of 0s and 1s, with near-perfect accuracy, a notion that was previously pegged as hopelessly utopian. As one of Shannon’s colleagues marvelled: ‘How he got that insight, how he even came to believe such a thing, I don’t know.’"

https://aeon.co/essays/how-a-polymath-transformed-our-understanding-of-information

Se pensate che Trump, Russia, Corea del Nord e riscaldamento globale non bastino a darvi l’ansia prima di addormentarvi, ecco un altro motivo. Ci siamo. È iniziata l’epoca in cui gli antibiotici non funzionano più. E adesso?

Money quote: “Last August, a woman in her 70s checked into a hospital in Reno, Nevada with a bacterial infection in her hip. The bug belonged to a class of particularly tenacious microbes known as carpabenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, or CREs. Except in addition to carpabenem, this bug was also resistant to tetracycline, and colistin, and every single other antimicrobial on the market, all 26 of them. A few weeks later she developed septic shock and died. For public health officials like Patel, that case marks the end of an era, and the beginning of a new one.”

https://www.wired.com/story/the-post-antibiotic-era-is-here-now-what/

L’inchiesta di Spotlight, il team investigativo del Boston Globe, che rivela le debolezze della FAA e la possibilità per i criminali di registrare e usare aeroplani negli Usa in stato di pressoché completo anonimato.

Money quote: “A Spotlight Team investigation has found that lax oversight by the Federal Aviation Administration, over decades, has made it easy for drug dealers, corrupt politicians, and even people with links to terrorism to register private planes and conceal their identities. With the US stamp of approval — signified by a number on the tail fin that always begins with the letter “N” — owners often find more freedom from scrutiny and anonymity while traveling. This has allowed criminals and foreign government officials to mask illicit activities or keep wealth hidden from their home countries.

The registered owner of the crashed twin-engine Piper, a company called Aircraft Guaranty, is part of a nearly invisible private industry that sometimes operates from computer terminals inside FAA offices in Oklahoma, busily registering planes on behalf of foreign nationals — and working in a system that allows them to hide their names from the public. More than 1,000 planes are registered in Aircraft Guaranty’s name at an address in a Texas town of 2,500 that doesn’t have an airport. But it’s enough to give clients both anonymity and coveted US registration for their planes.”

https://apps.bostonglobe.com/spotlight/secrets-in-the-sky/series/part-one/

Marea, il cavo sottomarino che traversa l’Atlantico voluto da Microsoft e Facebook, il mio articolo per La Stampa

http://www.lastampa.it/2017/09/27/tecnologia/news/microsoft-e-facebook-assieme-per-marea-per-il-nuovo-cavo-dati-atlantico-6i1d49ml8GJRVwchSJ6ZVP/pagina.html

Sto per rientrare in Italia e volerò Delta (San Francisco verso New York e poi da là verso Milano). Proprio oggi Delta annuncia che offrirà gratuitamente i servizi di messaggistica sui suoi voli per promuovere le tecnologie installate negli ultimi dieci anni. Ma solo a partire da ottobre. Mannaggia...

Money quote: “Free messaging will be available on all Gogo-enabled Delta flights, including all aircraft with two or more cabins. Customers will be able to access free messaging through Delta's Wi-Fi portal page, airborne.gogoinflight.com. Free mobile messaging will be for text use only and does not support the transfer of photo or video files.”

http://news.delta.com/delta-offer-free-mobile-messaging-flight

Il problema adesso non è soltanto un attacco nucleare da parte della Corea del Nord, ma anche un incidente di proporzioni bibliche, se continuano i test. I cinesi pensano infatti che il tipo di sperimentazione (scavare un buco in una montagna, metterci la bomba, farla esplodere, misurare i risultati) possa portare a devastazioni molto pericolose per la Corea stessa e per i vicini, segnatamente la Cina. A Pechino non sono felici di questa idea.

Money quote: “Another test might cause the whole mountain to cave in on itself, leaving only a hole from which radiation could escape and drift across the region, including China, he said.

“We call it ‘taking the roof off’. If the mountain collapses and the hole is exposed, it will let out many bad things.”

Sunday’s blast was followed by an earthquake eight minutes later, which China’s seismic authorities interpreted as a cave-in triggered by the explosion.”

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2109725/north-koreas-nuclear-test-site-risk-imploding-chinese

Ho un PC con CPU da 24 core e il mouse va a scatti, grazie Windows 10 - il mio articolo per Macitynet.it

https://www.macitynet.it/cpu-24-core-non-si-muove-mouse/

A volte ritornano: X62 è il Thinkpad nato a Shenzen - il mio articolo per Macitynet.it

https://www.macitynet.it/volte-ritornano-x62-thinkpad-nato-shenzen/

Essere incinte senza sapere chi è il padre. La vita diventa all’improvviso più complicata. Ma c’è un modo per ripensarla.

Money quote: “Today, I don’t feel any pain or regret. I just feel love and thankfulness that a situation that felt like “the worst thing to ever happen to me” became the best thing. I don’t feel any shame — I left all of that behind me a long time ago”

https://medium.com/@kaytmolina/i-didnt-know-who-my-baby-s-father-was-1a785a39e164

Se ne stanno occupando un po’ tutti: il futuro del lavoro con l’arrivo massiccio di una nuova generazione di robot e con la intelligenza artificiale che cambia molto se non tutto. La prospettiva del World Economic Forum è interessante soprattutto perché centrale rispetto ai ragionamenti che si stanno facendo sui giornali e nei think tank.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/06/the-future-is-automated-but-what-does-that-really-mean-for-jobs

Una serie di bancarelle per la vendita di oggetti usato spalmate su 950 chilometri circa, a cavallo tra Michigan e Alabama. È il mercatino della Route 127, con personaggi variegati. Il tutto in un video che dura pochi minuti. Interessante.

Money quote: "Featuring a loveable array of bargain-hunters, decluttering novices and unusual artists, Elvis Loses his Excess, and Other Tales From the World’s Longest Yard Sale collects scenes from the annual Highway 127 Yard Sale, which stretches some 600 miles along US Route 127 from Michigan to Alabama. Driving the sale’s path and capturing the people she meets along the way, the US director Riley Hooper crafts a charming and heartening road-trip film about the multitude of meanings, large and small, carried by our stuff."

https://aeon.co/videos/tiger-rugs-elvis-impersonators-and-jesus-paintings-scenes-from-a-600-mile-yard-sale

È il formato a cambiare il contenuto. Anche per la musica pop.

Ottima lettura sull’industria dei media.

Money quote: “Throughout the history of recorded music, formats have helped shape what we hear. Our ideas about how long a single should be date back to what could fit on a 45 RPM 7" vinyl record. AM radio meant mono recordings, rather than stereo, and producer Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound—with its cavernous echo and massed instruments—was built for it, offering plenty of depth through a single speaker. Video killed the radio star. Ringtones birthed the quick-hit digital chirps of snap music. The requirements for American Top 40 FM radio, in particular, grew so byzantine by the early 2010s, when blaring, mathematically precise hits reigned supreme, that an industrial-strength supply chain of super-producers and songwriters emerged to fulfill them.”

https://pitchfork.com/features/article/uncovering-how-streaming-is-changing-the-sound-of-pop/

Quando l'ingegno e la casualità si sposano il loro frutto può essere succoso e rinfrescante. Da dirigente del marketing a figurante di televisione e cinema, otto anni di vita intensa e piena di soddisfazioni nel luccicante e rutilante mondo dello spettacolo. Ovvero, mamma guarda come ho sconfitto la crisi.

Money quote: "Eight years ago, I’d never have imagined I’d be playing the VIP bestie of the supermodel Coco Rocha. Or, for that matter, casually strolling by Matt Damon, pretending not to be aware of his scripted meet-cute on a New York City sidewalk. In 2009, I’d lost my job as an ad sales and marketing executive at a publishing company and was having trouble finding a new one. The recession was affecting most businesses, and unemployment had reached its highest level in 25 years; months of interviews and rejections had me searching desperately for new avenues. Unexpectedly, I’d find my first days back at work on a film set, as an extra. What initially seemed like a temporary gig turned into a viable, even unexpectedly stable, way to make a living while also learning the nuts and bolts of a fascinating industry."

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/09/my-life-as-an-extra/541212/

Magnum PI, Miami Vice, Starsky e Hutch. Un articolo di Quattroruote che racconta le supercar della tv anni Ottanta. Breve e incisivo.

Money quote: "Che fine hanno fatto le auto usate nei telefilm più famosi degli anni 80? Alcune sono state demolite, altre rivendute. Su altre ancora aleggia il mistero. E capita pure che qualche sopravvissuta finisca all’asta per ben cinque volte senza trovare acquirenti. Ecco cinque storie sulle auto che hanno fatto sognare intere generazioni."

https://www.quattroruote.it/news/curiosita/2017/02/03/auto_da_telefilm_ecco_che_fine_hanno_fatto_le_regine_delle_serie_tv_piu_amate.html