Apple, ecco come dovresti fare i tuoi MacBook Pro - il mio articolo per Macity

https://www.macitynet.it/apple-ecco-come-dovresti-fare-i-tuoi-macbook-pro/

Sta scoppiando la bolla del bike-sharing?

Money quote: “Just two days after China’s number three bike sharing company went bankrupt, a photographer in the south-eastern city of Xiamen captured a bicycle graveyard where thousands have been laid to rest. The pile clearly contains thousands of bikes from each of the top three companies, Mobike, Ofo and the now-defunct Bluegogo”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/nov/25/chinas-bike-share-graveyard-a-monument-to-industrys-arrogance

Wired Usa spiega bene cosa vuol dire la fine della Net Neutrality negli Usa - e in parte anche nel resto del mondo.

Money quote: "Because many internet services for mobile devices include limits on data use, the changes will be visible there first. In one dramatic scenario, internet services would begin to resemble cable-TV packages, where subscriptions could be limited to a few dozen sites and services. Or, for big spenders, a few hundred. Fortunately, that’s not a likely scenario. Instead, expect a gradual shift towards subscriptions that provide unlimited access to certain preferred providers while charging extra for everything else."

https://www.wired.com/story/heres-how-the-end-of-net-neutrality-will-change-the-internet/

Perso quasi quattro milioni di Bitcoin su poco più di sedici.

Money quote: “In the future, more bitcoins will be lost. But the rate at which they disappear will be much lower than in the past since, now that they’re so valuable, people will be more vigilant about keeping track of them (unlike this poor fellow out who threw away a hard drive with the key to 7,500 bitcoins). Meanwhile, there is a question of whether the Chainalysis findings mean bitcoin is more scarce than people assume—or if the market has already priced the missing coins into the currency’s current value.”

http://fortune.com/2017/11/25/lost-bitcoins/

“Shangri-La”, la space opera di Mathieu Bablet | il mio articolo per Fumettologica

http://www.fumettologica.it/2017/11/shangri-la-mathieu-bablet-mondadori-recensione/

Confondiamo gli effetti con le cause. Il problema non sono i movimenti e i leader populisti o il crollo della consapevolezza e del tessuto sociale, ma l’ignoranza alla quale ci stiamo abbandonando.

Questo articolo, che noi etichetteremmo come “bla bla bla sull’analfabetismo funzionale oltretutto americano” (credetemi, penso di sapere come ragiona un giornale), è una delle letture più importanti del 2017. Dentro c’è tutto quello che ci servirebbe.

Questa è la premessa:

Money quote: “Many of these poor readers can sound out words from print, so in that sense, they can read. Yet they are functionally illiterate — they comprehend very little of what they can sound out. So what does comprehension require? Broad vocabulary, obviously. Equally important, but more subtle, is the role played by factual knowledge”

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/opinion/sunday/how-to-get-your-mind-to-read.html

Questa è la cosa interessante:

Money quote 2: “Don’t blame the internet, or smartphones, or fake news for Americans’ poor reading. Blame ignorance. Turning the tide will require profound changes in how reading is taught, in standardized testing and in school curriculums. Underlying all these changes must be a better understanding of how the mind comprehends what it reads.”

Una pensatrice fenomenale e semi-sconosciuta anche a chi si occupa del suo campo, la filosofia morale: Philippa Foot

Money quote: "There is a clue in her reference to moral philosophy. For at least the past 200 years, people who have thought about these things have suspected – or hoped – that morality is the one thing that sets human beings apart from nature (or should one say, the rest of nature?). Nature is the realm of laws, stern and unbreakable, and morality that of freedom. Nature is how things are, morality how they ought to be. If there’s anything to these points of contrast, then what seems at first a mere platitude sounds more like an absurdity. We are not, in the relevant sense, part of nature – not even of that part of nature that consists in our fellow animals, and, still less, plants.

Have we anything to learn about morality from plants? This might well depend on that bigger question: are we, or aren’t we, part of nature? One of the many things that set Foot and her allies in philosophy apart from others of their generation was their refusal to make an either/or of it."

https://aeon.co/essays/how-philippa-foot-set-her-mind-against-prevailing-moral-philosophy

Tosto e non tutto condivisibile (ma cosa lo è?), però necessario: le quattro cose che ogni donna deve sapere nella cultura dello stupro.

Money quote: "Money was created by men, for men, to reward men’s skills. That didn’t matter a few decades ago when marriage meant the men who owned women provided food and shelter for them in a kind of quasi-slave relationship.

It matters a lot now. Women are told they are free, but so much of the work they do and the value they bring is deliberately ignored by our only valuing system. This fact alone puts invisible pressure on women to partner."

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/rape-culture-four-things-every-woman-needs-to-know-63961098eb85

Alcune considerazioni molto ragionevoli centrate sull’idea che anche l’acqua, quando è troppa, fa male.

Money quote: “Questa è la logica alla base di un consiglio attribuito all’investitore Warren Buffett: prima scrivi quali sono i tuoi 25 obiettivi principali nella vita, poi individua i cinque più importanti, concentrati su questi ed evita gli altri 20 come la peste, perché sono quelli che rischiano di distrarti di più, proprio perché contano, ma non sono le tue priorità.”

https://www.internazionale.it/opinione/oliver-burkeman/2017/11/28/tv-social-network-dipendenze

Che sia la volta buona e stia arrivando la fine dei social così come li conosciamo? E magari anche delle serie tv, aggiungerei speranzoso...

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/11/the-end-of-the-social-era-twitter-facebook-snapchat

Money quote 1: “Will a future generation look back in 10, 20, or maybe 100 years from now and wonder, mystifyingly, why a generation of humans believed in these platforms despite mounting evidence that they were tearing society apart—being used as terrorist recruitment tools, facilitating bullying, driving up anxiety, and undermining our elections—despite the obvious benefits and facilitations they provide? Indeed, some of the people who gave us these platforms are already beginning to wonder if this is the case. Last month, I wrote a piece detailing how some early Facebook employees now feel about the monster they have created. As one early Facebook employee told me, “I lay awake at night thinking about all the things we built in the early days and what we could have done to avoid the product being used this way.””

Money quote 2: “Yes, it’s true that we’ve heard this all before—that people are abandoning social media, that the platforms are doomed. The New York Times has written variations on that story so many times over, it could have been a standing column in the business section of the paper. But I do believe that this time is different, the beginning of a massive shift, and I believe it’s the fault of these social networks”

Men’s Health esiste ancora e pubblica articolo... beh stile Men’s Health. Come questo sull’orgasmo femminile che sarebbe un’ottima cura per molti mali. Donne, oggetti misteriosi...

Money quote: “Her focus: sex as a way to promote general health—as a treatment for depression, chronic pain, sleep disorders, even arthritis. Someday, Prause says, doctors could prescribe masturbation. “Natural, free, accessible—what more do you want from your health care?” she asks me.”

https://www.menshealth.com/sex-women/inside-the-orgasm-lab

Tutte le novità delle “nuvola” di Amazon. Il machine learning è più facile - il mio articolo per il Sole 24 ORE

http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/tecnologie/2017-11-30/tutte-novita-nuvola-amazon-machine-learning-e-piu-facile-103807.shtml

Incidenti nucleari di una volta, cinquantatre anni dopo

Money quote: "The courageous actions Hicks took that night and over the next several days were not publicized. The accident was not disclosed to the public until years later, when a government report on accidents with nuclear weapons included seven sentences about it. The report listed the accident as the nation's first involving a Minuteman missile."

http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/communities/belle_fourche/fifty-three-year-old-nuclear-missile-accident-revealed/article_653347a4-04e8-5c29-a778-3a6a6c3cfd84.html

Forse ci siamo: gli americani la stanno chiamando la "media apocalypse". La fine di una economia. E la pubblicità è solo uno dei motivi. Lo scenario è da film dell'orrore e questo è l'articolo che definisce lo stato dell'arte (The Atlantic è di proprietà della vedova di Steve Jobs, Laurene Powell).

Money quote: "Here is the briefest possible history of attention and advertising in the 21st century—they have both flowed from desktops to mobile devices and from publishers to platforms. In 2016, 90 percent of websites reported that unique visitors on mobile devices had eclipsed desktop; and 90 percent of the growth in digital advertising came from just two companies, Google and Facebook."

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/11/media-apocalypse/546935/

A San Francisco c'è un microscopico cinema in cui si guardano corti muti da un buco nel muro. Se vi capita, è divertente.

Money quote: "The small theater is the work of Laurie O’Brien, who created the Peephole Cinema in 2013 as a novel way to showcase films. O’Brien, who was originally trained as an animator, wanted to find a way to bring animations to a wider audience. She has also installed other similar cinemas in the Brooklyn and Los Angeles. She recently put one in San Francisco’s airport."

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/peephole-cinema

Il self-improvement ti rende una persona peggiore. Parola di questo tizio che l'ha praticato

Money quote: "Most people make poor choices. They don’t want to worry about money, or getting up early, or if what they do matters. They, however, would never consider these choices poor. That label is pure judgement on my part.

The problem is that with so much mindfulness, millions of mini comparisons, judgement itself becomes a habit. This is a common side effect of self-improvement. Since it’s all about getting better, you’re left with only two opinions of other people:

They’re better than you.

You’re better than them.

Whichever one you settle on, you lose. This is self-improvement’s dark secret."

https://medium.com/personal-growth/self-improvement-has-made-me-worse-a4cc23e93e7a

Questa è una che non sta tanto bene

Money quote: "I love being a writer. I really do. But I also put a lot of pressure on myself to succeed and build a successful business. And sometimes it all feels like too much."

https://writingcooperative.com/my-daily-routine-as-a-freelance-writer-9e494c4bf7ee

L’App di cui tutti parlano al momento (e che tutti prevedono verrà copiata di sana pianta nel giro di qualche settimana da parte dei colossi del web) si chiama HQ, ed è un quiz. Un normale quiz, in diretta, con tanto di presentatore (molto spigliato) e premio in denaro per i vincitori. Puoi giocare anche tu. Va in onda 2-3 volte al giorno (l’App ti avvisa quando), e il presentatore ti pone 12 o 20 domande che prevedono 3 possibili risposte, di cui una sola è corretta. Se rispondi esattamente (e hai poco più di 3 secondi per farlo), passi al turno successivo con tutti gli altri (ma ti dicono il numero di quelli che invece non ce l’hanno fatta). Se arrivi alla fine vinci il premio finale (che di volta in volta è tra i 1000 e i 2000 euro) ma devi dividerlo con quanti sono arrivati alla fine assieme a te (e possono essere tantissimi o pochissimi, dipende). Il tutto dura 10 minuti e, se io fossi un produttore televisivo - anche italiano - mi metterei subito a pensare a una versione in formato app di un quiz televisivo già famoso.

Link: http://apple.co/2jzjJ9w

L’assistente digitale Alexa di Amazon ora ci aiuterà anche nel business - io mio articolo per Il Sole 24 Ore

http://mobile.ilsole24ore.com/solemobile/main/art/tecnologie/2017-12-01/l-assistente-digitale-alexa-amazon-ora-ci-aiutera-anche-business-085954.shtml

Quantum computing e la fine della crittografia così come la conosciamo (ed è una cosa tremenda).

Money quote: “Now cryptographers think that a new kind of computer based on quantum physics could make public-key cryptography insecure. Bits in a normal computer are either 0 or 1. Quantum physics allows bits to be in a superposition of 0 and 1, in the same way that Schrödinger’s cat can be in a superposition of alive and dead states. This sometimes lets quantum computers explore possibilities more quickly than normal computers. While no one has yet built a quantum computer capable of solving problems of nontrivial size (unless they kept it secret), over the past 20 years, researchers have started figuring out how to write programs for such computers and predict that, once built, quantum computers will quickly solve ‘hidden subgroup problems’. Since all public-key systems currently rely on variations of these problems, they could, in theory, be broken by a quantum computer”

https://aeon.co/ideas/quantum-cryptography-is-unbreakable-so-is-human-ingenuity