Mostly, I Write

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/

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

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

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/

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/

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/

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/

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

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/

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

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

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/

Ok, è un po’ complesso, ma proviamoci lo stesso: lo faccio fare a Siri, che è brava a fare i riassunti. Eccolo. L'autrice di questo articolo esplora la rappresentazione del matrimonio in letteratura, notando la sua rappresentazione spesso negativa e repressiva. Mette in evidenza libri come "Sucker Punch" di Scaachi Koul e "An Honest Woman" di Charlotte Shane, che sfidano queste narrazioni presentando resoconti sfumati e gioiosi del matrimonio. E mette anche in discussione la necessità per gli scrittori di giustificare le loro rappresentazioni positive del matrimonio, suggerendo che il desiderio stesso è una spiegazione valida e convincente. Money quote: "FOR YEARS, I resisted the idea of marriage the way I did any life outcome I was expected to deliver irrespective of want. If a piece of paper were the certifiable difference between calling a love true or false, then that love was rendered false by definition. I didn't nurture any wedding fantasies in childhood--not the dress, not the party, not even the spouse--save for one: I stood up from the head table while the shape in a tux who sat next to me looked on in adoration. A mic appeared in my hand. Then, I gave a zingy, sexy speech that made the entire room laugh and blush and cry before it radically remade their understanding of desire. Eventually, I realized this was not a fantasy of becoming a wife. It was a fantasy of becoming a writer." https://thewalrus.ca/are-women-allowed-to-be-happy-in-their-marriages/

Dungeon Crawler Carl: un uomo, una gatta e la fine del mondo - piacevole scoperta fatta per la mia rubrica su Fumettologica https://fumettologica.it/2026/09/

I polpi, animaletti molto intelligenti con otto tentacoli, sono tutti figli di una mutazione genetica che ha reso il loro cervello e sistema nervoso quello che è (molto intelligente). Affascinante. Money quote: "Now, researchers have discovered a mysterious mutation in some octopuses that might explain their intelligence. A study published in the August 17 issue of the journal Current Biology reveals that the eight-limbed creatures can produce proteins with extreme accuracy thanks to a variation never seen in any other animal. Although there is no direct evidence that the adaptation is linked to expanded octopus brainpower, only a lineage of creatures with enlarged nervous systems and that can carry out complex behaviors appears to have the mutation." https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-are-some-octopuses-so-smart-the-answer-might-lie-in-a-never-before-seen-mutation-that-helps-them-accurately-build-proteins-180989319/

Guardare i reel e gli altri video sui social fa male, molto molto male. Anzi, di più. Money quote: "Cognitive control helps people balance immediate pleasures against longer-term goals, and impairments in this system are linked to conditions such as depression, anxiety, ADHD, and addiction. Short-video platforms present rapid, algorithmically curated streams that are built for continuous, low-effort consumption. Prior behavioral research has tied both internet addiction and smartphone addiction to weaker self-control, and separate neuroimaging work has documented disruptions to reward and cognitive-control circuits in people with behavioral addictions. Despite this, few studies had directly tested whether the act of watching entertaining short videos itself suppresses the brain’s cognitive control regions. The Zhejiang University team set out to answer that question, along with a second one: what neurochemical factors might explain why this suppression varies from person to person?" https://www.rathbiotaclan.com/tiktok-videos-deactivate-key-cognitive-brain-regions/

Rallegratevi tutti perché è tornato Elmar Burchia, l'unica firma autorevole del Corrierone (scherzo, eh! però il senso della notizia di Elmar noialtri ce lo sognamo) Money quote: "Carlo III non ha bisogno del passaporto britannico Nel caso di re Carlo III, la spiegazione è quasi paradossale: il passaporto britannico è emesso a nome del sovrano. La stessa famiglia reale britannica lo chiarisce sul proprio sito ufficiale: il Re non ha bisogno di possedere un passaporto perché il documento viene rilasciato in suo nome. Tutti gli altri membri della famiglia reale, compresa la regina Camilla e il principe di Galles, ne hanno invece uno." https://viaggi.corriere.it/news/chi-puo-viaggiare-senza-passaporto-solo-3-persone/

Negli Usa si comincia a riflettere seriamente sul lavoro da remoto, che ha stravolto l'economia facendo cambiare i prezzi delle case, spostare gli assi urbanistici e provocando tanti altri cambiamenti. Money quote: "Although these five cities are not necessarily representative of the country as a whole, their experiences help to illustrate the breadth of the impact of remote work, showing how its rise has played out in places with varied economies and tax structures, and what it could mean for the future. Researchers also interviewed national experts on office vacancies, city finances, and urban development to provide additional context. The effects of remote work on cities have been manageable so far, but city leaders should be concerned that they are not happening in isolation: Cities are also struggling with rising costs, reduced state and federal support, and fragile economies, among other challenges.6 Even if remote work on its own is not sufficient to cause cities lasting harm, it could result in harm in combination with these other factors. Encouragingly, city leaders are not complacent—they are trying to adapt to remote work and renew downtown vitality. The outlook for cities will depend in large measure on the success of these efforts and the degree of support they receive from state and federal policymakers." https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/reports/2026/05/the-remote-work-challenge-lessons-from-5-cities

"Harness" vuol dire "imbracatura", quella cosa che si usa ad esempio quando si fanno le scalate in montagna. Ma il verbo, "to harness", ha un significato più ampio e vuol dire "sfruttare" oltre che "imbrigliare". Applicato all'intelligenza artificiale, è la chiave per capire cosa sono gli agenti. Money quote: "Others have written (simplistically) that Agent = Model + Harness. Here the word Harness refers to an Agent Harness. But what is an agent harness? Agent harnesses use AI models to create AI agents, and their first application was for coding. Now, agent harnesses sit at the core of all types of AI agents and understanding how an agent harness works will help you understand what an AI agent is. An agent harness is a piece of software that provides an environment for an AI model to operate within. Unlike most AI models, you as an end user can own your own agent harness." https://earendil.com/posts/what-is-a-harness/

Letture per la domenica Un momento importante della vita, una riflessione sulle tre cose importanti che hanno avuto un impatto sulla sua maturazione. Money quote: "My father passed recently, and he was twice my age. I am approximately the same age that he was when I was born, and I am now “the old generation” - there’s no one left in the generation above me. At the same time, I recently joined a company that skews younger-than-me. When I joined Google in 2011, I had just turned 30, and was in the mainstream demographics of Google in 2011. There were a bunch of more senior folks, with the very senior ones being in their 50s and having completed stints at Bell Labs. I admired a lot of these “greybeards” (even though this is a sexist term - what’s the right female equivalent? There were a few very senior female engineers that I would love to include). So perhaps it is natural that I am reflecting on “what were the important realizations that I made since my early 20s that had a profound impact on the way I think about the world”? In some sense: What are the insights I had that made me “more mature”, for some positive definition of “mature”?" https://thomasdullien.github.io/posts/2026-08-21-three-important-steps-in-my-maturation-process/