prealpinux

As I'm getting older I tend to appreciate more and more simple and essential things, both in life and technology.

Year after year I realized that tech companies tend to overcomplicate their products with tons of functionalities that only few people really use.

Selling a product as the best in the market is not enough if I've to spend months understanding how this product works.

A long learning curve will probably let those companies loose customers.

While there are some interesting applications for the metaverse (e.g. remote working), there are also a lot of risks related to this possible future web development.

Many companies including META are investing a lot of money to bring metaverse into reality. Reason is simple: metaverse is a kind of Second Life (do you remember it?) with steroids.

A virtual world packed with crypto wallets that will let you buy and sell virtual things and that allows big tech companies to take a step further on targeting ads to you.

I do hope to be wrong, but that's the kind of web we might see in the future.

There are several reasons that make blogging a good choice still Today.

Let's focus on three of them.

1. You can control everything

Colours? Themes? No problem, you can decide everything with no constraints.

2. Indipendence

If you are self hosting your blog then you're the boss. If you don't want to self host your blog a good solution may be a platform like Write.as / Writefreely that offers you a great way to blog without getting crazy.

3. Your data is yours

Make sure to do regular backups of your blog in order to avoid any problem in case of hacking or update failures. Future migration to other blogging platforms it's your choice.

I guess I'm not the only one who has seen many book blurbs without knowing their name.

They're on many books, promoting them (yes, it's marketing!):

A blurb is a short promotional piece accompanying a piece of creative work. It may be written by the author or publisher or quote praise from others.

Source: Wikipedia

If you are interested in book blurbing then you can read this article:

https://lisaferland.com/book-blurb/

AI technology has many problems (like every new revolutionary technology) and there are many boundaries to put on them.

Anyway I believe AI technology cannot be completely stopped, just regulated.

There are many decision to be taken by governments, but that's part of the game.

With the upcoming AI revolution and integration with Bing, Google & Co. the paradigm underlying search queries will change.

AI will reply to user questions with a natural language without the need of providing a list of websites as happened till now.

This may change the way we access the web, replacing the idea behind it forever.

Thinking is a good habit too.

That's why I'm mixing them together in this sort of microblog.

There is only one simple rule here: there are no rules!

If you want to become a blogger you've to remind yourself that it's a long jouney and not a short run.

Long term commitment is needed for your blog to reach an audience.

Keep it in mind!

“Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.”

Plato

Sometimes I feel a stranger for myself.

I think our inner self is more complicated than we usually think.

“Il successo non è definitivo, il fallimento non è fatale: è il coraggio di continuare che conta”. – Winston Churchill

Ogni volta che falliamo in qualcosa impariamo a evitare lo stesso errore. Inoltre, il fallimento insegna la resilienza.

Ecco perché il fallimento fa parte del processo di apprendimento umano ed è una pietra miliare del metodo scientifico.

It seems that Today the weather is quite unsure... That said we decided to go out for a short walk in the surroundings.

Sometimes it's hard to remember how pleasant can be to breath fresh air in a natural environment till you do it.

“My key to dealing with stress is simple: just stay cool and stay focused.”

Ashton Eaton

Last working week was very hard and I'm quite tired in these days.

Luckily during weekends I can have enough time to charge my batteries again to afford next challenges.

“Shrinkflation is the process of items shrinking in size or quantity, or even sometimes reformulating or reducing quality, while their prices remain the same or increase.”

Source: Wikipedia

The process of reducing quantity (or quality) of a product trying to keep the same price level is not (in general) a good commercial strategy in my humble opinion.

Why shrinkflation exists

Inflation is hitting raw material and energy costs, that's why producing the same quantity of a product costs more to companies.

There are few strategies companies can assume to afford this situation:

• keeping the same product prices reducing profits;
• increasing the cost of their products;
• using shrikflation to mask the increased prices.

Why shrinkflation is not good

From a consumer perspective hidden shrinkflation is a kind of fraud.

First of all companies are used to mask quantity reduction behind some little tricks like keeping the same packaging of the product even if the quantity is reduced.

But if customers are used to buy 500 gr of pasta and now they buy 400 gr they will soon or later realize to have been gabbed.

Shrinkflation also complicates the process of comparing products.

It is better to buy 450 ml of milk at 1,85 eur or 500 ml at 2.15 eur?

If you are not Albert Einstein you will need a calculator to compare prices.

I'm quite sure customers are considering these practices against their interests, exposing all the brands applying them in a bad light.

Marketing managers, where are you?