La mia intenzione (o forse farei meglio a dire la mia speranza) per l’anno prossimo è quella di continuare ad essere costantemente attivo all’interno del mio blog. Mi sono reso conto che nel corso del 2023 ho postato più di 200 volte 😱 (ok, la maggior parte erano solo aggiornamenti di stato o fotografie), ma è comunque più di quanto mi sarei aspettato.
Sono infatti convinto che i blog giochino ancora un ruolo essenziale nell’ottica di un web indipendente e decentralizzato rispetto alle Big Tech.
Stanno volando gli stracci tra Tuta e Proton e francamente ne avremmo fatto anche a meno. 😖
Queste diatribe secondo me non fanno che generare confusione negli utenti e non incentivano il passaggio da Gmail & co a servizi più rispettosi della privacy.
Le email sono un mezzo di comunicazione intrinsecamente insicuro in quanto nato in un epoca pioneristica dell’informatica nella quale nessuno si preoccupava di privacy, hackers ed agenzie governative.
Il 2024 si sta avvicinando a grandi falcate ed è arrivato il periodo nel quale iniziare a pensare ai buoni propositi per il nuovo anno. Il consiglio che questa volta voglio darvi è quello di pensare di aprire un blog, non è mai stato così semplice gestirne uno!
Infatti da poco tempo si sono affacciate diverse piattaforme WriteFreely perfettamente integrate nel fediverso alle quali potersi iscrivere. Oltre allo storico noblogo.org si sono aggiunte anche log.
Non sono ancora intervenuto nel dibattito su Threads e colgo l’occasione per farlo ora. Sicuramente l’ingresso di Meta nel fediverso porterà degli sconvolgimenti, anche se è presto per capire che piega prenderanno gli eventi.
Una cosa però la devo ricordare, queste big tech devono rendere conto di ciò che fanno ai propri azionisti e portare degli utili. Nulla di male, ma abbiamo già visto cosa significa tutto ciò in termini moderazione e di privacy per gli utenti.
Lasciata la macchina nel centro di Ponte Tresa (VA) si attraversa il valico di confine che porta al comune di Tresa (Svizzera). Da qui occorre salire verso la chiesa di San Bernardino ed il castelletto che si trovano nella parte alta del paese. A questo punto sarà sufficiente attraversare la strada e seguire i cartelli gialli fino a Via dei Ronchi lungo la quale troverete un cartello dei sentieri con indicata la tempistica per raggiungere Pura.
La camminata di oggi si trova non lontano da quella che abbiamo fatto qualche giorno fa. Questa volta però partiremo dal centro del comune di Sangiano (VA) ed imboccheremo la Via Monte Nero (non lontano dal Municipio). La strada è abbastanza stretta, ma è asfaltata e percorribile anche in auto. Noi invece abbiamo preferito farla a piedi dal centro del paese. Abbiamo percorso tutta la strada (è composta da molti tornanti ed è in salita) fino a quando diventa sterrata per poi raggiungere in pochi minuti Borgo San Clemente a Caravate, un piccolo nucleo di case posto su Monte Sangiano.
Ieri abbiamo fatto una bella camminata nel varesotto. Lasciata l’auto nei dintorni dello spaccio della Lindt siamo saliti in direzione di Bregazzana tramite la vecchia strada che passa per i boschi. Giunti al piccolo centro abitato siamo saliti verso la chiesetta (Piazzetta Don Ernesto Essi) da dove inizia il sentiero all’interno del Parco dei Fiori che vi porterà prima all’Alpe Ravetta e poi al Pian Valdes da dove si può proseguire per il Monte Chiusarella.
Oggi breve camminata dal centro di Caravate (VA) sino all’omonimo belvedere con una bella vista sul Lago di Varese e quello Maggiore. Purtroppo il sentiero non era per nulla segnalato e siamo riusciti ad arrivarci solo grazie alle indicazioni di una signora ed allo smartphone. La vista però ha sicuramente valso la fatica nel trovare il posto. 😉
Bella domanda.
Sicuramente ci sono alcuni vantaggi nell’utilizzare queste reti sociali, ma allo stesso tempo quali sono i rischi?
Dove inizia la privacy? Quanto valore ha la mia privacy? Sono disposto a fornire i miei dati alle grandi aziende tecnologiche e ai loro software di intelligenza artificiale?
Devi rispondere a domande come queste per poi decidere se vale la pena utilizzare social mainstream come Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok etc…
Potresti al contrario optare per un modo diverso e decentralizzato di accedere ai social, quello legato al fediverso.
Maps are not always a representation of a territory. For years, Swiss cartographers have been hiding drawings in maps. They did it as a joke and to get away from the routine: in some cases the National Topographical Office took notice of it after a long time.
Read the full story here: Swisstopo
Il giro di oggi parte da Meride (Ticino - Svizzera) per arrivare alla cima del Monte San Giorgio che è Patrimonio UNESCO.
Tempo di percorrenza: circa 1:40 / 2:00 ore (andata) ed 1:40 ore (ritorno)
Attrezzatura consigliata: scarponi da trekking e bastoni
Periodo consigliato: tarda primavera / primo autunno
Si parte dal centro dell’abitato di Meride nei pressi della chiesa seguendo le indicazioni per Cassina - Monte San Giorgio.
La prima parte del percorso è lungo una ripida mulattiera che vi porterà fino alla località Cassina (886 m/slm) in circa un’ora.
I have tried Nostr (a new protocol for decentralized social media) and would like to give a personal & non-technical verdict on this system.
First doubt: if the average user is already struggling to use Mastodon at first glance, I can imagine how they might find themselves overwhelmed by such a system.
Second doubt: the fact that it is uncensored is a good thing, but also a major Achilles’ heel. As far as I understand it, there is in fact no content moderation.
After talking about self-hosting and introducing my blogging journey let me talk about the platform I’ve used to blog for 4 years till I recently left.
I do not remember how I found Write.as, but I tried it just because I was curious to understand how it worked.
The essential user interface and the markdown editor with no frills attracted my so much that I decided to start blogging with them.
I’ve recently written about the drawbacks of self-hosting. In that article I talked about it from a generic and technical point of view.
Let’s get more personal now. 😉
Many years ago I was self-hosting Wordpress for my blog, but at some point I realized I was spending more time upgrading, customizing & fixing problems than writing something on it.
This situation was so frustrating that I decided to stop blogging many times because I had a sort of internal conflict.
Self-hosting is great: you control the server, the software & your data. That’s all. Or not?
I think there is a lot understimation about the drawbacks related to self-hosting.
I self-hosted Wordpress for several years and during that time I had some issues while upgrading it, also theme and plugin conflicts where always behind the corner.
Wordpress is a great piece of sofware and very versatile. It is easily customizable, but this can also be a problem once we talk about compatibility.
Inspired by Manton blog post I’ve done a recap of the countries I’ve visited over the years.
Italy Switzerland France Austria Germany Netherlands Spain Greece United Kingdom San Marino Republic Vatican State Principality of Monaco Principality of Seborga (that’s the only unrecognised micronation I’ve visited so far 😉)
Over the years I’ve tried several note taking apps and after using them I came to conclusion that many are overcomplicated for my personal needs.
All I need in my daily routine is a short list of things I have to do (or to remember).
I believe Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) can be useful for some people, but not for me (at least not in this moment).
Simplicity is all I need, so a smart To-Do list is perfectly fine.
When we think about smart homes we usually look into positive things like controlling lights, temperature, security and connected devices.
But are these smart homes truly smart?
A part from the enthusiasm for technology every smart device has its own app and configuration accounts (not talking about security holes).
A solution may be the new Matter standard, which was born in order to offer:
Simplicity; Interoperability; Reliability; Security. It's hard to say if Matter will solve all actual problems of our smart homes, but probably it will be an important step to the right direction.
Years of research have shown again and again that the way choices are posed affects our actions.
Source: “What Should We Watch Tonight?” On the Concept of Choice Architecture
I recently read an article that made me reflect on how often we are inclined (myself first) to use sophisticated web services and apps that propose to help us be more productive.
Sometimes alternative solutions are very easy and simple.
The blog post talks about how the author replaced note-taking apps by simply opening a new mailbox used only for this purpose.
This is certainly a creative solution that can actually be interesting for many people that don't need complicated features but only to keep track of their notes on the go.
I agree with postpsychosis, we usually tend to discuss without discussing. That's make sense to me especially because we are immersed in a society always online.
Lately I started to appreciate to wake up early in the morning. From my point of view it's one of my personal life hacks.
The reasons why I really like to be an early riser are several:
I have more time for myself; I go to bed early in order to wake up early; I spend less time in traffic to go to work.
“Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster.”
Sun Tzu
When we talk about security there are many good practices you can follow in order to minimize the risk of being hacked (strong passwords, 2FA, etc..).
One of them is being updated about past and present data breaches.
For this reason I use haveibeenpwned.com, a great free service that provides you information if your personal data have been leaked.
At the beginning there were Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator and I've always preferred Netscape Navigator.
Then Mozilla released Firefox and I've chosen it as my favourite browser for years.
Recently I was forced to switch from Firefox to Brave Browser because I realized that a Chromium based browser is ligther and more reactive on my old notebook.
That's not good as I would have preferred to use Firefox, but Mozilla have created a very heavy piece of software.
I've always been skeptical about all that crypto enthusiasm that lead us to a sort of a crypto bubble.
I'm not against Bitcoin or blockchain, but I'm aware that behind the scenes there is much more speculation than we think.
Technology may be good, but the way we use it may be bad.
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.
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.
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.