Ramblings of a Software Craftsman
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C# 12 Primary Constructors
May 9, 2024
I wrapped up my C# 12 session at the ABP Dotnet Conference 2024, and I wanted to share the take-home points, at least about the most relevant features in...
In the pinewood
May 3, 2024
I went for a walk in the local pinewood the other day. It’s one of my favorite places, especially the least frequented parts, where one can walk for hours...
Quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson
April 29, 2024
I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me. – Ralph Waldo Emerson (debated, see here) The post...
Quoting Moxie Marlinspike
April 27, 2024
It’s very fast to build something that’s 90% of a solution. The problem is that the last 10% of building something is usually the hard part which really...
Quoting Ken Thompson
April 26, 2024
The moral is obvious. You can’t trust code that you did not totally create yourself. No amount of source-level verification or scrutiny will protect you from...
Tor: from the Dark Web to the Future of Privacy
April 26, 2024
This one looks like a promising read: Tor, one of the most important and misunderstood technologies of the digital age, is best known as the infrastructure...
Spellbound Contemporary Ballet's The Art of Fugue
April 22, 2024
Yesterday, Serena and I went to see Spellbound Contemporary Ballet’s The Art of Fugue, a performance based on J.S. Bach’s unfinished work. I have been...
Cowboy Bebop
April 19, 2024
I have been following Cowboy Bebop on Netflix (the anime, not the spinoff TV series). The opening is a visual and musical marvel; I’m enthralled by it. The...
Redis is forked
April 19, 2024
Vicki Boykis has a great piece on Redis’s recent vicissitudes. At the same time, she recaps where we stand and sings the praises of a project that many are...
AI isn't useless. But is it worth it?
April 18, 2024
Molly White’s experience with LLMs corresponds more or less with my own, but she is much better at recounting, critiquing, and drawing conclusions than I am....
I am speaking at ABP Dotnet Conf'24
April 15, 2024
I am thrilled to have the opportunity to present at an international conference once again. On May 9th, I will speak at the ABP Donet Conf'24. My session,...
Why I speak at conferences
April 11, 2024
Among the essential reasons I continue to make presentations at various conferences is that the preparation required to deliver good content forces me to...
Quoting snakeyjake
April 6, 2024
I wish I was morally bankrupt enough to be a productivity guru. I could, like, charge $50k to stand behind a podium in a hotel ballroom and spout nonsense at...
Timeline of the XZ open source attack
April 2, 2024
The so-called “XZ attack” is all over the internet these days, and for good reason. Over a period of over two years, an attacker using the name “Jia Tan”...
Listening to purchased music is the way
March 31, 2024
Happy Easter, everyone. This morning, I completed the long-overdue move of all my ripped CDs from my old 2012 MacBook Pro to the new one and, then, to my...
ChatGPT is the perfect Linux assistant
March 29, 2024
I spent the day doing remote maintenance on multiple Linux machines via ssh. The revelation is that ChatGPT is the bomb for these tasks: What does that...
William Adams: english advisor to the Shogun
March 26, 2024
I am not a fan of TV series. However, I have been following the Shogun miniseries with a fair amount of interest, mainly because I am intrigued by the...
From Bocconi to the Twin Mountains
March 18, 2024
Yesterday I went for a walk in the mountains. This tour starts from Bocconi (on the road to Muraglione Pass) and the nice humpback bridge that is just below...
Cannibalism as a way to honor the dead
March 16, 2024
As it appears, cannibalism was much more widespread than previously thought, and perhaps for more complex reasons than we think. To honor the dead, for...
Quoting Alice Rohrwacher
March 16, 2024
In a beautiful essay published in Waiting for God, Simone Weil reminds us that study serves to develop attention, and almost no matter what is studied, even...
Quoting Frank Herbert
March 14, 2024
I wrote the Dune series because I had this idea that charismatic leaders ought to come with a warning label on their forehead: “May be dangerous to your...
Quoting Lars Wirzenius
March 13, 2024
Take care of yourself. Sleep. Eat. Exercise. Rest. Relax. Take care of other people, as best you can. People are important. Software is just fun. –Lars...
Astral Gold by Dean McPhee [music]
March 11, 2024
Thanks to Giovanni Ansaldo’s convincing review on yesterday’s issue of Il Mondo podcast, my first Bandcamp purchase1 is the recently released Astral Gold...
Dirty Rat by Orbital, with Sleaford Mods [music]
March 11, 2024
I recently bought Dirty Rat, the absolute banger from Orbital’s 2023 Optical Delusion. It couldn’t be anything different, given that it’s a collaboration...
Voice dictation on iOS and macOS is underestimated
March 10, 2024
Most people likely already know and use the voice dictation feature in iOS and macOS all day, but I’ve only now seen the light. Yesterday, I discovered I...
Medieval monks also had focus issues
March 10, 2024
Medieval monks also needed help with focus and attention. Joel J Miller discusses this in What Monks Know About Focus, the latest issue of Miller’s Book...
I am presenting on OAuth2 at two conferences this month
March 5, 2024
I am speaking about OAuth2 and Open ID Connect with ASP.NET Core 8 at Rome .NET Conference 2024 on March 22 and then, less than a week later, at WebDay 2024...
Saturday beach walk
March 4, 2024
The post Saturday beach walk appeared first on nicolaiarocci.com.
Quoting Benedetta Tobagi
March 3, 2024
For those who have found their meaning, their place in the world, and what they feel they want to live for, death is just one part - inevitable, but not...
On founders doing customer support
March 2, 2024
I just came across this tweet by Aaron Levie: The best founders I know — no matter their company’s scale — thrive on doing customer support directly. There’s...
Astral Gold by Dean McPhee
February 29, 2024
Thanks to Giovanni Ansaldo’s convincing review on yesterday’s issue of Il Mondo podcast, my first Bandcamp purchase1 is the recently released Astral Gold...
Sick and tired of Spotify's music-consuming model
February 28, 2024
I’m growing sick and tired of Spotify’s music-consuming model. There are many compelling and sometimes conflicting reasons, most perfectly outlined in The...
REPLAY by Jordan Mechner
February 27, 2024
Jordan Mechner (@jmechner, creator of Prince of Persia) has written and drawn a graphic novel memoir, REPLAY. It’s out in French and will be released in...
Quoting John Carmack on AI
February 26, 2024
“Coding” was never the source of value, and people shouldn’t get overly attached to it. Problem solving is the core skill. The discipline and precision...
Beach walk
February 26, 2024
In a brigh Sunday morning, we went on a lonely beach walk Our third kid turned eighteen yesterday; she’s an adult now, and we’re left with no teenagers in...
Quoting Ran Prieur
February 24, 2024
There’s a common belief that suffering is necessary for pleasure, or that evil is necessary for good, like the change of the seasons. It’s one of those ideas...
SQLite foreign key constraints are disabled by default
February 22, 2024
Today, I learned that SQLite only enforces foreign-key constraints if explicitly instructed. I imagine this is well-known and trivial for the SQLite...
Quoting Ethan Mollick
February 20, 2024
Many skeptics about the impact of AI are focused on the flaws that LLMs have today: hallucinations, short context windows, slow answers, and so on. These are...
Default ASP NET Core 8 port changed from 80 to 8080
February 20, 2024
Today, I learned the hard way that the default port for ASP.NET Core 8 container images has been updated from port 80 to 8080, quite a remarkable breaking...
Monte Tiravento
February 19, 2024
Yesterday, I went on a hiking trip to Monte Tiravento. This majestic loop tour is uncommon compared to the classic woody image of the Parco Nazionale del...
Paying people to work on open source is good actually
February 17, 2024
From my experience as a maintainer of midly successful open-source projects, I have come to the conclusion that people who criticize accepting payment for...
Solo winter attempt at Cerro Torre
February 16, 2024
My mountaineering days are mostly left behind, and I miss them, so now and then, I look at some YouTube videos from the field specialists. Today, the...
AI generated videos just changed forever
February 16, 2024
Yesterday’s OpenAI launch of Sora is, as if always the case with OpenAI, mind-boggling. Marquees Browniee’s comment is spot-on, so much so as he’s obviously...
Content of Charles Darwin's personal library revealed for the first time
February 15, 2024
I’m always fascinated by these in-depth bibliography efforts, and this one, with its unique 300-page catalog detailing 7,400 titles from Charles Darwin’s...
Spinoza and the art of thinking in dangerous times
February 10, 2024
Technically, The New Yorker’s Baruch Spinoza and the Art of Thinking in Dangerous Times reviews a book on Spinoza. It is so well conceived that it also...
GitHub Wikis don't allow edits or pull requests
February 9, 2024
Today I learned that GitHub wikis are not editable online and do not support pull requests. You can clone and edit a wiki locally but not return your change...
Isolated indigenous people as happy as wealthy western peers
February 9, 2024
Interviews with people in remote communities challenge widely held perception that money buys happiness. People living in remote Indigenous communities are...
Ethan Mollick's first impressions on Gemini Advanced
February 8, 2024
Ethan Mollick, one of my few LLM/AI sources, just dropped his first impressions on Gemini Advanced, released today, but which he’s been testing for a month...
A new golden era of blogging?
February 8, 2024
After yesterday’s, another article on the modern era of blogging surfaced on my RSS feed. In A Golden Era of Blogging, Jim Nielsen boldly proposes that we...
The 20-year indie web cycle, maybe
February 7, 2024
The History of the Web has an interesting take on the resurgence of blogging and the indie web that seems to be occurring these days. With roots in the world...
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