My 5 cents on #ChatGPT, #Bing's new #AI and this AI craze that is sweeping over Linkedin... unpopular opinion: this may be the worst thing that happened to the Internet in the past two decades.

https://www.barbinirocco.com/2023/02/chatgpt-or-what-have-we-done-to-the-internet/

The tragedy of having tech hobbies is that you can so easily lose track of time and lose tons of sleep.

I've just realised it's almost 1 in the night and I was still writing code to assist me in the search for the solution of a cryptogram.

#cryptogram #python #nerd

I tried to buy multicolored carrots online... got them black and white instead.

#groceries #DadJokes

Quote:
"Before booking a first-class ticket, parents must make an informed decision as to whether they think their child will be a disruption, said Elaine Swann, the founder of the Swann School of Protocol, an etiquette school in Carlsbad, Calif. This means being conscious of the length of the flight, the time of day that they’re flying and the age of the child. If it seems like the child will be a disruption to others, parents should select another section of the plane, Ms. Swann suggested."

I'm appalled by the absurd sense of entitlement that would lead a first class traveler to think that they have an intrinsic right to be left alone, while those flying coach class can be disturbed at will. As a parent, I wouldn't oppose adults-only sections, but they should be distributed across all classes of seats, and each class should also include child-friendly sections.

NYTimes: Babies in First Class: Which Side of the Aisle Are You On?
Babies in First Class: Which Side of the Aisle Are You On? https://nyti.ms/3vi2Gy4

#AirTravel #children #parenting #flying #FirstClass

Transposition ciphers have an elegance of their own, which makes solving them a particularly satisfying endevour.
It was fun solving the E-6 and E-7 cryptograms (an amsco and a complete columnar) from the ND-2022 issue of The Cryptogram.

#cryptogram #cryptography #ACA

Gosh, every time I try to write something longer than an sms with my phone, I miss the phisical keyboard on my old blackberry (more than 10 years ago).

#blackberry #keyboard #typing #smartphone

So, after deciding in a few days that Mastodon may indeed be the one social media that has a positive impact on my life (vs. all the rest which I abandoned at various times), here's my belated #introduction.

I'm a quasi-middle-aged Italian nerd. I like the usuals (reading, movies, travelling, star trek, star wars except episodes 7 to 9), I love my children and my wife, I'm definitely lgbtqi-friendly and I'm most definitely an atheist. I'm also a member of the ACA (see https://www.cryptogram.org for reference), and I'm learning to play rugby with a local team.

Regarding the boring stuff (aka how I manage to get food on the table), I have a degree in foreign languages and I speak several at different levels (Italian, English, Spanish, French, German, Arabic), but my career has always been in digital. I'm currently a senior solutions engineer for a US tech firm that serves the marketing and advertising market, meaning I get stuff implemented on other companies' websites and systems. This comes with a good salary and the feeling that I'm selling myself to the devil (yeah, I collaborate with the nice people that give us growing consumerism, the related environmental problems, and all the crap that typically comes out of for-profit social media).

A lot less boring, I hope, I'm fed up with selling myself to the devil, therefore I'm filling up a large part of my spare time to study and practice information security. My idea is to skill up, collect some useful certifications to prove it, network with the infosec crowd to get some much needed visibility... and then sacrifice my career and a part of my salary on the altar of becoming a better version of myself, and doing a job that has a positive impact on the world. Or at least more positive than what I do now. I'm hoping to finally accomplish that between 2024 and 2025.

Also, please feel free to always (politely) correct anything stupid I may say. I can take negative feedback as an adult.

#hacking #cryptogram #rugby #leftist #socialism #nerd #InformationSecurity

Interesting #NYTimes article (gift link, so you can read it without a subscription) on the impact of layoffs and resignations at #twitter. Doing some easy math, they should already be below 2500 staff, with total organisational chaos and dwindling numbers. In the end, the aftermath of this mess could have the effect of decades of #union work: a case study in how tech companies MUST keep employees happy or they won't survive.

Elon Musk’s Twitter Teeters on the Edge After Another 1,200 Leave https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/18/technology/elon-musk-twitter-workers-quit.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbfqYhlSVUaCybJUNMnqBqCgvfeh7E4gXm7KTWOSnNe0OUJH4WavljKf6lufcB2ximaWJlBLLorDrRU_9NoAnZMGUOus4fW39MMOTk0ooa-GW9s0pzGAL1ptG62PmX8dbdznPjv7xmKdTHsDfGIhiUqc1wxpoB3Ng3_gQx-zajEEOF239J1zK1hUsg8HWFcEXHM6_r4CBx-O8GFbgXf4mQ0U-JZXzLUmr2M-u5KMVUSWR-dEiQJsStr48hcOdgXIK7_MxchHcP1ir4UAWBtR5y7Zb0MQhxa9206yzYYoXINDQ#