The last few months have been quite intense, both workwise (where things continue to go rather well) and on a personal level (where the cultural difference we are experiencing still seems difficult to overcome, and we are struggling a bit to make new friends, although we have been to a very fancy 2000’s party last week where we met a nice couple).

However, the weather is on our side; it’s still warm enough, and the thought of returning to the cold Italian weather in just over a month doesn’t fill us with enthusiasm.
We have planned a short trip to Sequoia National Forest and Death Valley for the long Thanksgiving weekend. Since we don’t celebrate it, we take the opportunity to explore the surroundings and discover California.

I discover new blogs to follow and new lives to dig into almost every other week. The real problem is that lately, wherever I turn, the amount of content in front of me becomes more unsustainable every day. Books, music, video games, RSS feeds… it’s honestly all too much, and I’ve decided to take a step back, get off the wave of the here and now, and take my time to read, listen, and play.

I’ve been playing eFootball very seriously lately, skipping all the other backlog games that I have, and want to train well enough to climb the world rankings. For now, I’ve stopped in the second division with a ranking of 3700 in the world on Xbox. Which is quite satisfying considering I started playing seriously about a year ago.

This week I’m in Chicago; Too bad I don’t have the time to visit the city. I watched the election day results last night on my iPad mini while going to sleep. I noticed that none of my colleagues mentioned the vote or the result this morning. Which I consider absolutely positive in a work environment, so I deliberately didn’t ask them anything.

I would like to be able to discuss and understand the reasons that led to such a clear choice, even more so than in 2016. I believe there is a lot of anger, misinformation, and a desire to defeat the other side rather than firmly believing in what the future will grant them with theirs. And I felt strongly unwilling to judge since Italy also experienced a similar situation with Berlusconi, so when I read absurd posts online from indignant Italians, they might forget what happened just a few years before in our country.

In a week, I will leave for Austria first and then for Germany for a couple of work appointments. With good peace of my flight miles, which I hope to be able to use soon properly.

I'm quite sure that if you're even slightly passionate about issues related to the Internet, you've undoubtedly stumbled upon the WordPress vs. WP Engine dispute. You can get a better idea through one of the best-written articles I've read so far on The Verge.

A completely nonsensical drama, really. I don't know WP Engine or its business practices, but it seems to have the fault of adopting open-source software and, in the full spirit of open-source, shaping it for their needs. Or at least that's how I understand it.

On the other hand, it seems from WordPress there's an attempt to change the rules of the game once it has already started.

Although often in disagreement with some of his opinions, this time DHH's view seems to me the most free from all that surrounding noise useful for resolving the issue (but perhaps useful in Court):

That's the deal. That's open source. I give you a gift of code, you accept the terms of the license. There cannot be a second set of shadow obligations that might suddenly apply if you strike it rich using the software. Then the license is meaningless, the clarity all muddled, and certainty lost.

I wonder how it will end. Certainly, WordPress, in its commercial nature and thus .com and the hosting service, hides many pitfalls for someone like me who isn't adept at handling code. I still remember when I decided to move the blog there, I had to pay something like $300 a year.

Luckily, Manuel came to my rescue.

I love participating in the topics suggested by the IndieWeb Carnival for my blog, and October's theme, hosted by Riccardo, is particularly dear to me. It's about "multilingualism in a global Web," and as a native Italian speaker, I find myself in this situation daily since the last nine months.

Riccardo is Italian, just like me, and while reading the introduction to the topic, I couldn't help but smile:

I invite you to write about your experience with foreign/artificial languages; about the role of multilingualism in a predominantly English-speaking Web; about how your daily life is affected by multiple languages; and anything you come up with that can be interesting in this discussion.

It's not just a predominantly English-speaking Web, but it's a predominantly English-speaking World too! I often find myself having conversations with colleagues and acquaintances since we moved to the United States, and only a few are aware of the privilege of being born and raised without needing to worry too much about learning another language. Because everyone outside of English-speaking countries studies English as an additional language to their native one.

While those fortunate enough to be born in the United States, Australia, the U.K., etc., don't have to exert much effort when traveling abroad. It's others who have to adapt. My wife and I often think about what it must be like to live in a world where everyone speaks your language, and wherever you go, you know there's a way to communicate.

The convention has therefore wanted that this unwritten rule, but accepted by everyone, was from the beginning of the Internet, shared, making English in fact the most popular language and the only one capable of letting you cross your national borders.

In my own small way, it took me a while to make the leap. I only started writing in English a few weeks ago, mainly to interact with other bloggers. But thinking about it, also because the English language has now become the main one through which I express myself most of the time offline.

Online, apart from this blog, I've been used to speaking in English since the early 2000s. Since I started interacting with people from all over the world through a headset and a microphone on Xbox Live using a video gaming console.

In written form, however, I had to wait for the advent of social media and especially when I began working at Microsoft in 2006. From that moment on, there hasn't been a day where I haven't written at least one sentence in English.

What about you? What’s your experience?

My ‌iPhone 15‌ Pro Max battery level is currently at 94 percent with 299 cycles. For a lot of 2024, my battery level stayed above 97 percent, but it started dropping more rapidly over the last couple of months.

In this MacRumors article, Juli Clover mentions that she set her iPhone 15 Pro Max to charge to a maximum of 80% for a year. This ensured that her battery remained above 97% of its life for most of the time, recently dropping slightly below 94%. Not bad.

What surprises me is how many charge cycles both she, Gruber, and others put their phones through in a year.

I'm at 134 cycles, having started using mine in November 2023, so it's just a two-month difference compared to them. I've never set my battery charge limit below 100%, and my only rule is never to let it charge below 45%.

Maybe this is the real secret to maintaining good battery longevity? My battery still has 97% of its life, and I have no intention of replacing my iPhone.

For a few days now (with the iOS 18 update release), I've been testing a charge limit of 90% to see if I'll experience a sudden drop too, or if I can keep my phone's battery healthy for a decent period.

What about yours?

Last week, we had some friends visiting from Italy. We took the opportunity to do something different and explore some parts of the city we hadn't seen yet.

We decided to go hiking at Runyon Canyon Park. It's a city park shaped like an ellipse that forms a loop as it climbs up the Hollywood Hills.

I dusted off my Sony Alpha and, even though the gloomy light of the day didn't help the shots, I managed to get a few decent panoramas. Of all of them, I've chosen these two photos.

While the PlayStation 5 Pro seems to offer significant performance upgrades, its price tag (especially in the U.K. and in Europe) has raised eyebrows among many gamers compared to what the pricing of PlayStation 5 was four years ago. For example I ordered mine from Amazon in 2020 spending around 510 euros, shipment costs and a vertical stand support and a physical disc reader included in the price.

The PS5 Pro's price increase over the original PS5 is significantly larger than the jump from the PS4 to the PS4 Pro, while it was the opposite in terms of technology (PS4 didn’t have 4K support originally while PS4 Pro was equipped with that). This has led many to question whether the performance enhancements justify the higher cost.

Honestly, although it's too early to judge whether the juice is worth the squeeze, I think many can agree that yesterday turned out to be a wasted opportunity to show something new.
If this new mid-generation console had to flex its muscles, just to justify a purchase choice, it certainly shouldn't have done so by showing PlayStation 4 or cross-gen games during its launch event, because honestly, I don't think I was the only one who had a hard time noticing significant differences between a PlayStation 5 and a PlayStation 5 Pro version among the materials shown yesterday.

Above all, these details are still so small and limited that with the speed of today's games, the eye of anyone who plays won't notice small improvements on the textures of a leaf on the marginal part of the screen and outside the main action of the game. Probably the differences in frame rates will be more evident, which a more powerful machine can certainly guarantee.

However, I don't think such a high cost is entirely justifiable, especially since most of the components are the same as the PlayStation 5. Ultimately, the success of the PS5 Pro will depend on whether consumers perceive the performance improvements as worth the extra cost. If the console can deliver a truly exceptional gaming experience, it may be able to justify its higher price point.

But certainly not today.

I'm not a technician, nor a programmer, and I don't know any programming languages. However, I do know what APIs are while I maintain a deep, obsessive passion for all things tech.

Not to mention music streaming services. Over the past 10 years, I think I've tried them all, you name it, and I've likely spent more than a week on it.

I've used both Apple Music (for more than 4 years), and currently, I'm happily using Spotify, despite the much-anticipated Hi-Fi still being absent. Also, I'm a heavy Apple user.

Among the various reasons I currently prefer Spotify over Apple Music (maybe I'll do a dedicated post for all the others), there's definitely the Spotify Connect feature. It allows you to control Spotify from any device, regardless of where the streaming was initiated. Practical example? If I start music on my phone in the bathroom and then leave it on the sink? No problem, I can control it from my computer in the bedroom and decide to stop playback.

Until September 3rd, for those using iOS, Spotify Connect allowed controlling the playback volume through the physical buttons on their iPhone. This is no longer allowed by Apple due to the discontinuation of the necessary APIs which Spotify heavily relied on to let Connect work properly.

In the tech world, as in video gaming (where I've hung out for decades), the line between being a product fan or a fanboy is very thin, especially when it comes to championing a brand, where one can easily fall into blind perseverance, ignoring all elements at play.

Reading this post by Gruber on the topic, I felt that line was crossed once again:

It remains unclear to me exactly what is going on here. I think what happened is that what Spotify was doing to enable users to use the hardware volume buttons on their iPhones to control the volume of playback on other devices via Spotify Connect was making use of private or undocumented APIs, and Apple shut those APIs down in iOS 17.6. In short, that it was a hack that stopped working or just stopped working reliably.

If it's not clear what's happening, how can the use of an API be labeled a hack? Especially when this hack is associated with Sonos in the linked Mastodon post?

Simply put, after 15 years, Apple decided to modify the APIs without an apparent reason, once again asserting its control over its devices. This isn't necessarily bad, especially when talking about privacy and security, but I'd like to know what sensible reason there could be to degrade the experience for millions of users who've enjoyed both the streaming service and iOS for decades?

And John Gruber:

Who should get to decide the rules for how the hardware volume buttons work on iPhones and iPads? Apple, or the European Commission?

This easy irony about the EU's decision-making power isn't about showing who's got the bigger stick but about having a logical sense for the end user.

But I understand it might not be easily comprehensible for someone who's probably using Apple Music from day one and decided to often denigrate what isn't Apple.

During this brief Italian vacation, I realized that I started this blog in 2009, today. That's 15 years ago.

A very long time, and although it's not my longest-running online presence, but it's certainly the most consistent one.

What have I learned in these past 15 years?

Blogs were, especially in Italy, a passing phenomenon. In the early 2000s, if you didn't have your own space where you could express your thoughts, you were essentially out of the game. Unlike forums, blogs allowed those with something interesting to say to stand out from the background noise of trolls and serial posters since forums were the only competitors at that time. They became the first true manifestation of one of the theses of bottom-up conversations as established by The Cluetrain Manifesto:

A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.

For a few months, I was also part of what was then called the blog stars circuit. I was invited to events, to participate in debates, and to promote products.

Did social media kill that era? In Italy, undoubtedly. We are a people born for social media; we are slaves to voyeurism and naturally inclined towards flames and drama. Those who had a blog suddenly felt delegitimized and, deprived of their moment of glory, ended up getting bored and stopped writing, witnessing the rise of influencers first and creators later.

But if you didn't care much about entering the arena for the battle of attention, and if your goal was, as it still is for me, to have a presence on the Web where you can be yourself and weave valuable relationships, then almost certainly your blog has survived all this and is alive and well.

In 15 years, I've found friends, work partners, acquaintances, and had the opportunity to interact with some of the people I admire most, and this still happens today, like last year with Manuel and his help in rebuilding this space almost from scratch.

I've only recently realized, perhaps too late, that to truly open up to the world, I would need something different, namely to start writing in English. Because outside our national borders, people haven't surrendered to an idea of the Internet entirely equivalent to social media. Elsewhere, there are still people who prefer to interact as they did 20 years ago, where all you need is to share stories via an email address.
Perhaps anachronistic? Likely, but certainly more genuine and profound. Digging deeper down without having to widen the perimeter.

I will forever be grateful for choosing to make this decision 15 years ago. These pages have been an effective therapy for me, a journey of self-discovery before even discovering the world.
I will always be grateful to all the people I've met over these years, even if they were part of my life for just a second.

This place will continue to exist as long as I can take care of it, as long as existing technologies allow me to do so. It's an extension of my being.

An open bar tab whose final balance will always be in my favor.

Noemi has finally found and started a new job. This gives us a nice dose of tranquility from many perspectives. A few months ago, when we still weren't sure about her job future, we decided that I would take a week off at the beginning of September. So, I decided to surprise my parents and come directly to our summer house, here in Sardinia, until the 8th.

I found a good deal with Lufthansa, which along with Swiss Air, is one of the few airlines to offer a route from Los Angeles to Olbia with just one stop in another European country.

The journey passed rather quickly, and in the awake moments between naps, I only thought about how much plastic and trash each airplane leaves behind as soon as it takes off.

Starting with these headphones. How many of these are distributed around the world every day? And how many of those are/will be recycled? I imagine the environmental impact of these tiny objects is not insignificant, and as I put them on to listen to the audio of "Dune: Part Two," I wondered if there was a way to avoid distributing more than 300 pairs on each transoceanic flight.

Equip every screen with Bluetooth technology? Fit the seats with standard 3.5mm jacks instead of those odd double inputs? Or perhaps USB-C compatible ports?

I obviously paid attention to everything else too. Especially after the cabin crew announced that Lufthansa adopts a green protocol, suggesting we keep our plastic cups (specifically mentioned) for refills during subsequent trolley rounds.

Yet...

Yet, on both the Los Angeles to Munich and Munich to Olbia legs, two plastic bottles were distributed:

I wondered what could be done to avoid this. More refill stations to fill up the water bottles across the plane since practically everyone owns nowadays? (As many airports already do) Or store water in some other material?

Perhaps it would have been better to avoid green initiative proclaims if this was going to be the result.

I'm not sure if being good at writing is an innate ability or a quality acquired over time, perhaps through voracious reading or a deep humanistic education. I imagine that, as with all matters in life, talent needs to be honed to share it with the world, and there are some people naturally more gifted than others.

However, talent, although an innate quality, must be recognized by someone, and often a group of people must agree to acknowledge it.

The same goes for those who write well. You don't necessarily need to be a novelist to do it. We often see very short texts that are extremely effective due to their originality and simplicity.

Simplicity. That's the real keyword here. Often, the greatest writers are appreciated by the general public precisely for this reason. If you have something to say, say it. Without too many words. Straight to the point.

Is there a way to improve? Is there a way to be a better writer? Perhaps today, as Seth Godin suggests, AI can help even those who can't string two understandable sentences together:

Get better at writing. You might not think you’re a professional writer (you’re a doctor! you’re a manager! you’re a teacher!) but if it’s an important part of your job, you are a professional, or at least we expect you to be.

Now there’s a second option. If the writing you’re doing doesn’t need to be in an idiosyncratic voice, take your memo, paste it into claude.ai and say, “please rewrite this to make it clear, cogent, positive and concise.”

I've wondered if this could also apply to those with a blog. If leveraging AI could be helpful. Probably yes, but only with the form. And although it might help with substance too, I hope those eager to share their world with others do so genuinely, without needing technology to invent stories.

What's the point of all this? I too would like to become a better writer one day. To entertain with an incisive style while maintaining my narrative consistency. I don't think this necessarily has to turn into a book; my blog is enough for me. Knowing that those who come here to read do so because they're interested in what I write, but also in how I write it.

Meanwhile, I'll try, as much as possible, to always ask myself these questions just before I start writing my first sentence from now on:

But everyone isn’t going to read your work, someone is.
Can you tell me who? Precisely?
What did they believe before they encountered your work? What do they want, what do they fear? What has moved them to action in the past?