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 used 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?

Which I am.

For those who might have noticed, which I imagine are few, and those who have still decided to read me, I have started posting in English lately.

I've done this for a very simple reason. By now, all the blogs and bloggers I read and want to engage with are written in English. Even, and especially, by Italians.

I want to try to keep up with the trend and see if I can expand my network of connections. No, I'm not interested in views, especially since Manuel and I have disabled any tracking systems in here.

I genuinely want to connect with other bloggers. With those, in essence, who continue to keep their distance from social media to engage in constructive conversation, because they've understood too well that, in those spaces, it has become impossible.

Therefore, inspired by this post from Lou, I too found myself envying those who decided to change their native language and started adopting English (Especially after Steve pointed out to me that my entry for IndieWeb this month should have been in English instead of Italian):

Every once in a while I discover a real gem where someone's efforts are all at once entertaining, thought provoking, inspiring and original. I'll often be stricken with a pang of jealousy. "I want to write like that", I'll tell myself, knowing that I won't.

This also translates to the fact that I’ve been living in the United States for 9 months now, and English has become the main language to use daily.

So, no more hesitation, if I make mistakes, you know why. I'm just an Italian looking for stories to relate to and to broaden his knowledge of the world!

The perfect blogger can take a mundane event and make it interesting. I'd read about their trip to the supermarket in a minute because they make things relatable. They find our common humanity in the everyday events we all experience

I've never really understood Mastodon or the Fediverse in general. Or rather, I've never seen its true utility except for creating even more suffocating and polarized echo chambers. Nothing that we hadn't already seen during the era of forums a few decades ago.

I echo Simone's words here, with which I very much agree. And it's for this reason that blogs still make sense today. Not so much because it's necessary to develop a community around them, but because they are much more effective in stimulating a calm conversation, free from FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), and above all, they force the writer to exercise a certain logic of thought that would otherwise be swept away by the totally instinctive reactions typical of keyboard warriors, as we say in Italy.

the Fediverse idea, albeit interesting on paper, is gloriously showing its main flaw: pretty much all their incarnations are mimicking social media, with all the consequent detrimental effects. Doom scrolling, an infinite series of short burst of personal opinions, usually disconnected from one another. Whether siloed or decentralised, the resulting unsearchable ephemerality is not really different from other mainstream corporate incarnations. Alex wrote much deeper considerations about this very topic, in their post ~The Fediverse and attention economy~.

A fine marzo ho postato i costi legati ai miei abbonamenti digitali, ma siccome alcune cose sono cambiate e con altissima probabilità rimarranno così fino a fine anno se non oltre, un aggiornamento era doveroso. Ed esultare soprattutto per il bel risparmio ottenuto.

Alla fine del post spiego come fare 😉

• Netflix - Ho spostato il mio account e tutto il suo storico sotto un account straniero. Pagamento annuale $37.22. Risparmio attuale sull’anno: €181.91
• Xbox Game Pass. Visto i recenti annunci di aumento prezzo e ancora la totale assenza di un abbonamento family da condividere con amici, ho deciso di acquistare una card ed estendere il mio abbonamento fino al 2027
• PlayStation Plus Premium. Invariato. Come scritto nel post originario, non c’è molto che possa fare per cambiare Stato associato al mio account. Sempre: €152/anno
• Nintendo Switch Online. Dismesso. Risparmio €19.99 anno
• YouTube. Nonostante sia sempre convinto che resti il miglior valore aggiunto per un abbonamento digitale, confermo di non volerlo rinnovare per il 2025. Risparmio sull’anno al cambio: €127.81
• Apple TV+: Confermata. Essendo io gestore Family non posso far parte di nessun altro abbonamento al di fuori del mio. Quindi si continua con i $9.99 al mese
• Prime Video: Confermato $139.99 anno
• Paramount+: Nuova aggiunta, doverosa per vedere la Serie A negli Stati Uniti. $42.00 all’anno. Sì, all’anno e non al mese come DAZN
• Disney+: $42 all’anno. Faccio parte di un account family. Costo irrisorio. Fatto per la nuova stagione di Bear e terminare The Walking Dead
• Bear App: Come scritto qui, anche se mi scoccia pagare un abbonamento annuale, mi piace e voglio mantenere attivo l’abbonamento. Al cambio sono €27.38/anno
• Telegram Premium: Niente di aggiuntivo rispetto a quanto mi serva. Lo dismetterò sicuramente. Risparmio €23.99/anno
• Glass: Nonostante adori l’app, l’aumento di prezzo e il fatto che sia decisamente poco popolata mi hanno fatto propendere per la dismissione e pubblicare piuttosto qui sul blog tutte le mie foto. Risparmio €37/anno
• Domini e blog: €45/anno
• iCloud+: Irrinunciabile. €109.44/anno
• Spotify Family: Mio padre ha deciso di non utilizzare più il servizio. E sebbene qui negli Stati Uniti il prezzo sia aumentato a $19.99 al mese, il mio costo annuale è di $39.98. 3 euro al mese!
• Uber One: $96/anno
• NextDNS: $19.99/anno

A conti fatti il risparmio si aggira attorno ai 325 euro. Tantissimo a pensarci a posteriori e nonostante abbia aggiunto due abbonamenti in più. Tanto, per me, ha fatto l'aver scoperto questa pagina di Reddit, dove c’è da stare attenti perché la fregatura è dietro l’angolo, ma se si presta un minimo di attenzione si può accedere a prezzi decisamente più agevoli facendo parte di un account Family con un risparmio, come visto, notevole e soprattutto legale!

Come siete messi voi ad abbonamenti? A quali non rinuncereste mai?
Fatemelo sapere via ~email~ e già che ci siete se avete voglia di sostenere il blog potete farlo ~qui~.

Nell’ultimo mese, complice l’aumento di prezzo mensile per l’abbonamento Family negli Stati Uniti (in realtà si può tornare al prezzo precedente rinunciando all’add-on degli audiolibri per il gestore dell’abbonamento), su Threads e Reddit leggo di tanti che spinti da una fake news hanno deciso di abbandonare Spotify e passare ad Apple Music.

Oltre il prezzo, a quanto pare, nel giocare un fattore determinante c’è la pulizia di UI rispetto a Spotify e che quindi su Apple Music si trovino soltanto brani musicali e non podcast o audiolibri (o come nel caso U.K., anche video corsi)

Ma quello che per molti può essere un vantaggio di lettura ed esperienza nel approcciare l’applicazione, per me è un punto di forza. Oltre ad aver fatto un’enorme pulizia nel feed RSS ho proceduto nell’ultimo mese a cancellare decine di applicazioni inutili sul mio telefono, buone solo a prendere polvere e occupare memoria.

E in questo processo di semplificazione mi sono reso conto di quanto per me sia importante non disperdere energie e attenzione in mille rivoli differenti. Per questo Spotify resta per me l’opzione migliore per le mie esigenze. Un app con dentro tutto. Fine.

Da qualche giorno sto provando ad adottare lo stesso criterio anche per altre applicazioni. Ho deciso di ri-testare Bear App e unire così Apple Notes e iA Writer. Entrambe molto preziose, la prima la utilizzo pesantemente al lavoro, la seconda è l’app dove scrivo tutti i miei post del blog.

Apple Notes però non consente nessuna personalizzazione, non consente di default di ingrandire il font - e spesso su uno schermo da 32 pollici risulta difficile - e nemmeno di modificarlo. iA Writer l’ho considerata come alternativa valida, ma il sistema di salvataggio delle Note non mi ha mai appassionato.

Bear sembra il giusto compromesso al momento. Personalizzazione, esportazione del testo in Markdown, Note per lavoro e vita personale, post per il blog. Unica pecca è che per attivare la sincronizzazione iCloud bisogna pagare un abbonamento mensile. Resto sempre a favore del pagamento lifetime, ma così è.

Mi sono dato qualche settimana, se c’è altro, fatemelo sapere via email!

This post has been updated and now has both an English and an Italian version of it!

Incredibly, it's already August today. I don't understand how 8 months have flown by since we left Italy.

I'm equally astonished by the fact that we haven't sweated a single day yet. When I hear from relatives and friends in Italy, they all tell me they're dying from the heat, but here we're really in a climatic paradise, where we almost never go above 24 degrees Celsius. In fact, both in the morning and after dusk, a sweatshirt is a must for outdoor excursions.

A new month also means a new episode of the IndieWeb Carnival. August is hosted by Steve, and the theme is about Rituals.

I don't have any particular rituals. I have two that I consider constants in this phase of my life.
The first is the morning coffee once I get to the office. I always try to arrive before the hustle begins to give myself some solitary moments, dedicating time to reading my RSS feed while sipping an espresso. Or rather, an Americano here in the States.

The second is a ritual I started with Noemi. For every city we visit around the world, we book a couple's massage. We've done this practically everywhere for the past 7 years, and we consider it one of the things we most enjoy doing together when we're on vacation.

I used to have another one in the past. Every year when the new FIFA game came out, I would always take a day off to buy the game and spend the rest of the day playing it. But I've abandoned that over time, partly because as the years went by, the game consistently got worse and was never too different from the previous year.

A ritual doesn't necessarily mean becoming a slave to a habit; on the contrary, for me, it aligns with loving oneself and listening to one's body and mind.

We should all have more rituals in our lives.

What's yours?

---

Incredibilmente oggi è già agosto. Non capisco come sia possibile che siano volati così velocemente 8 mesi da quando abbiamo lasciato l’Italia.

Resto altrettanto stupefatto dal fatto che non abbiamo ancora sudato un giorno. Quando sento parenti e amici in Italia mi dicono tutti che si sta morendo dal caldo, qui invece stiamo davvero in un paradiso climatico, dove non superiamo quasi mai i 24 gradi C°. Anzi, sia al mattino che dopo l’imbrunire una felpa è d’obbligo per escursioni in esterna.

Nuovo mese equivale anche a una nuova puntata dell’IndieWeb Carnival. Il mese di agosto è ospitato da Steve e ha come tema i rituali.

Non ho dei rituali particolari. Ne ho due che reputo costanti in questa fase della vita.
Il primo è il caffè del mattino una volta arrivato in ufficio. Cerco sempre di arrivare prima dell’inizio delle danze e concedermi qualche momento in solitaria, dedicandomi alla lettura del feed RSS mentre sorseggio un espresso. O espresso abbondante qui negli States.

Il secondo è un rituale che ho iniziato con Noemi. Per ogni città visitata nel mondo, prenotiamo un massaggio di coppia. L’abbiamo fatto praticamente ovunque da 7 anni a questa parte e reputiamo sia una delle cose che più ci piace fare insieme quando siamo in vacanza.

Ne avevo un altro in passato. Ogni anno all’uscita del nuovo Fifa, prendevo sempre un giorno di ferie per andare a comprare il gioco e spendere il resto della giornata a giocarci. Ma l’ho abbandonato nel tempo anche perché con l’andare degli anni il gioco è peggiorato costantemente e mai troppo dissimile dall’anno precedente.

Un rituale non equivale necessariamente a diventare schiavo di un abitudine, anzi, per me combacia con il volersi bene e ascoltare il proprio corpo e mente.

Dovremmo avere tutti più rituali nella nostra vita.

Qual è il tuo?

Provare a capire gli Stati Uniti da una piccola cittadina come Marina del Rey sarebbe come provare a capire l’Italia da una cabina telefonica.
Le distanze, le differenze, i sottili sub-strati culturali e sociali sono incomprensibili e difficili da padroneggiare se non si decide di viaggiare e scoprire.
Spero di farlo al più presto e non solo per questioni legate al lavoro.
Voglio conoscere meglio ciò che mi circonda, a partire dalla California che in un’area grande come l’Italia racchiude al suo interno mare, montagna, collina, pianura e deserto.

Ma a volte è difficile avere la mente sgombra dall’idea di futuro quando ancora qualche tassello deve andare a posto, è difficile programmarlo quando ancora ci stiamo facendo tante domande.
Nonostante questo resto positivo. Qui ho la sensazione di vivere in una bolla diversa da quella milanese, dove i ritmi erano abbastanza frenetici e scanditi dai tanti appuntamenti sociali e di lavoro.
Ci sentiamo ancora in vacanza, come se ci aspettassimo che tra poco tutto questo possa finire. Ci godiamo la calma, la pace, i ritmi estremamente più lenti e il mare.

Già. Il mare. Non viverci per 40 anni e tutto d’un tratto avercelo a 10 minuti di cammino fa un certo effetto. Vi consiglio l’ultimo numero de Il Pensiero Lungo la newsletter di Martino, dedicata proprio al mare:

Un viaggio cosmico che si ripete circolarmente e che riporta all’inizio. Mutati dall’anno trascorso, ma verso e attraverso il punto da cui tutto è iniziato. Ritornarci misura sia l'avanzare del tempo contingente ma anche l’immutabilità di quello cosmico: siamo troppo minuscoli perché il nostro tempo conti qualcosa, non siamo nemmeno un battito di ciglia dell’universo.

Il mare azzera il tempo: è sempre così e sempre così sarà. Del resto è un infinito e quindi non ha né presente né futuro e il mare che scrutiamo è lo stesso che vedeva Giulio Cesare o Marco Polo. Una massa fluttuante e cangiante, increspata o tumultuosa, screziata da onde, lucida e tesa se non c’è vento. Il mare è una materia ed è ovunque, il mare è reale e concettuale allo stesso tempo.

Sono giorni di riflessione. Penso tanto e mi ritrovo a conoscermi meglio, ascoltarmi di più quando tutto il rumore superfluo mi sembra di averlo lasciato in Italia. Mi piace, forse ci sono arrivato tardi, forse non importa poi tanto, ma benché non abbia risposte sul futuro so per certo che ci stiamo arricchendo e questo è importante.

Manca poco, come dicevo, per sistemare qualche tassello e permetterci di buttare via qualche pensiero di tentennamento su questa scelta di trasferirci qui. Non è assolutamente un ripensarci, ma penso sia più che normale chiedersi di tanto in tanto, ma avrò fatto bene?

Questi primi sette mesi intanto sono volati via alla velocità della luce e penso sarà altrettanto così fino alla fine dell’anno. Da adesso ho qualche viaggio di lavoro e inizierà la fase di programmazione per il 2025.

Non possono che aspettarci belle cose.