My Top 7 New Features in .NET 7

The other day we did a .NET 7 Spotlight event at this month’s DevRomagna meetup. The speakers were Ugo Lattanzi and me. In my session, I chose to talk about my top 7 new features in .NET 7 (pun intended.) What follows is a mix of my preparation notes and what I ended up really saying1. 1. Performance Since the initial release of “new dotnet” (.NET Core), performance has always been a critical goal for the ....

December 4, 2022

My Music in 2022 according to Spotify

Wrapped by Spotify, the 2022 edition just landed in my mailbox. This year I listened to twenty-four different genres. My favorite was Indie Jazz, followed by Hip Hop, Jazz, Electronica and Rock. I am a little puzzled about that Hip Hop in second place. In total, I spent 14143 minutes listening to music, 80 percent more than other listeners in Italy did. My favorite track was Fear Of The Dawn by Jack White, followed by The Beginning by Native Soul, Sorcery by The Toxic Avenger, Spirals by Django Django, and Boy From Michigan by John Grant....

December 3, 2022

I am on Mastodon and I love it

Marcus Hutchins on Mastodon: What I missed about Mastodon was its very different culture. Ad-driven social media platforms are willing to tolerate monumental volumes of abusive users. They’ve discovered the same thing the Mainstream Media did: negative emotions grip people’s attention harder than positive ones. Hate and fear drives engagement, and engagement drives ad impressions. More here. I have been on Mastodon for a few weeks now, and wow, what a breath of fresh air....

December 2, 2022

Book Review: Mašen'ka

Masen’ka (or Mary) is Nabokov’s debut novel. It was written when he was in his twenties, living as an émigré in Berlin, just like the story’s protagonist. In the introduction of my Italian edition (Adelphi), the author admits that some life events poured into the narration. The depiction of Ganin’s life in a pension filled with fellow Russian ex-pats, and the relationships between them, is undoubtedly reminiscent of Nabokov’s own experience....

November 30, 2022

The Origins of Python

Yesterday the creator of the Python language, Guido van Rossum, tweeted about The Origins of Python, an essay by his mentor, Lambert Meertens. “On Sunday, June 21, 1970, in an office building on Great Portland Street in London, a teletype sprang to life. Under the heading “HAPPY FAMILIES,” the machine rattled out a sequence of English sentences, such as “THE DOG SITS ON THE BABY” and “UNCLE TED PLAYS WITH SISTER....

November 26, 2022

Book Review: The Crow Comes Last

The Crow Comes Last is a collection of thirty short stories written between 1945 and 1948, primarily based on the author’s wartime experiences as a resistance fighter during WWII and then in postwar Italy. Some are brutal, others funny, and some are gritty. They all revolve around the themes he perfectly defined while talking about his book: I prefer to divide the subject into three parts, to highlight three thematic lines of my work from those years....

November 25, 2022

Castle Rock Climb in Antarctica

There’s regular hiking, and then there’s Antarctica hiking. Check out brr’s report of a Sunday’s hike from McMurdo’s base up to the tip of Castle Rock, with spectacular views of Mount Erebus and the surroundings. brr’s Antarticta blog is a recent addition to my RSS feed collection. It’s always interesting to follow people living and working in the most remote parts of the world.

November 18, 2022

Eve 2.0.4 released

I just released Eve 2.0.4, the REST API framework for #python. It’s available on PyPI and includes a relevant security fix so you might want to update ASAP. Package info Docs

November 10, 2022

Book Review: Ravenna

Nerdy prelude. Local Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) were all the range when I was a teenager. With my group of local hackers, we hacked our way into ITAPAC, the then-leading Italian packet-switching network (we are talking pre-Internet era here.) Via ITAPAC, we’d connect to so-called “out-dial systems” in the USA. From one of those, we’d finally call our target BBSes with a local call at no cost. We felt so invincible!...

November 7, 2022

Welcome to hell, Elon

As someone who’s been on board with Twitter since 2009, I have to admit that I’m very concerned with recent developments. I admire and respect Elon Musk for his companies’ achievements, especially in space and electric movement industries, but the man himself, holy cow, what a drag. On The Verge, Nilay Patel’s brutal piece on the recent Twitter acquisition is chock-full of brilliant insights on what it takes to run a modern commercial social service....

October 29, 2022