Mattia Monga
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mmonga.it
Mattia Monga
@mmonga.it
Associate Professor at Università degli Studi di Milano

[bridged from https://mathstodon.xyz/@mmonga on the fediverse by https://fed.brid.gy/ ]
Reposted by Mattia Monga
New, long, oral history of Ken Thompson, my and everyone's hero.

From the Computer History Museum: https://computerhistory.org/blog/a-computing-legend-speaks/

Click thru a while to get a text transcript.
A Computing Legend Speaks
Ken Thompson, one of the foremost programmers and computer scientists of the last 50 years, shares stories about his life and career in a newly released oral history.
computerhistory.org
October 27, 2025 at 12:36 AM
#itadinfo per quest'anno è finita, segnatevi le date per il 2026, 9-11 ottobre, Padova. Gli atti di quest'anno li potete scaricare qui: https://zenodo.org/records/17224224/files/Rossano_def_web.pdf Grazie a tutti, come al solito se ne esce con una grande voglia di fare!
October 5, 2025 at 5:59 PM
Inizia #itadinfo a Salerno https://www.itadinfo.it/ Un mare di cose da imparare!
October 3, 2025 at 6:34 AM
John Searle (1931-2025)
https://www.colinmcginn.net/john-searle/

His "Chinese room" argument against AI was never convincing for me. But I found his work on speech acts illuminating. I had the honor to listen to one of his lectures at the University of Italian Switzerland some years ago: it was […]
Original post on mathstodon.xyz
mathstodon.xyz
September 30, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Reposted by Mattia Monga
Il professore Stefano Russo è il nuovo Presidente del Consorzio Interuniversitario Nazionale per l’Informatica #CINI

Il prof. Russo, ordinario di sistemi di elaborazione delle informazioni presso il Dip. di Ingegneria Elettrica e delle Tecnologie dell'Informazione e Coordinatore del Dottorato […]
Original post on mastodon.uno
mastodon.uno
September 23, 2025 at 12:57 PM
Reposted by Mattia Monga
Using #orgmode for so many years, I just recently stumbled over the Elisp function "org-copy-visible" which is practical as hell: it copies the currently visible characters.

So you can collapse/expand, mark a region and then copy only the visible parts of it.

Particular helpful when you paste […]
Original post on graz.social
graz.social
August 15, 2025 at 8:46 AM
Reposted by Mattia Monga
My #emacs Elevator Pitch (August Blog Carnival) https://christiantietze.de/posts/2025/08/emacs-elevator-pitch/

It starts with this:

"If you like working and thinking with text, you will love Emacs: anything you want your computer to do, Emacs can do in text form."
Emacs Elevator Pitch (August Blog Carnival)
Jeremy Friesen hosts this month’s Emacs Carnival, and the topic is “Your Elevator Pitch for Emacs”. It took me a couple of days to come up with a useful angle, because I didn’t even consider Emacs pitch-able. But that’s what’s so cool about writing prompts like these – you can think outside the box. So here’s mine: > If you like working and thinking with text, you will love Emacs: anything you want your computer to do, Emacs can do in text form. That probably raises some eyebrows during the elevator ride in the imaginary company headquarters for Amazing Company Inc.: “What do you mean, anything?” > Well, think of Emacs like a rich-text editor first. Like Microsoft Word. You can write, mark-up your text for lists and emphasis, have images. It’s probably ugly for you by default, but you can make it very comfortable and minimalistically modern-looking, so that you don’t lose yourself in the nested ribbon toolbars. So imagine that now you have a writing experience you like. Are they still with me? The next part depends on their job at Amazing Company Inc., but I’d pull from a collection of potentially relevant tasks at work. > You feel comfortable and at home when you write. And then you tell Emacs to also do your email, with the same feeling – after all, it’s just text you read and send; just like company Slack, which you also attend to in Emacs, because you find the web interface irksome; and then you file invoices that you need to process automatically; and you write your to-do lists and reminders with it; and read the news like you did with Pocket/Instapaper/…; and contribute to the company wiki; and manage database records interactively; and teach it to plot graphs and charts from the CSV exports for the quarterly results presentation; … So after listing something that doesn’t sound like an intuitive use case, I expect the follow-up: “Why would I want to do that if we have dedicated software for this?” Is it asked with a genuine sense of curiosity? Or meant to ridicule, maybe to look good in front of the colleagues that don’t get it, to not submit to such lunacy? It doesn’t matter, the answer is just the same: > Because you value your sanity. Because you’re tired from all the web services updating their UI every other week, rearranging core features, presenting you with chatbots and pop-up explainers to absentmindedly click away, but eating at your productivity and the comfort of knowing what you’re doing nevertheless, diminishing your sense of agency. Because you began to loathe software some time ago, who knows when that started. Maybe the last part is a bit of a stretch. Watch their eyes before you go that far. Their eyes tell whether you’re onto something. And we are onto something, aren’t we? > You’re a professional. You’re good at what you do. Could you also be happier doing it? Could you reclaim a corner of the computer from which you command excellence? Dramatic pause. > This is your ticket out of that grind. Bring under your control what you want or need to do. Teach the computer your work, and then have it work for you, not the other way around. Avoid spelling out the web link in an actual conversation. But do read Mike’s piece next. Happy carnivalling. * * * Hire me for freelance macOS/iOS work and consulting. Buy my apps. Receive new posts via email.
christiantietze.de
August 8, 2025 at 5:38 PM
Reposted by Mattia Monga
The street that my mum lives in is a one-way street, but wasn't marked as such on #google Maps. This caused many drivers to drive the wrong way. I have tried to edit it on Google Maps (there is such functionality), but to no avail. No matter how often I submitted a change (with photos of street […]
Original post on polymaths.social
polymaths.social
June 22, 2025 at 10:02 AM
Comunque a me votare piace moltissimo!
June 9, 2025 at 5:55 AM
Ultimi giorni (scadenza il 15/6) per contribuire a #itadinfo2025
Se vi occupate di didattica dell'informatica è un'occasione da non perdere!
https://www.itadinfo.it/
June 7, 2025 at 7:21 AM
Questa ha tutta l'aria di essere una buona lezione sulla resilienza dei sistemi distribuiti rispetto a quelli centralizzati (ma qui su @Mastodon siamo già esperti, no?)

https://www.ilpost.it/2025/05/04/oseja-de-sajambre-spagna-blackout
Il piccolo comune spagnolo dove il blackout non c'è stato - Il Post
Oseja de Sajambre ha sviluppato un sistema di emergenza che le permette di ricevere corrente anche in caso di problemi con la rete nazionale: ha funzionato anche questa volta
www.ilpost.it
May 4, 2025 at 1:54 PM
Reposted by Mattia Monga
Obligatory #piday photo.
March 14, 2025 at 2:08 PM
@scuola forse può interessarvi sapere che è partita l'organizzazione del 3° convegno ITAliano sulla Didattica dell'INFOrmatica (ITADINFO), pensato come momento di formazione e scambio di esperienze per docenti di scuola e ricercatori universitari.

Quest'anno si svolgerà a Salerno dal 3 al 5 […]
Original post on mathstodon.xyz
mathstodon.xyz
March 11, 2025 at 10:17 AM
È partita l'organizzazione del 3° convegno ITAliano sulla Didattica dell'INFOrmatica (ITADINFO), pensato come momento di formazione e scambio di esperienze per docenti di scuola e ricercatori universitari.

Quest'anno si svolgerà a Salerno dal 3 al 5 ottobre. Trovate ulteriori dettagli al sito […]
Original post on mathstodon.xyz
mathstodon.xyz
March 11, 2025 at 8:05 AM
February 22, 2025 at 5:25 PM
Reposted by Mattia Monga
OK.

This is kind of scary.

I uploaded my profile pic to

https://theyseeyourphotos.com/

This is a site, setup by a former Google employee to show you, how Google would interpret a picture of you.

The result is not 100 % accurate (e.g. that I could be targeted with alcohol ads, but I hardly […]
Original post on berlin.social
berlin.social
February 10, 2025 at 9:08 AM
Reposted by Mattia Monga
As many people here I'm looking to switch from Gmail, github, etc to more reliable non-US tech/services. I like https://european-alternatives.eu/, but EU countries/companies are not necessarily stable either. So, is there a list that ranks services by *resilience*, like to: govt change […]
Original post on datasci.social
datasci.social
February 16, 2025 at 10:16 AM
Reposted by Mattia Monga
February 13, 2025 at 3:11 PM