In my recent People & Blogs interview, I offered to share my experience with anyone who wanted to reach out. Someone took me up on it, and asked some really good questions about what it's like to live and run a business in Florence. It's funny, you often don't even realize what might be interesting about your own life to someone else. These felt like mundane things to me, things I barely think ...

I don't think the world needs another article about AI and programming, but I want to capture this moment in history, mostly for myself. First of all, I consider myself incredibly lucky to have lived through a historical period that allowed me to experience the birth of three complete revolutions: the internet, smartphones, and now LLMs. The acceleration I've experienced toward using AI has bee...

An interesting pattern I've developed on my site — one I haven't seen elsewhere? — is making your website also your feed reader. Let me introduce you to my /feed/. The main reason I went this route instead of, say, installing Miniflux: I didn't want another service to manage. But as I kept going, I discovered a lot of other advantages — the most obvious being that it's public. If you browse it,...

I'm going through rather hellish months. I've gotten myself into a relationship again that's hurting me, that's wearing me down. Months of fights, misunderstandings, scenes that repeat identically, but precisely for that reason, increasingly painful. From a certain point of view, it's normal. Romantic relationships, if they're good, at some point always bring out your traumas, your most vulner...

Stoner — John Williams In his forty-third year William Stoner learned what others, much younger, had learned before him: that the person one loves at first is not the person one loves at last, and that love is not an end but a process through which one person attempts to know another. I loved this book so much. It has all the ingredients to be boring. The story is linear. The writing is dry, f...

I remember clearly how, around 15 or 16, I had this belief: once you hit 40, you're definitely an adult. I looked at those who, in my eyes, were older, stronger, confident people, and I thought — to become that starting from this... you must definitely cross some invisible line at some point, and then you just 'know.' Well, I'm (almost) 40 now. I've learned that — sadly — it's not about age, or...

We are programmed to always think of the worst, to complicate things, to feel fear, anxiety, anger. We don't know how to communicate, neither do others. We carry painful fragments forever imprinted within us, upon which we build our structure, our behaviors, our beliefs. We live in a completely sick society that hasn't been human-scaled for decades. We are distant, distrustful, addicted in ever...

okgiorgio: killer sound, great vibe alignment, plus he really seems like a super nice dude. I just pre-ordered his vinyl; I'm super sad I missed his live performance in Florence, but I'll try to catch up soon. Poetry Unbound: I fucking love Pádraig, the poems he chooses, his thoughts, his soothing voice, and the music selection. A real gem; I'm so grateful I found him. iako and facciadinuvol...

I have no idea when I started being so hard on myself. I think it has always been part of me. I lived my childhood feeling loved, but the message I somehow internalized was: “they love you, if.” I never had a rebellious phase. Just today I realized that I spent my entire elementary school years without seeing any classmates outside of school, as my mother took me to the school where she worked ...

This is a story about an unexpected journey into fatherhood and self-discovery. It spans a decade of my life, from my early twenties to my thirties. At 22, I found myself unexpectedly becoming a father — a role I had neither planned nor considered. I was still trying to figure out who I was and what I truly wanted. I was in my third year of university, Cecilia was my first girlfriend, and I was...

In my quest to try new things for short periods of time, I had the opportunity to participate in a 10-day Vipassana meditation course, "as taught by Goenka". What is Vipassana? It's a meditation technique. It was rediscovered more than 2500 years ago by Buddha as a universal method to alleviate suffering. Goenka passed away in 2013, and was a notable lay instructor of Vipassana meditation. He h...

They often claim that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become a master in any given field. It's the consistent, relentless practice that paves the way to excellence. For a lifetime, I've been racking up flight hours in the realm of programming and the web. It would be nice to say that the reason is innate determination, but the truth is much simpler: it's the sheer joy I derive from it that...

No one knows that, at the age of 17, in the midst of adolescent confusion, I wrote a book. A novel. It was a significant effort, in the end the book approached 100 pages! I recall it took me several months to write. It was never published or distributed, except amongst a few close friends at that time. At one point, I even lost it, only to surprisingly retrieve it five years later from one of t...

Check out the job listings for the position of a full-stack developer currently on We Work Remotely. Then read ours (it's still in draft). It's exactly because of things like this that I continue to feel joy and pride in owning and running a company. The opportunity to craft the job description I would have wanted to read as a developer. To pose the questions I believe are crucial to potential ...

To integrate this website into the IndieWeb took me longer than I would have liked. The resources were fragmented and confusing. Should I do X or Y? Having too many options to choose from can lead to paralysis. We don't want that, do we? We want something simple, something that allows as many people as possible to get on board. An omakase 🍱. Here's mine. If you already have your own publishe...

It’s hard to believe, but there was a time in the web era when social media didn’t exist. Imagine this: the year is 2000. Apple is absolutely crushing it with their latest iPods... Microsoft was... you know, being Microsoft. People had the desire to share, as they always have. So they joined forums, created their own blogs, their own websites. There was Blogspot, Deadjournal, or Livejournal for...

In the last post we imagined a social media world where your followers seamlessly connect across platforms, empowering everyone to manage their data and engagements. We pictured a landscape without algorithmic feeds, spam, or intrusive ads, reminiscent of the simplicity of email. There are ways to realize this image. Right here, right now. But (almost) no one knows it. ActivityPub is one such m...

Wohpe — Salvatore Sanfilippo This is the first novel… by one of the world’s most respected programmers. He’s better known by his pseudonym antirez, and for being the creator of Redis, a datastore used in practically any web product. He's is a personal legend of mine, both for the almost artistic quality of his code design, and for his approach to this fascinating (and often sick) world that is ...

Imagine a world where the terms “Instagram followers” or “Facebook friends” don’t exist. Instead, your followers on one platform are the same followers on all platforms. After all, aren’t they YOUR followers? Imagine your brother posts a picture of your nephew on Facebook, and you can see and engage with it on X (Twitter). Your daughter posts a video on YouTube, and you can like it on your Inst...

Since 2015, the richest 1% has owned more wealth than the rest of the planet. We’ve come to the point that eight men now own the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the world. What's fascinating is that it hasn't always been this way. It's a cumulative process with a steadily widening gap that’s happening right under our nose, as we speak. In 2020 and 2021 alone, the wealthiest 1% of t...

Apple, Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft. It's so hard to start talking about them. They're everywhere, in every context. You, I, and everyone we know are using them. Be it at home, at work, school, or anywhere in between. They've become as instinctual and integral to us as a second skin. We use them to unwind, learn, entertain ourselves, surf the web, communicate, share, stay informed, travel,...