Il progressismo economico e politico e la sua difficile relazione col passato in un periodo in cui tutti parlano - senza aver nulla da dire.

Il problema attuale del progressismo economico e politico - quello onesto e consistente, non quello di Obama, di Renzi, o dei socialisti danesi o di Syriza - è che, recentemente, si è trasformato per necessità in una sorta di "regressismo".
In un periodo storico in cui le innovazioni politiche ed economiche si rivelano sempre più un cul-de-sac, il guardare addietro è l'unico modo di comprendere e reagire alla deriva verso cui andiamo incontro, specialmente noi Europei.
Un Tocqueville contemporaneo, intellettuale e divulgatore di mondi sconosciuti ai più, sarebbe latino americano e, venendo a vivere temporaneamente in Europa, ci descriverebbe come un popolo che ha rinunciato di fatto ai propri diritti fondamentali, come masse circuìte da nozioni di pseudo uguaglianza e democrazia atte a perpetrare il volere di un pugno di padroni del vapore.
Tornando al problema del progressimo, mi capita spesso di spiegare ad amici e conoscenti sotto i 40 come funzionavano le cose in Italia, a livello di redditi, servizi e diritto del lavoro, mentre loro nascevano o erano ragazzini. La reazione nella maggior parte dei miei ascoltatori è di quasi totale indifferenza nei confronti dei contenuti: ciò che il cervello restituisce al momento è un rifiuto pavloviano del "vecchio". Fa niente che solo 30 anni fa, in Italia, spesso un reddito da impiegato era sufficiente a fare le vacanze con tutta la famiglia, comprare la casa, la macchina e mandare all'università i figli - ed a volte anche i nipoti, a 20 anni di distanza. Non era tutto perfetto, assolutamente, ma il paragone fa impallidire la situazione attuale.
Scatta il rifiuto del "vecchio", ritenuto senza se e senza ma incompatibile coi giorni d'oggi. Peccato che, senza nominare il nome dello Stato in questione e gli anni passati da quei momenti storici, sembri di descrivere una socialdemocrazia scandinava ante litteram. E mi viene in mente cosa intendeva Pasolini quando parlava della violenza e del danno dei corpi estranei al profilo antico e prezioso della città di Orte.

Coworking/coworker: the truth behind sharing a workstation.

"Coworking - being coworker" is just another name for "sharing a workstation because there's not enough aggregate demand to let you open a business completely of your own".

Been a coworker / being in a coworking environment is nice, sharing your workstation makes you meet many interesting people, usually you're projected in a stimulating and composite atmosphere. But the truth - or, as I prefer, the fact - is that you are forced to share your workplace exclusively because you can't afford the costs of having one of your own, and you can't because there's not enough demand for (your) goods and services.
So, stop making coworking popular. Being a coworker is just another way to celebrate how our economy is going bananas.

University and knowledge.

Universities teach knowledge, not intelligence.
Knowledge is often culture and time-related.
Intelligence is the ability to travel through knowledge recognizing the scientific facts.

Microsoft introduces Windows 10: recomposing the fragmented operating systems market.

Some days ago Microsoft introduced Windows 10. The first thought I had has been "They'll have a lot of work to do recomposing their fragmented operating system market". Why did I thought that?
I did because, just to give you a hint of how many Windows products exist in the consumer market, when I have a request for support and I'm asked about a specific button or function or menu, I have to ask "Ok, which Windows do you use?" or guess, by the description I've been told, if it's Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 or, sometimes, the eternal Windows XP (thank God, almost all the Windows View computers died during the years as a sort of natural selection and no one dares to install it on the home pc).
One of the biggest industrial innovation coming with Windows 10 will be the free upgrade, for a year, from Windows 7 on. This practice, lent from the Apple's OS X recent trends, started shyly with Windows 8.1 but that is considerable as a separated case: Microsoft wanted to fix the terrible Windows 8's feedback and, after a year and half of upset users all around the world, they did it giving everyone the Windows 8.1 upgrade for free - which passed as a minor upgrade, almost like a patch, but demonstrated to be something faster and easier to use and configure. Now, this new OS is presented as a milestone too, and it's supposed to simplify the whole Microsoft software products list leaving, hopefully, only XP and 10 in the pc market.
This release contains a million of breakthroughs, like the new rendering engine for games and visual effects, the Android-style devices control bar, the graphics "responsiveness", the redesigned Start menu which includes the old-fashion shape and the ultra-recent tiles too, the unification with Windows Phone and XboX environment, the introduction of Cortana - something impressive that really looks like a human mind living inside your device - and, as a side application, the most futuristic product at all: the Microsoft Hololens. If you don't know what they are, jump at 2:31 of the video at the bottom of the post and keep your jaw tight. These device has been developed under the supervision of Alex Kipman, a guy that sounds to deserve all your attention. Another remarkable thing, although it's something not completely new, is the Windows Store section, which is finally getting quite crowded of apps. This is a big plus - even if late - especially considering the rain of Intel Atom/Pentium processor based Windows tablet. Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo and Microsoft itself are releasing a huge number of devices under 10 inches ready to be used exactly like a pc - and not as a scale blind version of Windows (remember the awful RT?).
The question for me is: will I leave linux for a full-time use of Microsoft Windows 10? And what about you? Will you perform the free upgrade?

Cool Sound and Water Experiment.

The week's video is about distorting a water flow using a subwoofer which emits waves of several frequencies. Funny and fascinating!

The European Central Bank QE (Quantitative Easing), AKA Saving the Euro, not the European.

A couple of days ago the European Central Bank's Quantitative Easing (QE) entered the game. We all knew it was coming: the last two months have been a continuous "Mario Draghi will buy the European national treasury bills", "ECB buying European T-bills soon", "ECB financing governments" and so on. Then, finally, the thing happen: the ECB will buy for some years the European T-bills of the secondary market, proportionally with the size of each European country, for top 60 BLN of euros per month.
Many reactions have been registered: generally, the main European newspapers and tv channels titled something like "SuperMario did it", painting the operation as a success in terms of politics (the German attitude for non-intervention of Central Banks has been consistently broken for the first time) and economics (the huge amount of resources the ECB put on the table). The rest of the world shows more or less similar judgements besides some exceptions, and I'm part of that.
It looks like a matter of logic. The European governments have a budget problem: the internal demand it's shrinking progressively > the companies close > the governments get less VAT and other taxes > the governments have to compress the public expenses cutting investments and services but these cuts are not enough > nobody wants to buy T-bills of a collapsing State and the interest rates on these rise, making the whole thing more expansive > the ECB buys massively these certificate, the governments have the money and the interest rates goes down.
Let me explain another kind of lucid logic: my grandfather whistles > the train whistles > my grandfather is a train. This is a syllogism, one of the first form of logic thought. Many centuries later, Galileo Galilei found that logic is a standard not robust enough to demonstrate the truthfulness of a statement or phenomenon. An argument is "scientific" when it's both logic and demonstrated, on the empirical side, on the base of a certain hypothesis.
As well as the grandfather thing, the chats around the European QE are not correct at all.
The European QE consists in the single Central Banks of the Eurozone - the ECB is just a trust of European banks and doesn't do anything directly - buying T-bills for the mentioned amount of billions of euros per month. The single CB will buy those T-bills from private banks (the "secondary market"). The whole operation has the aim to give these banks - which are completely rotten and full of debts because of the thousand of billions of toxic assets they have in their own portfolio - money. The ECB then expects these banks to start lending money again to the companies and, so, "stimulating the internal demand" (raising your wages, hiring your unemployed friends, moving the economy).
Here's what's wrong in this prediction: banks progressively stopped lending money to the "real economy" during the last years (the "credit crunch") NOT because they don't have money to lend but because banks does it when these two conditions apply: (1) the return of the amount lent is quite secure and, if this first step is respected, (2) the financial performance X% of such operation is expected to be higher, for example, than the earnings you can have investing the same money on a stock market index which shares the same risk rate.
Since almost all around the Eurozone the condition #1 - the most important - is very aleatory and the #2 barely exists, the banks don't lend money. No matter the CEOs behaviors, the corruption rate, the obscene value of corporate bonus and many other things we hear every day as presumed responsible for the economical crisis.
On the other hand, even if this abundance of liquidity generates so irrational expectations (lending money to an economy where companies close and people get fired?) that will make the banks lending money again, that wouldn't be enough. In this hypothetical field, Bloomberg talks about the necessity of 3,000 BLN of euros to change the destiny of Europe. The Draghi's "bazooka" is around 1K - and, anyway, I already explained you why this is a definitely hypothetical scenario.
Again, the only certain consequence of the QE is that the banks will buy soon and for long time more governmental T-bills then in the recent past. This, according to many "experts" - I don't know "experts" of what - will have positive effects because if the banks buy more certificates, the governments will pay back on them, in the future, lower interests than before and so the public debts will grow slower then before. 
The last chain of cause-effect description is correct, but there's more. If the interests rate in our region get smaller than now - and we're already very close to the zero - the interest rate on the European deposits will decrease too, and probably will even disappear. Why Nordea should give you the 0,5% on a deposit when the cost of money is 0,2%? This will ruin an entire generation of savers and, more important, will automatically make you move a great part of your money from your deposits (risk: zero) to the stock market (risk: the moon) because that is the only place where you can still have a discrete gain.
In conclusion, the actual QE is, at the end, inflating the new speculative bubble. A bubble 100% European, this has to be clear, so big that it's possible to see it from the deeper space. And we'll be the next victims.
Do you want to understand more about the thing? Take a look at the youtube seminar down here and take you time. It took years to me. And stop watching economics news on tv.

A year as IT-alian expat in Denmark.

Today, the 15th of January 2015, it's exactly a year I live in Copenhagen, Denmark, as IT-alian expat. I chose this country and then moved here on the base of a list of macroeconomical, social and geographical factors, and influenced by a sweet memory of a trip I had in 2009 to visit a high-tech firm in Århus too - I'm human :-)
I just got off the plane when I had a coffee with the first two "Danish" people I talked with, Mara and Igor, both Italians living there. They were the first I talked with, but in the tube I've heard my language many times. People looking for a job, people running away from their places, from everywhere, physically and metaphorically: the northern Italy, the southern, from huge and "rich" cities just like from the countryside, people with no educations and guys with a PhD - all empirical demonstrations of how the austerity policies in the Mediterranean country are working fine.
The road so far has been long and hard: I have a low-risk attitude about my life, and I looked for any job to be entitled for the Danish "system" and start from that point. Then, I couldn't use it for a while: a full time contract and too many things to do made me run out of spare time in my too small 24 hours day. I had a job in a Danish firm, a regular contract, I subscribed for an a-kasse with a trade union, everything. After a month and half, I've been fired: looks like fraudulent bosses don't like their employers asking questions about un-paid days of great job with many demonstrated results achieved. So the "You're doing the best job ever" and the "Thank you for your efforts" became a polite "I think we should interrupt our cooperation" by email. No 15 days of notification - as stated in my contract, no precise reasons, just a lack of "good vibe". I called my union, explained everything to their lawyers, brought all the possible document to demonstrate the quality and the feedbacks I had at work. As a result they - one of the most expansive Danish union - had a coffee with my bosses, asked a couple of question to a couple of "trusted" employees (read: pets) and the day after I had my answer: "We can't do anything".

Probably I just dealt with the three worst union's employees ever, probably not. Anyway, I decided to avoid any future contact with these people unsubscribing the union. The day after I found a part time job, to start my own in the meanwhile. Here things go fast. It reminds me Alexis de Tocqueville, when he emphasized the use of his telephone (and the role of the international commerce) to renew his passport and buy some flowers from Holland in a few minutes, just from his studio. Months later, I switched to another part time job. Higher pay, closer to my place. I started a cooperation with a huge Scandinavian company. The first invoice. I left to start my own full time project. Many customers, many projects, and then now.

15 January again. It's a year I'm here. The road so far has been tough. The one to ride yet more. But I like it. Happy birthday to me.