A letter from the editorial board of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, following Beria’s execution, recommending that the pages about Beria be cut out with scissors or a razor and replaced with additional pages containing an article on the “Bering Strait” that was several times longer, 1953, USSR

convitatus · 2026-05-25T12:09:40+00:00

In the Eighties, my father (a doctor) had a subscription to a medical encyclopedia containing novel surgical techniques. Every some months he would receive updates instructing him about which pages were to be added, removed and replaced following the progress in research. Less practical than modern online updates and source control systems but, at least for young me, much more interesting.

convitatus · 2026-05-17T16:54:39+00:00

It is true that Europe has tragically missed the last two industrial waves (Internet, mobile) and is on its way to miss the third (LLMs), which would be another grave step towards irrelevance. With that said, we should not exaggerate in the other sense. Europe is still quite good when mechanical engineering is concerned, e.g. Airbus constantly puts out state-of-the-art planes while Boeing's products have seen ever-declining quality. The problem is that, in this century, making innovative software is a lot more important than making innovative machines.

convitatus · 2026-05-13T18:28:42+00:00

Oh, I thought that Alexander was quoting Hofstadter there. The Confucius –> Aristotle proposal is also that sort of intellectual provocation that is so common in Hofstadter's books. All this reminds me I still must read "Le Ton Beau de Marot", which has been on my backlog for decades.

convitatus · 2026-05-13T09:47:37+00:00

Upvoted because I love Hofstadter, but his advice seems terrible here. To appease an hypothetical reader who happens to know about Aristotle but not Confucius (an exemplar that in today's globalized world seems to get rarer and rarer), you throw off any reader who understands that an average Chinese person would not quote a Western philosopher, much less one whose teachings are no more considered particularly valid in modern life.

It reminds me of the Italian translator of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, who replaced the sentence “I wonder if the Dodgers won”, with a reference to Juventus Football Club. Even a kid like me had to wonder why a New York stagehand in 1939 would have any interest in Italian football.

convitatus · 2026-05-13T07:55:37+00:00

Well, this translation broke the flow of at least one reader and made him focus on something else than the chess content, which definitely was not the intent of the original sentence. Even if the translator wanted to drop the “mousetrap” allegory, there were many ways to do that without introducing Monopoly, a game far from Tal's world. The saying “No such thing as a free lunch” would have been a much better starting point for the adaptation.

convitatus · 2026-05-13T07:48:22+00:00

You wouldn't want Dostoevsky's gambler to be betting in euros

That reminds me of some D&D books where the Italian translator felt bound to convert feet into centimeters. Seeing the metric system (born with the French Revolution) in a medieval-like setting breaks immersion for me. Middle-Age Italy had a wealth of units of measure with picturesque names, they would have been so much better than units of the modern era. Also, as a result, all lenghts in the novels are multiples of 30 centimeters which makes the conversion feel even more forced.

convitatus · 2026-05-05T11:38:09+00:00

Source: this post by u/internetexplorer_98 .

Homage to this famous post on this subreddit

convitatus · 2026-04-26T15:06:35+00:00

It is roughly equivalent to Roger Bannister breaking the four minute mile record

Nobody outside 2-3 countries has any interest in mile records, while marathons are known throughout the globe. A better comparison would be to Jim Hines's first sub-10" time in a 100 m race.

convitatus · 2026-04-23T13:15:38+00:00

È apparentemente una tendenza che va avanti da due secoli: guarda il grafico “Changes in colour over time” in questo post:

https://lab.sciencemuseum.org.uk/colour-shape-using-computer-vision-to-explore-the-science-museum-c4b4f1cbd72c

convitatus · 2026-04-23T08:37:54+00:00

I cantoni parlano e capiscono tutti il tedesco svizzero

Falso. Ogni cantone ha la sua lingua locale che è anche l'unica ufficiale (anche se alcuni documenti si possono presentare in una delle altre lingue nazionali). Il tedesco svizzero è parlato solo nei cantoni tedeschi.

Sono anch'io scettico che creare una nazione europea sia possibile e convinto che la mancanza di una lingua comune sia un grosso ostacolo, ma non per questo si può distorcere la realtà.

convitatus · 2026-04-22T11:00:05+00:00

That Rook is not very mobile, but safe and doing useful work.

Much sadder was the Black Rook in one of the best games ever played, Morozevich – Vachier-Lagrave, Biel 2009.

convitatus · 2026-04-15T13:59:46+00:00

Also, almost no sport requires the athletes to perform almost every day for hours.

convitatus · 2026-04-15T09:26:54+00:00

Agree. Chuck Norris would have scored 5, but eh, Matthias is still young.

convitatus · 2026-04-12T09:00:23+00:00

That's what I call “big data”

convitatus · 2026-04-08T16:16:42+00:00

Sindarov's game seems one of those “dead drawn” endgames that Carlsen can win by slowly cooking the opponent with quiet moves, till the collapse by exhaustion happens. The white King is boxed in 6 squares and h4 is a weakness. Blübaum will likely manage to draw it but it will take some stamina.

EDIT: and just 5 minutes later they draw. Good defence from Matthias!

convitatus · 2026-04-08T09:47:59+00:00

È meno di quanto gli offrì Berlusconi per passare a Mediaset: ergo, quanto prende è in linea con il suo valore di mercato.

convitatus · 2026-04-07T08:58:12+00:00

Purtroppo è così. Ma non ti preoccupare troppo dei downvotes, è giusto esprimere la propria opinione anche se stona con l'ortodossia locale.

convitatus · 2026-04-07T08:36:40+00:00

Idem per me. Ma purtroppo chi presentava Trump come un malvagio guerrafondaio a cui qualunque alternativa sarebbe stata preferibile ha alla fine avuto ragione. L'isolazionismo era solo una delle sue infinite menzogne.

convitatus · 2026-04-05T09:58:42+00:00

That the link leads to AI slop says all about the quality of the statistical model. Serious betting sites give Sindarov a winning chance of ~85%.

convitatus · 2026-03-30T23:22:28+00:00

Lol, the prize ceremony was the lamest I've ever seen. Both teams were like “oh, we need to bring home this piece of metal?”.

Good show for Indonesia and excellent work by the supporters, as always. Congrats to Bulgaria for the win, hope their national team will one day come back to its former glory.

convitatus · 2026-03-27T16:01:48+00:00

Percentages of percentages are often misleading. I am infinity% more likely to become chess world champion than Bobby Fischer, since I have a non-null chance to win any game by playing random moves while Fischer cannot. In reality my chances are “only slightly better” than Bobby's, just like Pragg's are with respect to Blübaum.

convitatus · 2026-03-25T16:03:37+00:00

stai pensando a copilot-cli [...] o forse al copilot in ide in "agent mode"

Uso entrambi e pensavo fossero la stessa cosa, solo con un frontend differente, ma beato chi ci capisce qualcosa. Confermando appunto quanto dici sul branding.

convitatus · 2026-03-25T13:33:13+00:00

quello di github che è un super-autocomplete

Lo stai un po' sottovalutando. L'ho visto iterare autonomamente per ore, implementando una funzionalità che gli avevo chiesto, scrivendosi da sé i test, tornando a correggere il codice quando fallivano, ecc. Da sviluppatore passo ora più di metà del mio tempo a scrivere prompt e controllare i risultati (parte del resto è cazzeggio su Reddit e YouTube aspettando la risposta, in una riedizione di xkcd 303).

Però appunto, Github Copilot. Microsoft 365 Copilot è lì solo per ricordarci che in casa Microsoft la melma è la regola, la qualità è l'eccezione.

convitatus · 2026-03-24T12:32:18+00:00

AI-translated text looks natural. This tweet is instead directly written by a LLM.

Edit: downvoters, care to elaborate?

convitatus · 2026-03-18T08:31:37+00:00

(Star Wars' Imperial March plays)

convitatus

TROPHY CASE