In the last few days, or rather the last four weeks, besides having traveled a lot (I still need to sort out the photos from the long Thanksgiving weekend), I've also focused my efforts on doing some cleaning. In every sense.

I've been decluttering technologically; I sold my two SteamDecks which I rarely turned on. I canceled my subscription to Nintendo's online services, which I never really used. I've significantly reduced the time I spend on social media and shifted all the wasted time into playing eFootball and trying to go to sleep every night before 11 PM.

Moreover, since the beginning of December, in anticipation of our imminent return to Italy for the Christmas holidays, I've started running regularly again. The first two sessions were terrible; the following days I could barely walk. But by the fifth session, I already noticed significant improvements both in time and effort.

I must say I feel much more serene, calm, and physically present. Despite the constant shoulder pain that only appears with certain movements, which I decided to treat again with a steroid shot yesterday. We'll see how it evolves and if I can resolve something.

Lastly, regarding my mental health and the desire to bring order to every aspect of my life, I decided to revert this blog's domain to the original: contino.com. The Feed RSS should be changed if you were subscribed to gwtf.it, but let me know just in case: gwtf@contino.com

The blog's name obviously won't change; "Go With The Flow" has always been and will always remain my life philosophy, but I felt the need to associate it even more with myself.

My decluttering phase isn't over yet. Very soon, I'll tackle the many clothes I moved here from Italy and rarely wear, ending with a clear decision on which digital spaces I will inhabit in 2025.

I am in Copenhagen, sitting in front of gate C39, waiting to board to my flight to Los Angeles in more than an hour.
I am spending this time reading through my RSS Feed in search of past posts with interesting content. A very easy operation.

The first thing that stands out, as it has been for the past 20 years, is its completely slow and private nature, totally focused on my interests and the people who have chosen to share a slice of their interesting life online.

Completely opposite to social media. Completely opposite to clinging to an ephemeral space where only the here and now really matters. Where memes, extremism, and exaggerations truly rule.

Among the posts from the past few days, there's one from Louie Mantia, in whose paragraphs I see myself reflected entirely.

Maybe it’s social media that’s getting in the way. It’s demanding of my time and my energy. It distracts me. It takes me away from making. I can’t stop bad things from happening. I can’t stop people from picking fights on the Internet. I can’t stop unwanted replies. I can’t stop anything. The best I can do is make good things. And that’s what I want to do. It’s what I’m best at, and I want to maximize the amount of time I’m able to spend doing it.

Same here Louie, same here. I want to focus on games, playing them, talking about them, know interesting people thanks to them. Which is the thing I really enjoyed doing lately, and that is also why I posted less over here.

Maybe, hopefully, that one change will free me from spending so much time on social media, absolve myself from replies, and give myself the time to focus on the things I actually like to do. I want to make icons. I want to make playing cards and fonts. I want to experience things that inspire me to make those things. And I think this is the way.

I have the great fortune of having turned my passion into a job. It took time, but this past month and the many work-related events that happened have made me reflect on my priorities and learn to put first what I love to do and what makes me a better person: my family, gaming, this blog, nature.

My refocusing begins here.

As I was saying in the previous post, this week seems endless. I made a very brief pit-stop in Milan earlier, then Salzburg, and now I'm writing these lines from Berlin, almost on my way back home. Or rather, my new home in Los Angeles.

On the way to Europe, in my little cubicle on the plane, I often wondered how it would feel to see home again, the places most familiar to me after almost a year away. In fact, I can say it had no effect at all.

I'm not sure how to explain it. But I felt nothing, no nostalgia, no desire to return. My only thought was damn, it's cold!

Perhaps this introspective reflection has brought a bit more inner peace. Recognizing that I could truly live anywhere in the world, what's important is being with Noemi and Panna.

I am quite exhausted and feel the need to go home and sleep in my bed. And finally, next week we will have our first vacation since we moved, taking the opportunity of Thanksgiving to go first to Sequoia National Forest and then to Death Valley.

I can't wait.

But let's get to the title of the post. Why too much? If you haven't noticed, in these last 3 weeks there has been a lot of online discussion about which new microblogging platform to migrate to after X. I always thought Threads could be a good candidate, now Bluesky seems to be back on the rise, and this interests me only because many gaming industry folks are moving there.

Indeed, it's the only reason I'm currently using all three. But I've reached a point where I can't stand any of them anymore. They don't deserve my time. They don't deserve my attention, except, of course, for work-related matters. Unfortunately.

Having said that, I have the great fortune and privilege of owning this blog. I might make some changes in the coming weeks, like going back to the contino.com domain as soon as Manuel finds the time to migrate. Or maybe try to post more frequently without necessarily writing a torrent of words.

The last few months have been quite intense, both workwise (where things continue to go rather well) and on a personal level (where the cultural difference we are experiencing still seems difficult to overcome, and we are struggling a bit to make new friends, although we have been to a very fancy 2000’s party last week where we met a nice couple).

However, the weather is on our side; it’s still warm enough, and the thought of returning to the cold Italian weather in just over a month doesn’t fill us with enthusiasm.
We have planned a short trip to Sequoia National Forest and Death Valley for the long Thanksgiving weekend. Since we don’t celebrate it, we take the opportunity to explore the surroundings and discover California.

I discover new blogs to follow and new lives to dig into almost every other week. The real problem is that lately, wherever I turn, the amount of content in front of me becomes more unsustainable every day. Books, music, video games, RSS feeds… it’s honestly all too much, and I’ve decided to take a step back, get off the wave of the here and now, and take my time to read, listen, and play.

I’ve been playing eFootball very seriously lately, skipping all the other backlog games that I have, and want to train well enough to climb the world rankings. For now, I’ve stopped in the second division with a ranking of 3700 in the world on Xbox. Which is quite satisfying considering I started playing seriously about a year ago.

This week I’m in Chicago; Too bad I don’t have the time to visit the city. I watched the election day results last night on my iPad mini while going to sleep. I noticed that none of my colleagues mentioned the vote or the result this morning. Which I consider absolutely positive in a work environment, so I deliberately didn’t ask them anything.

I would like to be able to discuss and understand the reasons that led to such a clear choice, even more so than in 2016. I believe there is a lot of anger, misinformation, and a desire to defeat the other side rather than firmly believing in what the future will grant them with theirs. And I felt strongly unwilling to judge since Italy also experienced a similar situation with Berlusconi, so when I read absurd posts online from indignant Italians, they might forget what happened just a few years before in our country.

In a week, I will leave for Austria first and then for Germany for a couple of work appointments. With good peace of my flight miles, which I hope to be able to use soon properly.

I'm quite sure that if you're even slightly passionate about issues related to the Internet, you've undoubtedly stumbled upon the WordPress vs. WP Engine dispute. You can get a better idea through one of the best-written articles I've read so far on The Verge.

A completely nonsensical drama, really. I don't know WP Engine or its business practices, but it seems to have the fault of adopting open-source software and, in the full spirit of open-source, shaping it for their needs. Or at least that's how I understand it.

On the other hand, it seems from WordPress there's an attempt to change the rules of the game once it has already started.

Although often in disagreement with some of his opinions, this time DHH's view seems to me the most free from all that surrounding noise useful for resolving the issue (but perhaps useful in Court):

That's the deal. That's open source. I give you a gift of code, you accept the terms of the license. There cannot be a second set of shadow obligations that might suddenly apply if you strike it rich using the software. Then the license is meaningless, the clarity all muddled, and certainty lost.

I wonder how it will end. Certainly, WordPress, in its commercial nature and thus .com and the hosting service, hides many pitfalls for someone like me who isn't adept at handling code. I still remember when I decided to move the blog there, I had to pay something like $300 a year.

Luckily, Manuel came to my rescue.

I love participating in the topics suggested by the IndieWeb Carnival for my blog, and October's theme, hosted by Riccardo, is particularly dear to me. It's about "multilingualism in a global Web," and as a native Italian speaker, I find myself in this situation daily since the last nine months.

Riccardo is Italian, just like me, and while reading the introduction to the topic, I couldn't help but smile:

I invite you to write about your experience with foreign/artificial languages; about the role of multilingualism in a predominantly English-speaking Web; about how your daily life is affected by multiple languages; and anything you come up with that can be interesting in this discussion.

It's not just a predominantly English-speaking Web, but it's a predominantly English-speaking World too! I often find myself having conversations with colleagues and acquaintances since we moved to the United States, and only a few are aware of the privilege of being born and raised without needing to worry too much about learning another language. Because everyone outside of English-speaking countries studies English as an additional language to their native one.

While those fortunate enough to be born in the United States, Australia, the U.K., etc., don't have to exert much effort when traveling abroad. It's others who have to adapt. My wife and I often think about what it must be like to live in a world where everyone speaks your language, and wherever you go, you know there's a way to communicate.

The convention has therefore wanted that this unwritten rule, but accepted by everyone, was from the beginning of the Internet, shared, making English in fact the most popular language and the only one capable of letting you cross your national borders.

In my own small way, it took me a while to make the leap. I only started writing in English a few weeks ago, mainly to interact with other bloggers. But thinking about it, also because the English language has now become the main one through which I express myself most of the time offline.

Online, apart from this blog, I've been used to speaking in English since the early 2000s. Since I started interacting with people from all over the world through a headset and a microphone on Xbox Live using a video gaming console.

In written form, however, I had to wait for the advent of social media and especially when I began working at Microsoft in 2006. From that moment on, there hasn't been a day where I haven't written at least one sentence in English.

What about you? What’s your experience?

My ‌iPhone 15‌ Pro Max battery level is currently at 94 percent with 299 cycles. For a lot of 2024, my battery level stayed above 97 percent, but it started dropping more rapidly over the last couple of months.

In this MacRumors article, Juli Clover mentions that she set her iPhone 15 Pro Max to charge to a maximum of 80% for a year. This ensured that her battery remained above 97% of its life for most of the time, recently dropping slightly below 94%. Not bad.

What surprises me is how many charge cycles both she, Gruber, and others put their phones through in a year.

I'm at 134 cycles, having started using mine in November 2023, so it's just a two-month difference compared to them. I've never set my battery charge limit below 100%, and my only rule is never to let it charge below 45%.

Maybe this is the real secret to maintaining good battery longevity? My battery still has 97% of its life, and I have no intention of replacing my iPhone.

For a few days now (with the iOS 18 update release), I've been testing a charge limit of 90% to see if I'll experience a sudden drop too, or if I can keep my phone's battery healthy for a decent period.

What about yours?

Last week, we had some friends visiting from Italy. We took the opportunity to do something different and explore some parts of the city we hadn't seen yet.

We decided to go hiking at Runyon Canyon Park. It's a city park shaped like an ellipse that forms a loop as it climbs up the Hollywood Hills.

I dusted off my Sony Alpha and, even though the gloomy light of the day didn't help the shots, I managed to get a few decent panoramas. Of all of them, I've chosen these two photos.

While the PlayStation 5 Pro seems to offer significant performance upgrades, its price tag (especially in the U.K. and in Europe) has raised eyebrows among many gamers compared to what the pricing of PlayStation 5 was four years ago. For example I ordered mine from Amazon in 2020 spending around 510 euros, shipment costs and a vertical stand support and a physical disc reader included in the price.

The PS5 Pro's price increase over the original PS5 is significantly larger than the jump from the PS4 to the PS4 Pro, while it was the opposite in terms of technology (PS4 didn’t have 4K support originally while PS4 Pro was equipped with that). This has led many to question whether the performance enhancements justify the higher cost.

Honestly, although it's too early to judge whether the juice is worth the squeeze, I think many can agree that yesterday turned out to be a wasted opportunity to show something new.
If this new mid-generation console had to flex its muscles, just to justify a purchase choice, it certainly shouldn't have done so by showing PlayStation 4 or cross-gen games during its launch event, because honestly, I don't think I was the only one who had a hard time noticing significant differences between a PlayStation 5 and a PlayStation 5 Pro version among the materials shown yesterday.

Above all, these details are still so small and limited that with the speed of today's games, the eye of anyone who plays won't notice small improvements on the textures of a leaf on the marginal part of the screen and outside the main action of the game. Probably the differences in frame rates will be more evident, which a more powerful machine can certainly guarantee.

However, I don't think such a high cost is entirely justifiable, especially since most of the components are the same as the PlayStation 5. Ultimately, the success of the PS5 Pro will depend on whether consumers perceive the performance improvements as worth the extra cost. If the console can deliver a truly exceptional gaming experience, it may be able to justify its higher price point.

But certainly not today.

I'm not a technician, nor a programmer, and I don't know any programming languages. However, I do know what APIs are while I maintain a deep, obsessive passion for all things tech.

Not to mention music streaming services. Over the past 10 years, I think I've tried them all, you name it, and I've likely spent more than a week on it.

I've used both Apple Music (for more than 4 years), and currently, I'm happily using Spotify, despite the much-anticipated Hi-Fi still being absent. Also, I'm a heavy Apple user.

Among the various reasons I currently prefer Spotify over Apple Music (maybe I'll do a dedicated post for all the others), there's definitely the Spotify Connect feature. It allows you to control Spotify from any device, regardless of where the streaming was initiated. Practical example? If I start music on my phone in the bathroom and then leave it on the sink? No problem, I can control it from my computer in the bedroom and decide to stop playback.

Until September 3rd, for those using iOS, Spotify Connect allowed controlling the playback volume through the physical buttons on their iPhone. This is no longer allowed by Apple due to the discontinuation of the necessary APIs which Spotify heavily relied on to let Connect work properly.

In the tech world, as in video gaming (where I've hung out for decades), the line between being a product fan or a fanboy is very thin, especially when it comes to championing a brand, where one can easily fall into blind perseverance, ignoring all elements at play.

Reading this post by Gruber on the topic, I felt that line was crossed once again:

It remains unclear to me exactly what is going on here. I think what happened is that what Spotify was doing to enable users to use the hardware volume buttons on their iPhones to control the volume of playback on other devices via Spotify Connect was making use of private or undocumented APIs, and Apple shut those APIs down in iOS 17.6. In short, that it was a hack that stopped working or just stopped working reliably.

If it's not clear what's happening, how can the use of an API be labeled a hack? Especially when this hack is associated with Sonos in the linked Mastodon post?

Simply put, after 15 years, Apple decided to modify the APIs without an apparent reason, once again asserting its control over its devices. This isn't necessarily bad, especially when talking about privacy and security, but I'd like to know what sensible reason there could be to degrade the experience for millions of users who've enjoyed both the streaming service and iOS for decades?

And John Gruber:

Who should get to decide the rules for how the hardware volume buttons work on iPhones and iPads? Apple, or the European Commission?

This easy irony about the EU's decision-making power isn't about showing who's got the bigger stick but about having a logical sense for the end user.

But I understand it might not be easily comprehensible for someone who's probably using Apple Music from day one and decided to often denigrate what isn't Apple.