I had a PDF in English, so I asked Claude Code to translate the text into Italian and convert it to EPUB. Done – it works and reads well. It took me less than 5 minutes. Things that, I don’t know, might not even have occurred to me to do before.
One thing about AI is that I use it. I use it for work, but also for personal stuff.1 And there’s nothing wrong with that. I also wrote about it here (in Italian): I don’t remember how to do some things that I now do with a calculator, and sooner or later I’ll probably forget how to do things that I now do with an LLM. All in all, it’s not a big deal. The serious thing is that I had distanced myself from Google.
In a recent blog post, Jordan Fulghum noted how, through the use of AI agents via the terminal, the management of self-hosted solutions has radically changed. Today, it’s easier, faster, more convenient, and even more fun to install and configure utility, monitoring, or productivity applications.
One thing I wanted to say, regarding my last post. I am not a pessimist, and I do not want to imagine any kind of block on artificial intelligence tools for supporting creative work or development. On the contrary, aware of my past mistakes, having experienced defeat, mortificazione and frustration in my youth, I believe these tools should be used to produce faster and, perhaps, to sell the fruits of one’s labor better. Clearly – needless to say – cleary the results of these tools must be verified, corrected, analyzed, and adjusted before being put into a stable context. Already said. I am optimistic about this, but with calmness.
As a boy I was a freelancer for many years. I built and sold websites. I did it like a craftsman: I designed the layout with Macromedia Fireworks, refined it with lines, shadows, and reflections, and then manually converted it to HTML1. Then I used my own CMS, built from scratch with my own PHP framework, to make it dynamic.
I stumbled upon Vinson Guo somewhat by accident. I don’t remember exactly, but I think his app was suggested to me by Gemini or Perplexity. I don’t remember. Anyway, Vinson is a developer based in Chengdu, China. In recent months, he’s been working on publishing SmartRSS.
I’ve been working a lot with AI lately. Wait, don’t run away. I know it’s a boring and unpleasant topic, about which everything and its opposite has been said, but it’s a topic that can’t be ignored. And anyway, I’m only telling you a side story. So, listen, go ahead.
I liked so much how Viticci has contextualized his review of the new iOS 18, focusing on the people behind the technology and not on AI. I fully share its perspective.