An IT pro with 20 years of experience and Uni degrees in Math, Physics and CompSci. I love Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Non-Fiction tales of science, math, technology and history.
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Nate Silver shifts from prediction to betting and risk taking. I really liked this book, the anecdotal stories serve well to illustrate his broader points. The book is well structured and connects the dots between gambling as a hobby or a game and risk taking as an important part of every day life and society at large.
Nate Silver shifts from prediction to betting and risk taking. I really liked this book, the anecdotal stories serve well to illustrate his broader points. The book is well structured and connects the dots between gambling as a hobby or a game and risk taking as an important part of every day life and society at large.
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I loved this book. Once again Neal Stephenson has managed to combine an education on historical, scientific, technological and societal events with a gripping tale of intrigue and adventure. The story itself includes fascinating settings and characters from a little told tale of a forgotten time leading up to World War 1. Looking forward to the next chapter in the Bomb Light series.
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The inside story of the largest law-enforcement sting operation ever, in which the FBI made …
I once knew a man arrested and held for a bank robbery he did not commit. It's a much longer story, but while he was held, he told me about how the other inmates would all watch "Law and Order" while rooting for the "bad guys" because the police were not following the rules of engagement when hunting down criminals. It was the first time I had thought about what it must mean to real-life people locked away on actual charges and what media reflects about their experiences. While reading this book, I found myself shouting, "No way!", "How can that be legal?", "Who allowed that!" and it made me remember this experience from long ago. This is an excellent book that is painful for privacy advocates to read, but it is an important story. It's constructed in a way that immerses the reader in the point of view of …
I once knew a man arrested and held for a bank robbery he did not commit. It's a much longer story, but while he was held, he told me about how the other inmates would all watch "Law and Order" while rooting for the "bad guys" because the police were not following the rules of engagement when hunting down criminals. It was the first time I had thought about what it must mean to real-life people locked away on actual charges and what media reflects about their experiences. While reading this book, I found myself shouting, "No way!", "How can that be legal?", "Who allowed that!" and it made me remember this experience from long ago. This is an excellent book that is painful for privacy advocates to read, but it is an important story. It's constructed in a way that immerses the reader in the point of view of law enforcement while laying out the wider world of crime that leverages encrypted phones. Joseph Cox does an excellent job of letting the reader understand the motives of law enforcement and the impact of their actions so the reader can simply absorb what is happening before calling into larger questions about privacy, legality, and the legal practicality of a program like this. For that reason, I hope this will become standard reading in criminal justice classes. It's constructed in a non-technical manner, so the average reader won't get lost in technical jargon. It's respectful to the law enforcement personnel who are trying to make a difference while painting a highly complex topic that needs to be discussed.
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Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants is a 2013 nonfiction …
potentially my favorite work of nonfiction to date. a work that i constantly come back to and revisit, one of the best things I read in college
I loved this book. Once again Neal Stephenson has managed to combine an education on historical, scientific, technological and societal events with a gripping tale of intrigue and adventure. The story itself includes fascinating settings and characters from a little told tale of a forgotten time leading up to World War 1. Looking forward to the next chapter in the Bomb Light series.
From a New York Times bestselling author, a fresh and detail-rich argument that the best …
An interesting analysis of historical events that show how a fair approach to managing people and distributing benefits can yield superior outcomes over income maximizing approaches. It suffers from being cherry picked and anecdotal . While the case studies are well researched and valid examples, without considering counter examples more broadly the argument is less than convincing.
This is a great telling of the race to create a general purpose artificial intelligence that sparked the ChatGPT LLM frenzy that is fueling a craze for AI. It is interesting how two companies both approached the challenge with a focus on AGI and safety and how they both ended up getting co-opted by the very tech giants they were seeking to shield the technology from. Well-told and well-researched, I really enjoyed reading this. The book does a good job at not taking sides as either a techno-optomist or and AI-doomer and presents both sides evenly. Well done!
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The inside story of the largest law-enforcement sting operation ever, in which the FBI made …
Loved this book. It is a gripping cyber-thriller about how the FBI infiltrated criminal organizations using encrypted communications. I tore through this and thoroughly enjoyed it. The material is factual and follows real events while still being structured effectively in a compelling narrative.
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Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants is a 2013 nonfiction …
I love nature and I love books.If you do too, you might love this book. Told with a almost mystical reverence for the natural world, but with the voice of a scientifically trained botanist it weaves a story that while tragic at times is hopeful and uplifting. I feel like I struggled along with the author as she told her story and came out a better person in the end because of it. The audiobook is narrated by the author and that adds an extra dimension to the book and makes it more enjoyable, something rare for author narrated audiobooks.
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants is a 2013 nonfiction …
I love nature and I love books.If you do too, you might love this book. Told with a almost mystical reverence for the natural world, but with the voice of a scientifically trained botanist it weaves a story that while tragic at times is hopeful and uplifting. I feel like I struggled along with the author as she told her story and came out a better person in the end because of it. The audiobook is narrated by the author and that adds an extra dimension to the book and makes it more enjoyable, something rare for author narrated audiobooks.
Loved this book. I feel like this book did a better jobs than the more well-known Better Angels of Our Nature by Stephen Pinker at making the case that people are basically good. Pinker fell in the trap of trying to present specific evidence from research that was impefrect and most of the arguments against his thesis have been around that evidence and the validity of that research. Bregman does a good job of avoiding that trap without presenting unsupported arguments.Also, the way he structures the book helpds. Pinker was saying look at this macro evidence we are clearly good on average, whereas Bregman breaks down human behaviors in a micro way and shows the roots of these behaviors. It is a more satisfying approach and I feel more effective.
The inside story of the largest law-enforcement sting operation ever, in which the FBI made its own tech start-up to …
