Recently finished The DevOps Handbook[1].
Had a lot of nice insight into good ways of doing DevOps, and I found the examples from real companies incredibly helpful in understand how the concepts help in the real world.
Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
281–290 of 532 posts
Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
#282The Dawn of Everything, by Graeber and Wengrow. Refutes most of the claims made by Harari in Sapiens, and shows everything you though you knew about prehistory is plain wrong. It's a great book, very well written and well informed. Made me think that humanity's history isn't an arrow pointing in the direction of progress; we make experiments. Our current way of life is not the "best so far", it's but one arrangement…
It's excellent. The quality of DoE demolishes by example the flimsy narrative in Harari's books. I like Sapiens from the point of view of being a lens about specific things in human condition - our capability to take imaginary things as hard truths for example - but Sapiens is closer an autofictional narrative of human condition, than any proper study of what history actually tells us.
Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
#283"This is how you lose the time war". It's by two authors. Light read. I bought it because it was inexpensive and I the title was a "me-shaped" hook. :) I chuckled after a few pages, after about 1/3rd I couldn't put it down, or read it fast enough. Challenging, as it started to rain during my walk to work (as evidenced by the dozen wrinkly pages towards the end). The next day as I read, I was pacing around my apartmen…
I read that after reading Gladstone's scifi book[1]. I liked the poetic and emotional nature of it, but I thought it tried too hard to be both that and a science fiction story. When I tried to grasp at the scifi aspect, it felt like I was grasping at air. [1] _Empress of Forever_, while not poetic, I thought had interesting ideas that were more fleshed out. A lack of focus kept it out of top-tier scifi like Simmons'…
Oh, that's interesting!! I completely "agree" with your perception of the "air", though!! I think we differ in that, to me, I immediately and completely interpreted that as intentional. Not attempting for something and failing, but a faint, and a clever one at that.
A "trick". We were "tricked". :) I distinctly remember I wasn't even half through, and I broke out laughing, raising a fist in mock-anger. And to me, that's part of the awesomeness.
(For instance, I also enjoy magic shows, and standup, surprise parties, and love a trick or witticism. So of course I would process "you tricked me, authors!!" with a smile.)
yay brains/diversity of perception/etc :)
Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
Woo! Diaspora! The opening of that book is such a well put and apt description of... that, I've forced it on plenty of my friends. Schild's Ladder also fantastic (yet similar.. like 30 Rock and Kimmy Schmidt? Still fun, but kinda "i've seen this before"). I think Permutation City was overrated. I haven't read any of his other novels, have you? Iain M Banks (Excession), Greg Egan (Diaspora, Dark Integers), and Charles…
> The opening of that book is such a well put and apt description of... that, I've forced it on plenty of my friends. I think the opening of that book stuck in my head as that is how digital beings and digital identity WILL BE DONE. It makes so much sense to me. Although oddly, I remembered it being cryptographically sound and describing a way for the individual to have secure private keys to prove they are them (eve…
> Although oddly, I remembered it being cryptographically sound and describing a way for the individual to have secure private keys to prove they are them (even to themselves) but I can’t find it when I reread the intro. I thought it was some distributed secure escrow with the Polis but I have have dreamt it.
I'm pretty sure I read something like this too. So either we both dreamt it, or we're both mixing from another science fiction story. :D
Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
#285Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship by George Dyson.
A mindblowing vision and project of a vehicle that would offer the capability to truck TONS of stuff as far as, say Saturn, or offer speedy travel to Mars.
Born in the nuclear optimism of 1950's, killed by politics and bad optics of nuclear bomb enabled spaceflight.
The more I read of the book the more exciting the topic became. I did not realize how superior and feasible the nuke powered spaceship would be if built.
I hope Orion will fly one day, it's that awesome.
Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
#286"The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up" by Marie Kondo
It made me change the relationship to my belongings.
Also practical tips on how to organize the stuff that actually works.
Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
#287The Code Book by Simon Singh[1]. The book is very old, first published in 1999, but I did not know about it till my colleague brought it to work recently. The following stories are very interesting and read as detective novel: 1) how Enigma worked and how it's code was cracked; 2) how Egyptian hieroglyphs were deciphered, which appeared to be very common to Coptic language[2]; 3) how Linear B writing decoded[3], whic…
Singh's Fermat's Last Theorem is a better book, IMO.
Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
#288'God Human Animal Machine' by Meghan O'Gieblyn was a very interesting read. Her background in an evangelical seminary->physics obsessed naturalist->ponderer of AI consciousness made for a very interesting voice and perspective. Blind Sight by Peter Watts is some amazing fiction, a gripping First Contact story The Body Keeps the Score and My Grandmother's Hands are two excellent books to assist at recognizing and proc…
This has been on my list for some time, since I came across this great essay by O'Gieblyn on spontaneity/habit.
One that I bounced off of recently is A Fire Upon The Deep. I don't get it.
Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
#289I think I had it recommended to me here before, so I’ll do the same now. I’m reading the Commonweal series, which starts with “The March North”.
It’s a really, really hard book to get into due to the way it’s written, but its really a quite unique fantasy world populated (and historically ravaged by) wizards and sorcerers.
It also has a fire breathing sheep called Eustace.
The rest of the series basically constantly expands on the world and the lore through the interactions people have, generally with different viewpoint characters.
I’m down to the last book, and a bit sad that the trip will be over.
Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
#290Why we sleep. This book motivated me to change my sleep habits after decades of being a night owl. I’m starting to love early mornings, and I feel so much better. This was a hard change.
How to do nothing. About resisting the attention economy and reorienting one’s relationship with technology and the environment. A very thought provoking and timely read, especially while I’m on sabbatical.
Flow. Explores the psychology of optimal experience, and again has been rather applicable while I’m on sabbatical trying to recover from burnout. It explores the flow state: how people achieve it, why it’s so enjoyable, and shifting towards a mindset that seeks to find flow in everyday moments.
Learned Optimism. Explores the original research that revealed the concept of Learned Helplessness, provides tools to assess one’s own level of optimism/pessimism (this was…revealing), and makes a strong case for replacing certain pessimistic defaults through simple retraining exercises. Really helpful if you grew up in an environment that hammered pessimism into your core. Has been life changing.