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My Favorite Books of 2016

gatesnotes.com

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Re: My Favorite Books of 2016

#131

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

mark242 wrote: post #90
raintrees wrote: post #86

A humorous observation: Ever look at an HTML page created by Microsoft Word? Quite a bit of code goes into what should have been a simple HTML document. Now try viewing source of Mr. Gates' web page here: 6873 lines, the HTML content starts at 5816 and goes for 9 lines to describe the 4 books plus the bonus, for a whopping total of 9 lines of content, 6864 lines of behavior and presentation... Wow.

If you were ever wondering why Google started AMP, this is it. 5k+ LOC of inlined Javascript, 2.6MB of data and a 13 second load time.

You could just not write the code in the first place.

Re: My Favorite Books of 2016

#132

Post by branchless »

_nkl1 wrote: post #89
QuarterReptile wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Econtalk. Russ Roberts is a fantastic interviewer, with only a few weak performances in his decade of weekly podcasts. He probably skews a bit libertarian for the typical HN'er to agree with, but he gives voice to a lot of points of view, and he brings on good guests. At least half of the podcasts have sufficiently interesting titles that they could be easily voted to HN front page, and the depth of discussion is goo…

It's pretty good, but sometimes boring. Do you have a few "must-listen" episodes to recommend?

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/08/odonohoe_on_pot.htm...

Re: My Favorite Books of 2016

#133

Post by dghf »

Cyph0n wrote: post #27
knz wrote: post #3

"Honorable mention: The Grid, by Gretchen Bakke. This book, about our aging electrical grid, fits in one of my favorite genres: “Books About Mundane Stuff That Are Actually Fascinating.” " The author of this book was on NPR/Fresh Air in August. It was a great listen/read if you are interested in the subject. http://www.npr.org/2016/08/22/490932307/aging-and-unstable-t... I heard it a couple of days after a weather re…

I think the word "mundane" is out of place. Whoever isn't fascinated by the modern power grid is slightly dead inside. The same applies to a ton of other "mundane" things, like road and rail networks, sewage systems, garbage disposal and recycling, and so on. I think a better term would be "rarely noticed".

> I think the word "mundane" is out of place.

I think it's perfectly fine. "Mundane" means "commonplace", "everyday"; it's an antonym of "exotic".

Some people use it in a slightly derogatory fashion because, unlike you, they don't appreciate the complexity and ingenuity of many mundane things. Which is a shame, but I think sadly inevitable, as many (most?) are designed to be unobtrusive; the only time you should notice a sewage system, say, is when it goes wrong.

Re: My Favorite Books of 2016

#134

Post by waltwalther »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #16
knz wrote: post #3

"Honorable mention: The Grid, by Gretchen Bakke. This book, about our aging electrical grid, fits in one of my favorite genres: “Books About Mundane Stuff That Are Actually Fascinating.” " The author of this book was on NPR/Fresh Air in August. It was a great listen/read if you are interested in the subject. http://www.npr.org/2016/08/22/490932307/aging-and-unstable-t... I heard it a couple of days after a weather re…

Here's one that may fit into your list of must read books. Twinkie, Deconstructed by Steve Ettlinger. This book is about the ingredients that go into a Twinkie and how they are created. Super informative on the ingredients of everyday foods.

just picked this up based on your recommendation. Thanks!

Re: My Favorite Books of 2016

#135

Post by facepalm »

thirdsun wrote: post #110
raintrees wrote: post #86

A humorous observation: Ever look at an HTML page created by Microsoft Word? Quite a bit of code goes into what should have been a simple HTML document. Now try viewing source of Mr. Gates' web page here: 6873 lines, the HTML content starts at 5816 and goes for 9 lines to describe the 4 books plus the bonus, for a whopping total of 9 lines of content, 6864 lines of behavior and presentation... Wow.

Furthermore, with uBlock Origin on Chrome the doesn't show any text / paragraph. I see the header image followed by an endless sea of whitespace.

works fine with Firefox+uBlock Origin

Re: My Favorite Books of 2016

#136

Post by staticelf »

Noseshine wrote: post #117
savanaly wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all that, it loads really fast and looks nice.

It takes GIGA-hertz machines to achieve that. On highly parallelized architectures. Often with SSD storage. When I started on the Internet I had a 33 MHz 32 bit CPU, just for comparison, and I used a word processor on 8 bit and with WYSIWYG and a modern GUI on 16 bit. So you telling me "it loads really fast and looks nice" leaves me unsure about my feelings, considering a wider context. It's just some (passive) graph…

When you started websites also looked like shit. So..

Re: My Favorite Books of 2016

#137

Post by krzyk »

facepalm wrote: post #135
thirdsun wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furthermore, with uBlock Origin on Chrome the doesn't show any text / paragraph. I see the header image followed by an endless sea of whitespace.

works fine with Firefox+uBlock Origin

On my Firefox+uBlock Origin I see also a photo and endless sea of whitespace

Re: My Favorite Books of 2016

#138

Post by knz »

paganel wrote: post #124
Cyph0n wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the word "mundane" is out of place. Whoever isn't fascinated by the modern power grid is slightly dead inside. The same applies to a ton of other "mundane" things, like road and rail networks, sewage systems, garbage disposal and recycling, and so on. I think a better term would be "rarely noticed".

> The same applies to a ton of other "mundane" things, like road and rail networks, sewage systems, One of my still-on-the-shelf projects is to photograph, geo-locate and categorize all the manholes from my city that have been installed prior to WW2 in order to document how the city evolved over time (surprisingly enough my city still has manholes from the early 1900s), because a city with no working sewage system ca…

Check with the city first - in the US they often have a management program due to the need to inspect manholes. Depending upon how advanced they are they may even have georeferenced photos and age information.

Re: My Favorite Books of 2016

#139

Post by aorth »

reubenswartz wrote: post #99

I thought Shoe Dog was a great book, although my favorite book of the year was a Gates Notes recommendation for summer reading-- The Vital Question, by Nick Lane. If you're interested in biology and the origins of life, it makes some provocative claims, and backs them up. If this doesn't change how you think about life on earth (and elsewhere), I don't know what will... https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Sum…

I will put The Vital Question on my "to read" list. On a similar topic, I've just picked up Sapiens, which was also on Gates' 2016 Summer reading list. A few people in my circles had been talking about it so I decided to pick it up, before even noticing Gates had recommended it.

Re: My Favorite Books of 2016

#140

Post by Noseshine »

staticelf wrote: post #136
Noseshine wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes GIGA-hertz machines to achieve that. On highly parallelized architectures. Often with SSD storage. When I started on the Internet I had a 33 MHz 32 bit CPU, just for comparison, and I used a word processor on 8 bit and with WYSIWYG and a modern GUI on 16 bit. So you telling me "it loads really fast and looks nice" leaves me unsure about my feelings, considering a wider context. It's just some (passive) graph…

When you started websites also looked like shit. So..

So what? It still is just text and graphics! The fact that it "looked like shit" was far more attributable to the absence of designers and professionals at the time, and of professionally designed templates.

HTML tables for layout sucked - but you could get graphics and text on the page, nothing more is on that page we are talking about here.

Do you think to get better graphics and better layout options for static HTML pages we needed to first get Gigahertz Intel i5 CPUs, combined with Gigabytes of RAM and capable graphics GPUs?

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