51–60 of 283 posts
I am not a cryptographer but I do work in security and The Code Book by Simon Singh is an excellent history of the history of cryptography/cryptanalysis presented as periods through history where the pendulum swung between giving the edge to the code makers or breakers. The code makers have been ahead since about the 1970s.
Or so the code breakers would have us believe…
Code by Charles Petzold then doing Nand to Tetris has given me an abiding (though amateur) fascination with computer architecture, which lead to building a 6502 machine and reading about lots of other architectures.
Accounting... The rule of accouting is that if anything excites you about accounting you shouldn't do accounting. The most fun I had studying accounting was learning about tax evasion, money laundering, defrauding stakeholders etc. Any academic book about forensic accounting could be deemed interesting if you just read only the case studies.
What book on forensic accounting would you recommend for entertainment value? I have some knowledge of french accounting, been exposed to US style, and thoroughly enjoyed long forms involving forensic accounting, money laundering and the like...
The EPA was made aware of him but did nothing even after they physically inspected his biodiesel "factory" and discovered it was basically just an empty warehouse.
What finally brought him down was his taste for expensive sports cars and his being an asshole neighbor. He was always parking his sports cars pn the street, blocking school bus stops, etc. Local parents suspected he might be a drug dealer because of how many cars he had and how lavishly he spent his money, and they asked the local police to look into him. It was the local investigation that uncovered the fraud and brought him down.
https://advancedbiofuelsusa.info/rodney-hailey-sentenced-to-...
I’m not a physicist, but this book took me very close to abandoning my CS career and getting into theoretical physics.
A very tough question. I feel that it might be quite hard to lure a curious person into Computer Science, who doesn't know anything about the field yet. One of the books I liked (since I actually studied Linguistics in my Bachelor's) and what drew me towards CS was "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software" by Charles Petzold.