Content here is by Michael Still, mikal@stillhq.com.
At 20, Chris Knight set off into the woods to avoid society. He didn’t come out apart from to commit petty theft for supplies for 27 years, when he was finally caught after about 1,000 burglaries. Catherine and I are a bit divided on this story — I think Chris clearly had something wrong in…
This is a book about motivation, specifically about how our assumptions that biological urges and extrinsic motivation are sufficient to model all human behaviours. It turns out that’s not true — intrinsic motivation plays an important part, and in fact badly applied extrinsic motivators can harm the much more powerful intrinsic motivating factors. (It will…
This book lied to me. It purports to start out with a description of a hostage situation in New York city. However, the twist is it turns out that its a simulation instead of the real deal. The deception is complete! However, this is a pretty unusually effective way to “hook” people at the beginning…
I guess it’s no surprise that work uses Argo CD, so it seemed like time to understand it a bit better. Unfortunately this book has what I have come to expect from Packt publishing — it could do with a more solid editorial pass to be honest. The English in the book is awkward, and…
Another really good if a bit short book. My only real criticism of the first four books in this series is they really should have been one book. Title: Exit Strategy Author: Martha Wells Genre: Fiction Publisher: Tordotcom Release Date: October 2, 2018 Pages: 143 Murderbot wasn’t programmed to care. So, its decision to help…
The third installment in the murderbot series. Another fun if a bit short read. Honestly these books should all have been a single volume. That’s the only way I don’t enjoy these books — they’re super expensive for their length. Title: Rogue Protocol Author: Martha Wells Genre: Fiction Publisher: Tordotcom Release Date: August 7, 2018…
This is the textbook for a course I am doing at the moment. To be honest the book is kind of old and nothing special, but I read it so it gets at least a brief mention here. Overall the book is too dated to be particularly useful, and I find it hard to believe…
This is an interesting read about the history of the EBS subsystem in Amazon EC2. This quote particularly stands out to me: What I didn’t realize until I joined Amazon, and seems obvious in hindsight, is that you can design an organization much the same way you can design a software system. Different algorithms have…
Another short and fun sci-fi read. Our favorite anxious and depressed murderbot is off trying to solve the mystery of why in fact he murdered all those nice people. Along the way he meets a mildly annoying but actually kind of friendly AI transport ship with a lot of unexplained capabilities. Definitely worth a couple…
While being a fairly transparent metaphor for refugees, this book is also an excellent read with a relatively believable premise. I especially like the ending, which I thought was quite unexpected. I don’t want to ruin any of this for anyone, but I really really enjoyed this book. Title: Children of Time Author: Adrian Tchaikovsky…