Recent Posts

Drive

  • Post author:
  • Post category:Book

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 be interesting to see what corporations currently cutting bonus payouts experience in terms of overall productivity now that they've removed an extrinsic motivator). Intrinsic motivation is more important for heuristic work where the outcomes aren't algorithmic or clear cut the book argues. It's not as simple as just cranking and handle and creativity comes out the other end. However, that's just what traditional management is -- a series of carrots and sticks to crinkle that handle as fast as possible. Its important to note here that the book repeatedly states that intrinsic motivation only works if the person's baseline needs are already met. That is, you need to be earning enough to pay your bills and so forth before you start valuing how interesting work is. Instead, the book encourages companies to consider things like 20% time, self organizing teams, flexible work hours, and so forth.…

Continue ReadingDrive

Plays Well With Others

  • Post author:
  • Post category:Book

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 of a non-fiction book. Importantly, the book also points out that the techniques that hostage negotiators use to take the heat out of a situation don't work for your marriage: Note to self: something designed for terrorists and emotionally disturbed people isn't perfect for your family. That opening is indicative of the rest of the book -- very readable, and good at keeping your interest. I guess that's good in a psychology book? Every chapter starts with a story, and sometimes the stories are event related to the topic at hand, which is admirable. The whole book is written in a lighthearted style that is fun without coming across as forced, which I think is a pretty impressive thing to have achieved. The book starts out discussing if you can judge a book by its cover -- that is, how good are humans at reading…

Continue ReadingPlays Well With Others

Argo CD in practice

  • Post author:
  • Post category:Book

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 a simple grammar pass by an experienced editor would have made a big improvement to the whole book. Worse, its clear little technical review occurred either, there is at least one case where a Kubernetes YAML field is typo'ed in the text and simply wont work as published. As an aside, I went and looked at my technical bookshelf, and I have literally zero books from Packt that I've bothered to keep. I am very close to just stopping buying books published by them. This book starts with an introduction to Kubernetes, which is a bit repetitive if you already use it. Given Kubernetes is a prerequisite for using Argo CD, it certainly seems like that will be the case for many readers. Explaining Kubernetes makes sense in the context of explaining where Argo CD fits in, but I can't help but think there should…

Continue ReadingArgo CD in practice

Exit Strategy

  • Post author:
  • Post category:Book

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.

Continue ReadingExit Strategy

Rogue Protocol

  • Post author:
  • Post category:Book

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.

Continue ReadingRogue Protocol

Hands-on Ethical Hacking and Network Defense

  • Post author:
  • Post category:Book

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 that something better hasn't been published in the intervening 11 years. That said, if I ever need to enumerate NetWare servers (remember those?) I'll know where to look for information!

Continue ReadingHands-on Ethical Hacking and Network Defense

Reactions to a history of block storage at Amazon EC2

  • Post author:
  • Post category:EC2

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 different benefits and tradeoffs in how your organization functions. Where practical, Amazon chooses a divide and conquer approach, and keeps teams small and focused on a self-contained component with well-defined APIs.  

Continue ReadingReactions to a history of block storage at Amazon EC2

Artificial Condition

  • Post author:
  • Post category:Book

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 of winter evenings to read.

Continue ReadingArtificial Condition

Children of Time

  • Post author:
  • Post category:Book

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.

Continue ReadingChildren of Time

Everything is Obvious, Once You Know The Answer

  • Post author:
  • Post category:Book

This is a book about common sense. Specifically, it's about how when you're told a fact it seems obvious -- common sense -- that it's true. Interestingly, this can be the case even if that fact is in fact untrue. This is at least partially because common sense is mostly practical, that is it's more concerned about "getting to the right answer", preferably quickly, than it is about exactly how it got to that answer. It's also partially because common sense is cultural, we map new situations to things we've seen previously to infer the correct answer. Different cultures have different experiences and so therefore have different common sense. The book spends a chapter discussing the ways that humans make decisions, and how logic isn't really the answer. We instead imagine ourselves in the projected situation and then work through what will happen. This means that we're bad at seeing attempts to anchor our thinking, or other forms of bias. We also tend to think that incentives will work better than they actually do in the real world. That is, we are bad at predicting what factors will be important in someone's decision making process and then apply ineffective incentives.…

Continue ReadingEverything is Obvious, Once You Know The Answer

End of content

No more pages to load

Newer Posts
Older Posts