The months main into re:Invent are thrilling (and sometimes exhausting). I spend most of my time doing analysis, assembly with sensible engineers, and creating tales to share with you on stage. It’s great. However it doesn’t depart me with a lot time to learn solely for pleasure.
So, within the weeks that comply with re:Invent, I attempt to make time to work via the ever-growing pile of books accumulating on my nightstand and all through my workplace. It’s a shedding battle. Then once more, when was it ever price doing one thing simple?
Right here’s a brief checklist of issues I’ve began, completed, and not too long ago added to the pile…
- A very powerful factor I’ve learn not too long ago was Proper/Fallacious: How Expertise Transforms Our Ethics by Juan Enriquez. It clearly lays out how our ethics and morals change beneath the affect of know-how in a reasonably quick period of time. For instance, utilizing gene modifying know-how comparable to CRISPR to change a baby’s genome could also be unethical proper now, however our grandchildren would possibly really feel in a different way, realizing that we may have eliminated or edited a gene identified to trigger breast most cancers. At a time of utmost polarization, this e book challenges us to consider how shortly mainstream opinions can shift and why.
- In mild of latest election outcomes worldwide, and the upcoming presidential race in the USA, I made a decision to re-read The Age of American Unreason in a Tradition of Lies by Susan Jacoby. It offers wonderful historic perception into how politics and the politicians that symbolize us have shifted away from rational and mental debate to who can shout the loudest. It’s fairly startling to see how a lot public language has devolved prior to now few a long time. If it is a matter you’re fascinated with, I urge you to learn Douglas Hofstadter’s 1964 Anti-Intellectualism in American Life.
- I lastly had an opportunity to complete Down and Out in Paradise: The Lifetime of Anthony Bourdain by Charles Leerhsen. As a fellow world traveler, with an identical view of learn how to stay, I’ve at all times been impressed by Bourdain’s storytelling talents. He was an empathetic narrator that targeted on individuals and their experiences. This e book is in regards to the man behind the tales that helped deliver these narratives to life.
- As a lot of you realize, I’m a lifelong AFC Ajax supporter, so I actually loved Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s biography Adrenaline: My Untold Tales. Zlatan began his profession at Ajax and his spotlight reel from these days will do extra justice than my phrases can:
- I picked up Atlas van een bezette stad 1940-1945 by Bianca Stigter, which covers the German occupation of Amsterdam within the type of an illustrated Atlas. It’s mind-blowing to see the ways in which the Nazi occupation nonetheless haunts town. The e book is in Dutch (sorry for now to my English readers), but it surely was tailored right into a four-hour lengthy documentary by Stigter’s companion Steve McQueen, known as “Occupied Metropolis” which debuted at Cannes final yr.
- I began studying Rust for Rustaceans: Idiomatic Programming of Skilled Builders by John Gjengset, but it surely’s a bit extra superior than I want for the time being, so I picked Command-line Rust: A Challenge-based Primer for Writing Rust CLIs by Ken Youens-Clark and it appears promising to this point. I’ll present an replace as I progress.
- Only for enjoyable, I purchased the fourth e book in John Burdett’s Sonchai Jitpleecheep sequence: The Godfather of Kathmandu. When you have ever spent any prolonged time frame in Bangkok, you’ll take pleasure in this sequence. The writing is completely sensible. I’m not completed but, however to this point, it’s nearly as good because the earlier three books.
- The very last thing I’ll depart you with is a paper I not too long ago learn from the Netflix Expertise Weblog, “Rebuilding Netflix Video Processing Pipeline with Microservices” by Liwei Guo, Anush Moorthy, Li-Heng Chen, Vinicius Carvalho, Aditya Mavlankar, Agata Opalach, Adithya Prakash, Kyle Swanson, Jessica Tweneboah, Subbu Venkatrav, Lishan Zhu — It goes into element about rebuilding their video processing pipeline on their microservice-based platform Cosmos.
If there’s one thing that you simply’ve learn or are studying that you simply’d suggest, let me know on Twitter or LinkedIn.
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