My Favorite Books of 2016
gatesnotes.com
gatesnotes.com
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 related power cut and ended up in the rabbit hole of the risk from cyber warfare/terrorism and solar flares. I'm not sure I would recommend that rabbit hole if you have any concerns about the reliance of society on technology and just in time shipping!
> I find this topic fascinating is because my first job, in high school, was writing software for the entity that controls the power grid in the Northwest
I wonder if somewhere in bowels of a northwest utility company there is a machine silently chugging away, running code written by a teenage Bill Gates, helping deliver electricity to the masses.
> My first job—other than being a page in Congress, which isn’t a real job—was doing a computer-software project for Bonneville Power Administration, which is a quasi-governmental entity that controls the power grid in the Northwest. We were computerizing the power grid. And the company that BPA had contracted with, TRW, was behind, so the people there scoured the country to see who really knew how to do a certain type of programming, and they found me, because I was sort of infamous as a boy wonder of a certain type of programming.
I guess there were mainframes and not minicomputers? Still, surprising a high school kid would get a coding job in the early 70s.
Of course it was. E.g.:
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 feel like the vast majority of people have absolutely no interest in learning about these things, even in a calamitous context.
True, but shows like How It's Made are incredibly popular, even if they give a very very surface view of the details.
Are you saying that we're supposed to take the word of the majority when deciding if something is "mundane"? In that case, almost everything we're discussing and upvoting here on HN is "mundane", because <90% (just a guess) of humans actually give a shit.
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.
But there are some complex systems that form the basis of civilization that just cannot be simply dismissed as "mundane", at least in my opinion. Systems that, without their presence and correct end-to-end operation, would result in absolute collapse of civilization. Systems that have been developed and perfected through the work of countless scientists, engineers, and laborers over the span of decades.
The power grid falls into this category, while the aforementioned 19th century movement does not.
Of course, I'm probably not aware of all such systems, and I'd definitely be delighted when someone points one out. Heck, I only learned about the complexity of HDTV standards throughout history on a HN thread today! It does not fall under the category I noted above, but I still found it deeply interesting.
I love talking to people who are interested in anything other than themselves - it really doesn't matter what as long as they are interested in something enough to have learnt and thought about the topic in some depth.
The real shame is so few people are interested in anything at all.
And yes, I agree: it's getting harder and harder to hold a deep conversation with someone on a technical topic, even in a professional setting. Or perhaps I'm just not looking correctly?
Just watch out for the bores that will just parrot whatever they heard on FOX/CNN last night.
Obviously, trying promoting such an idea to a culture that worships the selfie is foolish at best.
I think I disagree that those characteristics necessitate interest. People can consider the fact that the electric grid is an awesome accomplishment, while also having no care for understanding its history or inner workings.
That's true. I just feel that a better term could be used, since "mundane" makes it seem like the thing you're talking about is "no big deal". It just feels wrong to use it on something like the power grid.
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 cannot be called a "city".
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.
Christien Meindertsma has spent three years researching all the
products made from a single pig. Amongst some of the more
unexpected results were: Ammunition, medicine, photo paper,
heart valves, brakes, chewing gum, porcelain, cosmetics, cigarettes,
conditioner and even bio diesel.
According to the Amazon customers, the mentioned book was written by a non-technical person (actually, I've checked, a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology) and was apparently also without the careful editor. Alternatively, if somebody has read this book, maybe he can say that it's not that bad? I wouldn't like to buy it just to discover it's written like this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13103538
I strongly suspect the grid will be severely diminished by distributed renewable energy.
I'll have to pick up String Theory (I love that Bill Gates reads DFW) and The Grid per his recommendations.
When Jon Stewart did the Daily Show I always wondered if he had read guests' books because he had pretty detailed questions.
I wonder if in some cases his producers would give him "cliff's notes" for the books.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/03/fashion/bill-gates-the-bil...
I wonder if being "argumentative" against a book you disagree with in this way is a good antidote to confirmation bias.
One type of person might stop reading a book when it veers in a direction they disagree with and therefore end up never changing their mind.
On a tangential note: Over the years, many people have asked me how I know so many things... and I always give them the same answer: because I wanted to, so I put time into making it be that way. That's it.
While I feel that I should recognise that being reasonably gifted has likely benefited me here, there are _many_ people considerably cleverer than me! I take pains to attempt to drive home the central point, which is that I believe it's the _attitude_ that matters the most of the two. Just because I might have had a easier time than many when learning _doesn't_ mean it was easy, or didn't consume a lot of time and effort! No.
I just thought it was important, so I did it. It requires effort. It was an investment.
It greatly irritates me that many jump to the conclusion that some talent negates all the hard work that it required - and still requires. Learning never ends - or, it shouldn't!
I think most people are considerably more capable than they think - they often just don't try.
I've been doing this when friends ask for recommendations to cities. Google and guidebooks are already at their disposal, so a manageable list of 3-5 options with some personal insight is better than a comprehensive, but impersonal list of 20.
And if folks haven't read DFW's Roger Federer as Religious Experience in String Theory, you can read it on the Times web site (but you should also look into reading the rest of his works):
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20fede...
Now try viewing source of Mr. Gates' web page here: 6873 lines, the HTML <p> 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.
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?
https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Summer-Books-201...
https://www.amazon.com/Vital-Question-Evolution-Origins-Comp...
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 good for the hour each guests receives.
I find Econtalk discussions meaningful and rigorous, in contrast to carefree series like "99% Invisible" / Invisibilia / Startup. The latter are great as a chewing gum for the brain, but they are mostly trivia and I do not recall learning anything useful from them over the years.
It's notable that he's getting better over time. I started listening to the more recent ones, then went back and listened to the old ones, and they were quite a lot worse.
Off the top of my head, my favorites have included the episode about how the budget gets passed in the US, the one about justice and the prison system, the food bank market where food gets priced for exchange, and the one about medical ethics and the question of "too much information".
I'd love to have an "EconTalk meetup" in the bay area.
"Lots of things in the world seem ordinary. But when you dig deeper, it turns out, they’re fascinating. Surprisingly Awesome tells those stories."
It's german though.
- Endurance: The story about an expedition to Antartica... gone wrong (http://amzn.to/2g26L5i)
- Crucial conversations: Learn how to argue with people without starting fights. Allowed me to look at the situation more objectively (http://amzn.to/2h8w4yN)
- Making of the atomic bomb (http://amzn.to/2gJF6VU)
- Relentless: the personal coach of Michael Jordan talks about how you can become a cleaner. Great if you want to understand how great athletes think (http://amzn.to/2gJCerW)
- Make: rockets. Some cool stuff to do with the kids (http://amzn.to/2gZyQaQ)
- How to make a spaceship: The history of the Ansari XPRIZE. Interesting read about how hard it was to build this spaceship. (http://amzn.to/2h8xMzY)
Model rockets are great for kids. I wish there were an equivalently accessible set of programmable RC plane projects.
Except maybe "The Grid". Technical infrastructure is always fascinating and awe-inspiring.
...Which brings me to one of the two books that I reccomend on HN every time the subject comes up, because they're just that good.
Exploding the Phone, a fascinating dive into the world of phone phreaking that really needs more attention. It not only discusses the people and culture of the phreaking scene, but also the technology that drew them to the phone. It really manages to capture a bit of the magic that entranced people of the time: If you're not a little bit in awe of the A4 crossbar switch by the end of it... You should be.
I do recommend that people are generally careful with blindly taking everything as a straight truth, especially when an author seems "trustworthy". It is a known tactic to sneak in lies or exaggerations among the truths.
Did he read this many books before retirement?
On my last job, I had 30-40 minutes on the bus back and to work every day and got a lot of reading done. Now I live about 8 minutes from my job which unfortunately is not worth it to start reading.
(I noticed that I was skewing some of the results because I tend to always include Amazon links when I mention a book.)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12365693
That's how I interpret complaints by adblock users.
That's how I interpret pages that don't work at all when I have adblock turned on.
Seriously, if a website is so crammed with tracking shit and advertising that it can't even display text when I have ad-block on, then good-riddance.