Ask HN: Books with a high signal to noise ratio? - <AUTHOR> I like reading non fiction but a lot of it is like pop psychology with not a lot of informational content.
I've picked up two books recently and I've learnt a lot :
The Selfish Gene By Richard Dawkins
The 10 Day MBA By Steven Silbiger
There's very little fluff in these books and you learn something useful on almost every other page. I'd like to read more such books , especially on technical subjects. <comment><USER2> There's another problem besides poor signal-to-noise, the information in pop-(history, psychology, economics, etc.) books often is simply wrong or deceptive. Even scholarly books can misinform you or give you a very biased perspective; with millions (tens of millions?) of PhD's in the world, you can find a book that will say almost anything you like.

Thankfully, the experts in each field effectively review the books for you. An there are more widely-respected, serious scholarly works of true genius than you can read in your lifetime. The signal-to-noise generally is very high, misinformation is low, and writing by the very best is often very engaging.

In other words, if all you read is the very best humanity has to offer, you still won't live long enough to read more than a fraction of it. So why waste your time on anything else?

<comment><USER3> The question then is: how do you find such books especially as a layman?

<comment><USER2> I've tried to solve that challenge a few times now. Here's what I've learned so far, from most efficient to least:

* Ask an expert; this is a simple question for them. A university library's reference desk has worked well for me. For example, looking for books on Egypt, I contacted a university library referece desk and was connected to the library's Arabic Studies reference librarian, who had a Ph.D. in the field from an elite university. What was a challenging question for me was probably offhand knowledge for him. (Of course, respect their time (be prepared and patient) and the fact that you are not entitled to their services, but he seemed excited that a member of the public was interested and serious.)

* Look for scholarly articles reviewing publications in the field. I use Google Scholar but I get the impression JSTOR is better if you have access (I've never used it and know little about it). In each case I've read several articles to triangulate what is widely accepted and what is particular to that author, and to fill gaps in each author's coverage. However, I find the review articles themselves fascinating, almost essential background on what I want to read, and tend to get lost in them. Lacking expertise myself, I still feel uncertain about the conclusions I draw - what don't I know? what context am I missing? - there is no substitute for expertise.

* Look at class syllabi at universities. This has been slow going: I have to find the classes and the syllabi (if available), and then hope it includes more than an unannotated list of books.

* Do not: Use general web resources. It seems like the general web and the scholarly world are two separate silos of knowledge. I find 100x more valuable information in the scholarly articles, and random people on the web are often badly misinformed (this includes Amazon reviewers, a great source of complete nonsense that sounds good until you know better).

Overall, it makes me appreciate the resources available to university students, who have free and easy access to experts in a huge variety of fields, all paid to help them.

<comment><USER4> Very astute, especially the library reference idea. In the same vein:

\- Avoid news brought up by social networks - people like and share what's emotionally engaging, so the story writers have a very strong incentive to embellish. Majority of the "news" on social media is either bogus or empty.

\- Major newspapers check credentials of their guest authors. Those guest articles aren't always correct, but signal/noise is way higher.

\- Articles in peer-review journals are usually right, especially the bigger journals with more eyes on them.

\- Approaching a librarian is not as hard as it may seem. Here's UW. for example: [http://www.lib.washington.edu/about/contact](http://www.lib.washington.edu/about/contact)

\- Apparently there's a "24/7 Reference Cooperative", a nation-wide librarian Q&A service: [http://wiki.questionpoint.org/w/page/13839418/24%207%20Coop%...](http://wiki.questionpoint.org/w/page/13839418/24%207%20Coop%20FAQs)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think if you're really looking to get a sense of how the world works, the best stuff to read are journalistic accounts and histories. Just pick a subject your interested in, do a bit of googling on well regarded accounts of that subject, than go to town.

The reason I think these are more valuable than the pop psychology/business airport books is they don't operate under the pretense that the world's great truths can be boiled down to 240 pages. Rather, learning about people's experiences and stories on there own terms helps you develop a much more nuanced worldview.

For example, I'm reading The Battle Cry of Freedom, an overview of the Civil War, and it's astounding how much more insight a book about something 150 years ago offers into today's society than just about any of the Gladwell genre stuff.

<comment><USER6> I've also been reading The Battle Cry of Freedom and it's been amazing. The analysis and insights the author can pack into every single page is just incredible. And all those political, social, and historical insights have just as much applicability today. It really has been essential reading for understanding the major fault lines that have defined American life, and continue to do so in major ways.

<comment><USER7> I've been (slowly) working through the series (Oxford History of the United States) and want to put a mention in for "What Hath God Wrought", covering 1815-1848. Similar in scope and depth to Battle Cry, gave me similar feelings of "How can a book so long feel like it's barely abel to get all this information in."

Thats the period I was least interested in going in, but have ranked as the best History book I've read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined" by Steven Pinker

Bill Gates calls it one of the most important books he's read in his life. "People often ask me what is the best book I've read in the last year. Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined stands out as one of the most important books I've read – not just this year, but ever." [http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/The-Better-Angels-of-Our- Nat...](http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/The-Better-Angels-of-Our-Nature)

<comment><USER9> I encourage anyone who reads Pinker's book to also consider Nassim Taleb's critique [http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/longpeace.pdf](http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/longpeace.pdf)

<comment><USER10> ... and then read Pinker's reply [http://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/comments_on_taleb...](http://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/comments_on_taleb_by_s_pinker.pdf) TLDR: The book's structure was lost on Taleb, who blends the different chapters and then criticizes his own confusion.

<comment><USER8> I'm a bit of a Pinker fanboy, but his counter-criticism of Taleb is very well- written and hits on every point Taleb makes.

"Taleb shows no signs of having read Better Angels with the slightest attention to its content. Instead he has merged it in his mind with claims by various fools and knaves whom he believes he has bettered in the past. The confusion begins with his remarkable claim that the thesis in Better Angels is "identical" to Ben Bernanke's theory of a moderation in the stock market. Identical! This alone should warn readers that for all of Taleb's prescience about the financial crisis, accurate attribution and careful analysis of other people's ideas are not his strong suits."

<comment><USER11> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1Dm2ZYeA6U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1Dm2ZYeA6U) , "Statistics of Violence as Special Case of Fat Tails", there's been a ton of commentary on this back and forth, but not one of them thinks "Pinker is correct" if you've been paying attention. I need to start collecting resources related to this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The best book I've read in the last 5 years is David Simon's, "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets"...if you've watched The Wire, half of its material is derived from this real life account of being embedded in Baltimore's homicide unit: [https://books.google.com/books/about/Homicide.html?id=N8LS0b...](https://books.google.com/books/about/Homicide.html?id=N8LS0b0_bvUC&hl=en)

All of Atul Gawande's books, notably:

The Checklist Manifesto [1]: [http://atulgawande.com/book/the-checklist- manifesto/](http://atulgawande.com/book/the-checklist-manifesto/)

Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance: [http://atulgawande.com/book/better/](http://atulgawande.com/book/better/)

[1] You can read the essay that this book is based on in the New Yorker: [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/10/the- checklist](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/10/the-checklist)

<comment><USER13> 'Checklist Manifesto' is great, but I don't think it's high in SVN. It repeats itself a lot to drive home the point that using checklists is good, even (or especially) for experts in their field.

<comment><USER14> yea tldr is like 5 lines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> * Influence by Cialdini - great overview of the psychology of human motivation and influence. You'll get the inside dirt on a lot of sales and marketing tricks.

* Seeing like a State by James Scott - a good political history with lots of insight into many conventions in our modern society, such as even last names, were created to make society manageable by a central government.

* Europe and the Europeans by Barzini - the closest thing I have found to being a time traveler, skipping between different places and times in Europe from 1920 to the 1970's.

</comment><comment><USER16> A few books at various levels with very high signal-to-noise ratio:

Feynman's little popular science book _QED: The Strange Theory of Light & Matter_ is a gem. It's very short and non-mathematical, but still manages to get remarkably close to the truth.

If you're more mathematically inclined (e.g., fluent in multivariate calculus) and know a little classical physics, the first 5 chapters of Wald's _General Relativity_ are an essentially complete introduction to the subject.

Another classic is Shannon's _A Mathematical Theory of Communication_, which introduces the subject of information theory, and then solves basically all the subject's main problems.

In economics, I think the record for signal to noise is probably held by Keynes _The Econonic Consequences of the Peace_, 118 pages, in which he basically forecasts the disastrous course of events from 1918 to 1939.

<comment><USER17> Some nice books on this list - Keynes' book is certain packed with advice that was completely ignored at the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> On Writing Well by William Zinsser [http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-30th- Anniversary-Edition/...](http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-30th-Anniversary- Edition/dp/0060891548)

It's absolutely the best book for anybody who keeps a blog or writes any sort of non-fiction. I try and re-read it once a year.

</comment><comment><USER19> One of the most important books in my life has been

 _The Way of Zen_ by _Alan Watts_

(I listened to it as an audiobook). It changed the way I think and feel (or at least how I react to feelings). Other interesting books about philosophy/spirituality are

 _Jonathan Livingston Seagull_ by _Richard Bach_

 _Siddhartha_ by _Hermann Hesse_

 _The Power of Now_ by _Eckhart Tolle_

The last one is the least recommended, I'm not sure I got anything out of it, but I read it in in the same period of time as the ones above, so I might have learned something subconsciously.

<comment><USER20> +1 for Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Fantastic book, and a very very easy read to boot!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Quantum Computing Since Democritus, by Scott Aaronson. It covers an astounding amount of stuff -- including complexity theory, the nature of randomness and information, and quantum information theory -- into less than 400 pages.

<comment><USER22> Within computer science, I found "Introduction to the Theory of Computation" by Sipser to cover a lot of ground in a concise and comprehensible manner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I generally avoid books written by Journalists, especially for technical fields. I've been told by some Professors that a journalist will contact various experts in a field for a given hot topic and write a book on their notes (I assume they get compensated). The information in the book is still useful and should be fairly well written. However if you're looking for the high signal stuff, you're better off reading a book by someone who is actually in the field vs an outsider. Preferably someone who is on the cutting edge of the field. That's important to me because I'd rather read about ideas who are active in their field vs. an outsider/generalist. (Note that I have nothing personal against journalists. I simply view what they write as second hand knowledge. i.e Do you think a journalist can capture the nuance and context of a particular subject such as Evolution? I would trust Richard Dawkins to achieve that and do a better job)

I've had pretty good success with this method. As a browse the book store, I check the author and put down books that are written by journalists. If the author is a researcher or a distinguished person in their field I take a closer look at the book and check the reviews.

<comment><USER24> igonvalue

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sapins[1] by Yuval Noah Harari. Currently 220 pages into it, I wholeheartedly recommend -- it's remarkably well written and is full of very interesting perspectives.

Credit where it's due: learnt about this book in an edge.org conversation[2] between Dr. Harari and the eminent psycologist Daniel Kahneman.

Speaking of professor Kahneman, I recently finished his "Thinking, Fast and Slow" (I did notice it's mentioned in the comments, but still), over a period of deliberate slow reading of 5 months. Much has been said and written (more than well deservedly!) about this book. Don't let the title invite you to dismiss it off as yet another over-simplifying popular psyocology book; it's anything but that. It is an account of about 30 years of collaboration with his late colleague Amos Tversky. Certainly not a breezy page-turner. It's well worth it to take your own time to assimilate the content.

      [1] http://www.ynharari.com/sapiens-the-book/short-overview/
      [2] http://edge.org/conversation/yuval_noah_harari-daniel_kahneman-death-is-optional

<comment><USER26> I read _Sapiens_ after seeing the same edge.org conversation, and while it was mostly good, I think it started off strong and then became less so as it went on. Especially towards the end it became almost a hot list of current events the author had read about in the newspaper, like browsing through a lot of TED talks, without a lot of coherence to a larger picture. My other complaint would be that some portions seemed less scholarly and heavily influenced by the author's opinions and personal worldview. Not a bad book by any means but somewhat less than the "history of humankind" I had hoped for. The first quarter focusing on prehistory through agriculture was very informative, though leaves me questioning if I'm just suffering from Gell-Mann amnesia. Rated it 4/5 on Goodreads when I was finished.

I found _Guns, Germs and Steel_ by Jared Diamond to be perhaps a better book of similar nature overall, and would add in _The 10,000 Year Explosion_ by Cochran and Harpending as another good one for those who liked _Sapiens_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> "Getting to Yes" is probably the shortest, most useful book I've ever read. If you have to negotiate anything, this book will help.

I read it 22 years ago and it pays off regularly.

<comment><USER28> I'd second this. The core message of the book is well stated and though I read it a few years ago now, I still regularly use the communication techniques in every day life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Econtalk.org regularly interviews authors with recent books on a wide range of interesting topics from food to history to human nature to health care. Each hour-long interview serves as an overview of the book and helps me decide which would be worth a read.

Republic Lost by Lawrence Lessig had a high density of ideas.

</comment><comment><USER30> Good idea. Too many these books these days read like a long-form magazine articles (or blog posts) that have been stuffed with fluff to get to a book- length.

<comment><USER31> God, yes. I still can't get over "the no asshole rule". The entire book makes literally two points: "Don't be an asshole and don't tolerate assholes". It's stuffed with so many factoids and fallacies to belabour those points that I'm still mad at the author for wasting 6 hours of my day.

<comment><USER32> So the author was... kind of an asshole?

<comment><USER31> No, not at all, just terribly verbose and opportunistic, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini

Pretty much a must-read for anyone interested in sales, marketing, or "persuasion". However, even if you're not in that line of work it will blow you away. Lots of good examples and not a lot of fluff (despite what you might think just based on the title).

</comment><comment><USER34> The Making of Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes, he stars with the science of the atom as it was figured out in the late 19th century and continues through the end of World War II

<comment><USER35> While that's a tremendous book, especially in the first 300 or so pages on the history of nuclear physics there's also a _tremendous_ amount of fluff/noise, like paragraphs about the village where Lise Meitner and her nephew and fellow atomic physicist Otto Frisch were doing their Christmas vacation when she was the first to receive from her friend and former colleague Otto Hahn his stunning radiochemistry results proving the fission of uranium.

That was just the most outrageous example, but there are plenty more. But as far as I know it's the best book on the subject, and as "Luc" says in the other comment right now in this subthread, he doesn't oversimplify the science.

If you like that, for more of the same without a lot of fluff I'm finding _The Magic Furnace_ by Marcus Chown to be wonderful, it's is a history of the elements. How we deduced the very existence of atoms thousands of years ago, then generally much more recently their nature, then how they came to come about (e.g. fusion in stars). Truly fantastic and rather tightly written, the fluff about the philosophers and scientists is generally only a sentence or three.

If you like both of those, as I recall, haven't read it since the '80s, George Gamow's _30 Years That Shook Physics_ ought to fill out the rest of the basic picture, focusing more on our friends the electrons, which is where almost all the action in chemistry happens, that's something these other two books don't cover in as much detail as the nucleus.

<comment><USER36> I think a lot of what you call fluff/noise was the author's attempt to show the humanity of scientists who some readers might misidentify as gods on earth. I absolutely agree it can sometimes be tedious but I don't think it was just padding to make the already 900+ page book longer.

<comment><USER35> I don't think he padded the book, but I otherwise have difficultly explaining why he included those vacation location paragraphs. They didn't humanize Meitner and Frisch, or otherwise add to the story; yeah, they were walking in the snow when they came to the big conclusions (and Meitner's encyclopedic knowledge of the relevant physics facts was truly amazing), but no more than one setting paragraph was needed, and a couple of sentences would done in this place.

It wasn't like e.g. the Cambridge labs where so many critical experiments were done with such simple apparatus ... which got if anything less coverage outside of describing the experiments.

I suppose he found the story he told about the village too neat not to include in the book, but he or his editor should have had a little more restraint, it's pure noise. I shudder at imagining the size of the original manuscript....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> If history is of any interest, try Asimov's Chronology of the World, by Isaac Asimov (duh). It's ordered chronologically, and describes in concise and fact- rich passages what was happening during a given span of time in each region of the world.

Asimov was also a master at nonfiction writing for laypeople. Most of his books were nonfiction (they were easier for him to write).

</comment><comment><USER38> Everything can be considered fluff if you're familiar with the topic already. For example, I respect Richard Dawkins and agree with his position, but if you read two or three of his books, everything else is just "fluff". Similarly, if you already know Calculus, every other book on Calculus will be just "fluff". So, this basically means that you need to be reading books on topics that you don't know. The main difference I would make here is not in terms of having fluff or not, but if the book is well written.

<comment><USER39> Fluff is not content that you already know. It's narrative that isn't directly relevant to the topic at hand.

<comment> alok-g This deserves more than an upvote.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> _" There's very little fluff in these books"_

Very little fluff in a book that claims to be able to provide "40 percent of a two-year MBA program in ten days", at a fraction of the price?

If you want no-fluff writing on technical subjects, look for a good textbook on the subject of interest. I think people are averse to it, probably an artifact of formal education. But if you can find a well-written, introductory text, on any subject, I think you'll be amazed at how much you can learn from them, while actually enjoying the experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> That claim is overblown but it has a lot of useful content. You'll get what I'm talking about if you read it. Don't think of it as a substitute MBA. Think of it as a fun way to get a good overview of what it takes to run a business.

It's that sweet spot where it's not as dry as a textbook but not full of fluff like some pop psychology book.

<comment><USER40> > _It 's that sweet spot where it's not as dry as a textbook but not full of > fluff like some pop psychology book._

It does look interesting, and I think I may give it a spin. That said, some of the most valuable lessons in an MBA are technical (finance, marketing, operations).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41>
      Feynman QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter;
      Penrose The road to reality;
      Greene The elegant universe;
      Greene The fabric of cosmos;
      Greene The hidden reality;
      Hofstadter Gödel, Escher, Bach;
      Asimov Understanding Physics;
      Ivanov Easy as pi;
      Boyer a history of Mathematics;
      Robbins What is Mathematics?;
      Russel principia mathematica;

<comment> alok-g From the few I have read, I certainly know this is a great list. Am adding others to my queue. Question: Which all amongst these are NOT high on signal- to-noise ratio, if any?

E.g., I did not find Courant/Robbins as high density, though it is a very good book still.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Even his noise is signal. He is Donald Knuth.

 _The Art of Computer Programming_.

<comment><USER43> While (probably whimsically) not what the OP meant, I will attest to the accuracy of this recommendation - TAOCP has one of the highest SNRs I've ever seen in a book. For its thousands of pages, this says a lot.

<comment><USER42> The 50 years writing and editing has been about pairing the text down to what matters. It just turns out that a lot of things matter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Notes on the Synthesis of Form by Christipher Alexander is the most meaning- dense book I've ever read. The number and quality of his footnotes serve as proof.

[http://www.amazon.com/Notes-Synthesis-Form-Harvard- Paperback...](http://www.amazon.com/Notes-Synthesis-Form-Harvard- Paperbacks/dp/0674627512)

</comment><comment><USER45> The best history book I've read is The Origins of Political Order. Disguised as an academic political science book it is a sweeping history of human civilization starting in China and going through Arab and European states. It is chock full of intersting facts and surprising theories and implications for today.

<comment><USER46> Definitely a must-read. Also: Why Nations Fail, and Violence and Social Orders. People in tech would be well-served by a deeper understanding of the systems we operate in and hope to change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I love "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely and "Influence" by Robert Cialdini, both fascinating reads about how the mind works that yield useful insights for UI design and marketing.

<comment> alok-g Are these high signal-to-noise?

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> The Art of Eating, by MFK Fisher: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Eating- Anniversary-Edition/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Eating-Anniversary- Edition/dp/0764542613)

I love food, and I love the anthropology of food. The writing here is engaging and entertaining, but the content is quite interesting if you are at all curious about mid-century French cuisine from the perspective of an American ex-pat chef.

<comment><USER49> I second this. I have read every page of MFK Fisher that I can find. I have never regretted a single page. Not just a food writer; she possesses a poet's eye for the human condition, and genius-level writing skills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Simplicity - by Edward de Bono - [http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0141033096/ref=as_li_tl?i...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0141033096/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=0141033096&linkCode=as2&tag=shkspr-21)

It is literally one idea per page. Virtually noise free - but does demand some thinking on behalf of the reader.

</comment><comment><USER51> A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson

<comment><USER52> I absolutely loved this one. I'm a programmer, but I love the history of the physical sciences like chemistry, physics, geology, etc and associated things like math. Scientists did the funniest things to find out what we know now!

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

<comment><USER54> I started reading this book and am half way through and, although I'm not finished, I would have to disagree with you. This book is mostly pop- psychology with overstated implications and reliance on low-stake experiments that can not always be replicated. Also, the book glosses over actual results by saying "the participants were more likely to x than y". How much more likely?

A typical example of psychological discovery discussed in the book: 1\. Ask someone to give 3 or 10 examples of when they were assertive 2\. Ask someone to grade themselves on how assertive they are

And the study shows that people who were asked for 3 examples of how assertive they are were more likely to grade themselves as more assertive that those who were asked for 10 examples due to recollection bias.

I mean, I could see how this is sort of interesting but it's such low stakes. How would anyone be able to grade themselves from 1 - 10 on how assertive they are? What does that even mean? What implications does this have on anything?

I don't know. Psych experiments that are so glorified in the book seem to me to be too convenient and a form of story telling, which is fine except for the troubling implications that our cognitive biases and inefficiencies somehow trump our free will and freedom. But then again, I have my own biases.

<comment><USER55> It's supposed to be an accessible version of "Heuristics and Biases". Saying Kahneman is pop psych... Well if you think so, then we should consider anything in psychology to be "pop".

<comment><USER54> Another issue I take with the work is the certainty in talking about the analysis of his experiments. Phrases like "we now know..." are used often.

For instance, one experiment shows that frowning can have effects on your disposition. As an experiment, a subject is told to hold a pencil in their mouth in a certain way as to unknowingly produce a frown or smile and then do some task. The difference between behaviors is then attributed to smiling or frowning, as though the only thing going on with a pencil awkwardly in your mouth is the smiling or frowning.

Maybe I do view all psychology in a negative way but I imagine I find it distasteful the same way (I imagine) most people find the study of IQ differences among races distasteful. Is this a valid field of study? I don't know and I don't care to know because the racist overtones are so strong.

Unfortunately psychology, especially 'pop' psychology has been used to deny people their free will and restrict freedoms.

It goes along with an overall trend of the sciences to rely more and more on statistical methods which I find troubling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> You're probably already thinking a lot about technical systems. Donella H. Meadows' 'THINKING IN SYSTEMS' provides a profound introduction to system dynamics that might change your way of looking at systems in the world at large e.g. social, economic, and political systems and how they behave over time.

It's one of the few books I've read several times. Writing this makes me want to read it again.

</comment><comment><USER49> Gödel, Escher, Bach, by Douglas Hofstadter.

<comment><USER57> If you consider extravagance as noise, this book will have a terrible SNR. (I think it's nonetheless worth reading. It's basically an introduction to the theory of computation with fables and plenty of illustrating examples by Escher and Bach (both of which have unknowingly used important concepts from computation in their works). It is definitely much easier to read after having attended to a theory of computation I lecture.)

<comment><USER58> We have access to so much great work on the topic of computation today thanks to the internet, and especially because of work in computer languages and research over the last 20 years, but GEB was published in 1979. At the time it was ground-breaking, making work that really only a handful of people knew about and were interested in accessible to many.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Functional programming in Scala by Paul Chiusano and Rúnar Bjarnason. Programming Erlang: Software for a Concurrent World by Joe Armstrong. Even if you have no desire to learn Scala, Erlang, or functional programming, I still think most people would enjoy these books. Every page of these books contain a golden nugget.

</comment><comment><USER60> Since you don't say specifically what topics you are interrested in I'll just name a few of my own favorite non-fiction books that have a great signal-to- noise ratio:

\- Computer Organization and Design, Fourth Edition: The Hardware/Software Interface

\- Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment

\- Effective Modern C++

\- SFML Game Development

\- Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools

<comment><USER61> Haven't done any writing of C++ since college, and not too much reading either, but just flew through Effective Modern C++, and found it to be a great, information-dense, and eye-opening read. Highly recommended.

<comment><USER62> All of the C++ books by Scott Meyers are excellent -- very clear and insightful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> For writing fiction and simply how to use words effectively: The way to write by Joan Moat [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Way-Write-Ted- Hughes/dp/0140272704/](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Way-Write-Ted- Hughes/dp/0140272704/)

For understanding computer networking, Computer networks by Andrew Tanenbaum: [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Computer-Networks-Andrew-S- Tanenbaum...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Computer-Networks-Andrew-S- Tanenbaum/dp/1292024224/)

For physics (though old now), Feynman's lectures: [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Feynman-Lectures-Physics-boxed- set/d...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Feynman-Lectures-Physics-boxed- set/dp/0465023827/)

<comment><USER61> "The Way To Write" is actually _John_ Moat. I tried to look Joan Moat up on Goodreads, and couldn't find it.

<comment><USER63> oops, sorry. For some reason it isn't giving me an edit option, so thanks for your correction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Great question. Reminds me of what Samuel Johnson had to say about Paradise Lost ("great, but nobody ever wished it was longer")

My $0.02:

Andy Groves - High Output Management fits your bill

Most Seneca

Robert Frost poems (but maybe S/N is TOO high for comfortable consumption here)

</comment><comment><USER65> 1) Biology and Knowledge by Jean Piaget

2) Ontogeny and Phylogeny by S.J. Gould

3) The Logic of Life by Francois Jacob

These books have very little fluff and will challenge you to think in new ways about evolution, biology, and the development of human knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER66> _Gödel, Escher, Bach_ by Douglas Hofstadter?

</comment><comment><USER67> Thinking Fast and Slow - each chapter summarize several others whole books on behavioral economics.

<comment><USER68> Seconded. This book has a very high signal-to-noise ratio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69>
        In Pursuit of the Traveling Salesman: Mathematics at the Limits of Computation

by William J. Cook.

Combinatorial optimization is very important for many practical problems and increase in computational power and improvement in algorithms has lead to an immense increase in the scale of problems which can be tackled. This book describes these developments through the lens of the travelling salesman problem

</comment><comment><USER70> 1) A2K Handbook, free online, [http://a2knetwork.org/handbook](http://a2knetwork.org/handbook)

 _" Access to Knowledge (A2K) is the umbrella term for a movement that aims to create more equitable public access to the products of human culture and learning. The ultimate objective of the movement is to create a world in which educational and cultural works are accessible to all, and in which consumers and creators alike participate in a vibrant ecosystem of innovation and creativity."_

2) Sci-Fi author L. Sprague de Camp's 1963 book, "The Ancient Engineers", covers the period from early Egyptian engineering up to Galileo. [http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Engineers-L-Sprague- Camp/dp/03...](http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Engineers-L-Sprague- Camp/dp/0345482875/)

 _"History, technology, culture, finance, and sociology intersect here. It's not history from the top (kings and such, which some say is dry), nor history from the bottom (average people, which is necessarily endless and perhaps not very revealing). It's history from the nuts-and-bolts middle – how structures were built, how materials were transported, how wars were fought. When you know this sort of foundational information, everything else becomes more real."_

3) Paul Calter, "Squaring the Circle: Geometry in Art & Architecture", [http://www.amazon.com/Squaring-Circle-Geometry-Art- Architect...](http://www.amazon.com/Squaring-Circle-Geometry-Art- Architecture/dp/0470412127/)

 _" the combination of the subject knowledge of design, architecture, art, geometry, philospohy, music theory, and mathematics ... Calter includes the basic lessons and explanations of a regular Geometry course in his book, but then he interweaves an integrated classical curriculum (based on deductive reasoning)"_

4) Georges Ifrah, "Universal History of Numbers", [http://www.amazon.com/Universal-History-Numbers- Prehistory-I...](http://www.amazon.com/Universal-History-Numbers-Prehistory- Invention/dp/0471375683/)

 _" the first complete account of the invention and evolution of numbers the world over ... Dubbed the "Indiana Jones of numbers," Georges Ifrah traveled all over the world for ten years to uncover the little-known details of this amazing story. From India to China, and from Egypt to Chile, Ifrah talked to mathematicians, historians, archaeologists, and philosophers."_

</comment><comment><USER71> Zero to One - Peter Thiel

The Lean Startup - Eric Ries

<comment><USER18> If you're into technology startups—I assume you are—Zero to One is absolutely what you're looking for.

<comment><USER35> Ah, for startups in general, you should look at _The E-Myth_ by Michael Gerber, no matter what you're doing it'll have some essential advice, and you should examine your business model in the light of his general thesis that you should make your business "franchiseble". At the very least, observe the principles of leverage, "no one ever got rich typing".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> _The Four Steps to the Epiphany_ \- Steve Blank

 _Steve Jobs_ \- Walter Isaacson

 _Artificial Life_ \- Steven Levy

 _On Writing_ \- Stephen King

 _Machine Learning for Hackers_ \- Drew Conway and John Myles White

 _How Doctors Think_ \- Jerome Goopman

 _Cholesterol Clarity: What The HDL Is Wrong With My Numbers?_ \- Jimmy Moore & Eric C. Westman

 _Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco_ \- Bryan Burrough & John Helyar

</comment><comment><USER73> Mathematics books normally have an excellent signal to noise ratio. The difficulty is finding ones that are both important and not too difficult or specialized; textbooks are usually a good starting point.

I can recommend Feynman's lectures on physics and Bruno de Finetti's "Theory of Probability. A Critical Introductory Treatment".

</comment><comment><USER74> Not a book but Charles Munger's talk, A Lesson on Elementary, Worldly Wisdom As It Relates To Investment Management & Business is good and I see a copy is hosted on this very domain [http://old.ycombinator.com/munger.html](http://old.ycombinator.com/munger.html)

</comment><comment><USER75> I really like what I'm reading now: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Singularity-Is- Near-Transcend/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Singularity-Is-Near- Transcend/dp/0143037889)

...but it may not be what you want (some may consider it fiction)

</comment><comment><USER76> I recently read "Economics in One Lesson" by Henry Hazlitt [1], and I highly recommend it for anyone who wants a foundational understanding of economics. "One Lesson" is meant as a claim that the book is pure "signal." And it is.

Even more terse and incisive is the 150 year old essay that inspired Hazlitt to write his book, Frédéric Bastiat's "What is Seen and What is Not Seen." [2] It's uncanny how well this essay holds up today.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_in_One_Lesson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_in_One_Lesson)

[2] [http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html](http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html)

</comment><comment><USER77> I'm guessing you mean excluding textbooks

      The Extended Phenotype
      Your Inner Fish
      Thinking Fast and Slow
      The Information
      Chaos
      Statistics in Plain English
      Fortune's Formula
      Fooled by Randomness
      A Random Walk Down Wall St.
      How to Win Friends and Influence People

</comment><comment><USER78> As a sidenote - oh, dear again a book discussion. As if my pile of unread books was not high enough. Already ordered a few titles from this thread - I'm anticipating with dread and excitement if any more apparent must reads pop up. HN literacy thread plus instant click to buy - lethal.

</comment><comment><USER79> Now that it's finally been released, I recommend _Rationality: From AI to Zombies_ : [https://intelligence.org/rationality-ai- zombies/](https://intelligence.org/rationality-ai-zombies/)

<comment><USER80> Currently reading this and while it's pretty good, there's a considerable amount of fluff in the earlier chapters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> Shameless self-plug about my book that covers calculus and mechanics in 300pp flat.

No bullshit guide to math and physics: [http://noBSgui.de/to/MATHandPHYSICS/](http://noBSgui.de/to/MATHandPHYSICS/)

<comment><USER82> If you've included the non-standard analysis approach to calculus it could benefit a ton of people.

<comment><USER35> While I haven't examined it closely, there's a well thought of, concise, no- fluff book on it: [http://www.amazon.com/Infinitesimal-Calculus-Dover-Books- Mat...](http://www.amazon.com/Infinitesimal-Calculus-Dover-Books- Mathematics/dp/0486428869)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> Open books like the Haskell wikibook [1] tend to be concise since there's no need to create filler content.

[1] [https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell)

</comment><comment><USER80> A good option is to look for winners of science book prizes.

The Royal Society Winton Prize is excellent: [http://www.theguardian.com/books/royal-society-science- book-...](http://www.theguardian.com/books/royal-society-science-book-prize).

Some personal favourites:

The Incredible Unlikeliness Of Being by Alice Roberts is a wonderful book that describes how a human being develops from conception to adulthood in minute biological detail.

The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography by Simon Singh is fantastic, if a little out of date by now.

Cosmos: The Story of Cosmic Evolution, Science and Civilisation by Carl Sagan.

</comment><comment><USER84> \- Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders [http://amzn.to/1KWptkR](http://amzn.to/1KWptkR) \- Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul [http://amzn.to/1Mcy70b](http://amzn.to/1Mcy70b) \- Diffusion of Innovations [http://amzn.to/1Dy5ZmM](http://amzn.to/1Dy5ZmM) \- Failure Is Not an Option [http://amzn.to/1W8U4BG](http://amzn.to/1W8U4BG)

</comment><comment><USER85> For me it was

      Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond.

It blew my mind on almost every section! I loved it I suppose coz it answered a lot of questions I'd growing up and a bit more. I've recommended it to everyone in my family.

One critique I received was that there is repetition of ideas but I think its because primarily humans carry past successes anf failures so most of the changes are evolutionary to what worked previously and second this book is akin to a thesis and every chapter is essential to building up the case.

By far the best non-fiction I've read.

<comment><USER86> While no doubt Guns, Germs, and Steel is a good work, I will be hesitant to subscribe to ideas it presents, carte blanche. Please see this reddit discussion[1]

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/1rzm07/wha...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/1rzm07/what_are_some_of_the_main_anthropological/)

<comment><USER87> I'm sure I find books to read in this "Ask HN" but your comment is exactly what's the issue with it.

So the OP asks for high signal to noise ratio. There comes a recommendation, and then I read some good discussion on Reddit on how the book is actually kind of wrong.

This begs the question: What's "high signal to noise" anyways? Someone who has read 10 books on a subject will find barely anything new. One who just starts out might find "gems" on every other page.

And also: If a recommendation here in this "Ask HN" is given and then debunked as mediocre, how sure can one be to actually find a book with high signal to noise without reading the book?

In that sense: Thanks for your comment. In-depth discussions like the one on Reddit is really necessary, because I, as a starter, have no clue how to evaluate a book. Every recommendation should probably come with a lengthy discussion about its accuracy by people who know the subject :)

<comment><USER86> I kind of agree with you "high signal to noise" take. It is highly subjective. Most of the times, going with populistic choice seems to be way forward. Unfortunately we have very short time. Personally very liberal estimation of my reading prowess, I don't think I will read more than another 500 books in my life time.

My emphasis with my comment is to read books, ideas with healthy dose of skepticism, rather than worshipping it as gospel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> I learned quite a lot reading "Understanding Physics" by Isaac Azimov. It covers just about every level of basic through college level physics, and unlike textbooks it is actually readable.

<comment><USER35> I do remember it being fairly good when I read some of it in high school, although something about it failed to capture me and prompt me to read it all the way through.

One factor of that may be because Asimov didn't really understand the material, turns out he hit a wall when going from differential to integral calculus (the 2nd part of introductory calculus, very basic stuff), so I now view it with suspicion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> How to Solve It, by Polya.

</comment><comment><USER90> Lots of good picks added to my to-read list here.

If you can read French I recommend "Petit traité de manipulation à l'usage des honnêtes gens". To give you an idea, the translated title would be "Little treatise on manipulation for honest people". Unfortunately, it is only available in French.

[http://www.amazon.fr/Petit-trait%C3%A9-manipulation- lusage-h...](http://www.amazon.fr/Petit-trait%C3%A9-manipulation-lusage- honn%C3%AAtes/dp/2706118857)

</comment><comment><USER91> I was lucky that during my research time I got to know Dawkin's work. And the journey started there:

1\. "Cats' Paws and Catapults: Mechanical Worlds of Nature and People" by Steven Vogel. If you were fascinated by the wings of birds or little waves behind the plants in water read this. Fascinating book!

2\. "The meme machine" by Susan Blackmore. Starting off where Dawkin's book ended.

3\. "Three steps to yes" by Gene Bedell, beside Getting to Yes already mentioned here.

<comment><USER92> Blackmore's book is a very clear introduction to the meme, and general replicator, concept.

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit

I read this about the same time I read the Selfish Gene, had a similar effect. It's one of the few philosophy books that I still think about today.

</comment><comment><USER94> The Art of Electronics and the accompanying student manual.

</comment><comment><USER95> I recently read _Intelligence: All That Matters_ , a short (160 pages) introduction to measuring intelligence. It covers a little history, how it's done, why it matters. Written by a working researcher so not very fluffy, and came out in June, not last century.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OGLKHDO](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OGLKHDO)

</comment><comment><USER96> ==For electronics:

The Art of Electronics 3rd Edition (interview with the one of the authors, if you're unconvinced: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCI3B5eT9NA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCI3B5eT9NA) )

==For finances:

The Millionaire Next Door (filled with a lot of interesting facts and habits from extensive research)

==For food/cooking:

Alton Brown's Gear for Your Kitchen

BakeWise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking

</comment><comment><USER97> Daniel Kahneman, "Thinking, fast and slow"

</comment><comment><USER98> Why nobody mentioned Paul Graham's ANSI Common Lisp book? It 's got almost zero "noise" and full of signals .)

</comment><comment><USER99> Literary Theory: An Introduction, Terry Eagleton

<comment><USER100> Just to be clear, the simplest gloss on Eagleton's landmark essay (it's really too short to be a book) is that it's a takedown of belles lettres-style criticism.

Loosely speaking, Eagleton is best known for Marxist literary theory (dialectical materialism).

[Edit: removed html-style tags]

</comment></comment><comment><USER101> Lately I've been reading about the functional artist and writer because ultimately they do similar work to what we do. Our work is more concrete and has definite correctness but at least for me some of the admonishments towards Craftsmanship are good. I'm Reading Art and Fear at the moment. On Writing Well is also good.

</comment><comment><USER102> Try Peter Drucker's _Adventures of a Bystander_ , Jane Jacobs's Cities trilogy (non-fiction, written over many years, classic) and Robert Cialdini's _Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion_. Also I'll second the David Simon, Atul Gawande, Feynman, Shannon, and Keynes recommendations.

<comment><USER103> Just bought Jane Jacob's "The Death and Life...", glad to see it on here. I'm looking forward to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER104> _Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy_ by Joseph Schumpeteer and _Small is Beautiful_ by Schumacher are two classic, heterodox economic works. People outside the field rarely read them, which is a shame. Both have very high S/N ratios, and will make any reader more thoughtful about the world.

</comment><comment><USER105> 1\. Walter Lewin's For the Love of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge Of Time - A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics

2\. Subroto Bagchi's MBA At 16: A Teenager's Guide To Business

3\. Jugaad Innovation: A frugal and flexible approach to innovation for the 21st century by Navi Radjou, Jaideep Prabhu, and Simone Ahuja

</comment><comment><USER106> * Last Call The Rise and Fall of Prohibition * The Information, a theory, a flood * The Fruit Hunters * The Third Chimpanzee

Off the top of my head were pretty information dense in the sense that I remember walking away from them knowing a good deal more about something I didn't previously

</comment><comment><USER92> "Technical subjects" is too broad to get started. But if you are serious about wanting a high signal to noise ratio, you want textbooks and monographs. Landau and Lifshitz' series on theoretical physics; Knuth's _Art of Computer Programming_ ; that kind of thing.

</comment><comment><USER107> I enjoy certain classics, exactly for the reason that the signal to noise ratio is high. Granted, they do not tell much about business and more about human nature, but from Hemingway to Diderot... As an author still to be discovered I suggest JF Powers (morte d'Urban for example)

</comment><comment><USER108> "The Master Switch" by Tim Wu. It really changed the way I look at the current tech landscape.

</comment><comment><USER109> Here are 3 that I particularly liked in the last few years:

The Information, James Gleick

A Universe from Nothing, Lawrence Krauss

Abundance, Peter Diamandis

<comment><USER51> I was surprised to see a recommdation for The Information. Gleick seems the epitome of a rambling author who says almost nothing. I made it through Chaos, but could not get through Feynman or The Information. This kind of InfoJunk is what the OP is trying to avoid, I think.

<comment><USER109> Maybe you are right, it is not in the same category as The Selfish Gene. However, I thought the parts about the early history of computing were written very well, as someone who did not know much about it before.

I was also thinking that a non-fiction book with no fluff and no injection of personality/flair from the author is a textbook. There are many outstanding textbooks (like Molecular Biology of the Cell) which offer pure information, but I think commercial non-fiction books are aimed at a more general audience. The author needs to fluff a book up a bit to make the material approachable. I also wonder how some non-fiction books would read if untouched by editors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER110> For me it is certanly "The Beginning of Infinity" by physicist David Deutsch. Its every chapter answers to some deep questions I had about how the world works. Currently I re-reading it again in the 4-th time and still noticing something new and exciting.

</comment><comment><USER111> Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means

Author: William T. Vollmann

It's a _7 volume_ set, but has a one volume abridged version which is one of the more fascinating and thought-provoking books I have ever read. I rate it very closely to GEB.

Highly recommended.

<comment><USER19> GEB?

<comment><USER112> Presumably, "Goedel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter.

Which, incidentally, doesn't have a particularly high "signal-to-noise ratio" but it's one of the most interesting books I've ever read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER113> Without going into heavily technical books, I'd recommend _The Code Book_ by Simon Singh. There's also _Fermat 's Last Theorem_ by the same author.

On the more technical side, it's somewhat cliche but, _TAOCP_ really is excellent.

</comment><comment><USER114> If you're interested in language, I really love "Metaphors We Live By." It's more profound than I previously thought a book about metaphors could ever be. It starts saying interesting things on page 1.

</comment><comment><USER115> Pretty much any of these: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_Wor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_World)

<comment><USER116> I don't think a mega-compilation of the Western Canon is what OP is looking for...

<comment><USER35> Eh, they certainly tend to avoid fluff, and by definition, until you get to Marx, James, Freud you're not going to find "pop psychology"! A lot of them are very much worth reading, I personally would recommend:

Homer and a few Greek plays

Sample a bit of the great story teller Herodotus, then read the birth of historiography in Thucydides' _History of the Peloponnesian War_ , which by itself is also very interesting and important (wonder why the Founder of the US didn't like direct democracy? There are very important object lessons in it).

Surely Plato and Aristotle deserve some attention! The contents of the latter's _Rhetoric_ is essential for when you can't reach people with dialectic.

Euclid's _Elements_ is still about as good as you can get for what it teaches.

Plutarch is great, but I really like that period of history. To it I would add reading some of the earlier bits of Livy.

Read, or better yet listen to audio of a few of Geoffrey Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_ , out loud you can follow their Middle English.

Machiavelli's _The Prince_ is still damned good, and a landmark in talking about politics as it is, not as how people would like it to be.

Shakespeare surely needs some attention by English speakers. Swift's _Gulliver 's Travels_ were amusing when I read them in their original, and obviously very influential.

So, yeah, check out some of the classics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER117> Daniel Dennett "Consciousness Explained" \- on how or mind words, and why many of our intuitions / common sense knowledge about our mind is wrong (which can be demonstrated experimentally).

</comment><comment><USER118> \- Managing the Professional Service Firm by David Maister

\- Quantum Computing since Democritus by Scott Aaronson

\- Cryptography Engineering by Bruce Schneier et al

\- Time Management for System Administrators by Thomas Limoncelli

\- Expert C Programming by Peter van der Linden

</comment><comment><USER78> Notes on the synthesis of form by Christopher Alexander. Purports to be about architectural theory but has actually deep things to say about systems design and organizational learning in general.

</comment><comment><USER119> Richard Dawkins is OK. Sam Harris and Steven Pinker are more relevant.

</comment><comment><USER120> Early Retirement Extreme by Jacob Lund Fisker. It's an introduction to systems thinking, social organization and lifestyle design with a practical focus.

</comment><comment><USER121> I think No starch press really holds up to their name. :-)

</comment><comment><USER122> Mathematics: Form and Function by Saunders McLane

</comment><comment><USER123> Blinkist provides pretty good summaries of hundreds of books. They are using a freemium model. (I am not involved with the company.)

<comment><USER124> 3-days free trial isn't freemium.

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> _The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business_ (2014) by Charles Duhigg

</comment><comment><USER125> The Idea Factory, by Pepper White

</comment><comment><USER82> Both, "Consilience" by E.O. Wilson and...

"The signal and the noise" by Nate Silver

are worth look.

</comment><comment><USER126> Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology by Alfred North Whitehead

</comment><comment><USER127> The Information by James Gleick, a history of information

</comment><comment><USER128> Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity

</comment><comment><USER129> The Road To Reality by Roger Penrose.

All (literally all) signal

</comment><comment><USER130> Not sure really what you consider signal versus noise, as it depends a lot of what your interest or experience with a particular subject is. But at any rate:

Naturalist, Edward O. Wilson

</comment><comment><USER131> The Open Organization, by Jim Whitehurse

</comment><comment><USER132> Reclaiming History by Vincent Bugliosi.

</comment><comment><USER133> The Will to Believe, by William James

</comment><comment><USER35> _The Selfish Gene_ is wonderfully tight, indeed very little noise and a whole lot of signal.

Here's two books if you want to learn about math you might want to learn about: _The Facts on File Dictionary on Mathematics_ by Gibson, and _Foundations and Fundamental Concepts of Mathematics_ by Howard Eves, which takes a historical approach, but is not a history per se. More like "this is what the Greeks did, in this period the use of calculus was pretty loose and look at this equation that Euler thought was right, these are the steps that brought rigor to it" etc.

Susan Wise Bauer has been writing a series of history books solely focused on "politics", i.e. no coverage of the arts besides occasional mentions; that can be a very useful framework to then hang study of things like the arts off of. Also no wild speculation like _Guns, Germs and Steel_ is filled with, if it wasn't written down and passed down to us, it gets only brief mention. Here's the first one: [http://www.susanwisebauer.com/books/history-of-the- ancient-w...](http://www.susanwisebauer.com/books/history-of-the-ancient- world/)

Samuel Eliot Morison wrote a series of book on the _History of United States Naval Operations in World War II_ , they're focused on what happened in detail, with charts of the movement of the ships in various battles and so on. The TV series _Victory at Sea_ was based on them, and they're a good framework to then hang more detailed study of the war off of: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_United_States_Naval...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_United_States_Naval_Operations_in_World_War_II)

As Wikipedians put it, _This History of U.S. Naval Operations also intentionally avoided a certain amount of analysis, for instance deferring to other works for the causes of the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor. The intended audience for the work, to quote from the preface, was "the general reader rather than the professional sailor."_

There are two very tight and short books on self-defense, Jeff Cooper _Principles of Personal Defense_ and Massad Ayoob's _In the Gravest Extreme, The Role of the Firearm in Personal Protection_ , "Just the facts, ma'am", firearm centric but wonderfully focused.

ADDED: Sun Tzu's _The Art of War_ is itself very focused (the media on which it was written strongly encourages that!), although the commentary, traditional and what modern translators add, can wander into fluff. A lot of it is relevant to modern non-violent life, and don't forget that "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you". I recommend Samuel B. Griffith's translation, he was a professional military officer.

</comment><comment><USER134> "The Elements of Style" by Strunk & White.

"The biological basis of teleological concepts" by Harry Binswanger.</comment>


MoBack creates asset platform for AR and VR content - <AUTHOR> http://ar.moback.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Makes sense to have an asset storage pipeline for AV/VR content. Can view uploaded assets on multiple AR/VR devices.

I want to see more AR/VR specific features here in the future.

</comment><comment><USER2> Looks like a good service for 3D architects and designers. CMS, I guess for AR & VR content.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have tried the app and looking for more experience</comment>


Will making more money make you happier, and if so, how much? - <AUTHOR> https://80000hours.org/articles/everything-you-need-to-know-about-whether-money-makes-you-happy/ <comment><USER2> Tldr; > "We think the message is clear: if you want a satisfying career, once you're earning above about $40,000, don't focus on earning more money. "

I object that it clearly wouldnt work for expensive cities where rent is nearly equivalent to $40k pretax.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some people don't need more money.

We call this 'wealth', as distinct from 'income'. If you're focusing on income you're probably doing something wrong.

</comment><comment><USER4> Of course, the analysis is nonsense. More money will make you happier. However, when people look at these observational data sets, they fail to take into account that more money is usually correlated with more effort or more opportunity cost.

As a side note, the appeals to cardinal utility and interpersonal utility comparisons set us back by more than a century and are embarrassing.

<comment><AUTHOR> "more money is usually correlated with more effort or more opportunity cost."

Both of these are discussed.

I think it's the failure to do interpersonal utility comparisons that were a huge ridiculous diversion in economics and I'm glad that mistake is falling out of fashion in favour of pragmatism.

<comment><USER4> Not discussed, glossed over. The whole thing reads like Chelsea Clinton's "I tried to care about money, but I just couldn't."</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Ruby on Rails gem to detect bottlenecks before your code goes live - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/BaseSecrete/rorvswild <comment><USER2> This is looking prety good!</comment>


Launching our Data Science and Big Data Track - <AUTHOR> http://blog.udacity.com/2013/11/sebastian-thrun-launching-our-data.html?m=1

<comment><USER2> 99% of people looking for information about big data and 99% of people looking to do data science, don't have nowhere near big data, and don't need to be taught hadoop. Those people are instead often lacking fundamental knowledge and are looking for a trick technological solution instead of reviewing their basics.

A "data science" track should hence be 90% about algorithms, data structures, linear algebra and computer architecture. People need to know how to compute with matrices, how to use B-trees, what R-trees are, what SIMD is, what cache locality is, what package to use for practical linear algebra, what the gpu is good for and when and how to use it. Teach databases, but include also some of the theoretical database stuff, and teach how to correctly use relational databases in the first place, since this is most commonly useful and people don't really understand it. PostgreSQL is a real pearl, and few people know how much capability it has, how to use the geospatial indexing, the full-text search, how to do basic optimization and profiling.

Even for people who really do large scale computations, learning hadoop or mongodb (is anyone legitimately doing big data really using mongodb?) is just an afterthought, considering how much you have to learn first about mathematics, algorithms and computing to do anything sensible at that scale at all. If you bubble sort, MongoDB won't save you. If you know the fundamentals already, you likely don't need a separate course in mongo or hadoop.

For people looking to learn something more genuine, I would recommend, for example, this book:

[http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/mmds.html](http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/mmds.html)

<comment><USER3> 100% agree except that I think courses like this are great for people who want to bluff their way through a job interview to get one of those $150K-$250K big data jobs that are the rage right now (watching Andrew Ng's machine learning lectures beforehand as well would be the pro move in my book). In my experience so far, most of these positions appear to be Java programming gigs where, sadly, issues like SIMD, cache locality, and the GPU are actively ignored or dismissed. Autoboxing alone to use Java generics pretty much destroys any hope of efficient cache use.

I've walked out of job interviews over this sort of thing wherein it's been described as a "performance programming" position for big data and/or machine learning except that everything has to be in Java. And sure, Java performance programming is a thing, but compared to what one can achieve with SIMD, attention to cache-locality and/or running on the GPU for the 20% of the code that eats 80-99% of the cycles, it's laughably uninteresting to me, big bucks aside.

<comment><USER4> It's faster than python and R, dogg.

<comment><USER3> You can do extreme performance coding for Java, Javascript, R, Python, Haskell or the language of your choice as long as the number-crunching is done by calling low-level heavily optimized code. For example, PyCUDA:

[http://mathema.tician.de/software/pycuda/](http://mathema.tician.de/software/pycuda/)

And this is where I get told by data scientists that they don't wish to support such code. And IMO that's fine for piddling around and experimentation. But for production, on thousands to hundreds of thousands of servers, running 24/7, at companies with billions and billions of dollars in the bank, that's leaving way too many transistors and electrons on the table for me to stomach. In contrast, here's what you can achieve when you do pay attention to these things:

[http://istc-bigdata.org/index.php/mapd-a-way-to-map-big-data...](http://istc- bigdata.org/index.php/mapd-a-way-to-map-big-data-faster/)

<comment><USER4> You're in a different part of the problem space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems that the majority of Big Data/Data Science applications are designed to give advertisers insight into things I don't really want them to have insight into. That really sucks, because the technology is cool, but I don't want to help build that kind of future. It's kind of analogous to how I feel about Computer Vision: there are a handful of legitimate purposes for it, but most applications of the technology fall somewhere between "I don't like that idea" to "that's totally unethical".

<comment><USER6> There are plenty of Big Data applications that aren't unethical. Back in the 90s (before the term Big Data was conceived) two of the biggest users of Teradata were P&G and Wal*mart. It was more about supply chain and retail store efficiency than anything nefarious. Big data helped make sure that store shelves had what people wanted.

Today there are mass spamvertising campaigns on Big Data, but there are also applications on financial services (making sure our pension funds take the right risk), engineering, telecom and elsewhere that help improve our lives.

<comment><USER4> Helping Walmart is, at best, morally suspect.

<comment><USER7> Reducing retail waste is better for everyone. Though some of the stuff they do is questionable, like how carefully items in the store are placed to maximize the amount of unnecessary crap they sell to impulsive people.

<comment><USER4> How does 'exploitative labor practices' float your boat.

<comment><USER7> Well hopefully those jobs will be automated soon enough as machine vision and robotics rapidly pick up pace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a cool idea, but I wish everything wasn't so 'big data' oriented. Most people will never work with big data. Instead of teaching me map/reduce, how about teaching me how to model with a mixture distribution? Teach me how to master small data and then scale those up to big data when and if need be.

<comment><USER9> You might like Data Analysis from Coursera.

[https://www.coursera.org/course/dataanalysis](https://www.coursera.org/course/dataanalysis)

From the post it looks like Udacity too is working on courses that address this.

<comment><USER10> I'm working through this course (and took the earlier sister course Computation for Data Analysis with R). It's quite good so far. They stay away from the "big" part and focus on the core of data analysis: how to find data, clean it up, explore it, find relationships and present your findings. We are using R, which is suitable for most data sizes. It's offered by Johns Hopkins, and has more of an academic bent than an industry one. Great general purpose knowledge that I think you would want before you start messing around with Hadoop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So looking through this 'track', I see one course which seems like it might be more central to the discipline, "Intro to Data Science"[0]. Has anybody had a chance to compare this one against Bill Howe's "Introduction to Data Science"[1] on Coursera?

[0] [https://www.udacity.com/course/ud359](https://www.udacity.com/course/ud359) [1] [https://www.coursera.org/course/datasci](https://www.coursera.org/course/datasci)

</comment><comment><USER12> Introduction to Hadoop and Mapreduce course seems to have the right amount of content. It could be completed in one sitting and content is polished, well presented , and easy to grasp. Respect to Cloudera faculty. As an added bonus, uses python instead of java for examples.

<comment><USER13> (Course author here) Thanks. We chose Python because it's a little more approachable for many people that Java, and is the language used in Udacity's Comp Sci 101 course. Also, using Hadoop Streaming saved us from having to explain a bunch of concepts such as WritableComparables, InputFormats etc that would just have got in the way of the basic MapReduce principles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Most Udacity courses use Python, but seems this data science series will use R. Python also has lots of data analysis tool. Just wonder why they are choosing R.

<comment><USER15> R's data science tools are mostly native.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This seems like a great bundle of courses. The big data topics caught my attention but I'm actually looking forward to exploratory data analysis. Especially with the Tukey mention: [https://www.udacity.com/course/ud651](https://www.udacity.com/course/ud651)

</comment><comment><USER17> This looks great, anyone know how much the program will cost?

<comment><USER18> Says on the site mate, about $210 per unit

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ugh, Hadoop.</comment>


Ask HN: Bad time to start iOS/Swift development? - <AUTHOR> I've spent a long time doing fullstack web development, with the last five years focusing a lot on React / Node / Python. While I've enjoyed it I've become a little burned out on the web and it's direction in general, especially javascript. I'd like to try out something different.<p>I recently picked up swift in my spare time and have built several small apps with it for iOS and macOS. I've enjoyed the experience a lot, especially the language itself and would like to pursue it further. If I wanted to pick up some freelance work to test the waters, whats the market like? is it better to offer something cross platform like RN or Flutter? or is it a reasonable strategy to go narrow and focus purely on swift and it's associated frameworks?. <comment><USER2> Mobile wasn't that hot in 2010, then in 2013 it reached its pick (companies shifting their entire businesses to mobile). Finally, in 2018 it slowed down by a lot. We've noticed a similar trend with AI lately. AI is at its pick right now. Today, companies have dedicated mobile teams that are fairly independent from the rest. They aren't connected directly to the business of a company but they still have a huge impact for sure. You'd be surprised to learn that 80% of the traffic of company X comes from mobile and that mobile team has only 10 folks in it... Very lean, versus 100 folks working on Web and infrastructure.

If you switch today it's fine, you'll get a lot of opportunities as an iOS dev assuming you're really good at it. The bar is higher than Web, usually iOS devs know their stuff pretty well and ask tricky questions. If you've only built little apps, you may have to study a lot more (more advanced topics) before applying to jobs.

If you're looking for freelance jobs only, you'll be fine as long as you're not working with technical people. You can still hack your way around and build apps that aren't really optimized. As long as it does the job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the detailed answer, regarding the downturn in interested I guess I figured as much. It seems that it's focus has shifted to extending and supporting established products rather than being a flagship platform in itself. On the other hand the web market is absolutely saturated right now, my gut feeling was that while mobile has slowed down, it's not going away completely and there might be a viable niche there to work on while everyone's attention is so focused on web.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> While there is some work for iOS/Swift-only dev, most of it doesn't occur in a vacuum.

The itch the market really wants scratched is a one-stop-shop where they can get both mobile, web, and support services at once. Consider pitching your services that way. The contracts are bigger in scope and longer-term (because there's more to do, more moving parts, and fewer people to share it with).

The number of people who can do full-stack web, plus iOS, with experience in both, is a small minority of both communities.

Throw in Android and server/devOps and the set gets even smaller.

Throw in experience in what's hot right now, AI and ML, and you're in purple squirrel territory. While people are always looking for that purple squirrel, they don't always pay as well as companies looking for specialists in just a subset of that menagerie.

<comment><AUTHOR> This makes sense thanks, so offering a wider array of services is potentially a better strategy, given my background and experience. I imagine being able to build the API/backend layer, web and mobile client is desirable to some and you're right in that it would give one longer running contracts with a lot more work. So to reiterate your points, study more mobile, leverage existing skillset and throw in some AI/ML. I guess this is the broad vs narrow topic. How important is it to have finished apps in the respective app stores? I have years worth of web work to display, most of it still in production but nothing concrete for mobile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why focus on some niche environment provided by a specific company according to their whims and needs when there is a vast body of languages, tools, libraries, and frameworks available in the free and open space? With the Internet dominating all applications are basically just stores of data with their related organization, logic, and interfaces. If you want to add a pretty face to such an app using languages, tools, libraries, and frameworks primarily developed and owned by a company you can do that with minimal risk as long as the core is outside that.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a fair point and something I think about. For what it's worth I feel exploiting a development niche is a reasonable strategy and the core language is open source. What would you pick if you wanted to change directions?.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been in mobile development for a long time. I do iOS and swift now.

I think it's a good market. There are a number of places that do native development. I have always bet against cross platform mobile solutions. It doesn't interest me as a developer, and I don't think it's a good experience for the user.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is still a big market for native iOS apps, especially to connect to web applications.

Even smaller companies are interested in an iOS and Android apps for their web application.

So I expect there are lots of freelance opportunities.

<comment><USER7> But smaller companies also want to save money and think RN is good enough.

I actually learned RN, developed two apps in it, and kinda hate it, but like the idea of delivering the same app on both platforms, of course. Which I didn't do yet, because we don't have Macs at my work (previous work, got fired friday).

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry to hear you got fired, good luck finding a new gig. I guess RN or Flutter make sense if you're building for both, I'm not totally against it I just like the idea of using the tools the platform gives you. But I admit it might not be the most practical approach.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who is running a profitable SaaS company? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Founder of [https://fairpixels.pro](https://fairpixels.pro), we run a UX/UI design firm like a SaaS. Started out just by myself but grew to 5-figures a month in about 3 months if I recall correctly. We are profitable. In the process we niched down to work with mostly B2B Software companies.

To give a bit more context on how we run the business. We basically eliminated almost all the cost and extra work that normal agencies have. Agencies spend time networking, run ad campaigns, pay for expensive offices, etc. Most of their unpaid hours then get forwared to their clients. These are hidden in high hourly rates. (I know this because I have worked for agencies for years).

At Fairpixels we eliminated all of these things so we don't have to make customers pay for unpaid hours so we can lower their expenses. We then get to focus on the work we love. Designing awesome proeucts. It's not our goal to build a billion dollar juggernaut. I want our team to spend time with family and friends. Be fulfilled at the end of each day. Not worry about stuff that is not related to their core skills of designing world class products.

I think everybody benefits.

</comment><comment><USER3> Many people. Check [https://www.indiehackers.com/products?minRevenue=1](https://www.indiehackers.com/products?minRevenue=1) for more details, and the forum itself for discussions.</comment>


Pinterest pays $89.5M to terminate San Francisco office lease - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Pinterest-terminate-SF-office-lease-88-Bluxome-15525421.php <comment><USER2> From a few days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24312478](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24312478)

</comment><comment><USER3> It would be such a relief if they went under, I am _so_ tired of pinterest thumbnails (just copies of other images on the net, but low res, appearing first and unusable) polluting my image search results! Just this weekend I installed a plugin called Unpinterested to add -site:pinterest.* to all searches automatically- instant relief.

<comment><USER4> I expressed this same view on Twitter and I got a DM from a Pinterest software engineer who seemed to be an intelligent and thoughtful person but also seemed to be puzzled by my position, and genuinely unaware that this perception of Pinterest exists. There must be some other side of Pinterest that I've never seen, where it performs a useful function for its users?

<comment><USER5> 70% of pinterest users, and 93% of pinterest _usage_ is female. That's probably highly correlated to your (and HN userbase's) confusion about how Pinterest is perceived.

<comment><USER6> Yeah I signed up for Pinterest once and ticked "prefer not to specify" on the gender question. I also opted not to select any favourite/followed categories.

I was immediately inundated with bridal content and very little else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think some sort of highly flexible model is long overdue. So, not a complete abandonment of the office, but people will no longer be forced to go in.

There's things that are hard to communicate even over vidconf, and thus it's useful to have at least some human contact. On the other hand, it's very useful for people with families to be able to shift their working hours around, and a fair few jobs would allow that.

I foresee a lot of firms reducing the offices, maybe making what's left a bit nicer, and then letting people take care of their own time. Perhaps something like a day or two in the office for meetings, the rest of the time work from home but be in contact.

Managers will have to let go of the desire to see that everyone is in their seat.

<comment><USER8> > I foresee a lot of firms reducing the offices...Perhaps something like a day > or two in the office for meetings,

would you invest in wework if they become the biggest provider of these prefurnished, time-share offices?

<comment><USER9> Even if you think WeWork will disproportionately benefit... (And I'm not sure it does; do you want to be mixed in with employees from different companies that may have different rules about travel, behavior, etc.) Commercial real estate is likely to be an overall bloodbath.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For those also wondering how much the lease would've been:

> Pinterest, ..., said its lease obligations for the Bluxome project would > have been at least $440 million.

Source: [https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Pinterest- cance...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Pinterest-cancels-huge- SF-office-lease-in-unbuilt-15523170.php)

<comment><USER11> How much revenue does pinterest generate?

<comment><USER10> Revenue according to the article $272 million in Q2 (with a $100.7 million loss in the quarter).

<comment><USER12> That boggles my mind.

<comment><USER13> The lease number is likely over the lifetime of the lease (10 years or more) while the revenue number is quarterly.

<comment><USER12> No I meant the revenue of Pinterest. I can't understand how they make that kind of money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> All Google engineers readings this: Why isn't Pinterest banned from all SERPs yet?

Every other site that employed the same SEO and funnel tactics as Pinterest would be banned within a month.

</comment><comment><USER15> Why does a company that is worth more that 20 billion dollars rent property in the first place? If, as others have said, the total value of the lease was $440 million, surely its better to hire people to buy and run an office building?

<comment><USER16> Most likely a prop 13 issue. Property taxes don't go up in California unless you sell, since 1978, which means a lot of people are still paying what they paid in '78\. Goes for commercial too, not just poor grandma eating cat food with all that equity in her Beverly Hills cottage. All the big towers are leased. I heard it's downright byzantine, with many layers of 99-year subleases. Good deal for the lawyers, and for the landlords! Some professional would lose a license for malpractice if they sold.

By the way, it's not just SF, it's also the big chunks of the valley. The Facebook sign still says Sun on the back, and the Googleplex land is on lease from NASA. Question I'd like to know the answer to: who owns the land at Apple Park?

This law is enshrined in that fine document the California constitution, and can only be repealed by a simple majority of voters. Voters who own homes, or live for free in a home someone owns, or pay rent to live in a home someone owns.

<comment><USER17> The commercial property aspect of Prop 13 is actually up for a vote in Prop 15, to repeal these tax breaks for commercial property over $3M. It's interesting to see people come out of the woodwork railing against it for all sorts of reasons from how the money is distributed to claiming it will cost the state hundreds of thousands of jobs. Would be nice to see this archaic tax relic go away. It's like the state has granted feudal land rights to certain property owners.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Completely off-topic but I went and looked up that buildings site

[https://iwamotoscott.com/projects/bluxome](https://iwamotoscott.com/projects/bluxome)

I don't think I've ever been that annoyed at a scroll jacking website in my live. You legit scroll multiple wheel rotations for about 20-50pxs of scroll.

<comment><USER4> 99.9% of web developers now use a trackpad, and this site works perfectly with a trackpad. Those of us with actual mice are a vanishing breed.

<comment><USER19> I know many web devs and they all use mice at their desks in the office.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is it just me or is there no way to continue from this site's cookie modal?

<comment><USER21> I deselected everything and could "Continue". Modal was gone then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm not knowledgeable enough on the current state of VR, but I'm curious as to how it will affect office setups. If VR can replicate the feeling of being in the same room, I imagine some companies will skip the office expense entirely.

I can't foresee wanting to wear a VR helmet all day, but for an hour-long meeting? Maybe. Presumably projection tech will also progress and we might not even need to wear a helmet. Is this something that can conceivably exist in the next 10-15 years?

<comment><USER23> It kinda exists now with existing VR tech but the question is, is it work it?

For me when I'm working remote the existing video chat stuff would be great _if_ they could fix the latency.

Anything over a few hundred milliseconds means you end up talking over people accidentally, it's hard to have a naturally flowing conversation.

Honestly a big 4K screen on the wall with a good webcam on both ends and low latency would be great.

<comment><USER9> Latency and I also think it's just harder to read body language and back off of talking over. I was on an online panel a few months ago with people who I've appeared with before. We definitely did more talking over each other and not doing smooth handoffs than would have been the case in person.

I definitely have zero interest in wearing a headset for calls etc. unless the results are really amazing. Assuming the network is behaving (and people have a decent setup), video calls are fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is Pinterest going WFH?

<comment><USER25> Partly. From two days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24312478](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24312478)</comment></comment>


Skully - <AUTHOR> http://www.skullysystems.com/

<comment><USER2> This looks like a really cool piece of kit, but sadly it was introduced with an unwatchable video.

> "Our technology fundamentally enhances human capability"

No it doesn't. You've made a HUD that fits in a motorcycle helmet. You haven't created Iron Man.

The statement is then shortly followed by some obnoxious dubstep. It's a shame because it completely put me off looking further at what could be a great product.

<comment><USER3> _> You've made a HUD that fits in a motorcycle helmet._

...which allows you to see 180° behind your head, fundamentally enhancing your human capability. Unless you have worked out a way to do that organically? This is Iron Mannish, just a very early iteration.

<comment><USER4> I use a mirror.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As an experienced biker I wouldn't allow this thing in my helmet because I want a full uninterrupted field of vision.

We have enough problems with bad weather, flies sticking to visors and generally paying attention to what's ahead of you - vehicles pulling out of junctions, road-kill, fuel spills and potholes - i.e. riding defensively without distraction.

Most riders, once familiar with their bikes know how fast they're riding and what gear/rev ranges they're operating in from the engine sound, they don't need to watch their speedo and rev counter.

You might say, "yeah but maps?", I say plan your journey and if you have to stop a couple of times to take a look at a map then big deal. Don't put your life in danger because you switched your field of vision from watching a junction to checking a map in your helmet just at the moment a bus or a lorry pulls out because it didn't see you.

I did however dig the tinted visor.

<comment><USER6> _Don 't put your life in danger because you switched your field of vision_

AFAIK one of the features of HUDs is that it's projected at infinity, i.e. you don't have to refocus your eyes to see it clearly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> See also LiveMap and Nuvis, both similar crowd-funded HUD motorcycle helmets:

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nuviz/the-first-head- up...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nuviz/the-first-head-up-display- for-motorcycle-helmets)

[https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/livemap-motorbike- helmet-...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/livemap-motorbike-helmet-with- navigation)

<comment><USER8> Don't forget FUSAR ;)

[http://fusar-tech.com](http://fusar-tech.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting to see a project this large using Indiegogo rather than Kickstarter. Nice to have alternatives becoming more prominent, and every multi-million-dollar project and project that vastly surpasses its funding goal draws major publicity for its platform too.

<comment><USER10> Well in the 3D printer area (an area I have some interest in) it seems that people who are rejected by Kickstarter ended up on Indiegogo. I've looked for but haven't found any way yet to figure out how many projects are in that space, but for 3d printers the number of "this is going to fail, clearly" type projects has gotten relatively large.

<comment><USER9> > it seems that people who are rejected by Kickstarter ended up on Indiegogo.

That's exactly the problem that motivated my comment: Indiegogo and other such sites need to be seen as first-class crowdfunding platforms in their own right, not "rejects from Kickstarter" or "projects not cool enough to get into Kickstarter".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The largest failing, in my opinion, is that they've built the system into the helmet rather than building something which can be worn under the helmet or mounted to existing helmets.

I'd be willing to take the distraction risk of using the HUD while riding, but I'm not willing to take that risk while wearing a helmet of dubious quality. I'd rather stick one of the NUVIZ huds on my Arai and test it out with gear I know works.

</comment><comment><USER12> having "Jamison Cummings, Former Tesla Technician" as the first person for the testimonials video is a bit intellectually dishonest given that he is now VP of Manufacturing Operations at Skully. Questionable at best. Other than that it looks pretty cool.

<comment><USER13> I thought that was the point: to highlight the "great minds" that worked in the project. Am I wrong?

<comment><USER12> I'm referring to the 2nd video which is titled "These motorcyclists have already experienced the SKULLY AR-1. Here's what they have to say."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> They have quite the retargetting campaign going on. I keep seeing ads for this thing everywhere I go.

</comment><comment><USER15> That video was so cheezy lol

</comment><comment><USER16> So it's like Google Glass for motorcycles?

<comment><USER17> I thought this too and dig a little looking around, as it turns out it's too distracting (even for an experienced rider) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFq0TYgeB_k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFq0TYgeB_k)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Video without volume control => my brain automatically closes the browser's tab.

Also, my brains closes the tab when it hears dubstep.

</comment><comment><USER19> Should've called it sculder.</comment>


Amputee demonstrates bionic hand - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLkDQUOu_Y0 <comment><USER2> This is very cool. I remember reading about Dean Kamen's "Luke Arm" a few years back but haven't heard about it in a while. He and his lab were profiled, and they demonstrated the arm, which had, what looked like, the fine motor control that this one does.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rloSSqiUCM&feature=fvwre...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rloSSqiUCM&feature=fvwrel)

Anybody know if this is the same arm, or if not, what happened to Kamen's arm?</comment>


Unofficial Aadhaar apps on playstore that serve no purpose - <AUTHOR> https://www.medianama.com/2018/03/223-unofficial-aadhaar-apps/ <comment><AUTHOR> We recently saw trending post on HN related to fake whatsapp app on play store: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15626819](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15626819) and now its turn for Aadhar (kind of SSN of India).</comment>


Arduino founder calls out startup, Kickstarter in trademark dispute - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/design/2012/11/smartduino/

<comment><USER2> This is a classic case of trademark confusion. The question is what the best course forward is, and I'm not 100% sure I see a way out in which both end users and the Arduino TM holder would all benefit. If he sues then a good chunk of the money that was deposited by KS backers of the project will be spent on lawyers, if he doesn't he's making it clear that the Arduino trademark is not defended which will lead to a lot of copy-cats.

Tricky situation.

<comment><USER3> I thought arduino was open so others could copy it and even build new versions of it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The arduino guys have drawn a pretty good line in my opinion. They've allowed various clone to be similarly named as a sort of homage but smartduino is crossing a line in my opinion.</comment>


Stop repeating this privacy lie - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/18/daily-crunch-privacy-security-seriously/ <comment><USER2> Wrong link. Use:

[https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/17/we-take-your-privacy- and-s...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/17/we-take-your-privacy-and-security- seriously/)</comment>


Ask HN: What have you built with Google Sheets? - <AUTHOR> I'm always surprised by the things people have built using Google Sheets or on top of Google Sheets such as sheet2site or Tiller. It made me wonder what other things people have built or used it for. <comment><USER2> I can't say it's terribly impressive, but I've collected my performance at 90% of my gym visits over the last two years. Sheets has been very convenient in keeping myself on-track. I'm thinking about taking a weekend to clean the data and graph some trends or normalize my rep counts/distance/times into a single index I can use along with my weight to quickly assess "how I'm doing".</comment>


Where can I learn MERN stack from scratch, and what resources should I use? - <AUTHOR> I would love to hear other people's experiences and the resources they found helpful! <comment><USER2> Can you explain what MERN means in this context?</comment>


Ask HN: Nominate a song for startup founders? - <AUTHOR>

What song epitomizes the startup life? Any nominees? <comment><USER2> "Oh My God" by Ida Maria could be a fun one :)

I'm sure many people here are musicians or know musicians. Maybe there's enough talent to pool to write a startup theme song...</comment>