What are you reading? - <AUTHOR> I don't ever see this discussed here.  The level and focus of discourse here should make for great recommendations.
<edit> Should this be restricted to "on topic" material? </edit>
Me, recently and currently:
http://www.amazon.com/About-Face-2-0-Essentials-Interaction/dp/0764526413/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251767831&sr=8-12
http://www.amazon.com/Matter-Great-Design-People-Company/dp/0137142447/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251767882&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Positioning-Battle-Your-Mind-Anniversary/dp/0071359168/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251767926&sr=1-1 <comment><USER6> Assessment of Children: Cognitive Foundations by Jerome Sattler

[http://www.amazon.com/Assessment-Children-Foundations- Jerome...](http://www.amazon.com/Assessment-Children-Foundations-Jerome- Sattler/dp/0970267142/)

Assessing Adolescent and Adult Intelligence, Third Edition by Alan S. Kaufman and Elizabeth O. Lichtenberger

[http://www.amazon.com/Assessing-Adolescent-Adult- Intelligenc...](http://www.amazon.com/Assessing-Adolescent-Adult-Intelligence- Third/dp/0471735531/)

What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought by Keith Stanovich

[http://www.amazon.com/What-Intelligence-Tests-Miss- Psycholog...](http://www.amazon.com/What-Intelligence-Tests-Miss- Psychology/dp/030012385X/)

What Is Intelligence?: Beyond the Flynn Effect by James R. Flynn

[http://www.amazon.com/What-Intelligence-Beyond-Flynn- Effect/...](http://www.amazon.com/What-Intelligence-Beyond-Flynn- Effect/dp/0521741475/)

Handbook of Intelligence edited by Robert Sternberg

[http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Intelligence-Robert- Sternberg...](http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Intelligence-Robert-Sternberg- PhD/dp/0521596483/)

and a host of related books about IQ testing and what it means, to prepare a working paper on the latest research on IQ testing.

<comment><USER7> Do you know if baby size at birth is correlated to higher intelligence later in life? Also, what about the amount of hair a child is born with? Any correlation there?

<comment><USER6> This is a paper by an eminent researcher in the discipline (I have read one of his books and have another at hand) that I Googled up:

[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W4M-4GG8W00-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=997575277&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=9c4afe03e007ecc9d51908d673d72e30)

<comment><USER7> Thank you! Through your link, I gathered a few keywords and found this: <http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/322/7280/199>

Birth weight was also associated with education, with those of higher birth weight more likely to have achieved higher qualifications, and this effect was accounted for partly by cognitive function at age 8.

Small size at birth is associated with a range of adverse health outcomes, including poor cognitive development, an effect that is largely unconfounded by features of the family environment, such as socioeconomic status and birth order.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Finishing "Atlas Shrugged". While ideas and the spirit of the book have aged only slightly, the way of writing seems way too pretentious for our times. But overall the book is interesting. From historic and ideological point of view.

<comment><USER9> Ayn Rand was able to name so much of what I've felt growing up. While she may have used the literary technique of exaggeration to heighten the contrast between her philosophical views of moral vs. immoral, I don't think she took it "too far" as others are commenting. I think that's like saying Philip K. Dick took the ideas of technological advances and psychic ability too far in his story, "Minority Report", or like saying Pablo Picasso took multi- perspective simplicity too far in his Cubist paintings. Of course they did, it's part of their literary freedom. Exaggeration helps to make an underlaying principle become self-evident by speeding along conclusions that could eventually be drawn from observation.

<comment><USER10> I took her meritocratic stance seriously until I heard her defend inherited wealth, which is ridiculously inconsistent.

<comment><USER11> "Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth--the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him." - I think she's still basing it on merit. While I disagree with some of what she says, and she says a lot, she does a decent job of staying consistent.

<comment><USER10> It would be consistent if everyone who was fit to inherit actually did inherit. But that is not the case. Some of those who are fit do not inherit and others do. What is the basis for this inequality? Birth.

She destroys the idea of meritocracy that she herself presented so eloquently and discredits libertarianism as yet another excuse for those born wealthy to keep their wealth.

If an hair is not equal to his money it destroys him? Come on, what does it even mean to be "equal to money"? And how can someone who does not inherit wealth even prove that he or she is "equal to the money"? That's just the kind of fluffy nonsense that moral philosophers are so infamous for.

<comment><USER9> I don't think you would enjoy reading Rand (either you haven't yet read any of her work and are going based solely on what you read in this thread, or you just completely didn't understand her work).

As she argues, money is a means of trading human production and value. To be equal to your money is to provide production and value to society equal to the value of your money. According to Rand, if one who is barely capable of ever making more than $30k per year were to inherit $5m, it would not end well. And actually lottery statistics support this pretty consistently.

<comment><USER10> How does that explain why it is consistent that some get the opportunity to start out wealthy and some do not?

You don't seem to get what I'm saying at all. Among those who are willing and able to provide production value are some who get a boost from inherited wealth and some who do not.

Do you consider that fair or consistent with a merit based society? I do get perfectly well what Ayn Rand says in her books, and based on that her stance on inheritance is grotesque.

<comment><USER9> I think that according to Rand, fairness is a moot point when it comes to this situation. She is saying that if you are capable of achieving wealth, then you will achieve it no matter where you start from in our society. She also explains that those who are capable of achieving are concerned only with their own achievements and awards, and those of others only so far as they help to achieve their own.

If you put all of this together, you end up with the person of achievement not caring where others started (or what they inherited) in relation to themselves. Fairness only holds value when the person getting shafted cares enough to give it value.

Besides, Rand's argument is that over the long run, it really doesn't matter, as the person who is capable of producing great wealth will do so, with or without an inheritance. The person who is not will quickly squander it all and end up right back where they started. Her point is simply that an inheritance does not change one's ability to produce.

<comment><USER10> Well, she's a fiction writer. Me shrugs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson for the third time, and understanding it more than the second time. It has wonderful technical digressions that seem aimed precisely at geeks/hackers. In fact, on the the main characters is a programmer, and another is a code-breaker in the military who sees an opportunity for geeky analysis in everything he sees. (There are also many accounts of military battles from a soldier's point of view to break the talking up.)

<comment><USER13> I'm about halfway through this. Not sure I liked it at first, because his style seemed a bit too heavy-handed, as if he were a 16 year old with a really big thesaurus, trying to allude to as many different things as possible. It's grown on me though, over the last far-too-many pages. Still not totally happy, but it's interesting.

<comment><USER14> A third of the way in. While I find it definitely entertaining, and like both the military adventures and geeky bits, I do not—so far—feel actually engaged with it. However this could be because it's hard to read while in bed: tiny type and bulky (at 900+ pages).

Recently read "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins. The middle part was quite dense for me, but in the end I gained new appreciation for the AI field, which before really seemed like much pie in the sky nonsense, and after reading this book I am a believer.

Gearing up for something completely different now as the 12th installment of the WoT series is coming out in a few weeks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> . Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig

. Programming Clojure

. Little Schemer (re-reading)

. Evidence-Based Technical Analysis: Applying the Scientific Method and Statistical Inference to Trading Signals by David Aronson

<comment><USER16> +1 on ZAMM, very interesting book...do you plan on moving on to Lila, the "sequel"? I've read that very few have a full understanding of the point of the second book...I never got around to reading it after the first...

<comment><USER17> That book caused me no end of confusion, when I read it as a teenager. By the time _Lila_ came out, it was no surprise to me that in it he repudiates much of what he said in _ZAMM_.

People should avoid reading it, because it's useless, and if they do read it, they should take it a lot less seriously than it does itself, because it's clear from the sequel that the author himself does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Rereading How to Win Friends and Influence People (once again). That book never ages. May very well be the best book ever written. I'm guessing most of you have read it, but if you haven't, I urge you to order it right away! It will be your best purchase in a long time.

Also just finished Genome ([http://www.amazon.com/Genome-Autobiography- Species-Chapters-...](http://www.amazon.com/Genome-Autobiography-Species- Chapters-P-S/dp/0060894083/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251786710&sr=1-1)). Good read, but there are better books in the category.

</comment><comment><USER19> "How to Get Rich" by Felix Dennis ( [http://www.amazon.com/How-Get-Rich-Felix- Dennis/dp/009191265...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Get-Rich-Felix- Dennis/dp/0091912652) ) THE best get rich how-to guides that I've read (not that I've read too many of them, though :)

<comment><USER20> Best advice: "If it floats, flies or fornicates, better to rent it than own it."

I wonder how Dennis would feel about the fractional ownership model for each of those items.

<comment><USER21> In other words: Never own ducks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I got books like sheiks got oil. I'm swimming in them. I try to read a little from at least four books every day. (You'll have to look up these links yourself)

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

On my Kindle:

Anna Karenina, Tolstoy; Clean Code, Uncle Bob; Palm WebOS; Antoninus Meditations, Marcus Aurelius, Emperor; Never Eat Alone, and Other Secrets to Success, Ferrazzi

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

In my stack:

Daniel-X, James Patterson; Born To Run, Christopher McDougall; The Existential Jesus, John Carroll; Fear and Trembling - Repetition, Soren Kierkegaard

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

On the way in from Amazon: The Trusted Advisor, Maister; Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully, Weinberg; Rain Making: Attract New Clients No Matter What Your Field, Harding

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

I'm thinking about growing another pair of eyeballs so I can read two books at once. I'll let you know how the genetic engineering goes. (grin)

<comment><USER23> Why do you try to read from four books every day?

<comment><USER22> It's an interesting phenomenon. Now that I have my Kindle, I find I can "parallel read" instead of sequentially reading. It's really easy to flip between several books, and the Kindle keeps track of what percentage I have completed of each book.

I'm finding that the Kindle might not be so good with technical books -- why, I don't know. But for fiction and "light" books it's great. I wished I had read Tolstoy many years ago. That guy can really write!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Omnivore's Dilemma. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Omnivore%27s_Dilemma>

<comment><USER25> On the (sort of) same topic, I'm in the middle of Good Calories, Bad Calories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> "The Selfish Gene" by Dawkins. This was a result of asking my Twitter friends to decide between this and Art of War for me, and this won overwhelmingly. It's been a great read so far, and I'm really looking forward to learning more about how evolution and computer science can mix.

<comment><USER27> Dawkins is eminently readable, even in books that you think you know what he's going to say. I also recommend The God Delusion.

<comment><USER26> The God Delusion was the first Dawkins book I read -- a Christmas gift from my mother. When I told her what it was about, she got made and said "that's not in the spirit of Christmas."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "The Four Steps to the Epiphany" by Steven Gary Blank

[http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven- Blank/dp/09...](http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven- Blank/dp/0976470705)

<comment><USER29> Me too. I am struggeling to get through it though.

<comment><USER30> It is poorly edited, but full of excellent content. The author should release it to a wiki so that some enthusiasts can clean up the typos and other formatting issues.

I keep referring back to it. I think it would be good to read in parallel with a business partner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> "Anathem", by Neal Stephenson.

Don't be put off by its size, the book is great.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathem>

<comment> brown9-2 Not only don't be put off by it's size, but don't be put off by the press it got from when it was released. The book is way better than anyone could possibly sum up in a blurb.

<comment><USER32> And don't be put off by the slog through the first 100 pages or so.. it does have a pay-off.

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

<comment><USER34> That book corrupted me. I've never had an innocent conversation with a salesperson since.

<comment><USER35> Haha, I know exactly what you mean!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> 1\. Programming Clojure (Not going too well)

2\. Refactoring your Wetware (This is a very good book)

3\. SICP (Just started looking into this to see if I can attempt to write the code in Clojure)

<comment><USER37> I am half the way of SICP and I also have my hand on clojure. It would be a good experiment to solve the problems with clojure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software [http://www.amazon.com/Dreaming-Code- Programmers-Transcendent...](http://www.amazon.com/Dreaming-Code-Programmers- Transcendent-Software/dp/1400082463)

The Design of Everyday Things [http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things- Donald-Norman/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald- Norman/dp/0465067107/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251771897&sr=1-1)

<comment><USER20> "Dreaming in Code" was ultimately so depressing I couldn't finish it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> 1\. The Mythical Man Month (Some interesting essays, some dated)

2\. The Art of Agile Development (First agile book to read, certainly interesting)

3\. Object Oriented Perl (Very interesting stuff... I've read it a few times but keep flipping open to chapters and being in awe of the cleverness of the author)

<comment><USER40> Damn -- now I'm going to have to get _Object Oriented Perl_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Maverick - By Ricardo Semler of Semco. It's a must read book for every entrepreneur. I've read few business books, but this is one of those books I'll always recommend everyone with Founders at Work and Art of the Start.

It's a real story of Semco with great business lessons.

<comment><USER30> If you are interested in democratic and effective companies this is a great story. I wish more companies had a culture like Semco. Strong leadership should never go out the door, but autocracy should.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The Reasoned Schemer by Friedman, Byrd, and Kiselyov

Purely Functional Data Structures by Okasaki

Programming Language Pragmatics, 3rd ed by Scott

Fast Analytical Techniques for Electrical and Electronic Circuits by Vorperian

<comment><USER43> I second "Programming Language Pragmatics" it is a fantastic book, and he is a very good writer, with illustrative examples and just the right balance between breadth/depth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

<comment><USER45> That is such an excellent book. If you like it, you may also enjoy "Foucault's Pendulum" by Eco as well.

<comment><USER46> Very dense, the kind of book that a book geek writes.

When i read The DaVinci Code years later, it feeled like a very decaffeinated (really "de-lots of things") version of Foucaults Pendulum. It also feels like it spawned this sort of genre of history-mystery-conspiracy-airport-and-beach- novel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> OO i love these threads.

I am currently reading "The Power Broker" by Robert Caro and its awesome so far (~150 pgs in). Just finished Zinn's "A people's history". Next up is "Atlas Shrugged" or "The Power of Babel" by John McWhorter.

<comment><USER48> Why? Just because someone is reading something doesn't mean it's a good recommendation. I'm reading "Two years before the mast," and it's okay. There are better books.

However, here's a real recommendation: If you have a netbook, it can be used very effectively as an e-book reader if you turn it on its side while in bed, or place it upon your chest. I didn't buy it for that reason, but it is the most comfortable manner of reading books, AFAICS.

<comment><USER47> Because recommendations tend to be very specific to a certain topic (probably very technical), but asking what a person is reading now includes outside interests, hobbies and curiosities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I am reading _way_ too many books at once. Not in danger of finishing them all, but in the last month I have read from:

      Technical:

Armstrong, Programming Erlang

Oppenheim et al, Signals and Systems

Abelson and Sussman, SICP

The Fourier Transform and its Applications

Project Management for Construction

      Nontechnical:

Russel, History of Western Philosophy

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Schelling, Strategy of Conflict

The US Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual

Araki Photofile

...

All of them are too interesting.

<comment><USER50> I only read the first chapter of Malcolm X's autobiography before I lost my copy, but boy was it ever worth reading.

I think everyone should take an hour to sit down and read the first chapter, even if they don't like books.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> _Edison : a Life of Invention_ , Paul Israel (terribly dense condensation of a 6 volume biography... but it has all the facts. I don't know if Edison was a "genius", but he had lots of ideas, and he _did_ them. BTW Tesla isn't mentioned at all, and the AC/DC controversy only peripherally, in terms of Western Union)

Just finished _iWoz_ , by Woz. It's extremely casually written. He comes across as ego-centric but sadly without self-awareness even here, in autobiography (incidentally, I think the appropriate comic strip to represent Steve and Steve would be Calvin and Calvin. But I digress). The guy is a genius, there's some funny bits, and he gives some great advice: being able to think objectively gives you confidence, and independence of the opinions of others. Worth being reminded of when the pressure's on.

 _now to join the long tail of comments_

</comment><comment><USER52> Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll

Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges

Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain

The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education by Grace Llewellyn

</comment><comment><USER53> Just finished The Time Traveler's Wife... Working on GEB, and Ulysses (also a simple French reader and Le Petit Prince since I'm just learning French).

I also got a book about Ulysses to help me glean as much as possible out of this intellectual and physical monstrosity of a book.

</comment><comment><USER54> Network Algorithmics - George Varghese; Back of the Napkin - Dan Roam

<comment><USER55> Good for you on Varghese. Let us know what you build.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Halfway into "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and im liking it so far, specially its hindsights on philosophy and rationality.

"Beautiful Data", a couple of chapters, i like the "Beautiful" series cause you can take any chapter as a more or less isolated topic.

</comment><comment><USER56> Starship Troopers. Began and finished off 1984 after all the hubbub about it recently on HN.

<comment><USER57> Me too. Finished up to 9 chapters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> An introduction to probability - Vol I (William Feller)

Introduction to dynamic systems - David Luenberger

<comment><USER59> How are you finding Feller?

I've been through Shiryaev and have very mixed feelings on that one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> * Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life, by Winifred Gallagher (So-so. Pop-psychy, but interesting ideas.)

* 500 Essential Anime Movies: The Ultimate Guide, by Helen Mccarthy (Perhaps one doesn't actually _read_ such a book, but graze.)

* Mister Blank Exhaustive Collection, by Christopher J. Hicks (Fun. Love the art.)

* Programming Cocoa with Ruby, by Brian Marick (Tonight I will likely crack this open and see how soon I can code something.)

* Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories, by Raymond Carver (Started in, will work slowly through the stories.)

Sitting on the floor, beckoning me:

* Sunnyside, by Glen David Gold

* The Invention of Air, by Steven Johnson

</comment><comment><USER61> The Spanish Labyrinth: An Account of the Social and Political Background of the Spanish Civil War, Brenan [http://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Labyrinth- Account-Political-Ba...](http://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Labyrinth-Account- Political-Background/dp/0521398274)

Homage to Catalonia, Orwell [http://www.amazon.com/Homage-Catalonia-George- Orwell/dp/0156...](http://www.amazon.com/Homage-Catalonia-George- Orwell/dp/0156421178/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251784961&sr=1-1)

</comment><comment><USER62> Cabeza de Vaca's _Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America_

</comment><comment><USER63> Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges. Always a delight, the two prefaces for the collection written decades apart are a must read (Amazon Look Inside hasn't got it. Don't know why.).

<comment><USER46> Borges its great, i find his tales super-concentrated: one tale mentions people or stories that can spawn hundreds of other tales or biographies, and that leaves me wishing to read more of him to see if that story is told somewhere else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> _McMafia_ by Misha Glenny. Interesting read on globalization and organized crime as circumstances have materialized since the end of the Cold War.

<comment><USER65> You'd probably also be interested in the book Rogue Economics by Napoleoni. It discusses how the money from illicit activities are flowing around the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

Imitation of Life: How Biology Is Inspiring Computing

Programming in Python 3

</comment><comment><USER67>
      The Machinery Of Freedom by David Friedman
      Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
      Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

I'm in the middle of writing a book on emulation, and I'm finding it really hard to read anything tech-wise these days. There's only so long you can see such material before you can't take it anymore, and my own book pushes me over that line most days.

</comment><comment><USER68> 1\. The Annotated Turing - Charles Petzold 2\. SICP (going very slow) 3\. Findability - Peter Morville 4\. Making Things Happen - Scott Berkun

</comment><comment><USER69> Digital Apollo: Human and Machine in Spaceflight by David A. Mindell

Gray Hat Python: Python Programming for Hackers and Reverse Engineers by Justin Seitz

</comment><comment><USER70> Okasaki's "Purely Functional Data Structures"

Giola's "The History of Jazz"

Herbert's "Chapterhouse: Dune"

</comment><comment><USER71> _Why's (poignant) guide to Ruby_. I have no interest in Ruby, I just wanted to read why's thing on paper instead of on the screen. Though with hindsight, it might have been cheaper to just print it.

 _Fisher vs. Spassky: inside the 1972 world chess championship_. It is crushing me with brute force.

 _consider Phlebas_ by Iain M. Banks. War is hell.

</comment><comment><USER72> Good Calories, Bad Calories (Taubes)

About 700 children's books (Assorted authors)

</comment><comment><USER73> Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions

The Road to Reality (and I'll probably be able to post this for the next 3 or more threads of this type :)

Dead Until Dark (well when it comes in, certainly not going to buy this, and the library reserve goes nuts for books that spawn your popular vapire drama)

</comment><comment><USER74> A friend of mine has been completely obsessed with the Discworld books. I just borrowed "Jingo" and was impressed with how mature it was.(Mature in the ideas presented. The humor is absurd and appropriately silly) Pratchett isn't quite as great as Douglas Adams but is certainly close enough.

</comment><comment><USER75> Microsoft's Axum Programmers Guide (PDF). The language is beyond me, but I felt like going through it.

[http://download.microsoft.com/download/B/D/5/BD51FFB2-C777-4...](http://download.microsoft.com/download/B/D/5/BD51FFB2-C777-43B0-AC24-BDE3C88E231F/Axum%20Programmers%20Guide.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER76> Technical:

\- _Practical Common Lisp_

\- _Programming Clojure_

Non technical:

\- _Empire_ , Antonio Negri & Michael Hardt. A deep political and philosophical essay about the transition between modern and postmodern times.

\- Various material about the International Situationist, an avant-garde political and artistic movement from the 60s.

</comment><comment><USER77> My basic CS stuff:

Still at 'Real World Haskell'...and still not through the Monads part

Programming Clojure, started reading

Chris Okasaki's Thesis on 'Functional Data Structures'

O'Reilly's 'Algorithms in a Nutshell'

'Collective Intelligence', T. Segaran, O'Reilly

Some old Isaac Asimov books I found in my Landlord's cellar

R. L. Stevenson, re-reading 'Treasure Island' on Google Books

</comment><comment><USER78> Psycho-Cybernetics [http://www.amazon.com/Psycho-Cybernetics-New-More-Living- Lif...](http://www.amazon.com/Psycho-Cybernetics-New-More-Living- Life/dp/0671700758)

probably the best self-help book I've ever read.. Teaches a lot about how to think.

</comment><comment><USER7> A Code of Jewish Ethics, Volume 2: Love Your Neighbor as Yourself, by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin

[http://www.amazon.com/Code-Jewish-Ethics-Neighbor- Yourself/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Code-Jewish-Ethics-Neighbor- Yourself/dp/1400048362)

</comment><comment><USER79> The correct question is, "what are you reading _for_?" and the answer is "I'm reading 'Hee Haw: The Book.'"

Actually, it's "Matrix Methods in Data Mining and Pattern Recognition." Two years ago I would have torn through the math but now I'm, uh, less smart.

</comment><comment><USER80> I'm currently reading "Persepolis," the graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, and MIT Press' "A History of Modern Computing." I recently acquired a copy of Steven Levy's "Hackers," which I'd like to at least start before the end of the summer.

<comment><USER81> Hackers is an excellent book, probably should be required reading for anyone into the programmer/entrepreneur lifestyle, or wannabe.

It gave me my first moment where I was reading a book and thought, "Yes. _That's_ what I want to be doing. What they're doing. But me," when reading about some of the first computer game companies like Sierra, early Electronic Arts, early Apple, etc. Especially the story of Ken and Roberta Williams.

As a kid, I was using the software and hardware made by the folks described in those stories and felt that when I grew up I also wanted to be my own boss, and make and sell my own stuff. Make, sell, repeat. All other BS minimized.

<comment><USER80> That's the feeling I'm going for. Hopefully the MIT history of computing book coupled with Hackers and a full load of computer science courses in the fall will help motivate me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> Second Treatise of Government - Locke On Liberty - Mill The Communist Manifesto - Marx & Engels Eros & Civilization - Marcuse Civilization and Its Discontents - Freud The Road To Serfdom - Hayak Milestones - <USER2>

</comment><comment><USER83> Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

and

The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes

<comment><USER50> Interesting and unusual books for a hacker. Can you give us a quick mini- review of what you think so far?

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> The Candy Bombers, about the Berlin Airlift, the political and military conflicts surrounding the Airlift, and the Airlift pilot that started dropping candy for the kids near the airport.

</comment><comment> brown9-2 The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain De Botton

recommended in this thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=760771>

<comment><USER55> Great interview with him on Marketplace of Ideas podcast (Google it).

<comment> brown9-2 Thanks! Here's the link: [http://media.libsyn.com/media/colinmarshall/MOI_Alain_de_Bot...](http://media.libsyn.com/media/colinmarshall/MOI_Alain_de_Botton.mp3)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> Last three books I read were; Atlas Shrugged, Code Complete, The Mythical Man Month,

The three books I'm currently reading; flex and bison, Mastering Algorithms in C Expert C programming,

The next three books on the "to read" stack are; Cyptonomicom, The definitive guide to GCC, Managing projects with GNU make,

Did anyone else find "Code Complete" to be a bit repetitive, in places a bit redundant, and sometimes repetitive? I think the "pragmatic programmer" was a better read, and I could not put down "programming pearls"

</comment><comment><USER86> Most recently, been doing some skill refreshing with Jon Bentley's "Programming Pearls" and Paul Graham's "ANSI Common Lisp".

Not too long ago, Pepper White's "The Idea Factory".

</comment><comment><USER87> Growing up, I was a big fan of Robert Aspirin who wrote the Another Fine Myth series. I found out he died recently so I picked up his latest, Dragons Wild. It's a young adult novel but it was a fun, nostalgic read.

Prior to that it was House of Suns by Alistair Reynolds. Far-future sci-fi about a group of traders who travel at near-relativistic speeds from planet to planet over billions of years, watching human civilizations rise and fall.

</comment><comment><USER88> _Ulysses_ , haha.

<comment><USER89> Ouch.

<comment><USER88> Not entirely ouch. Much like when I read _Portrait of the Artist_ I am pressed between wanting to stab Joyce for having obnoxious and terrible worldviews and steal his flatcap for its clearly mystical powers of English wrangling.

I guess those aren't exactly mutually exclusive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> Just finished "Heretics of Dune". Now starting "Chapterhouse: Dune". Both are Audiobooks I got from Audible.com. Great production for the whole series.

<comment><USER20> Any of the ones read by Tim Curry are excellent. His voice characterizations are very good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> Agile Web Development with Rails. I'm up to Chapter 11 or so, if I remember right. Took a break to solve some puzzles for something completely unrelated. Hopefully I can get back to a chapter a night.

After that, I'll probably crack open the Flex 3 Cookbook that Mike Potter sent over. I still feel awful about not having read through that one yet, as Flex 4 is almost ready to be released.

</comment><comment><USER92> . Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance . Harvard Business Review - <USER3> the case studies . The Innovator's Dilemma . Ayn Rand++

</comment><comment><USER20> Reading "Q for Mortals." Highly recommend it for ideas for your next Antlr project. Whitney is a sharp character.

Also trying my best to read some fiction - it's gotten progressively more difficult to do over the years (the programmer has become programmed). Best I could muster was to re-read "The First 20 Million is Always The Hardest" by Po Bronson. Precious read.

<comment><USER93> LtU thread with Steve Apter (of nsl.com) explaining parsing of pure K: <http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1323#comment-15393>

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> * The Future of the Internet -- And How to Stop It :: by Jonathan Zittrain

* The Elementary Particles :: by Michel Houellebecq

<comment><USER95> Good luck with Elementary Particles. It's was too depressing for me. "The Possibility of an Island" gets better though, with a nice sci-fi underline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> > _I don't ever see this discussed here._

Nonsense :-).

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=749706>

Code Complete 2 [Chapter 7] (McConnell)

Test Driven: Practical TDD and Acceptance TDD for Java Developers [Chapter 2] (Koskela)

A friend is helping me with this one:

The Rebel [Chapter 2] (Camus)

<comment><USER22> Code Complete is good stuff. The first volume changed the way I thought about code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> Real World Haskell

<http://book.realworldhaskell.org/>

<comment><USER98> I'm bouncing between that book and "The Haskell School of Expression"( <http://www.haskell.org/soe/> ). The second seems to be better at describing data structures and building the language in your mind while the first is more of a reference of useful ideas.

<comment><USER99> It's strange how I never heard of this one, while the other gets a lot of attention. Is it very outdated?

<comment><USER98> I had a lot of trouble trying to get the libraries they mentioned working. The code examples in the book are so straight forward it was simple to implement them in OpenGL. I have not run across wrong information yet.

On a side note, I went to the Boston Haskell Users Group and their advice was "just read the Haskell Report". I needed a little more gentle introduction before we go jumping into the deep end of the pool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER100> Contemplative Science by B. Alan Wallace. It's about stripping out the analytical tools of Buddhism for study of the mind and creating a robust and consistent tool set for scientific inquiry into the nature of the subjective mind. Very interesting stuff IMO.

</comment><comment><USER101> Michel Foucault _Security, Territory, Population (Lectures at the College De France)_

</comment><comment><USER32> A re-read of the Wheel of Time series - kindof following along with the tor.com re-read (Which is worth checking out if you are a WoT fan). Going to push through the last 4 books in the next 2 months as Book 12 is coming out in Nov.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm also finishing Atlas Shrugged finally this week, having just finished The Fountainhead. Next on my list is Anthem, then I think I'll go back to some non-fiction for the next couple books... like Outliers and Capital and Freedom.

</comment><comment><USER102> Currently reading: "infinite jest" (wallace) "how to rock climb" (john long)

On deck for winter: "god created the integers" (hawking) "critique of pure reason" (kant) "illuminatus trilogy" "a brief history of technology" (up to 1900)

</comment><comment><USER103> Parting the Waters : America in the King Years 1954-63 by Taylor Branch

The Hobbit

Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter by Thomas Cahill

I track my reading on Goodreads: <http://www.goodreads.com/enkrates>

</comment><comment><USER104> Pride an Prejudice, until 4 in the morning last night. I'm sleepy now at work :)

</comment><comment><USER105> Infinite Jest, as a long slow process.

The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo/The Girl who Played with Fire, each of which I found myself burning through in a day (the new definition of the genre of Swedish crime writing, which is amazing).

<comment><USER55> What do you think about IJ? Where are you at in it? I'm ~400; was doing 75 pages a day during my summer break last week, but now that I'm working I'm down to 5 or 6 a day.

<comment><USER105> I like it, but it's a long march - I'm at about 320, and a had a similar pattern; 40 a day while on holiday, five or so while at work.

Seems like once you clear 200 pages or so, you're in it for the long haul. It's intimidatingly large, but I couldn't think of not finishing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER106> _Empires of the Silk Road_ yesterday and _Inside Central Asia_ today. Also _The Lightness of Being_ , _A Savage War of Peace_ , and _Confessions of an English Opium Eater_.

</comment><comment><USER107> I'm one of the ones that has too many books on my reading list.

Programming in Scala - Odersky et al. Code Complete 2- re reading, its a good read actually Godel Escher Bach - <USER4>

</comment><comment><USER108> Ha! I'm the only one apparently reading Melville! I'm reading _Omoo_ , his second book. I finished _Typee_ last week and _Omoo_ is the semi-sequel.

</comment><comment><USER109> Just finished:

"The Great War for Civilisation" - Robert Fisk "Life on the Mississippi" - Mark Twain "3 Commando Brigade" - Ewen Southby-Tailyour "Anathem" - <USER5> Stephenson

</comment><comment><USER110> _Computational Pharmacokinetics_ by Anders Källén

 _Secrets of Consulting_ by Gerald Weinberg

 _Le Ton Beau de Marot_ by Douglas Hofstadter

 _Born to Win_ by Muriel James and Dorothy Jongeward

<comment><USER46> Le Ton Beau de Marot by Douglas Hofstadter

How is it? please share your impressions.

<comment><USER71> If you're interested enough to ask, then you'll probably like it. If you've read and liked any other Hofstadter, then just just go get it. A bit weird at first, but ultimately superb.

<comment><USER46> I will. I took GEB and leave it 200 pages from the end, it is great but i keep feeling im not getting something. Im starting over now. And "le ton..." would be next.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER111> I just finished The Brothers Karamazov. It was excellent.

<comment><USER112> I'm just reading Poor Folk, in honour of the Recession.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Do folks here use Library Thing?

<http://www.librarything.com/home/jamesbritt>

(I've fallen behind in updates ...)

</comment><comment><USER113> Fatal Revenant by Stephen Donaldson

The Art of Happiness by HH Dalai Lama

</comment><comment><USER40> \- _SICP_ by Abelman, Sussman, and Sussman

\- _The Black Company I: Glittering Stone_ by Glen Cook

I try to stick to two books at a time -- one fiction, one nonfiction.

</comment><comment><USER114> John von Neumann and the origins of modern computing

</comment><comment><USER115> had my temporary fill of tech books, so:

on my bedstand is "when you are engulfed in flames"

and my next major read is probably "the gathering storm" once it comes out.

</comment><comment><USER29> Go It Alone (<http://www.brucejudson.com/>) by Bruce Judson

You can read it free online.

</comment><comment><USER116> Humpty Dumpty in Oakland by Philip K. Dick

Sometimes a little bit of fiction is nice over the usual technical / theory books one might read :)

</comment><comment><USER117> Read through _Untimely Thoughts_ a couple of weeks ago, have been meaning to pick up _The Great Melody_ by C.C. O'Brien.

</comment><comment><USER118> * Practical Mathematics * Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student * Foundations of Arithmetic * Emerson's Essays

</comment><comment><USER27> The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi

Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt

<comment><USER22> Finished "Ghost" last week -- nice book!

Not as good as his first one, but well-written.

You know there's a third book in the series too, right? Not as good as the first two, but good.

What impressed me most about this author was after writing three books, he hung up the series. He said that was it, not going any father.

I gotta admire that. Most Sci-Fi Authors with a good series have to beat the thing to death before they let go.

<comment><USER65> Well, he did follow it up with Zoe's Tale, a fourth book. And there's also Jane's Diary or some other book that is tangentially related to the main trilogy.

<comment><USER22> Yikes!

Sorry about the misinformation. I said that based on how he closes "Last Colony" -- he makes it pretty clear he's done for a while.

I guess the lure of the steady paycheck is a tough thing to resist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Infinite Jest (DFW)

Trading and Exchanges (Harris)

</comment><comment><USER119> * Dynamics of Software Development

* Wireless Communications & Networks

* Time Management for System Administrators

</comment><comment><USER120> Founders At Work, On Lisp, SICP, Idoru, The Art of Racing In the Rain (Garth Stein)

</comment><comment><USER121> C# in Depth: What you need to master C# 2 and 3 & Introduction to Algorithms

</comment><comment><USER122> Finished Amusing Ourselves to Death a week ago, now reading Cryptonomicon.

</comment><comment><USER123> I've been trying to get through a book a week recently, and not quite succeeding. Here's the three I'm going through right now (no affiliate links):

Arabian Nights, Hussain Haddawy's translation. Hilarious and many life lessons, strongly recommended. [http://www.amazon.com/Arabian-Nights-New- Deluxe/dp/039333166...](http://www.amazon.com/Arabian-Nights-New- Deluxe/dp/0393331660/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251774786&sr=1-1)

Healthy at 100, John Robbins. Just started, looks promising. [http://www.amazon.com/Healthy-100-Scientifically- Healthiest-...](http://www.amazon.com/Healthy-100-Scientifically-Healthiest- Longest-Lived/dp/0345490118/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251774809&sr=1-1)

The Psychology of Self Esteem, Nathaniel Branden. Gosh, Branden's so smart, I just wish he'd use smaller words and sentences so I could get his general ideas faster. [http://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Self-Esteem- Revolutionary-A...](http://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Self-Esteem- Revolutionary-Approach-Self- Understanding/dp/0787945269/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251774828&sr=1-1)

I just gave up on "Execution" by Larry Bossidy, it seems good but I wasn't connecting with it right now.

I read "Katsuno's Revenge and Other Tales of the Samurai" recently, which was a good, short book. It's like 120 pages, with six stories or so. A few of them were interesting, a few didn't speak to me, but overall worth a read. You'll learn some underpinnings of Japanese culture from it. (Also, it's only $9 on Amazon right now, can just add to cart for next order) - [http://www.amazon.com/Katsunos-Revenge-Other-Tales- Samurai/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Katsunos-Revenge-Other-Tales- Samurai/dp/0486447421/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251774864&sr=1-1)

Finished "The Samurai Banner of Furin Kazan" recently - very interesting, it's a look at the more political machinations and presents a dirtier, less ethical picture of the great strategists in the Sengoku era. [http://www.amazon.com/Samurai-Banner-Classics-Japanese- Liter...](http://www.amazon.com/Samurai-Banner-Classics-Japanese- Literature/dp/0804837015/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251774893&sr=1-1)

Don't start with it if you're not familiar with the era, though, you'll get the general sense wrong. I'd recommend start with Eiji Yoshikawa if you like Japanese history and want to learn more - of course, start with "Musashi", which is fantastic. If you really like it, "Taiko" is good too.

Musashi (my favorite book, huge for people who have lots of potential and are having a hard time dealing with people close to them because of it) - [http://www.amazon.com/Musashi-Eiji- Yoshikawa/dp/4770019572/r...](http://www.amazon.com/Musashi-Eiji- Yoshikawa/dp/4770019572/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251774933&sr=1-1)

Taiko (start with Musashi, if you like it a lot, pick up Taiko) - [http://www.amazon.com/Taiko-Eiji- Yoshikawa/dp/4770026099/ref...](http://www.amazon.com/Taiko-Eiji- Yoshikawa/dp/4770026099/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251774959&sr=1-1)

Also, finished The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing which is the best business book I've read in a long time. Short, simple, to the point. Highly recommended. [http://www.amazon.com/22-Immutable-Laws-Marketing- Violate/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/22-Immutable-Laws-Marketing- Violate/dp/0887306667/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251774971&sr=1-1)

</comment><comment><USER124> "The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman

"Goedel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter

</comment><comment><USER125> "La reine morte" (The dead queen) by Henry de Montherland.

</comment><comment><USER126> Inside the Mind of the Shopper - Herb Sorenson Born to Run

</comment><comment><USER127> * Gödel, Escher, Bach

* The Pragmatic Programmer

* Programming Clojure

* Pragmatic Version Control Using Git

</comment><comment><USER128> The Lost Continent, Bill Bryson.

An amazing book, very readable.

</comment><comment><USER129> From Beirut to Jerussalem. Thomas Friedman.

</comment><comment><USER130> Practical Django Projects 2nd edition

</comment><comment><USER131> Ideas and Opinions - Albert Einstein

</comment><comment><USER132> Haroun and the Sea of Stories :)

</comment><comment><USER133> Art of the Start - Guy Kawasaki

</comment><comment><USER134> Making of the Atomic Bomb

</comment><comment><USER135> Gang Leader for a Day Cracking the GRE Personal Development for Smart People The Ultimate Sales Machine Finding Your Zone: Ten Core Lessons for Achieving Peak Performance in Sports and Life

Must-read-soon: Infinite Jest; Tribes; Influence; Made to Stick; Foundation Rails 2

There aren't enough hours in the day. I'm going to shift to a wake-up-at-6-am sleep schedule so I can become a more productive person and have more time to read. Anyway, back to work.

<comment><USER128> Gang Leader for a Day --> Awesome Book!

</comment></comment><comment><USER136> The Brothers Karamazov. Awesome, if only for the casually violent Russian realism that I loved in Преступление и Наказание.

As far as learning goes, I'm chugging through the FARs and the Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge. I'm about to solo.

As far as computer tech stuff goes, I haven't picked up a book with hype (plus requisite clipart/bad drawings/abuse of color space) on the cover in years.

Edit: What's up with all the Ayn Rand? Misogyny, xenophobia and unvarnished greed aren't exactly admirable characteristics, and her books read like an apologist's how-to manual. My favorite example of a Rand fanboy now works (when last I checked) at a bowling alley in Santa Barbara, after loudly and memorably insisting that he didn't need liberal pansy friends like me, because he'd be the wealthiest tycoon alive.

Yeah.

I guess he has a stovepipe hat and a monocle now.

<comment><USER123> > What's up with all the Ayn Rand? Misogyny, xenophobia and unvarnished greed > aren't exactly admirable characteristics

The big problem with Rand is that she's downright nasty to the other side. So people feel attacked and tune themselves out to her good ideas. Rand's anti- politicking, pro-individualism, pro-triumph, pro-innovation, pro-going against the grain, and so on. She rails against the very real, very nasty backroom deals that give privilege and blessing to companies who can work the political system at the expense of companies built by clueless-to-the-law engineers and scientists. She makes a heck of a lot of good points...

...but she's really nasty about it, incredibly unfriendly and unsympathetic to the motives of people who have other politics than hers. It makes it easy for people with other views to tune out everything she wrote, even though there's a lot of value in it.

<comment><USER136> Oops. I just thought it was an amusing anecdote, but this isn't a constructive direction.

<comment><USER40> It was an amusing anecdote that started with a harsh indictment of anyone who likes Ayn Rand's writing. Are you _sure_ you didn't expect people to be offended at what you said? Are you, perhaps, being a little disingenuous here?

<comment><USER20> Ah, but if one aspires to an ego the size of Howard Roark's, he wouldn't be offended by anything whatsoever.

<comment><USER40> What does that have to do with liking Ayn Rand's writing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER137> Maximum City - Suketu Mehta Shantharam - Gregory David Roberts</comment>


72 hours to conceive, build and launch a startup in a helicopter - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupcopter.com

<comment><USER2> is this a joke?</comment>


Pence calls for Nasa to send humans to the moon within five years - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/03/26/pence-calls-nasa-send-humans-moon-within-five-years/ <comment><USER2> But do it using this box of spare change.</comment>


How to Approach Amazon Prime Day Sales - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1024501/how-to-approach-amazon-prime-day-sales/ <comment><USER2> Always thought that the deals were very meh. Does anyone have a site that will be distilling the deals into the ones that are worth looking at?</comment>


A 29-year-old on the difficulties of landing a first job - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/personal-finance/a-29-year-old-on-the-difficulties-of-landing-a-first-job/article4184375/?page=1 <comment><USER2> _At the age of 29, I've likely forever lost the following opportunities due to cost and probable inability to make up for lost wages and career potential:_

Seriously? _Forever lost_ is a pretty strong statement. I don't see how any of these opportunities are _forever lost_ just because he's 29 and hasn't had a steady job until now. Millions (billions?) of people manage to get married, have children, study, etc while in objectively far worse situations than this kid ever will be. This article overflows with a sense of entitlement. Reminds me of an editorial from a few years back, where a lawyer (professor?) in Chicago claimed destitution at $400K/yr [1].

[1] [http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/09/in-which-mr-deling- res...](http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/09/in-which-mr-deling-responds-to- someone-who-might-be-professor-todd-henderson.html)

PS: Comment from an older thread that expresses my sentiments precisely: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3991666>

<comment><USER3> Actually, I think he's screwed. As a 29-year-old with no work experience, he's at a disadvantage against 22-year-olds with similar empty resumes. When good jobs become available, he won't be able to compete.

The real problem is that the kinds of jobs that liberal arts education trains people for are:

* academia and research, which have been contracting for 30 years.

* autonomous high-skill labor, which has also been getting rarer, and which would require further education on his part.

* executive jobs that have since been judged supernumerary and probably don't actually make economic sense.

People like him used to get "junior executive" jobs where they might have no direct reports, but were clearly being groomed for something better. (Think Pete Campbell in _Mad Men_.) Those jobs don't exist anymore and that's probably a good thing, because they don't make sense, but that is exactly what society prepped him for-- something that no longer exists.

He's now in the state where he can't get quality work experience because he doesn't have quality work experience.

If I were unethical, I might start a business as a "reinvention consultant" and give guys like him a fake work history (shell companies, references, ~3 months of training in the very few things he actually needs to know to be a corporate executive) and a second chance. There will be a lot of demand for that kind of service 5-10 years from now.

<comment><USER4> > _Actually, I think he's screwed. As a 29-year-old with no work > experience..._

Screwed? Nonsense.

At 29 years old, I had zero work experience, other than a few research assistant jobs in my 10-year slacker bachelor's degree (which did not result in positive references). Oh, and 4 months at a Subway. The only thing even vaguely positive about my economic history was that I did do a degree in computing science... but I had deliberately made it as useless as possible, because I was an idiot.

6 years later, I work at the best company in the world (I believe you're familiar with the place, mchurch).

He (she?) may well be _disadvantaged_ by his age, that's fair. But then again, he's already had lots of advantages, like being educated, living in Canada, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "I wanted 65 hour weeks in a high pressure corporate environment. I wanted the tailored suits, the chance at a high income, the BMW, the prestige, the respect, and the power. I wanted to be someone. I wanted to be able to afford to donate to charities that are important to me. I was considering children, marriage, the house, all of it. It's not happening."

Do people really expect to get something like that by the time they're 30? There are very few industries where that's the norm. Perhaps some of my peers have totally unrealistic expectations! Too many movies, too much TV, and too much time spent reading about other people's lives on Quora.

I don't have dreams about my current job that's a good 40-hour week (sometimes 45), lets me drive a used Toyota, and helps me pay a mortgage on a modest home, have a wife and a child, and enjoy a meal out every now and then. I can still save some money for retirement, even if it's just a tiny bit each month. I enjoy my life, and hope for something better, but I work one day at a time to achieve that dream, and I don't complain about it!

<comment><USER6> "the chance at a high income"

That doesn't speak to entitlement to me, but rather just getting on the path that, with hard work, can lead there.

The problem is that many are unable to even get their foot in the door. The hope is eventually it will change with the boomers retiring and opening up positions, but there is always the danger that this generation will be skipped.

However, the same fear happened to Gen X, that GenX would be skipped over, but after some major growing pains that generation too found their way in.

Perhaps instead, the problem is that those who graduate into a recession are leapfrogged by those who graduate into a great market. There are other studies that show the disparity in lifetime earnings based on this.

<comment><USER7> I am roughly the same age as this person, and as kids we were told that all we had to do was work hard in school and high incomes would come our way. And so we, generally speaking, did – well over 50% of the Canadian population have achieved an education level higher than high school, and is considered one of the most educated nations.

Of course that idea is impossible. High earnings are not an absolute value, only a value greater than a typical income. If we all received high incomes, that income would just become typical, leaving a small group with an even higher income to strive towards.

This person is making an average income, which is where you would expect the average person growing up in our generation to be. We cannot all be above average. It is a logical impossibility.

<comment><USER6> Ah, but there's a problem here. I've seen it with a few of my friends.

They graduated college, and couldn't find anything. They took what was available, typically call center jobs. Then, when entry level jobs came in their desired field, they were passed over because their experience was in low skilled positions.

Those leaving college are given a free pass since they aren't expected to have experience. However, once you take that low skill position, it's much harder to climb back up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> $36 000/year Canadian for a single 29 year old person with no debt is far from poor. Especially considering he enjoys his job. If he uses the same entitled tone in interviews its no wonder he has an issue.

<comment><USER9> That depends on where you live.

Grossing $36k annually in Toronto or Vancouver doesn't go very far. Assume 27k net = $2,250 per month. $800 for rent, $400 for student loan, $300 for food, $300 savings, $200 entertainment, $250 for gas and insurance (assuming you own a car) and you're at 0.

And don't even think about getting into the housing market. Maybe the condo market with help from parents or 5-10y savings for a down payment...

<comment><USER8> Average student loan for an undergraduate degree is 27,000 [1] so on average it would be payed off by that time.

I haven't lived in those cities but I would guess public transport is good enough that owning a car is not a requirement, its more like entertainment spending. (I know people who have lived in the GTA without needing a car. I don't know exactly what their rent costs were, possibly a little over $800 but not more than $1000).

Sure he will not be getting a home in the immediate future but unless something terrible happens his salary will only go up . In 5 years, when he probably will have a 2 person family judging by his eagerness for marriage, a small home will be within reach.

[1] [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/the- cru...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/the-crushing- weight-of-student-debt/article625694/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Comments from this article's last appearance on HN: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3991173>

</comment><comment><USER11> Now, I'm much more recently out of school than this, but I can't take this guy seriously at all. I had a pick of job offers after I graduated. Granted, I was in an engineering discipline, so perhaps I had it easier, but practically everyone I know from school even in other fields has managed to find decent paying work. I understand that the job market isn't great, but he describes it as if its completely impossible for a recent grad.

</comment><comment><USER12> _I wanted 65 hour weeks in a high pressure corporate environment. I wanted the tailored suits, the chance at a high income, the BMW, the prestige, the respect, and the power. I wanted to be someone._

Reminds me of a saying _You don't need more money to be happy, you need to want less stuff_ \- I saw it on HN, but forgot the author. Maybe the key is to understand that the last sentence ( _I wanted to be someone_ ) doesn't have anything to do with the other ones. You don't magically _become someone_ by putting on a tailored suit or stuffing your body inside a BMW.

Not to forget that someone actually _wanting_ 65 hours of work per week will hardly end up healthy, happy etc.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you graduate in 2008 (at the age of 25 I presume) and you come with no professional experience (internships, work during school etc.) you're kind of asking for trouble. Also not that many people have the luxury to not work until 25, consider yourself lucky.

</comment><comment><USER14> I would suggest that the writer needs to disconnect their self-worth and identity from their temporary employment situation.

</comment><comment><USER15> Why the hell would you need to conduct in-depth research into 100+ companies?

<comment><USER3> My guess is that this person is non-technical and applying for executive-track jobs, since that's what "career job" means outside of technology. He has no way to distinguish himself, is at an increasing disadvantage with age, and is applying for junior-executive jobs that are now (due to the long-term downsizing of corporate management) being mostly filled with more senior people.

<comment><USER16> I would likely agree that this is what is happening. The big missing piece in all of this is the feedback loop. He has been doing the same process for a long time with no results and instead of questioning his approach he is playing the victim card.

He should step back and realize he can't compete at that level. I find that people that sometimes work at small companies tend to take on roles that they may not necessarily have been able to get otherwise. Once they are laid off, they expect to have the same job at another company. What is sometimes lost is that those companies may only hire for that role when the person has an MBA or a particular designation, etc. The person feels they should get the job since they have been doing it already.

Well, it just doesn't work that way. You can either keep smashing your head against the wall or just maybe go find yourself something else to smash your head against. In his case, instead of accepting that the jobs he is applying for he is perhaps marginally a fit for, I suspect he continues to apply even after seeing that he only meets perhaps 1 or 2 of the five criteria. Doing so is just stupid.

This person's story is the classic and simple case of using old methods of finding a job when these methods just don't work that well anymore. I find it amusing that with all the education that this person has, he doesn't realize that the old methods usually work in a very hot economy. A good classic that is always updated is the What Color Is Your Parachute? book. The approaches described in that book would likely get this person very good results once he starts realizing that he should be a little less ambitious to start in terms of what he is looking for and also change his attitude (ie. drop the victim mentality - nobody owes him anything).</comment></comment></comment>


Was Nate Silver the Most Accurate 2012 Election Pundit? - <AUTHOR> http://appliedrationality.org/2012/11/09/was-nate-silver-the-most-accurate-2012-election-pundit/

<comment><USER2> Thanks. I've been trying to find a good way to understand the accuracy of Silver's predictions.

What's a fair benchmark? This article offers up a "coin flip" for each state, computing that such a coin flip would have a Brier score of 0.25. (The Brier score is a mean-squared error between outcome (1 or 0) and the percent certainty of the prediction in that outcome. If a coin flip is the model, each state's result of 1 or 0 would be in error by 0.5. The mean squared error would be 1/51 * 0.25 * 51 = 0.25.)

But... that seems like too generous a benchmark. Take the simple model: "assume 100% likelihood that state X will vote for the same party as it did in 2008." That guarantees that deeply red or blue states will vote the same way, so it takes the non-battlegrounds out of the equation.

With this model, there would only have been 2/51 errors. This simple lazy model achieves a Brier score of 0.039, beating Intrade and the poll average computed in this article quite badly.

After working through this, I'm still impressed by Silver and the other quant predictions. But I'm more concerned about media that rely too much on reporting a single polls result as "news" rather than as part of a larger tapestry.

Then again, it's the maligned media polls that are the raw input to Silver and the other models. Unless the media keeps funding the polls, the quality of these more advanced models will suffer.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the suggestion. I've added your benchmark suggestion (along with a bunch of other fixes and new data like a 2008 RMSE benchmark along the lines of your Brier suggestion) into the R document: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Rnmx8UZAe25YdxkVQbIVwBI0...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Rnmx8UZAe25YdxkVQbIVwBI0M-e6VARrjb0KdgMEVhk/edit)

(I don't know when the new numbers will go live on the blog; Luke handles that.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Note how NPR is one of the most right-biased in this result. It's pretty evident from years of listening that the NPR staff generally are progressives, and would left. So I think this result exemplifies how genuinely 'fair and balanced' NPR really is.

<comment><USER5> Throughout all the criticism from pundits of Nate Silver et al. as a liberal/commie/whatever for predicting that Obama would win, I couldn't help but wonder if there was even any merit to the idea that an Obama supporter would _want_ to say that Obama is going to win the election. I would think predicting that Romney has a 10% chance of winning (making it tough but a distinct possibility he would win) as Nate Silver did would lead to some of the BEST possible voter turnout for Romney (making it the worst possible prediction strategically, if you want Obama elected). On the other hand, a prediction that Romney will win in a landslide would make many Romney supporters stay home.

Is there actually evidence that higher poll numbers in favor of X lead to higher voter turnout from supporters of X? It seems like everyone takes that for granted but I've never seen any evidence that it's true.

<comment><USER6> It's worth adding that Nate is on the record as saying he'd have voted for either Romney or Gary Johnson, if he would have voted.

<http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/150042>

<comment><USER7> Okay, I found the reference someone cited as "Nate Silver openly rooting for Obama". It's from _March 2008,_ before he joined the NYTimes:

<http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008_02_24_archive.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would like to see them add in David Rothschild at Yahoo[1], who's an expert in scoring rules and prediction markets and whose February (!) predictions were almost exactly on the money.

[1] <http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/signal/>

<comment><USER9> He works at Microsoft[1]. I have been following his predictions on PredictWise.com for the last four months.

[1] <http://www.linkedin.com/pub/david-rothschild/12/651/681>

<comment><USER10> Just to clarify, he recently moved from Yahoo Research to Microsoft Research when the former imploded. Same with David Pennock and others. The Yahoo folks in New York mostly switched to MSR (founding MSR-NYC) and the folks in California mostly switched to Google.

(I used to be part of that research group but I left at the end of 2010 to start Beeminder.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This compares top lines. I think a comparison of turnout model accuracy would be more informative. Most of the models that erred predicted that the 2012 turn out would lean less Democratic than the 2008 turn out model, based on the 2010 mid-term turnouts and a (mis)perceived dampening of enthusiasm among Democrats and increased enthusiasm among Republicans. Based on exit polling, there was a drop off of 7 million white voters, and I don't think anyone who predicted that.

<comment><USER12> The reasons for the low turnout will be interesting to hear. Nationally, nearly 3 million fewer votes for Romney in '12 than McCain in '08, and around 10 million fewer votes for Obama. Polls showed the election to be fairly close, so that would not tend to explain either "giving up" or "overconfidence" as a reason person didn't vote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does anybody know more about YouGov's methodology? On the face of it, I'm suspicious of their very low margin of error which seems substantially better than any other poll out there, but you can't deny that their polling was accurate.

Another thing that looks odd on that graph: the given polling numbers from Washington Times/Politico/Monmouth/Newsmax/Gravis/Fox/CNN/ARG all look _identical_ despite their differing margins of error (which suggests their source data is different). What's going on there?

<comment><USER14> Here's a good article from the YouGov site that describes their methodology: [http://today.yougov.com/news/2012/10/23/obama-stays-ahead- ju...](http://today.yougov.com/news/2012/10/23/obama-stays-ahead-just/)

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the link. In short, it seems like only poll people they can confirm are actually registered to vote based on the fact that:

"According to US census data, just 71% of eligible Americans are registered to vote. In 2008, almost 90% of those who were registered did vote. So in any poll, it is vital to know which respondents are on the register."

But there're a few more interesting subtleties in there too, so it's worth a read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Article doesn't mention Sam Wang. His confidence level for Obama winning was at 99%

<http://election.princeton.edu/>

<comment><USER16> Oooh, I wonder what "he" might choose for a username on a social media site!

<comment><USER15> I can guarantee, with a near 100% confidence rating, that I am not Sam Wang. Merely coincidental that we have the same last name and first initial. I mean there has to be at least 100 million people in the world with the surname Wang so the odds that we are the same person are pretty slim!

<comment><USER17> "I mean there has to be at least 100 million people in the world with the surname Wang so the odds that we are the same person are pretty slim!"

Except this seems to ignore that P(comment about Sam Wang | I am Sam Wang) is much higher than P(comment about Sam Wang | I am not Sam Wang) :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Actually the most accurate 2012 election pundit was Drew Linzer (<http://votamatic.org/>). Provided Florida goes Obama's way, he correctly predicted the electoral college - Obama 332, Romney 206.

<comment><USER19> Didn't Nate Silver say that was the most likely split? There was a post about it on HN for like the past 2 days.

Edit: The confusion is probably that Silver was reporting the average electoral split as his prediction, when the mode is more important in what you're talking about. His average was almost never a number that was actually possible, since he was quoting them to the nearest 1/10th of a vote, so its kind of unfair to punish him for not getting it exactly right.

<comment><USER18> You're right, I didn't realize Nate Silver was using an average. Also after reading the article, it looks like not just predictions for the 2012 presidential electoral vote, but other votes such as the Senate races are also being compared.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 It's worth noting that if you used the 2008 results as your 2012 prediction, you would have gotten 49/51 on this scale.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but if you simply predicted 2008, you'd get a mediocre Brier score on your state victory predictions (because it would punish you for getting 49 compared to everyone who got 50 or 51), and the RMSE is even worse: the margins were different and the electoral vote & popular vote _very_ different from 2008.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Slate Magazine found two other pundits which were as accurate as Silver.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/11/pundit_scorecard_checking_pundits_predictions_against_the_actual_results.html)

<comment><USER21> Josh Putnam is considered in the article, which looks at a finer level of detail than just correctly predicting the states.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Great article, but I disagree with the colouring on the first graph: if reality was within the poll's margin of error, I don't think it should be coloured, because that implies a bias that (probably) isn't actually there.

</comment><comment><USER22> Isn't YouGov the XBox pollster? They're in the top group.

<comment><USER23> Also interesting to their their margin of error is significantly lower than any of the other polling organizations. From what I gather on Wikipedia, they are internet-centric although I'm not sure if that includes XBox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is it possible to be more accurate than nailing all fifty states?

<comment><USER25> Well, maybe yes. One strategy for predicting the outcomes would be to paint a quarter red on one side and blue on the other, and assigning the outcome of that state to the outcome of the coin flip. That probably wouldn't be a very effective strategy, but it's possible to still nail all 50 states (actually, 51 in this case). Silver's method is much much more accurate than the coin toss method.

Silver takes all the polls, even the crappy ones, and includes them in his calculation. If you're a bayesian you'd find this comforting because all of the evidence is included in the belief. There might be some handwringing about how important each poll really is. If you're not a bayesian, then you have some other weird strategy that might or might not work.

So really, the predictions are nice, but what we're after is a system that produces good predictions. It's not clear that Mr. Silver's is the best. Perhaps there is some horrible flaw an evil agent could exploit that just didn't get tickled this election. It's tough to say.

<comment><USER26> > If you're a bayesian you'd find this comforting because all of the evidence > is included in the belief.

Off-topic, but this is my beef with the "Bayesians" - it's _not_ all of the evidence; it's completely absurd to believe that all evidence can ever be accounted for, when considering _anything_.

<comment><USER3> "More of the evidence" seems like pretty much the same thing...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


This is for the Facebook users... - <AUTHOR> http://www.fbgangsta.com/

<comment><USER2> Tumblr is not a web host.</comment>


Companies are once again storing data on tape, just in case - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-look-to-an-old-technology-to-protect-against-new-threats-1505700180 <comment><USER3> I didn't know they ever stopped storing data on tape. Tape to my knowledge has been pretty much in continuous use at big corps since their invention. Sure there was things like AWS glacier becoming possible alternatives but tapes are pretty entrenched.

<comment><USER4> Some have speculated that AWS Glacier is just a service that still stores information on Tape anyways. I remember when I saw a robotic tape storage machine at Fermilab when the Tevatron was still active. That was awesome. They also had racks of tapes.

See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Glacier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Glacier)

<comment><USER5> There's other speculation that Glacier is using high density Bluray optical recording with something like 400 GB per disc.

<comment><USER6> Isn't optical media a lot less stable than Tape? This seems like a bad idea if you're running an archival service.

I use to have a case of CDRs between 1997 and 2004, sometime in 2004 I noticed that many CDRs were becoming unreadable and switched to external HDDs. I kept the case for a while and I think it was 2005 or 2006 that all the disks were empty and I tossed it in the garbage.

Around that same time they were starting to phase out LPT ports on PCs and I decided to backup everything I had on reused tapes for an Irwin 40mb Tape drive from 1988 that I acquired sometime in the mid 90s from a salvage shop. I was able to pull everything off the tapes.

<comment><USER7> > Isn't optical media a lot less stable than Tape? This seems like a bad idea > if you're running an archival service.

Unless you have some giant warehouse of multiple-copying disk-verifying and re-duplicating robots running around.. which in the case of amazon might actually be the case, and at scale, could save lots on media..

to be clear, I have no personal insight as to how their service works

<comment><USER6> That seems like a lot more trouble than it's worth.

From a cost perspective it makes no sense at all. An LTO-6 tape is $25 retail and holds 2.5TB of data, LTO-7 tapes are $90 for 6TB. A 4 Layer BD-R disk is about $15 retail and holds around 100GB of data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tape is perfect for things like police bodycam recordings. They need to store a ridiculous amount of data for decades, and don't need access to it in real time. Cops/Courts/etc are happy to wait a day for video retrieval because the costs are so much lower.

I've also thought about how you could store medical patient data on tape, and retrieve it the day before a patient comes in. Or storing other types of data, and having ML record what gets retrieved when and try to predict it to reduce retrieval times. Too bad other storage is so cheap!

</comment><comment><USER9> Google uses tape. Very cool read/watch.

Summary: [http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/2/3/how-google-backs- up...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/2/3/how-google-backs-up-the- internet-along-with-exabytes-of-othe.html)

Video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNliOm9NtCM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNliOm9NtCM)

</comment><comment><USER10> I've never set up a backup system that didn't have tape rotated into cold storage as its last step. As far as I know, nothing ever came along that offered the same value for longevity.

</comment><comment><USER11> The suit is back! [http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

<comment><USER12> I don't think this is an example of a submarine article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I use to work at a small health insurance company with a tech staff of 10 people. 1 persons entire job was to essentially managing the tape backups and getting them sent/picked up from offsite storage. This was a senior network administrator.

</comment><comment><USER14> The primary advantage that tape still holds over disk is shock resistance. You can drop a tape cartridge and still expect to get all of the data off it, but that is not the case for a really high density disk drive.

An interesting thing that might change this would be one time programmable multi-level flash (OTP MLC flash). It has the shock resistance of tape, the random access of disk. The $/TB is slowly converging when you consider total cost of ownership and reliability of the equipment to read/write these.

At some point someone is going to do the needed mechanical engineering and that just might be the end of tape.

</comment><comment> sh-run We still use tapes at my enterprise. I'm on the network team, so I don't really work with the tapes directly, but it doesn't seem as inconvenient as it might sound.

We have a few large "tape libraries" in our data centers. The tape libraries have a robotic arm that handles the bulk of the tape swapping and organization. Humans are involved in loading the tape library and carrying the tapes offsite for storage.

I'm speaking as someone who has had a couple of casual conversations about the tape libraries and am not involved in the management of them in any way. They could actually be a huge pain.

<comment><USER7> it's all about aligning the tape consumption with the size of the arrays/tape storage so groups of tapes need to be rotated at the same time.

if done properly, it's as simple as grab this 'row' in the robot and replace it with this 'row' from the storage area - when not, it becomes a confusing hodgepodge of shelves and containers and which-tape-is-where.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't think it ever went away in larger companies.

A few months back I was looking into tape hardware, and I was disappointed to find that the barrier of entry is too high for consumers with only dozens of TBs. Based on my calculations at the time, for my desired data size it ended up cheaper to just buy a bunch of HDDs.

How do HDDs compare to tape when it comes to long-term storage? I've read lots of mixed reports.

<comment><USER16> > I don't think it ever went away in larger companies.

Or smart companies.

heck, I evaluated tape storage for personal use. It cost way less than I expected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> We stopped using tape just because datasets are too large. Fulls and differentials are not feasible at petascale. With LTO7 - a petabyte takes over a month to backup with a single drive. You need 50 or so to pull it in a day, assuming your storage can do 15GB/sec sustained.

<comment><USER18> 50 is not a large number. What's the problem?

<comment><USER19> I think he means that you'd need 50 tape drives with the backup running simultaneously across all of them to run the backup in a day - <USER2> that's not how backups get run, you generally aren't running full backups every time, you run a full then do incremental or differential backups starting from that point with periodic full backups.

The point I caught from the article that most people are bypassing is that tape provides a fully disconnected and unreachable (by attackers) backup, where many online backup systems are using software and systems that may be reachable from the systems being backed up. In the worst case of a motivated knowledgeable skilled attacker that could mean an attacker having the ability to wipe backups as well as live systems.

<comment><USER17> This is a good point. It really depends on so many factors what a good solution is for one's dataset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A relative of mine works for quantuam, a tape producer. There is some interesting history about standardization and the big players ganging up on the little guys.

You can also buy tape drivees online :) [https://www.newegg.com/Backup- Drives/SubCategory/ID-46](https://www.newegg.com/Backup- Drives/SubCategory/ID-46)

[http://www.quantum.com/](http://www.quantum.com/)

</comment><comment><USER20> How well does tape compare to DNA?

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

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure if you're kidding of not but...

Our ability to write DNA is quite limited (single fragments of ~1000bp at most) and expensive. The largest completely synthetic fragments that have been made would be able to store a few Megabytes of information.

I think it's potentially kind of interesting as an archival format, but even then data retrieval is always likely to be somewhat problematic. And we're a long way off synthesis of large datasets being practical.

<comment><USER22> Oligo size isn't all that important since you geneally synthesize pools.

You're right that reading the data back is expensive (essentially a sequencing project), but for deep archives that you would only ever retrieve in a catastrophy, DNA has the potential to be an ideal medium.

<comment><USER21> It makes it... less than ideal. And I don't believe we have good massively parallel synthesis approaches currently. Overall writing is problematic (reading also, but is getting cheaper/easier).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is it easy to accidentally erase/corrupt tapes with magnetic fields and such?

<comment><USER24> IME the bigger problem is the tape reader failing and the replacement not being able to read the old tapes...

<comment><USER25> You can grab virtually any old type of old tape reader over on ebay. As long as the host system has drivers for it (IIRC even 8 years ago there were no mainline drivers for Iomega ZIP floppies), you'll be fine.

And for really crucial data, you can always go to a data lab and have them restore the tape; wasn't there a story a year ago or so when they found old NASA tapes?

<comment><USER26> A standard tape horror story is that the old drive ended up out of alignment and later died, then the replacement, same type, was aligned properly (or just differently) and couldn't read the existing tapes.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


test.bi – Reserved domain for your projects – with SSL-Certificate - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Eun/test.bi <comment><USER2> This will the same way as any other attempt at this: with a revoked certificate.

<comment><USER3> welp, the guy mentionned that cert is renewed every 7 days and it's using Let's Encrypt.

It's gonna be a cat and mouse game even if LE bans the domain to be registered.

Nothing can prevent a domain owner to actively publish his private keys</comment></comment>


Researchers get cardiac muscle cells to grow, repair heart attack damage - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/12/researchers-get-cardiac-muscle-cells-to-grow-repair-heart-attack-damage/ <comment><USER2> It would be interesting, if they are able to control the cell division, to see what applications this could have in oncology.

</comment><comment><USER3> One more step in creating the 'too old'

<comment> alan-crowe On the contrary, this is the good kind of medicine. Emergency treatment saves your life, but leaves you with a damaged heart. This research looks towards repairing the damage.</comment></comment>