What I have been studying since re:Invent

Up to date: March 6, 2024

The months main into re:Invent are thrilling (and sometimes exhausting). I spend most of my time doing analysis, assembly with good engineers, and growing tales to share with you on stage. It’s fantastic. However it doesn’t go away me with a lot time to learn solely for pleasure.

So, within the weeks that comply with re:Invent, I attempt to make time to work via the ever-growing pile of books accumulating on my nightstand and all through my workplace. It’s a dropping battle. Then once more, when was it ever value doing one thing straightforward?

Right here’s a brief checklist of issues I’ve began, completed, and just lately added to the pile…

• A very powerful factor I’ve learn just lately was Proper/Improper: How Expertise Transforms Our Ethics by Juan Enriquez. It clearly lays out how our ethics and morals change below the affect of expertise in a reasonably quick period of time. For instance, utilizing gene modifying expertise resembling CRISPR to change a baby’s genome could also be unethical proper now, however our grandchildren would possibly really feel in a different way, realizing that we might have eliminated or edited a gene identified to trigger breast most cancers. At a time of maximum polarization, this e-book challenges us to consider how rapidly mainstream opinions can shift and why.
• In mild of latest election outcomes worldwide, and the upcoming presidential race in the USA, I made a decision to re-read The Age of American Unreason in a Tradition of Lies by Susan Jacoby. It gives superb historic perception into how politics and the politicians that signify us have shifted away from rational and mental debate to who can shout the loudest. It’s fairly startling to see how a lot public language has devolved prior to now few many years. If this can be a matter you’re focused on, I urge you to learn Richard Hofstadter’s 1964 Anti-Intellectualism in American Life.
• I lastly had an opportunity to complete Down and Out in Paradise: The Lifetime of Anthony Bourdain by Charles Leerhsen. As a fellow world traveler, with an identical view of the way to stay, I’ve at all times been impressed by Bourdain’s storytelling talents. He was an empathetic narrator that centered on individuals and their experiences. This e-book is concerning the man behind the tales that helped carry these narratives to life.
• As a lot of you recognize, I’m a lifelong AFC Ajax supporter, so I actually loved Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s biography Adrenaline: My Untold Tales. Zlatan began his worldwide profession at Ajax and his spotlight reel from these days will do extra justice than my phrases can:

• I picked up Atlas van een bezette stad 1940-1945 by Bianca Stigter, which covers the German occupation of Amsterdam within the type of an illustrated Atlas. It’s mind-blowing to see the ways in which the Nazi occupation nonetheless haunts town. The e-book is in Dutch (sorry for now to my English readers), nevertheless it was tailored right into a four-hour lengthy documentary by Stigter’s associate Steve McQueen, referred to as “Occupied Metropolis” which debuted at Cannes final yr.

• I began studying Rust for Rustaceans: Idiomatic Programming of Skilled Builders by John Gjengset, nevertheless it’s a bit extra superior than I want for the time being, so I picked Command-line Rust: A Undertaking-based Primer for Writing Rust CLIs by Ken Youens-Clark and it seems promising up to now. I’ll present an replace as I progress.
• Only for enjoyable, I purchased the fourth e-book in John Burdett’s Sonchai Jitpleecheep sequence: The Godfather of Kathmandu. When you have ever spent any prolonged time period in Bangkok, you’ll get pleasure from this sequence. The writing is completely good. I’m not completed but, however up to now, it’s nearly as good because the earlier three books.
• The very last thing I’ll go away you with is a paper I just lately learn from the Netflix Expertise Weblog, “Rebuilding Netflix Video Processing Pipeline with Microservices” by Liwei Guo, Anush Moorthy, Li-Heng Chen, Vinicius Carvalho, Aditya Mavlankar, Agata Opalach, Adithya Prakash, Kyle Swanson, Jessica Tweneboah, Subbu Venkatrav, Lishan Zhu — It goes into element about rebuilding their video processing pipeline on their microservice-based platform Cosmos.

If there’s one thing that you just’ve learn or are studying that you just’d suggest, let me know on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Reader suggestions

Unsurprisingly, it seems my readers are effectively learn. I acquired suggestions on Twitter, LinkedIn, and from fellow Amazonians, on nearly each matter possible. And with the hopes of getting via greater than a handful of those this yr (those I haven’t already learn), I’ve created a consolidated checklist.

Right here’s what you’ve all really helpful as of March 6, 2024:

• Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda
• Babel by R.F. Kuang
• Barking Up the Improper Tree by Eric Barker
• Fundamental Class Principle from Laptop Scientists by Benjamin C. Pierre
• Biking Uphill within the Rain by Tom Fucoloro
• Constructing a Second Mind: A Confirmed Methodology to Organise Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Inventive Potential by Tiago Forte
• The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman
• Aggressive Engineering by Tom Glib
• A Battle of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles by Thomas Sowell
• The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav
• Darkness at Midday by Arthur Koestler
• Dialog Mapping: Constructing Shared Understanding of Depraved Issues by Jeff Conklin
• The Expectation Impact: How Your Mindset Can Change Your World by David Robson
• Fluid Ideas and Inventive Analogies: Laptop Fashions of the Elementary Mechanisms of Thought by Douglas Hofstadter
• Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstader
• Hidden Potential: The Science of Attaining Larger Issues by Adam Grant
• How Google works by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg
• How Infrastructure Works: Remodeling our shared techniques for a altering world by Deb Chachra
• How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Consideration Economic system by Jenny Odell
• Hypermedia Techniques by Carson Gross, Adam Stepinski, et al.
• If Then: How the Simulmatics Company Invented the Future by Jill Lepore
• Illusions: The Adventures of the Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach
• Impressed: Find out how to Create Tech Merchandise Clients Love by Marty Cagan
• Introduction to Logic: Propositional Logic by Howard Pospesel
• The Language of Creation: Cosmic Symbolism in Genesis: A Commentary by Matthieau Pageau
• The Life on the Backside by Theodore Dalrymple
• Meditations on the Soul: Chosen Letters of Marsilio Ficino
• Naive Set Principle by Paul R. Halmos
• Narrative Economics: How Tales Go Viral and Drive Main Financial Occasions by Robert J. Shiller
• Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by Daniel Kahneman et al.
• Not the Finish of the World: How We are able to Be the First Era to Construct a Sustainable Planet by Hannah Ritchie
• Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin
• Notes In the direction of The Definition of Tradition by T.S. Eliot
• The Different Pandemic by James Ball
• The PARA Methodology by Tiago Forte
• The Phoenix Undertaking: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Serving to Your Enterprise Win by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford
• Taking part in to Win: How Technique Actually Works by Lafley & Martin
• Pragmatic Pondering & Studying: Refactor Your Wetware by Andy Hunt
• Quantum Therapeutic by Dr Deepak Chopra
• Quiet Management: Successful Hearts, Minds and Matches by Carlo Ancelotti
• Scary Good, the Way forward for AI and How You possibly can Save Our World by Mo Gawdat
• The Sergeant: The Unimaginable Lifetime of Nicholas Mentioned: Son of an African Common, Slave of the Ottomans, Free Man Beneath the Tsars, Hero of the Union Military by Dean Calbreath
• Software program Engineering at Google: Classes Realized from Programming Over Time by Titus Winters
• Software program Exorcism: A Handbook for Debugging and Optimizing Legacy Code by Invoice Blunden
• The Splendid And The Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Household, and Defiance Through the Blitz by Erik Larson
• The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra
• Suppose You’ll Be Blissful: Shifting By way of Grief with Grit, Grace, and Gratitude by Nicole Avant
• Pondering in Bets: Making Smarter Choices When You Don’t Have All of the Information by Annie Duke
• Pondering, Quick and Sluggish by Daniel Kahneman
• Unmasking AI by Dr. Pleasure Buolamwini
• Weapons of Math Destruction by Dr. Cathy O’Neill
• Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright
• Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Desires by Matthew Walker
• The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles Mann

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