[HN Gopher] Books I loved reading this year
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Books I loved reading this year
Author : Tomte
Score : 170 points
Date : 2021-11-22 18:18 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.gatesnotes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.gatesnotes.com)
| joconde wrote:
| So I was excited about Project Hail Mary and went to the
| Wikipedia page [1].
|
| Can someone who has read the book tell me if the current intro is
| a spoiler, or something we learn in the book's first third? ("He
| gradually remembers that...")
|
| I know Wikipedia doesn't put spoiler tags, but they are usually
| confined to the "Plot" section.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Project_Hail_Mary...
| tjader wrote:
| That is revealed in the first third of the book. I would prefer
| not having that info before reading, but it is part of the
| basic premise.
| joconde wrote:
| Okay thanks. That's on me for being too impatient I guess.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| It's not a major spoiler.
|
| He remembers that within the first few chapters, well before
| you're a third into the book.
| joconde wrote:
| Thank you!
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I loved PHM and was particularly relieved that it was great
| after the letdown that Artemis was. It's definitely a much more
| fanciful story than The Martian (you know what I mean if you've
| read it), but I think it's a good balance of still being
| totally believable and plausible.
| bluesquared wrote:
| Yes, very slight spoilers but probably not much more than you'd
| deduce from reading the jacket of the book. Certainly something
| that you find out from the first few chapters. Basic
| progression without too much spoilers is main character wakes
| up and deduces that:
|
| 1. He is not on earth 2. He is on a spaceship 3. He is not in
| our solar system 4. He is there for a reason
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I've mislaid my copy of Bill's "How I put a computer on every
| desk while totally fucking up everyone's idea of what software
| is, how it could be developed and how it might be used". To be
| honest, it was a riveting read but I don't really want to get
| into the sequel "How I became a nice guy and everyone forgot
| about the terrible things I did in business".
| azinman2 wrote:
| Would you rather Gates just takes his billions and spend it on
| private planes and yachts, retreated away from the world?
|
| I'm glad he's taking his acumen and treasure to things that are
| intended to positively benefit the entire world, personally.
| There's a lot of great things he can still achieve in this
| lifetime regardless of his past. Computing has largely moved on
| from his Microsoft days and it's control of the world and
| business.
| nnoitra wrote:
| Right as if "helping the world" is not self-serving
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Oh, he's a great guy now (mostly). I fully applaud 99% of
| everything he's tried do with the Gates Foundation.
|
| But what he did to the future of computing lingers on, and
| will do so for another decade or threee.
| cinntaile wrote:
| What did he do to the future of computing?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| He created the public understanding that "software" means
| ready-to-run executables. He created the public
| understanding that "software" is non-repairable, non-
| modifiable and created (only) by wizards in corporations.
| He created the public understanding that software had to
| cost money, and specifically per-copy, per-platform, per-
| user licensing terms.
|
| None of these things were accepted before Gates et al.
| create Microsoft. Sure, there were versions of them
| floating around, but they were still competing with
| alternative visions of how computing was going to work,
| and there was at least an equal chance that the more
| anarchic vision of things that ultimately gave rise to
| GNU and libre software would have won out.
|
| Gates' letter to "hobbyists" stands out as a turning
| point in the history of software, and because its author
| ended up with an enormously powerful corporation behind
| him, his views of how this stuff should work became the
| dominant one.
| etc-hosts wrote:
| Instead of paying more taxes, he has spent billions on
| privatizing schools.
|
| He has worked harder and accomplished more than anyone
| reading this, all of us work in a world shaped by his will.
|
| I was still very disappointed to learn that at some level
| he's just another out of touch billionaire.
|
| His excuse for hanging out with Epstein is he was seeking
| more access to philanthropic organizations. That's
| hilarious.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| You realized his 501c3 gives back less than 1% back to the
| country that birthed, and coddled him.
|
| As to his contribution to computing--I have no idea other
| than an added cost (practically a tax) on every PC I
| bought.
| greedo wrote:
| Wait, MS no longer controls computing in the business world?
| Show me a Fortune 1000 company that doesn't use MS
| extensively.
| davemp wrote:
| Google?
| hyperbovine wrote:
| I'd hazard a guess there are thousands of machines
| running Windows to be found somewhere within Google--they
| write plenty of software for that platform after all, and
| most on the sales/biz side are going to be trained on it
| too. Plus a lot of engineers using VSCode. MSFT also own
| GitHub, and, well, https://github.com/google. Same goes
| for pretty much all companies listed in the sibling
| comments as well.
| onedognight wrote:
| Apple? :)
| itisit wrote:
| AWS?
| [deleted]
| KineticLensman wrote:
| I'd second Hamnet, which is a really fascinating take on
| Shakespeare's early life and relationship with his wife and son.
| I liked Project Hail Mary too, but Hamnet has more compelling
| characterisation and believable world-building.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| Airport bookstore Books I loved reading this year
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I partially liked Hail Mary. Most of the book was good, but I
| found Eva's character too hard to suspend my disbelief.
|
| IMO, I found her character "lazy" on Weir's part. I wish he tried
| a little harder to make her easier to believe as a real person.
| 0xFACEFEED wrote:
| Agree, but Weir isn't very good at writing women. I'm glad that
| he kept her character relatively simple and as a sort of driver
| for the narrative. Had he attempted adding more depth she'd end
| up in a cringey love triangle or something.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir
|
| No. Just no. It is hard science fiction, but there is no
| character development. I had no empathy for the main character
| and did not care about him or his fate. Also he is unusually
| prude, which he blames on being a school teacher, but even his
| inner dialogue consists of "HOLY COW!" when surprised. I mean,
| really??
| twinkletwinkle_ wrote:
| I think that's just Andy Weir at this point. I enjoyed The
| Martian, but Artemis was horrible. Characters were
| indistinguishable from one another, they were all just Andy
| trying to emulate the success of the cocky sarcastic hero from
| The Martian. After reading that I don't think I need to read
| any more of his work.
| mdturnerphys wrote:
| With _The Martian_ , a later "classroom edition" was published
| with the profanity removed. Maybe he just wanted to avoid
| making a second edition this time.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Interesting, I did not know about that. Thanks.
| localhost wrote:
| I was disappointed by A Thousand Brains. The last part of the
| book veered into ... I don't really know. On the other hand, I
| loved Jeff Hawkins' earlier book on this topic: On Intelligence
| [1]. It's easily one of the top 5 books that I've read and the
| first part of A Thousand Brains recaps much of that work, so
| still relevant today according to the author.
|
| [1] https://numenta.com/resources/on-intelligence/
| criddell wrote:
| How well regarded is the Numenta software regarded in the AI
| community?
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| It seemed like the ideas from On Intelligence were ahead of
| their time. I'm surprised it never seemed to pan out into
| anything industry leading (at least as far as I can tell).
|
| Did it just not get enough eyes and resources? Was it a
| flawed premise? I'd be curious to know more.
| GeorgeTirebiter wrote:
| To me, top level, this seemed like a re-discovery of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Mind but with more
| detail as to how the actual neocortex works.
|
| I think the most important part of 'kilobrain' was the clear
| description of a single Functional Unit, that appears to be
| replicated throughout the neocortex and, ultimately, performs
| all functions we consider 'higher'. This, in a way, reduces
| Applied Intelligence to building an actual 'Function Unit' in
| something other than meatware (e.g. CMOS); and having high-
| bandwidth ways to hook FU's together to build (at first) sub-
| parts of the brain (e.g. maybe the auditory system). This would
| be an "MVP" type proof-of-concept that 'should' allow
| construction of a Full Brain. Now, exactly how such h/w would
| be 'programmed' (or trained) to perform said function -- that,
| I don't understand yet.
| TickCount wrote:
| Is Bill Gates still programming nowadays? He seems to have
| completely abandoned it. Which seems a little sad, because if he
| really liked doing it you'd expect him to at least work on a
| utility app or something in his spare time.
| rococode wrote:
| He said in a fairly recent AMA:
|
| > My code no longer goes into shipping products so I am rusty.
| I do like to try the new tools to understand how they help. I
| just did a review of the low-code tools where there is a lot of
| great innovation.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/m8n4vt/im_bill_gates_...
| Uhhrrr wrote:
| I read Hawkins's "On Intelligence" a few years ago and enjoyed
| it. For anyone here who's read both that and "New Theory of
| Intelligence", what's the relation between the two?
| Minor49er wrote:
| I also read "On Intelligence", though quite some time ago. It
| was much better than the various Ray Kurzweil books that I had
| read around the same time. "A New Theory of Intelligence" is on
| my reading list.
|
| If you're interested in the biological aspects of the human
| brain, I would suggest "I Am a Strange Loop" by Douglas
| Hofstadter, which explores a concept of where consciousness
| comes from, or "The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" by
| Oliver Sacks.
| briga wrote:
| Basically it's his updated thoughts along with some new
| research his company has done on cortical columns being the
| basis for human intelligence. It's a good read but perhaps a
| bit over-ambitious in trying to propose a unified theory of
| cognition.
| dunefox wrote:
| I'm reading Dune and I just bought a couple of neuroscience and
| math books. Maybe I'll even have time to read them!
| chestertn wrote:
| > The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future
| of the Human Race, by Walter Isaacson.
|
| The Nobel prize should have gone to Francis Mojica. Of course, he
| does not have all the PR machine that Doudna has, the futuristic
| TED talks and all.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| Why?
|
| Mojica did important work on CRISPR, yes, but Doudna and
| Charpentier were the ones who showed how to use it as a DNA
| editing tool, without which very few people would care about
| it.
| chestertn wrote:
| He did not just "do important work". He discovered and
| described the CRISPR mechanism. Without CRISPR, there is no
| CRISPR-cas9.
|
| > showed how to use it as a DNA editing tool
|
| Don't we care about basic research anymore?
| sjostrom7 wrote:
| The book is great at emphasizing and re-emphasizing the
| incremental nature of the journey, all the competition and
| co-discovery and the tiny steps building on each other's
| work that led up to Doudna and Charpentier's breakthroughs.
| Including the researchers that concurrently discovered
| CRISPR. Despite centering around Doudna's life and career,
| it very firmly gives credit where credit is due.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| A general-purpose DNA editing tool is still basic research
| by most standards.
|
| The Nobel Prizes are awarded for conferring the greatest
| benefit to humankind. Showing how to use CRISPR as a genome
| editing tool (Doudna and Charpentier) confers much more
| benefit to humankind than "just" characterizing CRISPR
| (Mojica). I don't mean to trivialize Mojica's work, but at
| the end of the day if not for the later work of Doudna and
| Charpentier, Mojica's work on CRISPR would be unknown and
| irrelevant to 99.9999% of the world population.
| LadyinMT wrote:
| I'm reading a novel with my PIM (partner in mischief) titled The
| Mandibles, by Lionel Shriver. I was thinking that the novel may
| have been written recently because so much of it reminds me of
| our current economic & political situation, but I was very
| surprised to learn it was originally written in 2016! It's eerie
| how much the author has gotten right!
| rememberlenny wrote:
| _- List for the lazy -_
|
| A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence, by Jeff Hawkins.
|
| The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future
| of the Human Race, by Walter Isaacson.
|
| Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro.
|
| Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell.
|
| Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir.
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| Project Hail Mary was so good. I loved The Martian but Artemis
| not as much. By that measure Project Hail Mary was a return to
| form.
|
| It was just a fun, breezy read that hit the problem solving
| part of my brain in just the right way, but with a different
| angle on things than "The Martian".
| Baeocystin wrote:
| I liked a lot of the ideas in PHM. I found the protagonist
| insufferable throughout, though. Perhaps Weir was going for a
| more flawed character after Watney? (Never read Artemis, so I
| can't comment there.)
|
| I still think it's a good book, and well worth the read. But
| man did that character grate on my nerves.
| evgen wrote:
| I either listened to or read an interview with Andy Weir
| where he said that he was aiming for just such a flawed
| protagonist in PHM. I think he felt the Watney character
| was criticized for being the fantasy self-projection of a
| certain variety of nerd/geek (a variety that is over-
| represented on HN) and so he decided to try to make a hero
| who was not as likable, brave, or self-sacrificing as
| people like to think they are.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| Rocky was an amazing character though.
| mritchie712 wrote:
| Yes, I think he was going for someone less likable. Watney
| was almost too likable.
| talor_a wrote:
| artemis was disappointing, Weir seems like he has no idea how
| to write a female protagonist. this was my introduction to
| his work, seeing that others feel the same way makes me think
| it was probably just the wrong pick and I should try his
| other books.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| What does Weir not understand about a female protagonist?
| It's not possible that the female protagonist just doesn't
| fit _your_ mold of what you believe a female protagonist
| should be?
| 0xFACEFEED wrote:
| Project Hail Mary is worth a read. Totally different vibe.
|
| It felt like he was trying to do something very different
| with Artemis and failed. I rarely have to put a book down
| but I just couldn't finish Artemis. The whole scene with
| the "strong" cop holding her down had my eyes rolling so
| hard they almost got stuck.
| fernandotakai wrote:
| project hail mary's audiobook is the best audiobook i've ever
| listened to. it's.... incredible. they adapted parts of the
| book that were kind of hard to "get" perfectly (and for
| people that read it, i think you know what i mean).
|
| i totally recommend it.
| metanonsense wrote:
| It absolutely is the best. Ray Porter's way of narration
| opened a new, almost visual, dimension. Maybe it's this
| very intimate ,,inner speech" style, but to me this was a
| truly novel experience.
| pchristensen wrote:
| I listened to Audible, and that made me wonder how
| effective it would be in the book, or how it would be
| written in the book at all.
|
| +1 for Audible.
| cridenour wrote:
| Yea when they added that element I first assumed my Airpods
| were dying or Audible was broke. Really loved it in the
| end.
| zwieback wrote:
| We're reading this one for my at-work bookclub, looking
| forward to it. We did the Martian back when and people
| enjoyed it. Although easy reading it has enough depth to
| spark a good discussion.
| Arainach wrote:
| It's an interesting choice for a book club. Due to the way
| the narrative progresses (you start with an amnesiac
| protagonist and gradually reveal backstory via memories)
| discussions could get tricky/problematic if anyone is
| reading ahead faster than the rest. Obviously all books
| have some risk of that but PHM is more challenging than
| most in my opinion.
| zwieback wrote:
| Our book club finishes the whole book before we have the
| discussion. You're right, an as-you-go approach would be
| much more challenging.
| reggieband wrote:
| I was going through goodreads yesterday and came across my
| review of The Martian there. I gave it 5 stars because I use
| what I understand is the Roger Ebert style of rating. The
| Martian is imperfect, pulpy and at times a bit over
| sentimental. But it succeeds at exactly what it sets out to
| achieve. It isn't Dostoevsky or Proust but it isn't trying to
| be. It made me laugh, kept me engaged and turning pages. It
| made me think, this situation is impossible but if it was
| possible then this is about as realistic as I could expect a
| novel to portray. In exchange for suspending my disbelief it
| gave me an enjoyable diversion.
|
| All that to say, if Project Hail Mary is equivalent to that,
| it is going on my to read list.
| pchristensen wrote:
| It is, very much so.
| greeneggs wrote:
| Doudna has her own memoir, "A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing
| and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution." Why would you
| read Isaacson's third-person account, when you can get the
| information from the scientist herself?
|
| Well, I read both books, and Isaacson's is much better. In
| fact, Doudna's book was largely written by her coauthor, her
| then-graduate student Sam Sternberg, based on long interviews.
| This is the same process Isaacson used. But, in my opinion,
| Isaacson does it better, incorporating more of Doudna's
| personal anecdotes with similar levels of science.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30971755-a-crack-in-crea...
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54968118-the-code-breake...
| [deleted]
| tfang17 wrote:
| Surprised there's no marriage books on this list...
| jjordan wrote:
| I recently read Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and
| Life, by Jack Bogle, the founder of Vanguard. Written during the
| 2008 recession, it's so much more than a business book. It
| highlights in detail how the financial industry at large leeches
| so much wealth for itself while creating so little, and offers
| insights from someone truly introspective of life, business,
| finance, and the future of the country. Highly recommend a
| read/listen.
|
| https://amazon.com/John-C-Bogle/e/B001H6NWEM
| elhudy wrote:
| Check out The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care -
| And How To Fix It, for a similar story and crisis facing the
| healthcare industry right now. Written by a Johns Hopkins
| professor and surgeon.
| qwertyuiop_ wrote:
| He should add this book Perversion-Justice-Jeffrey-Epstein-Story
| to his collection and make this a "required reading". Because [0]
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Perversion-Justice-Jeffrey-Epstein-St...
|
| [0] https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-
| life/inside-...
| alphabettsy wrote:
| The source is The Sun, equivalent to National Enquirer.
| [deleted]
| throwawaymanbot wrote:
| No Epstein related ones eh?
| rasulkireev wrote:
| Good books. Surprised to see some fiction, didn't know Bill reads
| that :)
| melling wrote:
| He's been doing his list for years and often has fiction:
|
| https://bookriot.com/bill-gates-book-recommendations/amp/
| 99_00 wrote:
| I'm super impressed by the production level of his 5 books I
| loved reading video.
| joconde wrote:
| Assign me a $140B net worth and I can do the same :)
| tomgp wrote:
| Doesn't that video seem odd though? I don't understand what's
| going on here, it's just surreal. Like if I was a multi-
| billionaire would I hire a film production crew including a
| bunch of extras and Christmas themed set to tell the world
| about 5 (already high profile and best selling) books? Is
| this just marketing for Bill? To what end? I guess everyone
| has to have a hobby.
| etc-hosts wrote:
| Yes this is just marketing for Bill.
| notatoad wrote:
| things just grow on their own sometimes, especially if
| you're successful enough.
|
| it's perfectly reasonable for a multi-billionaire to want
| to write a blog to publish his thoughts on various things.
| the existence of "the gates notes" is pretty normal. and
| when you're rich, you hire somebody to run the website for
| you. web design and marketing are pretty interlinked, so
| the guys running the blog do some promo, and generally run
| it the same way they would run any other content site.
| which includes making some video content targeting the most
| widely-viewed types of posts.
| melling wrote:
| We need the HN 2021 list.
|
| Fiction and non-fiction:
| cinntaile wrote:
| There used to be monthly(?) threads, but I guess that got shut
| down because it doesn't really lead to interesting discussions?
| 0xFACEFEED wrote:
| Aw, that's a bummer. I'd definitely participate.
| PhileinSophia wrote:
| _Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology._
|
| Incredible work for those interested in "how we know"
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