Simulation and its discontents

What Hacker News says

1. 082349872349872Sep 2024
   My bad: southern slavs, in (AEIOU, for smaller values of A) austrian service:

   https://books.google.de/books?id=6Ec6AAAAcAAJ&pg=PA190&lpg=P... (illustration on following page)

   https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandur_(Soldat)

   (and also here "bei einer Rekognozierung zu weit vorgewagt" puts the blame squarely on Condé's hay-giver; time for me to adjust my former weights...)

   Simulation and Its Discontents has the most Post-Its, for sure, so I'd hintergrund A Pattern Language on the same metric, instead of its namesake.

   Brasidas: Thuc 4.84 "And presenting himself before the multitude (for he was not uneloquent, though a Lacedaemonian), he spake to this effect:..."? http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%... or https://archive.org/details/a609583001thucuoft/page/301/mode...

   more TK

   (oh, wait: metis/techne seems awfully close to a relabelling of techne/episteme to me; does Scott have any equivalent to phronesis or is Dr. Ian Malcolm's tagline the least squared-error current equivalent?)

   Show morethread
2. engi_nerdDec 2016
   This year involved a career change, so much of my reading was oriented around my shift from flight test engineering to software engineering.

   Non-fiction (technical):

   * Code Complete, 2nd Edition by Steve McConnell. I can't say enough good things about this. I have kept referring to it in the months since I read it for the first time.

   * Computation Structures by Stephen A. Ward. I have read most of this one; it's a good reference for understanding computers at various levels of abstraction.

   * Simulation and its Discontents by Sherry Turkle

   * Scientific Computation: Python Hacking for Math Junkies by Bruce E. Shapiro. Good for getting back into Python after a few years away.

   * Accelerating MATLAB Performance by Yair Altman. Altman has an exhaustive knowledge of MATLAB and this book is a must for anyone doing serious work in MATLAB.

   * Doing Data Science: Straight Talk from the Frontline by Cathy O'Neil

   History:

   * The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians, by Peter Heather. Very well researched and written narrative examining how the Empire fared in the 3rd-5th centuries. Has a different perspective than the usual "Barbarian invasions ended the empire".

   * One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson. I love everything Bryson writes. This is no exception.

   * Rocket Ranch: The Nuts and Bolts of the Apollo Moon Program at Kennedy Space Center by Jonathan H. Ward. Also read Countdown to a Moon Launch: Preparing Apollo for Its Historic Journey by the same author. Ward writes the most amazing technical histories. It's quite obvious that he spent massive amounts of time piecing together exactly how things at Kennedy worked during the Apollo years. It's full of amazing little details like which firing rooms were used for which mission, how the entire Saturn V stack was rap-tested (literally having people lie on their backs on a work-platform and synchronously press against the rocket with their legs to try to get it to resonate), and so much more. If you are an Apollo program enthusiast you must read these two books.

   Biography

   * Kelly: More than my Share of it All by Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson. The man was a far better engineer than writer. A much better look at Kelly's business life was put together by his protege, Ben Rich (with Leo Janos), in "Skunkworks: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed".

   * Fighter Pilot, by Robin Olds. Autobiography of one of the brashest, best aces of World War II and Vietnam.

   * American Patriot: The Life and Wars of Colonel Bud Day, by Robert Coram. Not as well-written as Coram's biography of John Boyd. Or maybe Boyd just appeals more to my fighter-jet engineering side.

   * Chickenhawk by Robert Mason. Amazing account of what it was like to be a combat rotary-wing pilot in Vietnam.

   Other Non-Fiction

   * The M1 Garand Owner's Guide by Scott A. Duff. Worth it for Garand owners.

   * Atlas Obscura: A Guide To the World's Hidden Wonders by Joshua Foer. The print book is beautiful and ever fascinating.

   * This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate, by Naomi Klein. Like a lot of popular non-fiction, this could have been an excellent long-form article instead.

   Fiction:

   * The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047 by Lionel Shriver. A book with a high concept story and poor execution.

   * The Man In The High Castle by Philip K. Dick. Not my first time reading it, but just as enjoyable on this go-around.

   * QB VII by Leon Uris. Fiction, but based on some of Uris's own experiences as the defendant in a libel suit. A solid read.

   * Noble House, by James Clavell. The only book in his Asian series I hadn't read. Amazing, as are all the rest.

   * The Tao Trilogy by Wesley Chu. Eh. First book was decent, it got tedious after that. Only finished it all because I was on a business trip with poor internet access.

   * The Power of the Dog, by Don Winslow. I also read the follow-up, The Cartel. Winslow researched these books for years and they are powerful indictments of the War on Drugs. They're also good fiction, but many of the characters have real-world analogues. I spent quite a bit of time during/after reading these looking up the real-world history of the drug wars since 1975.

   Show morethread