The Fifth Head of Cerebus by Gene Wolfe

I never liked Gene Wolfe's books when I was young and I still don't like them now.  I did not like this story.  The "awesome" repository on github recommended the book so I read it. 2/5 Stars.

An Oblique Approach by Eric Flint

Intriguing universe, 3/5 stars.

Permanent Record by Edward Snowden

Fantastic!  Wow.  I have read all the other Snowden books, watched all the films, read some of the best technical materials released, and followed along as the saga continues.  This book is the very best so far.  I bought copies for people who work in this field.  Then I discovered the evil entities trying to kill Edward Snowden are also stealing all of the revenue for sales of Edward's books.  I shall try to get him to speak at eBay so that we can pay him for his important efforts on our behalf. 5/5 stars.  Internet Search Engines reveal where to find the book. 

The Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose

The first few chapters, Turing machines formalisms, and walk (inadequate) summary of Gödel's incompleteness theorems were terrible.  However the book warmed up during Penrose's commentaries about Quantum Theory, the odd uses of imaginary numbers, equivalences of large-scale Newtonian phenomena with Schrödinger's equation (my understanding from 1977 was wrong), and his introspective comments on "awareness," 3/5 Stars.

21st Century Life Skills

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWXcuqXaHsI

David's talk is interesting.  I watched at 1.5 speed.  10 minutes well worth the time. 

NeurIPS 2019 in Vancouver

In Vancouver this week (2019 week 50), over 13,000 of your closest personal friends are at NeurIPS-2019.  New this year, videos of the talks and their slides are webcast and recorded in real time here. The exponential growth of the conference predicts there will be over a million papers in four years. Personally, I attend neither NIPS NeurIPS, nor the international conference for machine learning (ICML) anymore unless I have a paper accepted, or I get sent there by my company to recruit.  In the words of Yogi Berra, "No one goes there anymore; it's too crowded."  

One theme that hit the twitterverse live blogging about NeurIPS-19 is that neural network deep learning research (but not application) is "hitting the wall" because of the narrow set of problems it solves (optimization with clear objective and loss functions).  At least two keynote talks highlighted the limits in current approaches and our woefully inadequate capabilities to solve more interesting "general AI" problems. In particular, this fantastic talk by Blaise Aguera y Arcas proposes a deeper simulation of biological systems (including neurons, evolution, & biological systems' learning) together with long-term short-term memory (LSTM) units in a simple topology as the basis for adaptable metalearning.  And in this talk, Yoshua Bengio explains some ideas for abstraction that he hopes will bring AI closer to general AI, including attention, consciousness, and causality.

The Nebula Awards 19 (1984) by various writers

Some of the stories are good.  I really don't like Greg Bear.  Post apocalyptic (nuclear war) was still dominating; half the stories are bad, 2/5 stars (dated, not worth reading anymore).

Auberon by James S.A. Corey

I wish the authors and publishers could get more of the their works out faster and sooner.  The tv show is a completely different experience from the awesome books and novellas. 5/5 stars.  Best space opera of this decade.

Mare Internum by Der-Shing Helmer

I recommend the web comic (soon to be a graphic novel) Mare Internum. Read it soon before it is deleted.  I followed each new page as it was being written.  The story is imaginative and gripping.  4/5 stars.

Invasion (book 9 blood on the stars) by Jay Allan

I am getting a little bored with the series and may wait a few years before reading the last few. The story line is exciting but the melodrama and repetition are grating.  He writes as if he were paid by the word.  3/5 stars

Salvation Lost by Peter F Hamilton

Fantastic!  I recommend buying all three books so that the tantalizing preludes and story interruptions are less jarring. 5/5 stars.

Die Tagesordnung by Eric Vulliard

Französisches preisgekröntes Buch ins Deutsche übersetzt und sehr beliebt. Dieses Buch wurde von meiner Schwägerin empfohlen. Die historischen Dokumente mit einigen der Spekulationen und Spekulationen des Autors geben einen grimmigen Überblick über die Ereignisse, die vor dem Zweiten Weltkrieg stattfanden, und über die Erfolge unserer herrschenden Klasse bei der Schuldumleitung und -manipulation. Ich mag Geschichten aus dem Zweiten Weltkrieg nicht mehr besonders, weil ich in den 1950er und 1960er Jahren mit zu vielen bombardiert wurde. 3/5 Sterne.

3 minutes, 3 hours, 3 days, 3 weeks

Late one evening this week I received a phone call from one of my children, asking what to pack as he was evacuating his house to escape a fire.  Without giving it much thought I told him to pack dust masks (3 minutes without air), water (3 days without water), and a power bank for his phone.

Now that he is safe, I am thinking that for urban survival in the event of natural disasters, we should think about preparedness much differently from outdoor survival.

Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

A Russian co-worker who shares my passion for science fiction recommended Arkady Strugalsky's books so I picked this one up.  It is fantastic. I missed the second wave of Soviet Science Fiction from the late 1970s but I caught the first wave because Isaac Asimov was a champion of the translations.  If you, like me, have not read Arkady Strugatsky, you are in for a treat. 5/5 stars.

I am a strange loop by Douglas Hofstadter

It took a while to get through this one.  Hofstadter is disappointed that fans of his magnum opus GED did not grasp his main point about (his metaphysical belief) that machines can have souls and that the level of soul-size or  consciousness is a spectrum.  He then creates a bunch of thought experiments and analyses to convince us.  His metaphysics is terrible, as is his neurobiology.  His ideas on abstraction and strange-loops are not bad, though.  Not great, 2/5 stars -- not worth reading.  Read an explanation of the Gödel paper instead.

algae bio-reactor sucks CO2 creates food, fuel, textiles

https://www.hypergiant.com/green/

A 1.8 cubic meter (67 cubic feet) sized "bio reactor" that is open-sourced, including the algae, sucks out as much CO2 from the air per second as 400 trees. The older or dead algae can be eaten, turned into fuel, or spun into textiles (clothing, carpet, insulation).

Nickel cell matrix "metallic wood" stronger than titanium, lighter than wood, floats

It takes a day to suspend the nano-scale plastic in water, dry them out, electroplate them with nickel, and then dissolve the plastic.  The largest pieces of the substance are postage stamp sized but it appears straightforward to scale up.

Black Dawn by Jay Allen

A mighty new empire is introduced into Allan's universe as the characters overcome overwhelming odds again.  The tropes are getting a little ragged but the stories are still fun, 3/5 stars.

Catriona Shearer's "Tilted Twin" puzzle

I just stumbled across Ben Orlin's "Math With Bad Drawings" blog, where he mentions Catriona Shearer's geometry puzzle tweets.  Both Orlin's blog and Shearer's tweeted puzzles are enormous fun.  Here is the answer to the puzzle above:

 cos(?) = 1/2 ; ? = 60 degrees.  The answer was tweeted at the author by Alaadin Cizer.

Misc Stories and Books by Frederik Pohl

Day Million, The Deadly Mission of PHineas Snodgrass, Fermi and Frost, The Knights of Arthur, The Mayor of Mare Tranq, Spending a Day at the Lottery Fair, A Life and a half, In the Problem Pit, the Day of the Boomer Dukes, The Hated, The Merchants of Venus

I chanced upon a collection of Frederik Pohl's complete works and am reading through them in fits and starts.  The early works have great ideas but are not as polished.  Many of his ideas stand the test of time.  Merchants of Venus in particular was really good, 4/5 stars.

The White Fleet by Jay Allan

More great plot twists in this very-long series.  The bad science and cardboard politics are a little grating but I hope to finish the series.  3/5 stars.

The History of Jihad from Muhammad to ISIS by Robert Spencer

The writing is a little inconsistent and the author omits some scholarly research and data from influential thought that do not support his narrative.  The history is interesting; the details are good and some of my personal knowledge gaps are filled.  At times it was a slog to get through and I think the text needs better editing, 3/5 stars.

How to Have a Good Day by Caroline Webb

I have not read this book.  However my daily Blinkist spam had an ultra terse distillation worth sharing:

Take a moment to think about one of your goals. It could be anything – from a professional aspiration to a dietary resolution.

Got it? Okay, now jot it down.

Did you write something like "Stop eating junk," or was it more like "Make healthy, delicious meals for myself"?

The former formulation is an avoidance goal; the latter, in contrast, is an approach goal.

Create approach goals for feel-good productivity

As you probably guessed, approach goals – aiming for something positive rather than steering clear of something negative – make us feel better and are more effective at ushering us to actual goal achievement.

One 1997 study found that students who used approach goals improved their performance, while the opposite was true for students using avoidance goals.

So why not take a couple of goals you already have and reframe them? Because not only does "Deliver a presentation that I'm proud of" sound a lot more appealing than "Don't screw up my next presentation," it literally gives you a better chance of achievement.

This approach to goal setting seems very simple, straightforward, and useful.  I have not tried it yet.

Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner

Another classic that withstands the test of time, great drama, amazing characters. 5/5 stars

The tunnel under the world by Frederik Pohl

Long flight from Frankfurt to Seattle.  Another very-old story that stands the test of time, 3/5 stars.

Bullshit Jobs, A Theory by David Graeber

I really enjoyed this (audio) book while flying back from Zurich.  The data are terrible and many of the assumptions are silly.  The politics are, of course, uninformed, wonderfully idealistic, and naive.  Despite these fatal flaws Graeber's concepts are fantastic.  The anthropological analysis and social insights are very interesting and in many cases spot-on.  The microeconomics are also good.  Most summaries of the book gloss over or fail to mention the strong anthropological analysis the author makes and therefore the concepts sound stupid.  Read the original. The phenomenon is real.  The book is worth reading, 4/5 stars.

Survival Kit by Frederik Pohl

Another great story that holds up after all this time, 4/5 stars.

The Big Nine by Amy Webb

A kind of weird, but interesting take on the current and near future state of data and machine learning (AI) from a political perspective.  It is great to be reminded of the insular, tribal perspectives by AI development communities as well as the political and social implications of current abuses of personal information that continue to increase exponentially.  The prescriptive suggestions are also quirky and completely impractical, of course.  But it's worth a read, 3/5 Stars.

Der Trick von Emanuel Bergmann

Eines der besten Bücher, die ich dieses Jahr gelesen habe! Ich habe buchstäblich laut gelacht und am Ende geweint. Fantastisches Schreiben, 5/5 Sterne.

three laws lethal by David Walton

Great premise, setting, beginning and story-telling, cardboard characters; the end was weak, cramming too much action into too few pages. 2/5 Stars.  Disappointed.

Zukunfts-Chroniken La Mancha von Hoerspielproject Deutschland

Interessante Ideen über kryogenen Schlaf und Gesellschaft, aber keine großartige Produktion. 2/5 Sterne.

Let the Ants Try by Frederik Pohl

interesting concept, not a great story, 2/5 stars.

The Midas Plague by Frederik Pohl

Really good, holds up extremely well! 4/5 stars.

practical, useful AI in everyday use

At the exact time and place this information appeared in my gmail, I needed it most and acted upon it.   When AI knows us better than we know ourselves, subtle changes will radically affect our lives and we won't notice.

How To . . . by Randall Munroe

Fantastic!  Randall's writing is improving.  The percentage of silly ideas I find appealing increased in this book compared to the last one.  .  I may buy copies as gifts for nieces, nephews, other kids again, as I did with Thing Explainer a few years ago.  4/5 Stars.

Dark Space Invisible War by Jasper T Scott

Terrible, 0/5 stars.  I put it down and did not finish.

The Empire Duet book 2, Hidden Empire by Orson Scott Card

Great continuation of the story and fantastic drama, 5/5 stars.

The Empire Duet 1, Empire by Orson Scott Card

A little dated but great writing and characters. 4/5 stars.

interesting take on the national basketball association's imbroglio with the Chinese government

The story of immediate outrage from Chinese basketball fans over the Houston Rockets basketball team General Manager Morey's tweet suffers from the inconvenient truth that Twitter is banned in China.  Hmm.

And Ben Thompson's article gets better.  

Chinese companies like Baidu, Tencent (WeChat, etc.)  Alibaba, et. al. are, of course, allowed into the U.S. while U.S. companies remain locked out of China. Chinese attacks on U.S. tech companies are allowed, encouraged, and augmented by China's censors.  The attacks are assisted by the Chinese military and by the "Great Firewall."

But Ben tells us much more.

Xi Jinping and the Communist Party does not hesitate to use state power to tell the Chinese people how they should think. Displays of patriotism, especially from young people, shows that the party's propaganda machine has mastered the power of symbol and symbolism in the mass media and social media. While imposing very tight censorship, the Communist Party has also learned to force the most popular artists and the most experienced internet companies to help Xi Jinping instill Chinese with patriotic zeal. All Chinese "influencers" are part of the propaganda machine, enforcing "correct" thoughts.

China Central Television (CCTV) wrote, "we oppose [NBA commissioner] Silver's claim to support [Houston General Manager] Morey's right of free expression. We believe that any speech that challenges national sovereignty and social stability is not within the scope of freedom of speech," Think about that a few seconds.  What does "freedom" mean?

And, of course, TikTok, the popular Chinese-owned social network, instructs its moderators to censor videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, Hong Kong protests, or the banned religious group Falun Gong, as one might expect.

So the question is:  will more companies, like Silver and the NBA give up all the money and stand by their values?  Or will they sell out and impose Chinese censorship?  I think it depends.  Microsoft and eBay will sell out for sure.  We already have.  Will Amazon?  Walmart?  It's hard to say.

Read Ben Thompson's entire analysis.

Nassim Taleb's attacks on our definition and use of intelligence quotient (IQ) assessments and measurements

Nassim Taleb has written an interesting draft paper attacking our current institutional definitions, measures, and applications of an "intelligence quotient," based on his earlier philosophical observations in his Incerto books.  His rants in medium are a little over-the-top and distract somewhat from the arguments he is making.  However many of the points are well-taken.  

ProzessBasis: Artikeln und Podcasts

Ich habe angefangen Artikel von dieser WWW-Seite zu lesen und mir einige der Podcasts anzuhören. Die englischen Artikel haben viele, schlimme eklatante Fehler, aber das Material, das sie behandeln, ist interessant. In diesem Artikel sind insbesondere einige gängige kognitions-psychologische Ideen einiger meiner Lieblingsautoren zusammengefasst.

Dauntless: Blood on the Stars 6 by Jay Allan

The story line continues and I am more willing to suspend disbelief. 3/5 stars.

Blood World by B. V. Larson

Larson's writing is improving; the characters are good; the mysteries and plot twists are fun, 3/5 stars.

Optimal parking strategy

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1904.06612v1.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W7UrAKcvQw

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mfw@wyle.org | 1.425.249.3936

Understanding Cyber Conflict: 14 Analogies ed. by George Perkovich & Ariel Levite

Very interesting analysis, eye opening..  5/5 Stars.

Cauldron of Fire by Jay Allen

Interesting story twists and military tactics, 4/5 stars.

Accenture SOW wins coveted Hugo Award

A statement of work for eBay Marketing has won a science fiction award.

Ig Noble Prizes

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/09/2019-ig-nobels-honor-cubed-wombat-poo-magnetic-roaches-and-more/

• temperature differences in left and right side of French postmen's private parts.
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