Long way to a small angry planet by Becky Chambers

The storyline and characters are very good and the space opera tech / politics are interesting. But the gratuitous bestiality and teen angst gossip / romance stuff is puke awful and nearly destroys the book.  3/5 stars.

Bridge across the stars by Portau et al

Some of the stories were good; some were terrible.  Most were just ok.  3/5 stars

AI Ethics

Die Frankfurter allgemeiner Zeitung (FAZ) hat einen interessanten Blick auf unsere gedankenlos Methoden des maschinellen Lernens auf wichtige Bereiche der Strafverfolgung, der Rechtsprechung und der Sozialpolitik anwenden. Mit Sensoren und großen Datenmengen können maschinelle Lernmethoden besser vorhersagen und Menschen effektiver manipulieren. Verordnung wird nicht helfen.

https://youtu.be/npcuik-bdoo

Fall by Neal Stephenson

I bought a signed first edition the night before it was released.  The book is fantastic.  I did not sleep, could not put it down. 5/5 stars.  It is slightly annoying that the author is merging his fiction universes from other books to bring back the progeny and personalities of characters from his other books.  I put up with the Robert A Heinlein (RAH) books when RAH started merging his characters, and I still love the Baroque Cycle, REAMDE, & Cryptonomicon family lines.  I generally do not like fantasy as a genre but the fantasy elements in this book are awesome. 5/5 stars, of course.

The Light Brigade bby Kameron Hurley

Well-crafted, intentionally disjointed, gritty military mystery story, 4/5 stars.

Seeds of war by Ashok K Banker

I sometimes enjoy Indian epics, with their occult spiritualism and odd take on fate, ethics, and motivation.  This one was a little slow but great fun, 3/5 stars.

Five Hour work day

https://www.20min.ch/finance/news/story/Bei-dieser-Firma-arbeiten-alle-nur-5-Stunden-pro-Tag-28549444

• 0800 - 1300, no breaks
• 40 percent productivity improvement
• no meeting longer than 15 minutes
• email is forbidden; everything is in chat
• extremely stressful, long learning curve

https://www.20min.ch/finance/news/story/Bei-dieser-Firma-arbeiten-alle-nur-5-Stunden-pro-Tag-28549444

The Legend of Corinair by Ryk Brown

The series is getting better.  This one is fun.  4/5 stars.

Disputation and Disinformation -- David Brin

https://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2019/06/disputation-and-disinformation.html  

Read David's entire blog post and click through the links.

Kialo looks quite interesting for a variety of purposes.

And this snippet was inevitable and is amazing:

At the opposite extreme… "Substitute arguing services" offered in China

A number of online services in China offer professional arguers who will verbally or electronically assault other people for a fixed fee. According to Radii China, "20 RMB (3 USD) gets you the standard angry phone call or WeChat message; 40 RMB (6 USD) guarantees a full day of spam calls; and 100 RMB (15 USD) blows up your target's phone with 999 hate calls."

Wow!

The quotes from Vint Cerf's missive to David are also interesting.  Seriously:  read the post, click through the links, and skim them.

Software Quality analysis from Web of Knowledge by Dave Jarvis

https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/06/06/web-of-knowledge/  

Here is an excerpt from a recent blog post by Dave Jarvis that appeared at work:

During the 1980s, a VT100-controlled radiation therapy machine named the Therac-25 fatally overdosed six people. After an extensive investigation by MIT professor Nancy Leveson, a number of lessons were put forward for safety-critical systems development, including:

• Overconfidence – Engineers tend to ignore software
• Reliability versus safety – False confidence grows with successes
• Defensive design – Software must have robust error handling
• Eliminate root causes – Patching symptoms does not increase safety
• Complacency – Prefer proactive development to reactive
• Bad risk asessments – Analyses make invalid independence claims
• Investigate – Apply analysis procedures when any accidents arise
• Ease versus safety – Ease of use may conflict with safety goals
• Oversight – Government-mandated software development guidelines
• Reuse – Extensively exercised software is not guaranteed to be safe

The remaining lesson was about inadequate software engineering practices. In particular, the investigation noted that basic software engineering principles were violated for the Therac-25, such as:

• Documentation – Write formal, up-front design specifications
• Quality assurance – Apply rigorous quality assurance practices
• Design – Avoid dangerous coding practices and keep designs simple
• Errors – Include error detection methods and software audit trails
• Testing – Subject software to extensive testing and formal analysis
• Regression – Apply regression testing for all software changes
• Interfaces – Carefully design input screens, messages, and manuals

In 2017, Leveson revisited those lessons and concluded that modern software systems still suffer from the same issues. In addition, she noted:

• Error prevention and detection must be included from the outset.
• Software designs are often unnecessarily complex.
• Software engineers and human factors engineers must communicate more.
• Blame still falls on operators rather than interface designs.
• Overconfidence in reusing software remains rampant.

Whatever the reasons (market pressures, rushing processes, inadequate certifications, fear of being fired, or poor project management), Leveson's insights are being ignored. For example, after the first fatal Boeing 737 Max flight, why was the entire fleet not grounded indefinitely? Or not grounded after an Indonesian safety committee report uncovered multiple failures? Or not grounded when an off-duty pilot helped avert a crash? What analysis procedures failed to prevent the second fatal Boeing 737 Max flight?

Loved it.  Great world-building, awe, wonder. Fantastic! 5/5 stars.  

1957 Big Stick aka 2019 9M730 Burevestnik

My favorite weapon system of all time is the 1957 supersonic low-altitude missile (SLAM) aka The Big Stick.  It cruises at 100m above the ground dropping 60 Megaton nuclear bombs on up to 12 targets, then flying for "weeks or months" spewing death from its nuclear exhaust.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZHONQAMV48

Putin's Russian military has completed the project.  Earlier this year they launched a successful test flight of a smaller variant and started producing the 9M730 Burevestnik.  They have also developed an underwater variant. Cool.

The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene

There is a lot of material re-hashed from his earlier books and the author continues to perpetuate his favorite debunked myths from Nietzsche and Jung.  He does treat the psychopathy and sociopathy well and he correctly raises genetic gender sensibility differences. Much of his research is surface, lazy, and weak in science.  I loved every one of his example biography sketches.  They were fantastic.  And in general, the 18 laws are well-communicated, illustrated, and explained.  It is worth reading but is not nearly as good as Mastery.  The book is long and dense ; it took me a while to read because I kept pausing to think about the concepts. 3/5 Stars.

young children acquire verbs and we understand War, Enlightenment

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/steven-pinker-interview/ 

Steven Pinker's journey enlightening our perception of verbs as young children to our own nature and history.  Read the whole interview.

Schrödinger's cat experiment

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1287-z

Despite the non-deterministic character of quantum physics, is it possible to know if a quantum jump is about to occur? Here we answer this question affirmatively: we experimentally demonstrate that the jump from the ground state to an excited state of a superconducting artificial three-level atom can be tracked as it follows a predictable 'flight', by monitoring the population of an auxiliary energy level coupled to the ground state. 

The cat always survives.  Amazing!

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mfw@wyle.org | 1.425.249.3936