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.