The Temporal Void by Peter F Hamilton

Fantastic story.  5/5 Stars.

Embers of War by Gareth L Powell

Not bad; good awe-and-wonder.  Characters aren't great.  3/5 Stars.  I may read the next few.

Gods and Legionnaires, Galaxy's Edge Savage Wars, book 2

OK, not great.  Luckily no telekinesis or other magic stuff, but the living-in-a-simulation stuff is weak.  3/5 Stars. 

Higher, faster, further

(Nasa's X43-A Mach-10 X plane holds the jet aircraft speed record)

You may share the "dream of flying" higher, faster, & further that pilots, aviation, and space enthusiasts all have.  I grew up during the era of the "cold war" and the "space race" (to the moon).  During my formative years, the USA built and flew interstellar spacecraft, all components of autonomous apocalyptic doomsday devices, and  the iconic, ramjet-powered, blackbird; we brought people to the moon and back, and even tested and proved mach-3 compression lift that has not yet been replicated with modern X planes.  Mitch still loves watching ravens, raptors, and swallows enjoying the thrill of flight.  In his lucid dreams, Mitch flies. Recently, Mountain Aerospace Research tested their "Fenris" motor that is trying to combine an air breathing scramjet (such as the one designed in 1958 and flown in the X-43A pictured above), with a regular space rocket that uses stored oxidizer. The concept is a rebirth of the 45-year-old "Space Plane" project that was defunded. I hope their vehicle works!

Empirical Analysis of Academic Paper Reviewers

Shockingly, this paper was actually published this quarter.

Bullies' brains are physically smaller

This Lancet article with N=1037 indicates clear, morphological differences in bullies' brains.

". . . for the small proportion of individuals with life-course-persistent antisocial behaviour, there may be differences in their brain structure that make it difficult for them to develop social skills that prevent them from engaging in antisocial behavior."

Those Eugenics idiots, much like a stopped mechanical clock that tells time correctly two seconds each day, were on to something.

Customizing Linters and other tools for your code reviews

As everyone knows, the single most-effective method and best possible investment of developer time to improve quality is serious code review.  ReviewDog is a framework for integrating linters and other workflow automation tools that amplifies the power of code reviews.  Check it out.

accelerating Terraform code reviews

Jay Wallace walks through methods and tools that supercharge your terraform code reviews to assure quality.  Very cool.

Amazon's true zero-touch Continuous Deployments

Amazon's Clare Liguori walks us through how Amazon claims they fully automate continuous deployments.  Despite the long checklists and testing requirements, each element of the pipelines make sense.  They provide the safety developers need to "fire and forget" by merging to the production branch and moving to the next task.  There is no "babysitting" or meat robot "monitoring" of a deployment.

the doomed city by boris strugatsky

The story itself is very interesting and the characters are quite good.  The writing is also (likely) amazing.  Unfortunately, the sociology is too "Soviet" for my taste and the book started grating about half way through.  3/5 Stars.   I read an English translation.

Tutorial, working example of gitops, kustomize, flux, helm

Approachable, detailed, working example on github or you to bring your DevOps skill up to the modern standard, opa gitops style.

Der Vorleser von Bernhard-Schlink

Fantastische!  Poignant, berührend und zutiefst menschlich. 5/5 Sterne.

Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

I did not like this story, the characters, or the writing that much, 2/5 Stars.

The Naked God by Peter F Hamilton

The story-telling and writing are great but the science and contrivances are terrible, 3/5 stars.

The Interstellar Ramjet concept is 60 years old

(Robert Bussard in 1959 with his Astronutica Acta issue)

Here is a wonderful history of our theoretical investigations into interstellar travel using the interstellar medium itself (Hydrogen) for fuel.  About twenty years ago, I personally was discussing the limits of such travel with my oldest son. As you know, some regions of interstellar space contain too little hydrogen to fuel a Bussard ramjet. My son suggested sending several "tanker ships" ahead of the main passenger liner to gather hydrogen from adjacent regions and leave the h2 in the path of the passenger liner.  I don't think this concept was ever published in the modern resurgence of academic study and I am too lazy to write up the math.

Interestingly, Bussard himself mentioned the use of an extremely-large magnet field for the ram scoop but is usually not credited.

The ONE Thing by Gary W. Keller and Jay Papasan

The voice, tone, empty bromides, and vapid aphorisms, especially in the first few chapters were very nauseating and I almost put the book down a few times.  However, one of my mentors recommended the book, so I felt obligated to get through it and the book did get better.  In a nutshell, as the title suggests, the book prescribes why and how to prioritize a single task, and  engage in that task with a singular focus.  The authors' innate values, intensity and driven personality shine through.  They assume everyone and all readers are megalomaniacal and driven to amass wealth, power, fame. The concepts and prescriptive recommendations in the book are actually very good and I do recommend the book.  For example, the time management recommendations and approaches to expanding your horizons are modern and treated poorly by other self-help authors.  3/5 Stars.  One of the top 100 business books you should read. 

Great talk on Chaos Engineering or DevSecOps

Aaron Rinehart takes us on a wonderful journey through Complexity, Testing in Production, and the advantages of Chaos Engineering for DevSecOps.  Don't miss this great talk.

The Neutronium Alchemist by

A great space opera thriller with terrible physics, 4/5 Stars.

Opinions!!

Everyone is very angry.  I was looking for data and peer reviewed academic publications but they are difficult to sift through.  This August 2019 study has almost no conclusions other than we don't gather enough data, But many journalists are citing that study to lend evidence to their own opinions. As Pinker keeps reminding us, the total number of urban fatal shootings keeps declining every year:

But this week we had car-b-q's, property damage, and theft, even in my sleepy little town.

Checklists are good

I am a fan of Atul Gawande's book and frequently try to use checklists for work-related activities. If you are trying to formulate a "launch readiness" checklist for your approval or release workflow for your backend applications, Aleksi Kornev's checklist is a good place to start.

Rejoiner Revisited

Google is seriously backing their GraphQL middleware (Rejoiner).  Kris Sandoval takes us on a quick overview of why it is so appealing and cases where trying to use it are inappropriate (expensive database calls).

GitOps deployment pipelines explosion

It seems everyone and her uncle is jumping on the GitOps bandwagon to deploy continuously.  Omer Kahani explains in his write-up how his company (Riskified) uses Argos continuous deployment in their pipeline.

GCP Audit Logging

DataDog gives us a guide to google cloud platform (GCP) audit logging and how to scan and use the logs.  My company pushes our logs through existing scanners used for other types of logs. But these audit logs can be used for other purposes.  It's relatively straightforward.

Meeker Report: Our New World - April 2020

Although her 2020 Internet report is not yet out, Mary Meeker published a report in April called "Our New World."  Her reports and analysis are always worth skimming.  I am hoping her Internet Report 2020 will come out this month.