Expeditionary Force book 2: SpecOps by Craig Alanson

The silliness and comedic bro banter continues in book 2.  The arbitrary magic system is a little annoying but otherwise it's very enjoyable and recommended! 4/5 Stars.

If you think you know what a proton is

 

Think again and read this interesting summary of recent research.  In particular, try to explain how what we currently perceive as a "proton" can sometimes be detected as a quark soup consisting of two charm quarks that weigh 1.3 times as much as the entire proton.  Forget conservation of mass.  Einstein might label it "spukhafte Gewichtsveränderung."

Earthbound (Marsbound 3) by Joe Haldeman

Depressing and confusing ending to a great series.  Good closure for the characters. 4/5 Stars.

Ihr Letzter Wunch von Blake Pierce

Meine örtliche Bibliothek hat nur sehr wenige Bücher auf Deutsch. Unter den deutschen Büchern, die ich gelesen habe, ist dies eines davon. Nicht schrecklich, aber nicht gut. 2/5 Sterne.

Columbus Day by Craig Alanson

This book has a fantastic space opera world built-up with a little awe-and-wonder mystery, wonderful politics, and great close-combat military action.  The hilarious sarcastic super-AI is wonderful and the "patron race" hierarchy concepts from David Brin's (far better!) Uplift books are good. However, Alanson goes too far to explain too much, instead of enabling events to uncover the strict rules of the magic system and leaving lots of frustrating mystery to uncover.  "Show the reader, don't tell the reader!" The gritty military experiences of "hurry up and wait," SNAFUs and ClusterFcks, are also wonderful and draw in the reader.  I can't wait to continue reading the books. 4/5 Stars.  Highly enjoyable!

This is my funniest 2 ed by Mike Resnick

I found about a quarter of the stories to be funny or worthwhile, but the gems were worth the slog through the weaker stories. 3/5 Stars.  In particular, the self-proclaimed "hay seed" farmer's diatribe describing a character

You look like somebody beat out a fire on your face with an ugly stick. You look like five miles 'a bad road. You look like the reason first cousins hadn't ought t'get married. Your liddle, squinchy eyes are all pupil; your nose is like a burnt pancake, and your jaws like a bear-trap.

. . . had me  laughing out loud.

What if? 2 by Randall Munroe

I love XKCD and this second volume of the series is just as good as the first one. The cartoons are fantastic.  Some of the questions and answers are great.  Some answers veer off into the wrong directions.  Randall's long form prose is less and weaker than the fiction and other non-fiction I read. 4/5 Stars.

Die Leiden des Jungen Werther von Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Dieses fantastische Buch ist mindestens so gut, wenn nicht sogar besser als Romeo und Julia. Die Schönheit der Schrift ist atemberaubend. 5/5 Sterne.

Gateway by Frederik Pohl

This book won the 1978 Hugo Award for Best Novel, the 1978 Locus Award for Best Novel, the 1977 Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the 1978 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.  And somehow I had not read it during the golden age of science fiction. It is a little dated but holds up remarkably well. 5/5 Stars.

Forget Nothing by Jason Anspach & Michelle G Meyers (audio)

This well-acted audiobook is a good back story to an interesting character in the series. There were some fun, tantalizing clues to the "big mystery" that is being revealed too slowly, 4/5 Stars.

The Sandman Act III by Neil Gaiman and Dirk Maggs (audio)

I listened to the most popular audiobook on audible and was disappointed.  The graphic novel is not well-adapted to audio; the power of the images is poorly conveyed.  Many of the stories are not bad and would do well as theatre plays or sketches.  Audio is inappropriate. 3/5 Stars.

Remains by Jason Anspach & Nick Cole

Fun story, great characters, 5/5 Stars.

Tschick von Wolfgang Herrndorf

Die Geschichte ist spannend und anschaulich.  Die verschiedenen Charaktere sind lebendig beschrieben und eine Entwicklung durchlaufen. Das Buch hat mir sehr gut gefallen, 5/5 Sterne.

Tips for business writing

A wise friend of mine recently posted these simple tips for business writing.  I personally violate all of these rules frequently and needed Marc's reminder.

minimize dependences

One of the rare objective principles we try to apply to reorgs and org design is to minimize the required communication and lock-step dependencies each execution team requires to deliver value to end-users.  This empowerment is sometimes called the "independent executor model" within the rubric of coordination models.  Recently my wise friend Michael posted his own take on how to apply this model to existing product teams.  The key, as Michael points out is that teams should be self-reliant:

They ask, but never expect other teams to do work for them.

The Signal 2 by Joshua and Philipp Calvert

The series is getting much worse as the magic system devolves and the prepper lifestyle is glorified. 2/5 Stars.  I shall likely not read the next one.

Gateway by Frederik Pohl

The story is surprisingly good despite the terrible Freudian psychobabble, 3/5 Stars.

Fairy Tale by Stephen King

The master still has his mojo.  Put this one at the top of your stack.  5/5 Stars.

The Signal by Joshua T Calvert & Philipp Calvert

The plot, mystery, characters, and background "awe & wonder" writing remind me of early 20th century golden age science fiction that I loved growing up.  It was easy for me to suspend disbelief of the techno-babble magic system and put up with tedious "prepper" messaging to find out what would happen in both storylines.  I look forward to the next book in the series. 4/5 Stars.

Zeihan on US Healthcare

This one is worth sharing:

The US healthcare system is a mind-bendingly spectacular ziggurat of blazingly hot trash. Americans spend roughly triple the amount on health care of the average citizen of other developed nations in order to achieve health services that regularly rank in the bottom third of humanity. A few years ago I was broadly supportive of Obamacare, as the idea of reducing costs and increasing quality for the world's most-expensive, least-efficient health care system sounded sexy. Unfortunately, the "reforms" made American health care even more expensive and even less efficient.

Read the whole thing.

Starbound by Joe Haldeman

I liked this one despite the odd plot twists.  The magic system was more self-consistent and the inscrutable aliens' unpredictability was cool. 4/5 Stars.

Der Besuch der alten Dame von

Dieses Buch ist eine fantastische, zeitlose Geschichte. Das Stück spielt vor dem Hintergrund der Weltwirtschaftskrise. Der Haupthandlungsstrang illustriert die berühmte und oft zitierte Zeile aus Berthold Brechts Dreigroschenoper: „Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral". Alle Charaktere sind tiefgründig und gut illustriert. Die Dunkelheit unserer primitiven Mob-Mentalität wird in der Geschichte kraftvoll dargestellt. Ich muss mehr von diesen Klassikern aufspüren und lesen, beginnend mit Friedrich Dürrenmatt. 5/5 Sterne.

How the World Really Works by Vaclav Smil

Life changing book! Top 2 I have read so far in 2022. Highly recommended, 5/5 Stars.

Mars Bound by Joe Haldeman

The story is a little dated and the magic system strays into physics violations and deus ex machina (lazy writing).  However, I enjoyed the story. 3/5 Stars.

Im Westen nichts neues von Erich Maria Remarque

Dieses Buch ist sehr gut geschrieben. Es ist in einfacher Sprache und lässt den Leser schnell in die Charaktere und Situationen eintauchen. Die tiefen und ausdrucksstarken Beschreibungen jeder Szene erwecken die historischen Ereignisse aus der Sicht eines Teenagers zum Leben. Leider war ich so in die Geschichte verstrickt, dass mich das Leid, das Elend und der Schrecken sehr traurig gemacht hat. Ich habe geweint. Daher fällt es mir schwer, das Buch zu empfehlen, es sei denn, Sie können Ihre Perspektive bewahren. 4/5 Sterne.

6:20 man by David Baldacci

A little over the top but not bad for a thriller, 3/5 Stars.

Defending Elysium by Brandon Sanderson

Surprisingly good story.  A little short.  Great world building. 5/5 Stars.

The Book of Joe by Jason Anspach & Nick Cole

Fun. 4/5 Stars.

API security: modelling, signing, encrypting, validating, rate limiting, TLA, error handling, auditing

Here is a fantastic and comprehensive summary of API security.  Integrating all of these capabilities can simplify your implementation.

Supply Chain Security Challenges

This recent article is a great non-technical summary of how and why supply chain attacks on open source are so dangerous and successful.  There are very few magic bullets and instant answers. Everyone in Tech, including users of tech will need to pay more attention, go through some extra inconveniences, and stay informed.

A short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson

The drama and people behind all the science are extremely well-presented and fun.  Unfortunately, recent, new discoveries have revealed the answers to some of the "big questions" that make the book so fun.  For example, Who We Are and How We Got Here by David Reich solves many of the mysteries regarding migrations of ancient Hominins. Although Bryson's book is dated, it's still worth reading. 3/5 Stars.

Murder by Other Means by John Scalzi

The complex mystery behind what is really happening in the story was not well paced. There were too many missing clues that came out only during the "big reveal."  The book should have been about twice as long.  3/5 Stars.  The first one is much better.

Singularity Sky by Charles Stross

I really liked this book, despite the terrible motivations, poor plot, and silly, arbitrary deus est machina magic system. All of the bizarre misapplied Soviet political thought was awesome. 4/5 Stars.

Management Style (again)

Every so often it's worth revisiting styles of management and using whichever "models" are in vogue to figure out how to get along better at work.  These "models" are usually just fashionable patterns of currently popular ideas that are unscientific and frequently not repeatable.  Nonetheless, the exercise itself -- thinking about how to better work with various personalities -- is usually worthwhile.  Here is one my friend posted recently that is worth reading and considering.

Personally, I have noticed that almost no one with whom I interact cares about evidence-based science.  And I have always been frustrated when trying to introduce academic (repeatable, predictive) applications of personality research because everyone prefers the debunked, mythological 19th century crap. 

Camouflage by Joe Haldeman

I did not appreciate the deus est machina transmutation and magical capabilities of the space aliens and the ending was a little disappointing.  But overall I liked the story, 4/5 Stars.

The End of the World is just the beginning by Peter Zeihan

I really loved this book despite my disagreement with the author's doom and gloom predictions. I speculate that individuals, corporations, and nation state actors will innovate and uncover ways and means to overcome the labor, materials, and transport shortages he predicts. 5/5 Stars highly recommended.  See also this talk the author gave on 9/8/2022.

Delivering bad software faster

Outcome is more important than output.  Speed is neither true velocity, nor is it the same as agile. This fantastic medium post points out that our fixation on DORA metrics and delivering faster prevents us from delivering what our end-users want. A work colleague told me recently that shipping many features in our software that our customers don't want is wasteful and self-destructive.

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

It is odd that I never read Joe Haldeman during the science fiction golden years (when the reader is 12 - 16 years old).  This one deserves the accolades and awards. 4/5 Stars.

Weaponized by Neal Asher

This author has a bizarre obsession with vivisection and wet chemistry that runs about a hundred million times faster than what is possible in our universe.  And this bad science frequently gets in the way of good storytelling.  I enjoyed the story and characters.  3/5 Stars.

C-Suite Perspectives on Risk Management & Information Security

Phil Venables wrote a series of questions and answers from CEOs, Boards of Directors, CIOs, and a few others.  This Question / Answer approach to this series communicates the concepts clearly and deeply, as most of us need to know the answers. I recommend skimming them:

• Risk & Cybersecurity Questions from CEOs and Boards of Directors
• Risk & Cybersecurity Questions from CIOs and CTOs
• Risk & Cybersecurity Questions from Security Teams
• Risk & Cybersecurity Questions from Governments and Regulators

The Forever Free by Joe Haldeman

The story was interesting and fun.  However, the end was quite terrible. 3/5 Stars.

Death Match by Lincoln Child

Good characters & story; great prediction of the loss of personal privacy, but a little dated and bad science, 3/5 Stars.

A Separate War & Other Stories by Joe Haldeman

I enjoyed this collection. I am catching up on Joe Haldeman books. 4/5 Stars.

The Galaxy and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers

The 1960's Star Trek trope of stuffing human social struggle into space aliens wears thin and there is too much politically correct ethical drama, with much ado about nothing of consequence.  3/5 Stars.  I shall stop reading Becky Chambers books, even when she wins these awards.

Buying Time by Joe Haldeman

 

I really enjoyed this one, 5/5 Stars.

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

This sequel to A Memory Called Empire is much better than the first one and was once again nominated for a Hugo award.  The politics are a little more motivated and the first-contact stuff is excellent space opera, 4/5 Stars.

Agile & Lean as simple as possible

I have always found the process of distilling important concepts down to clear, well-understood slogans or sound bites to be very difficult.  Each audience of the idea and each person within the audience has a different context and a different meaning for the words or pictures you are trying to convey.  However, I think my friend Michael has published a clever, unambiguous insight that most of us can understand.  

The entire Agile Manifesto and agile fashion trend is trying to empower developers who are really "the means of intellectual property production and delivery" of an enterprise to execute efficiently and effectively.  Michael has formulated a single question and corollary that can enable anyone to improve.  To paraphrase Michael's single question:

Are you currently, with certainty, working on the single most-important thing you need to do to move your effort towards success?

If yes: good! Carry on!

If no: Is it (a) because you're distracted/impeded or (b) because you don't know what the most important thing is?

In case it's (a): removing the distraction or impediment is now the most important thing [you need to do]. In case it's (b): finding out about the most important thing is now the most important thing [you need to do]. Communication is key in both cases, that's knowing, finding, and involving the right people.

A similar analysis of this idea is in the book The One Thing.

Polity 2: Shadow of the Scorpion by Neal Asher

Fun, mindless space opera.  I intend to read more of the series. 3/5 Stars.

Eversion by Alastair Reynolds

Fantastic story combining awesome steampunk, mystery, rich characters, and fun plot twists.  Great space opera. 5/5 Stars.

Observability fun

After a short hiatus, Charity Majors is publishing fun rants on her blog again.  I always enjoy reading Charity's blog posts.