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.