Phil Denhoff
Contains spoilers
It’s a half decent intro to Workers, ServiceWorks, and worker_threads.
That said, it relies pretty heavily on examples and is somewhat of a cook book for using the tech. It’s very much multihtreading WITH JAVASCRIPT. If you want an intro to multithreading in general, you’d be wise to rely on another resource.
That said, the book covers solid ground and has some good suggestions or topics I hadn’t previously been exposed to. Having good example code for how to get threading is nice, although I would’ve preferred to see an appendix with production-ready code. A large question I had going in, and still have leaving, is how do I execute TS code in a worker. I have to referenced the built JS file, but what’s the best way of doing that? Hard coding it in my source code?? Doubtful.
Anyway, read up on multithreading and then come here to see how you can apply it in JS.
Ender, Katniss, now Darrow. And yet, as corny as that is, it feels true. If I had read this as a teen in high school, it would've made a big impact on me. Jealous of kids today for being able to read it, but I'm glad I finally cracked it open. I expected it to be some fantasy book originally but the space aspect (albeit very, very minimal) hooked me at the start. I got chills once I heard where the story took place.
The core of this book is 4 parts that are very straightforward: make habits obvious, make them easy, make them attractive, make them satisfying. Those four pillars are the foundations of making a good long-term habit, but Clear’s underlying point is that habits, like people, should be growing and responding to their environment. Clear’s habit forming system applies Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s anti-fragility to everyday life. Your everyday life and habits should improve, one percent every day. And if you can’t grow them 1%, then you need to tune the habit to make it easier, to make it achievable.
Clear tells us this at the start of the book. If you aren’t achieving your habits, it’s not a personal failure. Your habit system is failing you. So everything else comes from — you’ve built a habit system that doesn’t grow in the face of resistance. What can you change so that it does? And while not a long book, I think atomic habits answers this question quite nicely.
Definitely worth a reread
I didn't enjoy "Ministry For the Future" nearly as much as some of KSR's other works like Red, Green, and Blue Mars. The book felt underdeveloped with ideas that I felt ridiculous. Using cryptocurrency as some sort of cure-all monetary solution - the idea that anonymity in currency would be such a useful asset or make money a better investment seems foolish.
The engineering projects, the sci-fi part of the book, also didn't convince me. Red Mars had the decency of being overtly fantastical; "Ministry For the Future" fell into a sort of uncanny valley where hearing about the projects, they just don't seem feasible.
I was also disappointed with the characters. I thought that this, like Red Mars, would be more of a story of many different perspectives, and I felt the focus on Frank and Mary, and in particular their relationship, dominated a lot more of the story than I would have liked. While it did make sense to focus on Mary as she was the minister for the Ministry For the Future, I just didn't find it that interesting.
I thought dialogue was boring at times. In particular, there was a section of the book that was just listing countries and their different climate solution projects which was extremely boring, and I wish I could have skipped it, but I was listening to an audiobook. The sections about the children of Kali and news articles about things like the drones were quite interesting. But most of the divergent non-narrative sections that added to the world were just kind of unengaging.
In short, it’s not something I’d reread.
Contains spoilers
That ending was earth-shattering, but feels so right for the world.
This was a tough book to read at the start. I mean it's such a gross concept for a story — animal meat consumption is banned because of a suspected viral infection in non-human animals. And yet, consistently what I felt was that the book gave me an opportunity to look at modern industrial cattle & pig "farming" processes and think about how disgusting and inhumane they are. Yes, meat is more expensive if the cow is allowed to have a life. Is that such a bad thing? Do you need to eat meat at every meal? Of course not.
The writing was a bit hard to follow at times, and the translation is imperfect — for instance, manually translating the Spanish name for Soylent Green instead of, y'know, calling the movie "Soylent Green".
Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading Tender is the Flesh far more than I thought I would. So gross!
This book gains a lot from its predecessors. It’s an excellent book, but as the finale, it’s nearly perfect.
I loved entering this world and spending time in Tolkien’s creation. I’m not generally one for fantasy but this is masterful writing. And to keep me entertained while writing English as if it was formal and ancient shocks me. I’m glad I finally read it all!
That said, I would not say the Appendices were necessary to my enjoyment. They were, in fact, a deep slog and unless someone wanted a truck load of names and dates, I’d skip it all. If - and only if - you felt like Arwen deserved more time, read her story. Otherwise… eh. Skip em.
But the rest of the book is so good!!
Truly swashbuckling, it's a fun, somewhat steampunk somewhat fantasy romp. It's quick, it's fast, it's funny, and I was glad to get back into this book again. I'm surprised how much I enjoyed it, to be honest.
The writing is a bit wonky — there's some stilted dialogue, things are fantastical or unrealistic, but it's a book that doesn't take itself too seriously and I appreciate it.
While at times slow, Before the Coffee Gets Cold was a quick read in an interesting place. If this was a film, I'd have happily watched it. And so I'm trying to expand my book tastes and read new books as well. And I liked this one! There were quite a few moments where I wished people would stand up for themselves more, but that's a difference in culture I think. Nothing shocking.
It sounds like I shouldn't become a founder, I need to be eccentric and also younger.
This book took a wicked turn at the end and just went off the rails.
I just don't know what the point of this book was. Whole chapters seemed designed only to pad the page count. Thiel's vision for a healthy startup is uninteresting to me as a workplace. It's just... maybe American love this, I don't know.
I enjoyed reading this after seeing Tarkovsky's STALKER. The film focuses on the Zone, and its unbearable pressure on the stalkers. But Roadside Picnic is focused much more on Redrick and his struggles outside of being a stalker. I wonder how much that comes down the refining a story — the authors wrote this over a year or so. And they came up with an excellent story, albeit a bit dry and slow. What if they'd waited a year and then rewrote it? Created a new story in the same vein? Would it be better? Different?
I've been thinking a lot about how people find niches to excel in. Sometimes that's their one world, or it's a certain kind of furniture, or some particular software. I liked the book but I enjoyed the movie more. Why?