aiefel

aiefel, 1 year ago

Pp 109: degrees of anthropomorphic acceptance.

aiefel, 1 year ago

The chapter on animal trials in middle ages Europe is really worth the cover price of this book alone.

aiefel, 2 years ago

The Service is a brutally honest and well-paced read, with some minimal plot, but it's meant to be character driven. There is no 'the end.'

Moving back to the cyberwar stack, Sandworm been sitting here since February waiting its turn, like the malware package on your phone.

aiefel, 2 years ago

Pushing through my backlog book stack. I don't read happy things.

aiefel, 2 years ago

Now, onto this...

aiefel, 1 year ago

Alaa's book makes you consider just how many of the world's top thinkers may be in a prison somewhere. Such a wide-ranging intellect, and absolute dedication to cause. What's happening to him and all political prisoners is what holds us all back. It's an angry regime brute forcing progress to stop.

Now onto what our relationship with animals can tell us about how we'll get on with smarter machines: "The New Breed" by Kate Darling.

aiefel, 2 years ago

Only a third through this massive one, so breaking my streak, but this one is worth the effort, it's like many books in one.

aiefel, 1 year ago

Highly recommend 'The New Breed' if thinking of better ways to consider our future around an increasing amount of autonomous tech is your jam. Some more notes in the ol'e blog. https://treacherous.tech/i-cant-keep-up.html

Moving on to Catherine Belton's 'Putin's People' which has been in the stack a while and on the bookshop shelves longer. Felt I should move it up while it's still topical, but obviously doesn't include events of the last 3 years.

aiefel, 2 years ago

Two-thirds through 'Rise and Kill First' this week. It's a real page Turner, but there are lots them.

aiefel, 1 year ago

There's a chapter in 'Sandworm' that references Cliff Stoll's phenomenal threat hunting memoir, 'The Cuckoo's Egg' and how that incident really had the seeds of current nation-state operations.

aiefel, 2 years ago

I am not doing well at my book-a-week goal, but for the record "The Service" is an absorbing read.

Frankie Miren has a great sense of character voice, and really gets into the weeds on the complications (legal, social, mental, economic, emotional) around sex work and the criminalisation/legalisation/decriminalisation debate.

There's also very plausible near-future sci-fi thrown in on how sex work criminalisation would trigger surveillance, censorship creep, and an industry of AI and sex-bots.

aiefel, 2 years ago

I've given myself a book-a-week challenge to run through my back-log. I'm dubious as to whether I'll keep it, but here's this week's read...

aiefel, 1 year ago

Finished Sandworm. Short version: all critical infrastructure is a sitting duck. With the Kremlin now ramping up cyber attacks again, against NATO aspiring countries, this book is foreshadowing.

Off cybers slightly, now but still on the anti-authorisation spree... #freealaa

aiefel, 1 year ago

I'm slightly obsessed with Drew Robinson's malware analyst role at iSight, looking at hacking campaigns' technical clues to discern which groups or political motives are behind them. I could see that being really interesting work.

aiefel, 1 year ago

Mid-way in, and what's good is that Greenberg is both a real storyteller, concise writer and able to cover tough tech concepts in an accessible way, dispensing with some of the dense "you're in the command line" perspective of 'Zero Day.' it's slightly more tech than "This is How They Tell Me The World Ends." All 3 books cross over somewhat. Sandworm's shortish chapters allow for nice breaks and in chapters 6 & 7 we get an excellent, relevant summary of about 1,000 years of Ukraine history.

aiefel, 2 years ago

Done with 'Rise and Kill First': a lengthy (could use a trim, much history has been more then covered elsewhere), detailed and mostly well-paced tour of what could be called tactical successes on the road to strategic and moral failure.
Shifting to a fiction title in my lockdown era book-buying stack to Frankie Miren's 'The Service', looking at the criminalization of sex work in UK.

aiefel, 1 year ago

'Putin's People; was a bit of a slog, riveting in places, but some dead weight between. An exhaustive account, I got to points in some chapters where it bordered on repetitive.
Good I read it while there's still a Putin regime, and the recent past it covers definitely relates to present events. Things pick up in the latter third as all the principles have been introduced and we see how it plays out through the Trump years and the start of the Ukraine invasion in 2014.
Could be a Scorsese film.

aiefel, 1 year ago

Alaa's visit to Gaza in around 2012, and analysis of the hyper-factionalization he found there is absorbing afternoon beer-and-book reading. Having once had a tiny supporting role of efforts led by locals in Rafah to bridge these divides, it really resonates.