What I have been studying since re:Invent

Illustration of Werner reading with a stack of books

The months main into re:Invent are thrilling (and infrequently exhausting). I spend most of my time doing analysis, assembly with sensible engineers, and creating tales to share with you on stage. It’s fantastic. But it surely doesn’t depart me with a lot time to learn completely for pleasure.

So, within the weeks that observe re:Invent, I attempt to make time to work by way of the ever-growing pile of books accumulating on my nightstand and all through my workplace. It’s a shedding battle. Then once more, when was it ever value doing one thing simple?

Right here’s a brief listing of issues I’ve began, completed, and just lately added to the pile&mldr;

Crucial factor I’ve learn just lately was Proper/Mistaken: How Expertise Transforms Our Ethics by Juan Enriquez. It clearly lays out how our ethics and morals change beneath the affect of know-how in a reasonably brief period of time. For instance, utilizing gene enhancing know-how comparable to CRISPR to change a baby’s genome could also be unethical proper now, however our grandchildren would possibly really feel in another way, realizing that we may have eliminated or edited a gene recognized to trigger breast most cancers. At a time of utmost polarization, this e-book challenges us to consider how rapidly mainstream opinions can shift and why.
In mild of current election outcomes worldwide, and the upcoming presidential race in the US, I made a decision to re-read The Age of American Unreason in a Tradition of Lies by Susan Jacoby. It offers wonderful historic perception into how politics and the politicians that symbolize us have shifted away from rational and mental debate to who can shout the loudest. It’s fairly startling to see how a lot public language has devolved up to now few a long time. If this can be a subject you’re taken with, I urge you to learn Douglas Hofstadter’s 1964 Anti-Intellectualism in American Life.
I lastly had an opportunity to complete Down and Out in Paradise: The Lifetime of Anthony Bourdain by Charles Leerhsen. As a fellow world traveler, with an identical view of how one can dwell, I’ve at all times been impressed by Bourdain’s storytelling talents. He was an empathetic narrator that centered on individuals and their experiences. This e-book is concerning the man behind the tales that helped carry these narratives to life.
As lots of you recognize, I’m a lifelong AFC Ajax supporter, so I actually loved Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s biography Adrenaline: My Untold Tales. Zlatan began his profession at Ajax and his spotlight reel from these days will do extra justice than my phrases can:
I picked up Atlas van een bezette stad 1940-1945 by Bianca Stigter, which covers the German occupation of Amsterdam within the type of an illustrated Atlas. It’s mind-blowing to see the ways in which the Nazi occupation nonetheless haunts town. The e-book is in Dutch (sorry for now to my English readers), nevertheless it was tailored right into a four-hour lengthy documentary by Stigter’s accomplice Steve McQueen, known as “Occupied Metropolis” which debuted at Cannes final 12 months.
I began studying Rust for Rustaceans: Idiomatic Programming of Skilled Builders by John Gjengset, nevertheless it’s a bit extra superior than I would like in the intervening time, so I picked Command-line Rust: A Mission-based Primer for Writing Rust CLIs by Ken Youens-Clark and it appears promising to this point. I’ll present an replace as I progress.
Only for enjoyable, I purchased the fourth e-book in John Burdett’s Sonchai Jitpleecheep collection: The Godfather of Kathmandu. When you’ve got ever spent any prolonged time period in Bangkok, you’ll take pleasure in this collection. The writing is totally sensible. I’m not completed but, however to this point, it’s nearly as good because the earlier three books.
The very last thing I’ll depart you with is a paper I just lately learn from the Netflix Expertise Weblog, “Rebuilding Netflix Video Processing Pipeline with Microservices” by Liwei Guo, Anush Moorthy, Li-Heng Chen, Vinicius Carvalho, Aditya Mavlankar, Agata Opalach, Adithya Prakash, Kyle Swanson, Jessica Tweneboah, Subbu Venkatrav, Lishan Zhu — It goes into element about rebuilding their video processing pipeline on their microservice-based platform Cosmos.