User Profile

Anders

aaspnas@kirja.casa

Joined 1 year, 4 months ago

Reading books of various genres, mostly Nordic Crime, Information Technology, Science and Fiction, Science and whatever I happen to find. I like to read mostly from paper, either pocket or hard cover, but also occasionally finish reading an e-book. I read books in Swedish, Finnish, English and German depending on what is available.

My reading history is available over at Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/user/show/76763164-anders

I work as a Technical Architect in a large Information Technology corporation and live in Turku, Finland.

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2024 Reading Goal

36% complete! Anders has read 11 of 30 books.

Sean Carroll: The Biggest Ideas in the Universe 1 (2023, Oneworld Publications) 4 stars

Mathematical model of space, time and motion

4 stars

Not the easiest book to read, but makes complicated concepts possible to understand, after rereading the more difficult sections a couple of times.

The book require some concentration, so not something that I would recommend for everyone, but if you are sufficiently interested in knowing the mathematics behind our everyday physics I can recommend it.

Noson S. Yanofsky: The Outer Limits of Reason: What Science, Mathematics, and Logic Cannot Tell Us (2013) 4 stars

What we know, and what we can't know

4 stars

This was a tough book to read on what I thought would be an interesting subject when I bought the book.

The book discuss subjects like paradoxes, mathematics and computation and their intersection with philosophy and outlines the borders where the known ends and uncertainty takes over.

As such it is a book I would recommend to anyone in science, as well as anyone in technology, especially in over hyped areas like artificial intelligence.

reviewed Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree (Legends & Lattes, #1)

Travis Baldree: Legends & Lattes (Paperback, 2022, Tor Books) 5 stars

Worn out after decades of packing steel and raising hell, Viv the orc barbarian cashes …

Surprisingly positive experience

5 stars

I do not read all that much fantasy, and I did not expect all that much, but this book provided a surprisingly pleasant reading experience.

Breaking free of old habits, friendship, opportunities and coffee are things most of us can relate to. Hence I would recommend this book to everybody, with a good cup of coffee on the side. I might even read this book again.

Ari Ezra Waldman: Industry Unbound (2021, University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations) 5 stars

Ari Ezra Waldman exposes precisely how the tech industry conducts its ongoing crusade to undermine …

Very impressive investigation

5 stars

This book presents an impressive investigation and analysis of the world of compliance focusing on privacy. While the book is about privacy you can extrapolate the problems it presents to other areas like diversity, security and equality. The appendix presents the multifaceted methodology and the challenges investigation this field has. The book has extensive notes that provides additional reading for those interested.

As for the results with the quite depressing conclusion the book paints a picture where people are hired as compliance agents to do a job that the company does not appreciate and interacts with people who would rather be left alone. For corporations presenting the image of caring about privacy seems to be sufficient. It also explains why the world of privacy in corporations is as bad as it seems with extractive practices running wild.

The book is somewhat similar to books like Sidney Dekkers Compliance capitalism and …

Corinne Cath: Eaten by the Internet 4 stars

We are living a unique moment: internet technologies are the default infrastructure for society, not …

Collection of essays

4 stars

This is a wide ranging collection of essays about the internet. The essays highlight various aspects of political power and social structure that shape internet today.

It is a short book, well worth reading for anyone, specially those who wish to understand internet culture of today.

Dave Thomas, Andy Hunt: Pragmatic Unit Testing in Java with JUnit (2004, The Pragmatic Programmer, LLC) 3 stars

For reference more than for the fun of reading.

3 stars

This was a work related book, not very long, not too out of date and not all that interesting in the end. There are lots to learn in this book, even for the experienced Java developer, but as that is just a very minor part of what I do for work and not all that practical at the moment. I would recommend this more like a reference book for developers, to read once and refer back to later when you need to code and write tests.

As a side note I read this book on my phone, with a small screen and in EPUB format. The normal text was readable but the code sections given as examples was quite unreadable and difficult to make sense of. You would hope that the EPUB format and layout would improve to better handle code samples and images. But I used what I had …

T. Kingfisher: Nettle and Bone (EBook, 2022, Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom) 4 stars

After years of seeing her sisters suffer at the hands of an abusive prince, Marra—the …

Dark, funny and complex

4 stars

A fantasy book that somehow deals with subjects that are not all that far out there at all in a way that makes imagination flow. Quite dark and macabre, but surprisingly funny and full of compassion. Could be triggering, but still a great book.

reviewed Distrust by Gary Smith

Gary Smith: Distrust (Hardcover, 2023, Oxford University Press) 4 stars

The book argues that science's credibility is being undermined by tools created by scientists themselves. …

A call of warning

4 stars

We are constantly bombarded with claims on how artificial intelligence, big data and other advances in technology and science is going to improve our everyday life. These claims oversell and underdeliver the actual capabilities. This book explain the mechanisms at work and attempts to provide actionable advice on how to to improve. One example of the advice provided is to improve education around the known pitfalls of our current technology. An other example and perhaps the most useful advice is stated in the title: Distrust!

The book goes from one topic to the next a bit without any clear direction. I would still recommend this book to everybody in technology, especially if you are in to artificial intelligence, big data or blockchain technology.