/lit/ - Literature

>>18603364
industrial society and it's future

>>18603395
>industrial society and it's future

I work in cybersecurity and anytime I try to read any tech/IT books I can't fucking take it.

>>18603364
The Orange Friendly Glow is sitting on my shelf peak comfy

Start with the Geeks

Tubes by Andrew Blum

Cool journey bro

Also the Phoenix Project a Dev Ops Novel

I enjoy reading these pleasure tech books when I'm not studying. Remember you're not studying these books. Take it easy.

>>18603504
Programmed
Logic for
Automatic
Teaching
Operations

Smartest machine yet to be rivaled by any academia
Most wholesome nerdfest ever assembled

Precursor to Apu fren cult

Just started the Sovereign Individual

Is it actually techy or just Libertarian propaganda?

>>18603364

>>18603364
Body of Secrets

Dumb fucks thought Snowden blew the lid on mass surveillance when the author did it first.

>>18603395
>>18604544
These.

>>18603364
30 years later and pic related is still the best book about computer development that's been written.

This one is also supremely comfy.

And we mustn't forget Raymond.

But neither should we forget the critics. Postman is a decent place to start there.

And of course Uncle Ted is worth reading as well.

>>18603364
Masters of Doom
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
The Soul of a New Machine

>>18606013
The project lead still makes me seethe. He doesn't deserve all the praise and reverence he gets at the end!

>>18606075
Tom West? Why does he make you seethe, anon? Genuine question. I too don't know that he deserves the fawning, but I also didn't find him nearly as objectionable as some other characters, and I've certainly worked with far *worse* managers than him in the past.

>>18606092
>Why does he make you seethe, anon?
He never spoke to his subordinates and when they tried to talk to him he was often actively hostile.
He shot down a bunch of good ideas that were then adopted months later and worked. The book gives him the credit for this.
The main reason is the bit at the end where all the juniors are celebrating and someone comes in, tells them to stop and says words to the effect of "you didn't do anything, it was all him" and the book supports this notion.

Basically, the guy was a cunt, did barely anything, was as harmful to the project as he was helpful, and then gets glorified for it.

>>18606140
The overall corporate politics at DG were shit, and I think the book rightly gives West credit for insulating his team from them and allowing them to focus on getting the Eclipse designed/built. That isn't an easy thing to do, especially with the native curiosity of the team he had assembled.

I dunno anon; I don't think he was a paragon of great management, but I don't think he was awful either. I guess YMMV.

>>18603364
some essays :

- >>18603411
-In the Beginning... Was the Command Line - Neal Stephenson
-Hackers and painters.

cyberpunk fiction

-the neuromancer

>>18603364
Halcyon Days, or the John Carmack archive

>>18606037
ESR is a hack, and I don't mean a clever trick. He does have some based views though.

The Dead Hand - cool if you're into CBRN. I read it when I was getting into the field. A bunch of case studies on chemical, biological, radioactive, and nuclear weapons and potential strategic uses.

>>18608832
One of the things people don't realize is that there aren't enough nukes to blanket the world by any means. You hit your enemies' nukes and population centers, but their food supply will still be somewhat in tact and you can't hit all the road infrastructure.

At the end of an exchange, millions of pissed off people will still exist on both sides. So this is where the idea of sending ICBMs with small pox comes in, so right as there are catastrophic economic disruptions for the rural population, they face a massive epidemic. You can also hit their livestock with anthrax, which was a worst case UK plan for if the Germans found a beach head across the Channel. Basically, they made 5 million anthrax cakes, enough to blanket live stock which would cause such an immediate food shortage that it would lead to several million civilian deaths and totally fuck the ability of the Reich to keep the war effort up. That and they were going to break their treaties and gas the Germans as they hit the beach.

Really, nukes are far from being a mega weapon. That will belong to comets and meteoroids. We've already landed on a comet successfully. What you'd do is use thrusters to steer it into orbit, and then send them down as a Dead Hand attack if needed. A decent sized asteroid would make the Tsar Bomb look like a fucking pin prick.

>>18608875
pretty sure you are not taking the nuclear winter in consideration

>>18603364
mitnick is bullshitting about 90% of the shit in this book right? i mean cmon theres no fucking way he did all that

Any books on AI? I've been wondering for a while about a good introductory to its essentials, including it's future and ethics.

This.

>>18608875
Not really -- killing another country's population is a byproduct, rather than a intentional, war-winning strategy.

>>18609686
Nuclear winter is a bad hypothesis built upon well intended thinking.

>>18603364
had a high school friend that when he left college said he was going to read this book over summer, saw him in college after summer on a bus and he was shaking, slapping his leg telling me his sister had OD'd on coccaine and kept talking about this book. Since then I kind of avoid books on wirtetapping and all that shit which is crazy as I can comfortably read fascist books and "Catcher in the Rye", just my mind goes "Dont read about tech, you'll end up on a bus talking to yourself". I also did come across a guy who was talking to himself on the bus and my mind went "he's got schizophrenia from one of those wiretapping books." its a mad, mad, mad world.

>>18611111
why is it a bad hypothesis

The Stray by Jason Ford, scifi about singularity AI, what it will mean for humans, what being human has always meant regardless of what happens with technology. self published, but there are good ones out there if you can find them.

>>18603364
The Gutenberg Galaxy - McLuhan
Future Shock - Toffler

A boomer gave me this book to read during an internship

>>18613302
The assumptions required in the hypothesis would not happen in a "realistic" model of nuclear warfare. Simply put, physicists and climate scientists don't understand how nuclear weapons are to be used.

1. They assume that the bulk of nuclear weapons will be targeting on cities -- which is not true.
2. They do not account that more than one weapon will be assigned to a target (can take from 3 to 7 warheads to successfully destroy a target).
3. They do not account that countries will hold deployable weapons in reserve.
4. They do not correctly nuance between targets that will be ground-bursted vs air-bursted.

Garbage in, garbage out -- all of the subsequent studies after the original study continue to use this poor foundation to effectively misrepresented the dangers of nuclear weapons for political goals.

>>18614123
Continuing from above;

Whilst it is a noble goal to eliminate or futher reduce nuclear proliferation. Misrepresentating the dangers does more harm that good because it ultimately prevents people (politicians and the common person) from being able to engage constructively with those who have genuine expertise.

>>18603364
The Cuckoo's Egg

>>18603364
24 Views of Mt Fuji by Hokusai

>>18610028
Agreed, very interesting read

>>18614202
>the cuckold's egg

>>18603364
What Technology Wants is interesting but dense and boring