I was invited by Adam Lange and Adam Haertle to share my story in “rozmowa KONtrolowana” podcast (in Polish). I’d like to thank both of them and of course all of participants for invitation, leading it, questions and nice way to spend time in familiar, geeky environment :) now - just view/listen to it your favorite format :)
if you’re not first-time visitor here, likely you know already I’m reading a lot of books. a lot? after years of carefully considering and accumulating books, I finally fulfilled one of my early dreams: to have a wall full of shelves dedicated to storing my book collection (as depicted in the opening picture of this post, although some packages obstruct the view - my apologies for that). now, what exactly constitutes “a lot” of books? for me, it means reading around 2-3 books per week, resulting in an average of over 100 books per year staying on shelves. of course, this is just an average figure. during vacations, I tend to indulge in more reading material (and sometimes end up buying additional books when I exhaust my supply). moreover, due to the pandemic, I’ve been reading even more than usual. however, it’s not a race to break records. reading simply becomes second nature over time. you can start at your own pace with any book that piques your interest. and see how deep the rabbit hole goes ;) ...
Eliot Higgins has achieved something remarkable by establishing a highly influential organization right from his own kitchen. this organization is dedicated to combatting the chaos caused by rampant disinformation and falsehoods disseminated by individuals, organizations, companies, and even nations. the book takes us on a compelling journey, tracing Higgins’ path from his humble beginnings in his own kitchen, armed only with an internet-connected laptop, to the formidable position that Bellingcat holds today. (by the way, the name “Bellingcat” derives from the image of a bell attached to a cat’s collar, which serves to warn potential prey.) ...
the book did a lot of noise, being quoted everywhere even before it was published. as part of the marketing before release, they even did limited publishing in parts in partnership with wired. but… the book is bad. simply as that. if you expected Tom Clancy’s level of technical detail, just because one of the authors is retired US Navy admiral - don’t. you won’t find it. if you expected Tom Clancy’s level of characters that have nothing interesting to say and their background story is thin as cheapest printing paper for your printer - you may enjoy the book. authors may have decided to define given character by throwing some random words and deciding from them. ...
we are all dealing daily with the eponymous “bullsh*t truth” and unfortunately we are inundated with it. we live in an age where opinions are treated as facts, and anyone who has access to the “mass media” suddenly becomes a great philosopher, thinker and scientist all rolled into one. the beginning of the book gives a brilliant summary of the situation we are in: The world is awash with bullshit, and we’re drowning in it. Politicians are unconstrained by facts. Science is conducted by press release. Silicon Valley startups elevate bullshit to high art. Colleges and iniversities reward bullshit over analytic thought. The majority of administrative activity seems to be little more than a sophisticated exercise in the combinatorial reassembly of bullshit. ...
I recently had a chance to finish reading fantastic book covering disinformation war happening between USSR and USA during Cold War - Active Measures. it’s frightening how Soviet Russia, and by extension todays Russia, mastered skill of disinformation and manipulation of public opinion. and at the same time, reading it helps you spot influence over todays anti- and pro- movements, like antivacciners, anti-5G, anti-whatever. i’m not saying they’re all inspired and sponsored by Russia (or by whomever), but after reading this book you can easy see into how those movements start, evolve and get exploited. it’s just so easy to spark doubt in uneducated minds, and then let them consume “verified facts” and “in the internets”. ...
I was able to finally reach Aleksander Poniewierski SPEED book in my queue of books to read. if you don’t know Aleksander, you should - and this book will give you a lot of good answers for “why?”. I can finally attest that indeed that’s great, short, and to the point piece providing high level view of what and how drives fourth revolution, and what exactly is that revolution about. ...
ARM announced recently 64-bit Cortex CPU. it’s very interesting, as not only it can run real time operating systems, but 64 bit architecture enables it to address more than 4GB. it also has optional memory protection unit, which means it will be able to run software requiring it - like Linux for example. and by the way - it’s worth to mention polish real-time operating system that’s already on the market for last couple of years with significant success - Phoenix RTOS. that kind of innovation makes looking in future of IoT much more optimistic - as today, IoT is a dramatically boggy leaky dump of quickly forget rubbish. ...
i posted quite emotional piece some time ago - on real world warriors that really don’t need to do anything more than they already did. despite that, they want more. publicity, fame and to achieve that - they use lies. it seems even poster hero of US - killed sniper Chris Kyle did a bit of lying himself. and it seems he was even warned specifically against it by his superior - that he can’t make false claims about number of medals he received. despite that, and despite that America is quite open in areas where they shouldn’t probably be so (well, i’m from Poland, and pre-1989 nobody would even thought on getting documentation about discharged soldiers so easily) so checking such claims can be very easy. Chris DD-214 document differs a bit from his book story and obviously, the story Hollywood wants you to believe. ...
how David defeated Goliath this story started in June of this year. one of Apple AppStore employees made an “error” while reviewing revision of Basecamp authors new app - Hey. David Heinemeier Hansson, one of the Basecamp founders, took it to Twitter David is not only Basecamp CEO, he’s author of series of great books on running teams and companies. he started to relay live on Twitter emails he and his employees exchanged with Apple Application Store team. as Apple takes anything between 15 to 30% of sales cut out of every in-app transaction, they suddenly asked him to include payment option in Hey. David argued, that the app never had and doesn’t plan to have option to buy anything. ...