It's a good read on introducing concepts of the Austrian school of economics.
It's also entertaining to read the author's pure hatred for Marx, Keynes, or anything remotely related to government expenditure. Such as this hilarious passage:
"Karl Marx, a semiliterate German bum who never had a job that could support him. Marx lived off the support of rich benefactors in England as he pontificated about reengineering the world into a dystopia run by people incapable of supporting themselves through their own labor."
This book is fucking insane (in a good way)! You got to read it. It’s like something out of a video game. After reading the wild stories, it even makes the garbage Hollywood turns out look incredibly boring and lame.
The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary …
Power to the bazaar!
5 stars
The essay titled “Revenge of the Hackers” alone is a great read that lays out how Open Source branded and shifted away from Free Software.
Lots of great context and insights behind the power of the bazaar (open source) vs. the cathedral (closed source), even ~23 years after the revised edition of the book was written.
The true story of what happened the first time machines came for human jobs, when …
A (factual) perspective on the Luddites
5 stars
This is an incredibly well-researched and masterfully written book on the history of the Luddites and the first unscrupulous tech titans of the 19th century. Highly recommended read.
Brian Kernighan provides an enjoyable read detailing the creation of Unix.
I really enjoyed the "behind the scenes" stories that describe the whys & hows that led to the development of some of the programs and tools we use to this day, such as: pipes, grep/egrep, the C language itself, the Bourne shell, Make, Sed & Awk, and on and on!
The mini biographies of the many talented folks (e.g., Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Doug McIlroy) who were instrumental in creating Unix was a fund read as well.
A potent exploration of the power of blockchains to reshape the future of the internet—and …
Where's the beef?
2 stars
A book that could have been a small blog post.
As the author is a general partner at a16z, who invests in all manner of crypto companies, I expected a hell of a lot more from the author in making a case for blockchain. But sadly it was a very weak and limp book that didn’t really have much to say. Other than the author’s insane hatred for RSS — why all the anger for a web feed? 🤷♂️
Here’s one of my gripes with this book (out of many): Chris states that the “unique properties of blockchains unlock a range of applications that simply can't be created on traditional computers.” But never provides a single solid example of what blockchains can do that we can’t already do with current “traditional” tech.
Another gripe: I found it disingenuous that Chris doesn’t plainly disclose his affiliation upfront with the crypto companies …
A book that could have been a small blog post.
As the author is a general partner at a16z, who invests in all manner of crypto companies, I expected a hell of a lot more from the author in making a case for blockchain. But sadly it was a very weak and limp book that didn’t really have much to say. Other than the author’s insane hatred for RSS — why all the anger for a web feed? 🤷♂️
Here’s one of my gripes with this book (out of many): Chris states that the “unique properties of blockchains unlock a range of applications that simply can't be created on traditional computers.” But never provides a single solid example of what blockchains can do that we can’t already do with current “traditional” tech.
Another gripe: I found it disingenuous that Chris doesn’t plainly disclose his affiliation upfront with the crypto companies he mentions throughout the book (such as Helium, Compound, Dapper Labs, and Maker — all of them a16z backed)…unless you go alll the way to the second-last page of the book to read that note.
The one positive: Chris does a good job of highlighting the dreadful consolidation of power and control of the Internet juggernauts (Meta, Google, Amazon, etc.).
