User Profile

This is a great little bible of leaks & cyberattacks of the last decade that have shaped our modern world. Nicole's work at New York Times gave her access to curious set of characters. From Italian contractor-hackers for hire, through Argentine's old guard hacking for fun all the way to elite NSA hackers hacking for their country.

Most of the stories were not new for me, but she packaged them up for ordinary people. Accessible, readable and fun. Full of detail but short on technical jargon. There's a lot of notes in the back of the book to back up most of the stories as well. If you've never heard of Stuxnet, Petya, WannaCry and others, this book might make you throw away your iPhone/Android and any other electronic device.

I suppose a small consolation for people might be: Unless you build nuclear centrifuges or are a political activist in Saudi Arabia, Uighur in China or some high profile individual in politics - nobody will "burn" their expensive zero-day bug just to get into your devices. The costs have risen significantly over the years (to millions of dollars for each).

This book covers the big picture. Zero-days, nation-states spying on each other, industrial espionage, ransomware of the highest order and more. It might work as an overview for future policy decisions. What the book misses is the recommendations for the ordinary people. Can they avoid being collateral damage in this war of the titans?

Worst attacks happen because people run out of date software riddled with bugs that have long been patched in the new versions. There's a hint of this recommendation buried in the book in one or two places. But I feel like that was a missed opportunity.

I might not be a Google fan, but even I admit they know how to scale. And I am not above learning from their engineering...

As far as IT-related books go this is fairly "soft" book. There is not much code to go over and the code that is there is more as an example.

But just because it is soft does not mean it's not good. Book covers everything from working in a team, documentation, version control, code review all the way
to testing and deployments.

What is unique about this book is how well it shows two aspects of software engineering that change everything:

- Time
- Scale

With engough time requirements change, people come and go etc. With scale, a piece of code that was performant enough suddenly crawls to a halt. And this
book is filled with examples of unexpected problems these things can bring.

Best of all, most of the book does not apply just to Google scale problems (though there are definitely parts that are very unique and therefore were a bit
less interesting). And for people who've "been around the block", some parts will be more of a "duh!" rather than "aha!".

Authors did a good job with the structure and the level of detail and I really liked the TLDRs at the end of each chapter. An easy recommendation for people in
the software engineering fields, especially those just starting out.

As the authors note in the foreword - they tried writing a book they wish they had when they started their careers. I believe they succeeded. I also wish I read this book much earlier in my life.

I've read and reviewed other books that all feel related to topics covered here, namely Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman or Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. Both of these get referenced several times in specific examples.

If this book was a professional person it would be a generalist. It covers cognitive biases, fallacies and buzzwords or phrases that you might have heard but perhaps don't understand the meaning of. And it strikes a decent balance between covering a lot of things and explaining each of them well. This is by no means a specialist literature for learning about all the ways our brains are broken.

I am including a photo of the inside of the back cover which contains a nice list of things covered (in the second half of the book) to give you an idea of the breath of it.

And perhaps one of the best things about the way this book is written - it is
very readable not at all dry. An easy recommendation almost for everyone. Not just to keep practicing and keeping these mental models on my mind as I go about my life.

This book has been on my list for a while, many people recommended it and I see why. The authors are an interesting match - and economist and a writer. Asking weird questions, getting even weirder answers.

The book makes several compelling points for reevaluating how we view our lives. It is written with the idea that incentives shape many aspects of modern lives and I can’t argue with this premise. I have seen too many people “gaming the system” when the incentives are set badly. Typical example might be to reward programmers based on number of lines of code they produce. That specific example was not part of the book but it might as well have been.

Among other things - conventional wisdom is often wrong. We should not always accept it blindly but look at incentives of people who peddle these wisdoms. Experts touting this or that often have vested interest in you believing whatever they are selling. Internet has made experts much less needed in many cases because it largely eliminates information asymmetry. It makes it much harder for experts to play on fears when the other side has access to the right information and can interpret it correctly.

Book makes a case that knowing what to measure and how can make a complicated world seem much less so. That said - information can be a beacon, a cudgel, olive branch or a deterrent. All based on who wields it and how.

It is a fun short read which for me boils down to one recommendation - question what incentives people have for doing or saying things. It will give you insights into their behaviors.

It’s not over until the mockingjay sings

So how about a Hunger Games prequel you say? Well, I’ve read the original books long ago and so I won’t be able to make a comparison. On its own, the story is engaging as you follow the future president Snow through his mentorship of 10th Hunger Games and beyond as the slow descent into darkness begins.Pitting kids to fight each other to the death in an arena is a unbelievable proposition. So having a bit more background into how it came it be is a welcome thing. And the book certainly seems to try and show just how even some of Panem citizens feel uneasy about the games themselves, but unable to voice their opinions. And so they just go along with the tradition even long after the war.If history has shown us anything it’s that most people will hide behind the mass of other people and not swim against the stream too much. So perhaps the premise is not that far fetched in the bleak future.One way the descent into madness is meant to make sense to us the readers is by us getting a good look into the workings of Coriolanus’s mind and his inner reasoning for his actions. It feels like he goes through too many changes over the course of a few weeks.All that said - I found the ending somewhat unlikely. But the story was fun so I won’t complain too much.

He said he didn't think anyone died happy, but you could die well

The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them.

Well this certainly was something new. A set of four novellas - slightly longer than a short story, but not quite a novel straight from King's great mind. And all of them hinting/connected to each other a little bit. Making them part of a single world. Most of King's book are considered a part of a single world anyway right?The first one a direct inspiration for Shawshank's Redemption. So most people will already know the broad strokes of the story. But it was still fun to read.The second (and longest) about a co-dependent and twisted relationship between and old Man with a terrible past and a young boy that grows up and grows dark with each passing page.The third about a boyish adventure like no other. A real gory treat for brave young gang of four friends who don't really belong together - as told by the only one of them still alive.And last (and my favourite) story of a old mans' club full of secrets and a tale of one determined mother. I imagine there's secrets connected to The Dark Tower and all the other worlds of King's world. A real treat.So should you read this? As King himself admits in the afterword - his writing is not "high literature" and not even meant to be. But it sure is entertaining and he's certainly an amazing storyteller. So sure - go ahead and have some fun.

If you don't control your temper, your temper will control you.

Stephen King is no stranger to putting more or less ordinary people in strange situations and let them deal with it. This book follows a similar recipe, cutting off a small town from the rest of the world completely. A drifter ex-soldier as one of the main heroes is not a novel idea. Neither is the"island" idea of being cut off from rest of the world. And of course neither is a despot trying to take over his little corner of the world. Put it all together and you get Under the dome.Looking back at the story, the villains are quite easy to identify early on. But their slow change from small-town jerks to full on villains is nevertheless quite a thing to watch. I kept asking (and still wonder) why and how would ordinary people let someone grab so much power and misuse it so blatantly. But then I guess this is not the crazy part of the story, but the more realisticone.One way or another, King is a master storyteller who can tell a story in a captivating way. At least it kept me up until 4:30 in the morning because I just had to finish those last 200 pages.One thing I will admit (and for which I am giving 4 stars)... There are just too many characters which are not all that developed. Even by the end of the book I was mixing them up to some degree and realized I did not even care that much. I cared for the story itself, but not the heroes themselves.

Severe illness is not life-altering, it's life-shattering. Less of an epiphany and more like someone had just firebombed the path forward.


There is no hiding from death. This book certainly doesn't shy away from the message. I feel this will not really be a spoiler, as you'll learn in the preface, the author is no longer alive.

Speaking of the preface - there is a phrase that repeatedly came to my mind as I read this book - a prose poem. Do not be mistaken, there's very little actual poetry in this book (though there is some), but the prose has that quality, rhythm, cadence and urgency to continue with the next line.

I found the writing brilliant. At times full of gore and action of surgery, only to be replaced with serenity of a quiet dinner with friends. This might be a book about dying, but it is full of life. It's not a book about cancer, being a doctor nor is a full-on patient story of fight for survival. But it is all of those and more.

For me personally - It's a beautiful philosophical book on how to live and die on your own terms. Finding out who/what is important to you, and finding the courage within you to get up each day and fight for it. Realizing that priorities change and that's OK.

I am quite sure I will read this again in the future.

Do not follow your passion. That's the gist of this book, but oh what an oversimplified and ultimately useless advice it would be.

And this could have been one of those "happy go lucky" type of books, full of personal anecdotes and fluffy marketing. The book is full of various personal anecdotes, but they are mostly there to show how messy good careers can be.

Book is structured and written in a very readable way (exemplified by me getting through it in a few days while taking copious notes). Best of all - there is a fair amount of actionable advice. No bombastic fake advice to make you into a successful business owner in a week, but actual things you can do day to day in your work to improve things over time for yourself. There's a few rules which I'll highlight to start with:
Rule 1: Don't follow your passion
Rule 2: Be so good they can't ignore you - importance of skill
Rule 3: Turn down a promotion - importance of control
Rule 4: Think small, act big - importance of mission

I am not going to spoil the whole book by summarizing too much of it, but I will highlight a few things I found important. Author bases his advice on personal experience, some personal interviews and actually some interviews conducted by Roadtrip Nation (those interviews can be viewed online).

What makes a great work that motivates people? For most people the work would have a mix of following attributes:

• Creativity


• Impact


• Control

And if those are valuable work attributes, what makes people worthy of receiving them - a basic supply and demand 101. Your need career capital - skills that someone is willing to pay for. A fair amount of book actually focuses on acquiring these skills - especially the 10 000 hour rule and deliberate practice. Basically ways in which we can improve our skills and push ourselves to get better at whatever it is we do.

When you have finally acquired this capital (and verified people are willing to pay for it), you can try to exert more control over your life. Whether it's working less hours, or have more autonomy in your day to day work or many other ways. However there are a few "control traps" and some advice on how to avoid them.

And last but not least - you should think about your mission that will govern your professional life. However the author thankfully advises not do try and define a mission until you have built a fair amount of career capital and gotten to the edge of your field so that you mission can actually have a bigger effect.

As with the deliberate practice - you should try and test your mission by creating smaller projects/bets that let your validate and verify things are the way you imagine them to be. And that people are willing to pay you to go in that direction perhaps.

Courage in your career decisions is important, but so is the timing. After all - working right trumps finding the right work.

This feels like one of the more useful self-improvement books out there and I can wholeheartedly recommend it especially to young people starting out.

Shortly after I started reading this book I read an article on taking smart notes and so I naturally applied it for recording interesting quotes and tidbits from this book. Following is not even close to all of my notes, but more their condensed summary.

I no longer remember why exactly I added the book to my reading list. It's in one of my self-improvement drawer. And in that regard I think I will have a hard time practically using things I learned from this book. As even the author himself noted - even decades of studying this field has not helped his intuition too much. There are several reasons for this - most notably that the errors in our judgement often come from "System 1" in our head - the intuitive, quick associative memory that mostly runs amok and makes split-second decisions throughout our lives. The slower, logical part of our brain (System 2) only takes over occasionally when it detects a problem. And the crux of the issue is that more often than not - we will not notice an issue until way too late.

One of the recurring topics is the feud between "rational" school of economics and the psychologists. The simplistic economic theory treats all actors as rational, always having all the information and making the best decisions. I find it self-evident that is absolutely not the case. Humans are maybe not downright irrational, but certainly prone to making less-than ideal decisions due to various reasons.

The book itself is full of examples and references to experiments that you get to replicate in your own head. In most of these, the reason for the example is to show you how your intuition and brain makes incorrect decisions. And there are plenty reasons why we falter. Some are more commonly known cognitive biases.The priming effect, anchoring, sunk cost fallacy, planning fallacy and more.

In my head I have a list of situations in which I would love my "logical self"(System 2) to engage and carefully consider things. When people throw percentages, probabilities or similar numbers in my direction and expect some decision for example. Or maybe I would love to do a pre-mortem (just as you area bout to finalize a decision imagine that you are a year in the future it turned out terribly - write what went wrong).

One excerpt/example from the book (in my own words so any mistakes are my own). On the topic of emotional framing there was this experiment:

Participants were told to imagine they were given 50 USD. Then they were given one of the following options:

1. You can keep 20 USD or gamble and possibly lose it all
2. You can lose 30 USD or gamble to keep the whole sum

Before you read the below "spoiler" try to first answer what you would choose in each of the cases based on a gut feeling. Then think about it a bit more and compare.

As you probably expect - most people will play it safe and take 20 USD if given the first formulation (frame) and gamble in the second (even though options are ultimately the same).

Some individuals are more resilient and can resist this framing effect, but on average people tend to play it safe (take no decision). But if they feel their options are bad, they will more likely try to gamble.

Plenty more could be written on the book (especially since I kept copious notes this time around). All in all - I have definitely found a lot of surprises and feel like I've learned something about humanity as a whole. Fingers crossed I'll remember it next time I'll need it.