Hacker News Books

40,000 HackerNews book recommendations identified using NLP and deep learning

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The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

Kevin Simler, Robin Hanson, et al.

4.4 on Amazon

36 HN comments

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Nicholas Carr

4.4 on Amazon

34 HN comments

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Robert M. Sapolsky

4.7 on Amazon

33 HN comments

Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

John J. Ratey MD and Eric Hagerman

4.7 on Amazon

32 HN comments

The Gene: An Intimate History

Siddhartha Mukherjee, Dennis Boutsikaris, et al.

4.7 on Amazon

29 HN comments

Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner

4.4 on Amazon

29 HN comments

Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe

Theodore Gray and Nick Mann

4.8 on Amazon

28 HN comments

“Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”: Adventures of a Curious Character

Richard P. Feynman , Ralph Leighton , et al.

4.6 on Amazon

28 HN comments

Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman--Including 10 More Years of Business Unusual

Yvon Chouinard and Naomi Klein

4.6 on Amazon

27 HN comments

How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking

Jordan Ellenberg

4.4 on Amazon

27 HN comments

R for Data Science: Import, Tidy, Transform, Visualize, and Model Data

Hadley Wickham and Garrett Grolemund

4.7 on Amazon

26 HN comments

The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

Iain McGilchrist

4.6 on Amazon

26 HN comments

Beyond: The Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey into Space

Stephen Walker

4.7 on Amazon

25 HN comments

When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing

Daniel H. Pink and Penguin Audio

4.5 on Amazon

25 HN comments

Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys

Michael Collins

4.8 on Amazon

24 HN comments

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chrisweeklyonNov 3, 2018

I'm reading a terrific book -- "When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing"[1] -- that reviews the literature on this exact topic. Recommended.

1. http://a.co/hY8eixX

chrisweeklyonNov 3, 2018

The question of timing -- finding the optimal "when" for various activities -- is an interesting and useful one to study. I'm reading and enjoying a book[1] that does precisely that.

1. [When: the Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing](http://a.co/hY8eixX)

mhbonFeb 26, 2019

When Kids Realize Their Whole Life Is Already Online:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/02/when-...

PretzelFischonJune 29, 2019

PBS had a show "When Whales Walked, journeys in deep time" the first part covered the evolution of crocks and how large and varied that species was in previous eons.

dexenonAug 28, 2012

If you like watching about this, I recommend ``When we left the Earth'' miniseries by Discovery Channel.

Focuses on people of the early space era, with narratives provided by several known and unknown participants.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_We_Left_Earth:_The_NASA_Mi...

noodleonSep 1, 2009

had my temporary fill of tech books, so:

on my bedstand is "when you are engulfed in flames"

and my next major read is probably "the gathering storm" once it comes out.

zapperdapperonJan 9, 2018

The Black Mirror series is worth watching, although they seem to focus mostly on 'digital consciousness'. The USS Callister episode is not only gripping but very funny too. So many great episodes though - hard to pick a real standout although I would have to say if I had to San Junipero is one of the best things I have ever watched.

Then there's the really cheesy old "so bad it's good" stuff, for example:
- When Worlds Collide (1951)
- The People That Time Forgot (1977)
- Swamp Thing (1982)

Have you seen the original War of the Worlds?

Then there is the Alien franchise, Aliens (Alien 2) being my personal favourite - Bill Paxton is sooo funny in that and of course it's directed by James Cameron. Some other great actors like Michael Biehn too.

Have you watched the series Firefly? Also the (related) movie Serenity.

There is soooo much great stuff out there!

stdbrouwonAug 21, 2015

Certainly, some enrichment programs have been shown to work, but others, like the track system in which students are grouped into different classes by ability, has in many cases been shown to be not particularly beneficial for either less or more talented students. See e.g. Jo Boaler's "When even the winners are losers: Evaluating the experiences of top set' students" (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/002202797184116#....).

It's also funny how the only standard for a well-rounded education seems to have become whether you perform well on standardized tests or have what it takes to become the next "inventors, entrepreneurs, artists and scientists." Everyone seems to want gifted children to receive a deeper education, not a broader one.

I'm an absolute proponent of differentiation and enrichment for gifted students, just don't make the mistake of thinking that the solution is as simple as giving smart people a more challenging curriculum and equally smart peers and you're done. A lot is possible within (or in addition to) mixed-ability classes.

Also, are we really seriously still doing this whole "BUT LOOK AT FINLAND, LOOK AT SOUTH KOREA" dance?

nomorecensorsonFeb 24, 2020

Indeed. See When Fury Overcomes Fear: www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/viral-alarm-when-fury-overcomes-fear

the_afonOct 5, 2017

Great! Not that the Nobel prize means anything to me, but I simply love Kazuo Ishiguro. His surreal novels are always moving to me. I absolutely love how he plays with unreliable narrators, like in "The Remains of the Day", "A Pale View of Hills" and "When We Were Orphans". He shows how they are flawed, sometimes self-sabotaging, but we (or rather, I) still empathize with them.

The ending of "The Remains of the Day" always moves me, almost to tears. How the butler, having realized he threw his life away for people who were not worth it, is at it again, repeating the same mistakes and having learned (almost) nothing. And still, I root for him.

dangetsonDec 5, 2020

I'll plug 'When Breath Becomes Air', also for brain surgeon.

jtothehonJan 3, 2021

Paul Kalanithi - When Breath becomes Air.

windexh8eronMay 15, 2019

I'm about halfway through "When, The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing" and it references many studies and topics relating to, obviously, timing. Many hospitals have implemented mandatory break schedules to combat this. An interesting read so far, recommended if you enjoy the linked article from the HN post.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35412097-when

And direct from the author some insights from the book:

'Afternoons are the Bermuda Triangles of our days. Across many domains, the trough represents a danger zone for productivity, ethics, and health. Anesthesia is one example. Researchers at Duke Medical Center reviewed about 90,000 surgeries at the hospital and identified what they called “anesthetic adverse events”— either mistakes anesthesiologists made, harm they caused to patients, or both. Adverse events were significantly “more frequent for cases starting during the 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. hours.” The probability of a problem at 9 a.m. was about 1 percent. At 4 p.m., 4.2 percent. In other words, the chance of something going awry was four times greater during the trough than during the peak. On actual harm (not only a slip up but also something that hurts the patient), the probability at 8 a.m. was 0.3 percent — three-tenths of one percent. But at 3 p.m., the probability was 1 percent — one in every one hundred cases, a threefold increase. Afternoon circadian lows, the researchers concluded, impair physician vigilance and “affect human performance of complex tasks such as those required in anesthesia care.”'

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/youre-more-likely-screw-up-af...

cpdtonSep 10, 2018

You're right that many demos simply exist to showcase technical brilliance, but many in the demoscene are starting to trend further towards expressing artistic ability. Some examples off the top of my head:

- Number One/Another One by CNCD/FLT: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=77399

- When Silence Dims the Stars Above by Conspiracy: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=75713

- Aurora by Excess: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=75791

- Along for the Ride by Ümlaüt Design: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=78053

glaberfickenonJune 22, 2016

Oh! just found a few references in the exact wikipedia article I linked.

Patrick Lin (October 8, 2013). "The Ethics of Autonomous Cars". The Atlantic.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/the-et...

Tim Worstall (2014-06-18). "When Should Your Driverless Car From Google Be Allowed To Kill You?". Forbes.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/06/18/when-shou...

Jean-François Bonnefon; Azim Shariff; Iyad Rahwan (2015-10-13). "Autonomous Vehicles Need Experimental Ethics: Are We Ready for Utilitarian Cars?". arXiv.org.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1510.03346

Emerging Technology From the arXiv (October 22, 2015). "Why Self-Driving Cars Must Be Programmed to Kill". MIT Technology review.
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/542626/why-self-driving...

lotidesonSep 1, 2012

Dan Pallotta wrote an article titled "When My Business Failed". It included a quote that explains the Apple/Android war perfectly:

> I've learned that the adage about innovation is true — that at first, people say your idea is absurd, then they say it was obvious all along, and then they say it was their idea to begin with.

That's exactly what I've seen with Apple since Steve Jobs returned. Remember all the "giant iPod" comments when the iPad was released? Or the "this will fail without a keyboard" when the iPhone came out? Those people shut up now. With each product Apple released, people dismissed it immediately.

Now people are saying they're "obvious" ideas. The argument that Apple shouldn't be allowed to defend their designs all center around how "obvious" they are. Of course, they weren't obvious when Apple released them. They're only "obvious" now that other companies have copied those ideas. I won't get in to design with most of you because you aren't designers but the simplest solutions are usually the hardest to come up with. It's easy to make something complicated. It's very, very hard to make it simple or intuitive.

You can't rewrite history. When the iPhone was being developed, Android looked like Blackberry. Those are the facts. What should be obvious is that Eric Schmidt sat on Apples board and suddenly pivoted Android before being removed for "conflicts on interest." And you wonder why Steve Jobs was pissed? That's a serious breach of ethics.

Most of the anti-Apple comments are absurd. Like the Xerox thing: Apple didn't steal anything. They paid for something Xerox didn't believe in and weren't going to develop further.

If you have an issue with patents write your congressperson. Donate to not-for-profit organizations trying to fix the patent system. Contact the companies that abuse the patent system (especially if you're a shareholder or large customer) and tell them what you think. But don't use patents as an excuse to attack companies you irrationally hate.

gruseomonJan 20, 2014

Pet peeve, sorry, but it irritates me that Clojure people act like this guilty-until-proven-innocent policy about macros is somehow original. It has been standard advice for decades. Chapter 8 of On Lisp (1994) is called "When to Use Macros" and its first section is "When Nothing Else Will Do":

By default we should use functions: it is inelegant to use a macro where a function would do. We should use macros only when they bring us some specific advantage.

I understand from a language marketing point of view why someone might say, "Oh, those other Lisps made wild and crazy use of macros. It was really bad! But we are enlightened and have restricted them." But it's a bogus way of playing to a bogus criticism. It would be better to just say that there's a tradition of how to use macros correctly.

kkonceviciusonDec 12, 2020

Mostly psy-ambient and related.

Koan - When the Silence is Speaking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYOV_BfJuvs

Connect Ohm - 9980: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4342W07dSMk&list=PLRpXl5QdzS...

Shwamp - Inner Landscape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmdONmtGBc4

---

Also everything by World's end Girlfriend

Worlds End Girlfriend - Crystal Chrysalis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUxn750UL24

Worlds End Girlfriend - Les Enfants du Paradis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfG_G2O2q40

Worlds End Girlfriend - Ghost of a Horse Under the Chandelier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp_e2O1at90

NotPavlovsDogonJan 17, 2021

Russian surnames have gender. So a female surname would be Isaeva, but the male Isaev.

English writers that want to avoid what happens to a Russian family name when involving several members (it's complicated) take the smart way out and do it like this:
"after the Isaev family relocated" [1] https://theamericanreader.com/4-june-1855-fyodor-dostoevsky-...

But the reviewer at the guardian (or is it the writer of the book?) goes for "When the Isaevas moved" when writing about husband and wife. If you can't get the surnames right, how much trust should a charitable reader extend towards the review?

If you stumbled across "Hemingway she wife" in an essay on Papa's love life biography, instead of "Hemingway's wife" how much trust would that carry?

Source: I first read the D-dude at nine years of age, in the original, and then went back to him on multiple occasions. What a downer. Also, genius. I prefer Pushkin, the only optimist of Russian literature, but you gotta respect Dostoevsky: how much ahead of the time his realism was, and what an influence he left. And then lots of people simply enjoy his work. If you haven't read "Crime and punishment", strongly recommended.

As for his love life, I read many opposing viewpoints, but I prefer to limit my judgement to the work, not the person. Too messy. Unreliable sources.

WesleyLivesayonFeb 1, 2018

You mentioned a history podcast, so just remember, you asked for this. I don't think anybody matches Dan Carlin for presentation (although his historical accuracy can be lacking) but here are some that are probably the most approachable.

* History of Rome: A narrative history of Rome from foundation to fall of the western empire

* Revolutions: A long series of various revolutions around the world (American, French, Haitian, etc. etc.)

* The British History Podcast: Chronological history of the British Isles, very detailed, hundreds of episodes in and the Normans have not showed up yet.

* When Diplomacy Fails: Covers various political/military events throughout history. Currently doing a deep dive on the Korean war.

* The China History Podcast: Episodes on all topics from Chinese history from ancient times to the Mao era

* The History of Byzantium: Picks up where History of Rome ended and continues the story until (theoretically) the fall of Byzantium.

* The History of England: Similar to British History, but moves at a far faster pace, currently in the reign of Henry VIII

There are of course many many more, but these are probably some of my favorites.

Shameless Plug: I create a podcast on the First World War called History of the Great War. I think it is pretty good, at least the more recent episodes.

charlescearlonJuly 5, 2020

If you have come to a point of discomfort in seeing Marxism discussed within the context of Black Lives Matter, then you are where you need to be. Sit with it.

It is a radical movement, the larger goal of which, discussed in [1,2], is the complete dismantling of white supremacy. What would a United States look like in which all life was equally valued? We don’t know, none of us has experienced that world, and that is why (I would contend) there is an urgent need to consider all options. The movement is not just about anti-Black policing, it is about bringing about a United States (a world?) where Black life (or the life of any marginalized person) is as valued and as treasured and held as sacred as any other.

You might also consider that Black radicalism has a long intellectual history [3,4,5].

In sum, I am saying to take a moment to understand the long historical context that birthed this movement. Sit with the discomfort that goes along with the process that will bring that world into being.

[1] “When they call you a terrorist: a black lives matter memoir”, Patrice Khan-Cullors, Asha Bandele

[2] “Stay woke: a People’s Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter”, Tehama Lopez Bunyasi, Candis Watts Smith

[3] “The Black Jacobins”, C.L.R. James

[4] “Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition”, Cedric Robinson

[5] “Black Reconstruction in America: 1860-1880”, W.E.B. DuBois

creamyhorroronOct 9, 2012

Here's a great site anyone considering the state of their friendships and social life should check out:

http://www.succeedsocially.com

The sort of topics it covers:

"How To Think Of Things To Say When Making Conversation"

"When People Don't Seem Interested In Starting Friendships With You"

"When You Feel Like Your Social Circle Is Indifferent To You"

"Social Mistakes Intellectual People Can Make"

"Reasons Someone May See You As Weird"

Just start clicking around randomly and you'll probably find an article that draws your attention. Hope it helps any of you folks out there who see that they may be doing something wrong but can't figure out what it is.

tjgqonNov 19, 2012

This reminds me of this (slightly old) article, wherein the authors observe that about 1 in every 30,000 TCP packets fails the TCP checksum, even though the actual errors should have been caught by the link-level CRC. They go on to speculate about possible causes, which include memory corruption at the hosts.

A good read, and it seems to be an instance of the same problem.

"When The CRC and TCP Checksum Disagree" - http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.27.7...

dalkeonApr 9, 2015

This is not interesting. If you read the comments you'll see people complaining that it compared an O(N^2) string append method to an O(N) disk append method.

Plus, the link to the research PDF in the Slashdot article is now broken. It should be http://arxiv.org/abs/1503.02678 "When In-Memory Computing is Slower than Heavy Disk Usage".

That page comments "This paper has been withdrawn by the authors for personal reasons. No further revisions"

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