- Hi, I'm Farai
and I'm just some random guy on the internet.
Today I'll be telling you about the books I read in 2017.
I know it's a bit late to do 2017 reflection type stuff
considering that it's nearly March.
But the Lunar New Year was just now
and I'm just gonna use that to defend myself.
Whether you buy it or not, I don't know,
but let's talk about the books.
First up is Technically Wrong by Sara.
Can't pronounce the surname, but that's the book.
I saw it on Instagram and it had the interesting byline of
sexist algorithms, biased tech, and toxic tech.
Something like that.
The book covers are gonna be next to me.
And I decided to borrow the book and I enjoyed it.
It's a very fast read and it looks into how
the mono culture that makes the applications.
So, you've heard the lines like, white, cisgendered?
The hetero-normative, heterosexual ...
Silicon, straight, that sort of stuff.
How like the lack of diversity,
which she argues is leading to biased algorithms
that are making very, very bad algorithms
that at it's best can be just very, very insensitive,
and at it's worst can actually be borderline dangerous.
Like determining sentencing for prisoners.
Which admittedly the person who made it,
before he sold it, he didn't actually hope
it would be used for that, but it's used for that.
But it's used for that.
People like numbers.
I mean, they use Bayesian statistics
to like determine whether or not lawyers
should pursue a case or if someone murdered someone.
So, I guess we do like numbers?
I mean that why actuaries are a thing.
Anyway, so the book goes through some examples.
So, like some activists who just got arrested,
got balloons saying, "Happy Birthday!"
And someone just randomly saw a picture on Facebook,
like those memories, that memories feature.
They just saw a picture of their dead child.
And stuff like, insensitive like that.
It can sometimes call black people gorillas.
And a whole bunch of stuff like that.
She argued, now while those issues seem really hard to fix,
I don't know how you would go about like fixing or
proving that and algorithm is biased itself.
Like the effects can tell,
but it's kind of a very tough situation.
There's some companies which took the initiative
to solve their problems and make them much better,
less profiling, less anxiety inducing
and just much more pleasurable person to be around.
Because some application try to push
a certain persona to them.
Which might just not be necessary.
As humans we know that, okay.
We don't always need to be jerkwad all the time.
Applications don't really have that.
So the one app was like, do we really need it?
The answer was no and they seem to be doing fine.
So that was Technically Wrong , by Sara.
Good book.
If you're interested in algorithms and bias,
that's a book for you.
Next up, is Blood, Sweat and Pixels , by Jason.
So, I read his op-ed on the New York Times,
which talked about how games typically ruin
the sort of people who make them.
Because of how stressful they are,
like there's a lot of crunch and it's just ...
As the book says,
it's just a miracle to see how games are made.
And by reading this book, it's true.
The book goes into how 10 games are made.
From really small indie games like Stardew Valley,
and Shovel Knight.
All the way to triple A titles like Witcher 3,
and Uncharted.
So, in like the challenges that they came along the way.
Things they had to overcome.
Issues with funding.
They mention Halo,
and somehow they couldn't use Master Chief because Bungie was...
Halo Wars was, very protective of their IP.
And it's real turbulent,
as you can see, the blood, sweat and pixels does show up.
It's really a great book.
After reading it, you'll never call devs lazy again.
You'll notice like, when I got the book from the library,
the librarian was like, oh look, look,
there's a comment by Adam Conover,
the one who ruins everything, which said something like,
it's depressing but ultimately uplifting.
Which is true, because seeing the games
that these guys make.
The sort of things that lots of people enjoy,
and have fun with.
Like Witcher 3, kind of gave them sense,
hey, those Polish people can make games.
Look, I'm not Polish, I'm Zimbabwean,
but you get what I'm saying.
It's a really fun book.
If you really want to look into your favorite games
and how they're made, it's a good place to start.
In fact, Jason himself looks into a lot of games
and how they're made.
I'll link to a video where he talks about
Mass Effect: Andromeda, and how that kind of messed up.
Essentially, the big development happened,
and the last 18 months of the 6 year development cycle,
and just a whole bunch of stuff.
I mean, imagine like working day and night for six months,
only to realize that a mechanic is just really boring.
Yeah, that's the sort of stuff they have to deal with.
And yeah, that's Blood, Sweat and Pixels.
Next up is the Thrilling Adventures of Babbage
and Lovelace: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer.
I was interested in seeing what Ada Lovelace
and Charles Babbage actually did.
So I found this graphic novel, I read it, and I enjoyed it.
While it's not exactly a history per se,
it's more of a steam punk novel looking into
what would happen if the analytical engine was built.
That's Babbage's computing machine.
And that Babbage and Lovelace decided to fight crime.
There's quite a bit of controversy between
what Ada Lovelace actually made was the first program
but she argues and ...
there's a strong argument that she did play a role in it,
because there were notes, and her annotated notes
are considered to be programming.
For Babbage's difference engine.
I eventually did get to go to the United Kingdom
and look at the sites that Babbage
and some of Babbage's work,
and where Lovelace was born, and it was a fun trip.
I might talk about that UK trip sometime,
but I've been meaning to for weeks
and I haven't gotten to do it.
The book is fun.
Just bear in mind that the footnotes
are where the actual history is.
The story, it's nice to have but it's not necessary.
Like, some of the footnotes just get heavy,
like just have that much image and all that footnote.
So, The Thrilling Adventures of Babbage and Lovelace,
a good book by Sydney Padua, I think.
And she replies to some of my tweets.
So I like her even more.
Do read that.
Next up is Masters of Doom.
I don't have the book right now,
but it talks about id Software, the creators of Doom,
the video game.
They also made Wolfenstein 3D,
which is considered to be the first FPS shooter.
And it was found by John Carmack, John Romeo,
another guy called Carmack and some other guy.
I haven't actually finished it,
but I did enjoy it while I was reading it.
It mainly centers around Carmack,
who seemed to have quite a fun childhood.
I mean one time he broke into the shool, and used thermite,
blew up a window, and tried to steal some Apple IIs.
And that was quite fun.
Just detailling some of the stuff they did in their early days,
and this other company, how they broke off and how they
tried to make their games.
They made this cool technique,
that they were able to bring console games onto a PC,
since at that point in time,
consoles were way more powerful than PCs.
At a given price point.
Now things have changed, there's still trade-offs,
but essentially PC games are cheaper than consoles,
so that I have a console right there,
but (sighs) not the point.
Basically they did a good job.
And it's a fun book if you want to read into id Software,
which pretty much invented a new genre of games.
So just look into that and you'll enjoy it.
Another book I read is Deep Work.
I have heard of it about this book
in all these productivity discussions and apps,
and I'm going to sound sacrilegious,
since I'm speaking sacrilege.
But I didn't enjoy the book that much.
The reason being is that, I'm a very sloppy person.
And the last thing I need
is to be reading more productivity tips.
I'm aware of his blog
and some of the things he advocates for, deep work,
focusing ...
focusing, inbox zero, pomodoro, that sort of stuff.
I'm familiar with it.
So instead of just reading more of it,
I might as well just do it.
The book's by Cal Newport, by the way.
And speaking of just doing it, is the next book.
And I have permission to swear since it's in the title,
and the book is, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck,
by Mark Manson.
Yeah, fuck.
I said it. Hah.
Have fun with that.
Fuck, fuck.
Oh wait, let me...
Let me be more mature.
But there is a lot of fuck in the book.
But the book generally argues not necessarily
that you shouldn't be giving a fuck, but rather,
you should be giving the sort of fucks.
Come to think of it I think there is a star in the f**k,
so it's not necessarily f**k.
Anyway.
But you should be giving the right sort of fucks,
because life is too short to be worrying about everything,
and what people think.
Again, like you get the point after a while so,
while fucks are interesting,
it does get a bit boring after a while.
I kind of got the point and time to move on in my life.
Another book I read is Code.
Which I'm still kind of reading, but I really enjoy it,
because it looks into how we come with the basic elements
of communication, and how we built our way up
into the modern computers we have.
We start off with Braille, no not Braille.
We start off with Morse Code, and the challenges they have.
Apparently the way things are structured
in the more common languages are like, shorter codes.
And these uncommon ones are longer.
And there are gaps and passes out into a tree, and ...
It's just amazing.
And you look at all these things,
and how they move into the computers that we use all day.
And Code is a great book, I'm still reading it.
I really wish I had this book
while I was doing computer organization.
Because that would really, really help.
But I was just confused,
like wait what are all these circuits about,
what the hell is going on?
So Code.
Let me see, I've got this here.
Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software.
By Charles Petzold.
Interesting, Charles and Charlie are ...
Charlie is short for Charles
even though it's got the same letters.
And finally is the book, The Hardware Hacker
by Andrew Bunnie Huang.
Like, the book has actual Bunnie in it's name.
So Bunnie, he does a lot of things with hardware and stuff.
I saw an argument with Naomi Wu, also known as SexyCyborg,
was in an argument that someone said
that Chinese don't really innovate,
because their stuff is unoriginal and stuff.
And she was like, "no, it's just different."
and she recommended the book in the process.
Which I picked up just trying to understand
Chinese ecosystem, which it did.
But it opened my worlds up to a lot of things, about like
how just looking at how software works,
how these things are manufactured,
and most importantly how China works itself, like IP.
IP is considered lax to Western standards,
but that allows people to take things
and like build on top of it
and make really, really cool things.
Like, you have a phone and you don't like
something about that phone, you can just change it.
So there's that guy, he can get strange parts,
he made his own iPhone and even put and iPhone jack.
Not an iPhone, a headphone jack in the iPhone 7.
I'll link to it up there.
And that's the sort of stuff that Hardware Hackers
is trying to get inside.
The most interesting takeaway from it was the fact that
at a certain point, we are going to be focusing less on
as like Moore's Law slows down,
we might actually reconsider the form of computing.
Because companies typically are like,
change your phone after two years.
Even though they'll last five years.
And right now I'm kind of like reflecting between
whether I should trade in my iPhone as soon as I can,
or just hang onto it until it does not turn on.
Because it's a good phone, and I just don't really see
why I should contribute to more e-waste.
I don't know.
Can you help me decide?
But as Morse code slows down,
we'll actually reevaluate a lot about the way
we relate to our devices and we'll also change the way that,
even programmers will start to think that,
"oh yeah, memory does exist."
so I know it's sacrilege because I like VS code but,
not sacrilege, hypocrisy, because I like VS code, but ...
At a certain point you need to look and you're like, yeah,
there has to be a point
in which you actually evaluate the technology you are using.
So there you have it.
The books I've read in 2017.
Up to the Chinese New Year.
I've included a blog post in the description
where I talk about these books
in a much more organized manner than I've done here.
And I've also linked all the books on Amazon,
I think I'll use a Smile link,
since that means you can donate to your favorite charities.
And, yeah.
If you like this video, leave a like.
Do subscribe here at Farai Gandiya, and to Farai's Code Lab.
And make sure to follow me around the internet.
Until next time, I'll still be Farai, and goodbye.
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