The months main into re:Invent are thrilling (and sometimes exhausting). I spend most of my time doing analysis, assembly with sensible engineers, and growing tales to share with you on stage. It’s great. But it surely doesn’t go away me with a lot time to learn solely for pleasure.

So, within the weeks that comply with re:Invent, I attempt to make time to work via the ever-growing pile of books accumulating on my nightstand and all through my workplace. It’s a shedding battle. Then once more, when was it ever price doing one thing simple?

Right here’s a brief listing of issues I’ve began, completed, and not too long ago added to the pile…

• A very powerful factor I’ve learn not too long ago was Proper/Improper: How Expertise Transforms Our Ethics by Juan Enriquez. It clearly lays out how our ethics and morals change underneath the affect of expertise in a reasonably brief period of time. For instance, utilizing gene modifying expertise equivalent to CRISPR to change a toddler’s genome could also be unethical proper now, however our grandchildren may really feel in another way, understanding that we might have eliminated or edited a gene identified to trigger breast most cancers. At a time of utmost polarization, this ebook challenges us to consider how rapidly mainstream opinions can shift and why.
• In mild of current election outcomes worldwide, and the upcoming presidential race in the US, I made a decision to re-read The Age of American Unreason in a Tradition of Lies by Susan Jacoby. It gives wonderful historic perception into how politics and the politicians that symbolize us have shifted away from rational and mental debate to who can shout the loudest. It’s fairly startling to see how a lot public language has devolved up to now few a long time. If this can be a matter you’re considering, I urge you to learn Douglas Hofstadter’s 1964 Anti-Intellectualism in American Life.
• I lastly had an opportunity to complete Down and Out in Paradise: The Lifetime of Anthony Bourdain by Charles Leerhsen. As a fellow world traveler, with the same view of how you can dwell, I’ve at all times been impressed by Bourdain’s storytelling talents. He was an empathetic narrator that centered on individuals and their experiences. This ebook is in regards to the man behind the tales that helped convey these narratives to life.
• As lots of you understand, I’m a lifelong AFC Ajax supporter, so I actually loved Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s biography Adrenaline: My Untold Tales. Zlatan began his profession at Ajax and his spotlight reel from these days will do extra justice than my phrases can:

• I picked up Atlas van een bezette stad 1940-1945 by Bianca Stigter, which covers the German occupation of Amsterdam within the type of an illustrated Atlas. It’s mind-blowing to see the ways in which the Nazi occupation nonetheless haunts town. The ebook is in Dutch (sorry for now to my English readers), but it surely was tailored right into a four-hour lengthy documentary by Stigter’s companion Steve McQueen, referred to as “Occupied Metropolis” which debuted at Cannes final yr.

• I began studying Rust for Rustaceans: Idiomatic Programming of Skilled Builders by John Gjengset, but it surely’s a bit extra superior than I would like in the mean time, so I picked Command-line Rust: A Venture-based Primer for Writing Rust CLIs by Ken Youens-Clark and it appears promising up to now. I’ll present an replace as I progress.
• Only for enjoyable, I purchased the fourth ebook in John Burdett’s Sonchai Jitpleecheep collection: The Godfather of Kathmandu. In case you have ever spent any prolonged time period in Bangkok, you’ll take pleasure in this collection. The writing is completely sensible. I’m not completed but, however up to now, it’s nearly as good because the earlier three books.
• The very last thing I’ll go away you with is a paper I not too long ago learn from the Netflix Expertise Weblog, “Rebuilding Netflix Video Processing Pipeline with Microservices” by Liwei Guo, Anush Moorthy, Li-Heng Chen, Vinicius Carvalho, Aditya Mavlankar, Agata Opalach, Adithya Prakash, Kyle Swanson, Jessica Tweneboah, Subbu Venkatrav, Lishan Zhu — It goes into element about rebuilding their video processing pipeline on their microservice-based platform Cosmos.

If there’s one thing that you simply’ve learn or are studying that you simply’d advocate, let me know on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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