Physicist Avi Loeb of Harvard believes we should take seriously the idea that ‘Oumuamua – the 1st known object to pass through our solar system from interstellar space – might have been created by an alien civilization. His new book is called “Extraterrestrial.” Source: https://earthsky.org/space/book-avi-loeb-extraterrestrial-1st-sign-of-intelligent-life…
Tag: memoir
Stephen Hawking memoir: ‘An iron man in a frail man’s facade’
Leonard Mlodinow’s book on his friendship with Stephen Hawking shows another side to the late physicist, including tales of punting in Cambridge and annoying a restaurant chef Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24833030-400-stephen-hawking-memoir-an-iron-man-in-a-frail-mans-facade/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
The 41 Books Mark Zuckerberg Has Recommended on Facebook
Last week Slashdot featured “the 61 books Elon Musk has recommended on Twitter,” as compiled by a slick web site (with Amazon referrer codes) called “Most Recommended Books.” But the same site has also created a page of books recommended by Mark Zuckerbeg. Zuckerberg’s list includes books by Peter Thiel (Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the…
Why Do Corporations Speak the Way They Do?
An anonymous reader shares a article: Anna Wiener, author of memoir “Uncanny Valley”, writes especially well — with both fluency and astonishment — about the verbal habits of her peers: “People used a sort of nonlanguage, which was neither beautiful nor especially efficient: a mash-up of business-speak with athletic and wartime metaphors, inflated with self-importance. Calls to action; front lines and…
How a flawed mentality led to Silicon Valley’s meteoric rise
In the memoir Uncanny Valley, Anna Wiener examines the collective hyperconfidence that has enabled the tech sector’s meteoric growth Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2232869-how-a-flawed-mentality-led-to-silicon-valleys-meteoric-rise/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower: US Heading In ‘Same Direction As China’ With Online Privacy
“The United States is walking in the same direction as China, we’re just allowing private companies to monetize left, right and center,” Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie told CNBC on Wednesday. “Just because it’s not the state doesn’t mean that there isn’t harmful impacts that could come if you have one or two large companies monitoring or tracking everything you do,”…
Paging Big Brother: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite
As fake and illegitimate texts proliferate online, books are becoming a form of misinformation. The author of “1984” would not be surprised. From a report: In George Orwell’s “1984,” the classics of literature are rewritten into Newspeak, a revision and reduction of the language meant to make bad thoughts literally unthinkable. “It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words,” one true…
Edward Snowden Memoir To Reveal Whistleblower’s Secrets
After multiple books and films about his decision to leak the biggest cache of top-secret documents in history, whistleblower Edward Snowden is set to tell his side of the story in a memoir, Permanent Record. From a report: Out on 17 September, the book will be published in more than 20 countries and will detail how and why the former CIA…