What are you currently reading?

[hopefullytrusting]

This reminded me of Clifford Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg, still worth reading for the recounting of methods used by both Hess and Stoll ( some of which are probably still employed today).

I think these kind of manuals are more useful than ever because their knowledge has largely been forgotten, but, let us also be honest - this was available in a public library - it only went so far (it does teach you how to do "illegal" things like 1990s phreaking, if I am recalling correctly).

[SimonNZ]

Started:

[Fëanor]

'War and Peace' by Leon Tolstoy

I've only read it once before ... about 60 years ago.



By the way, the 2016 British TV series was pretty good.  I watched it more recently. 

[Henk]

Neil Selwyn - Digital Degrowth

'We are fast approaching the point of "peak digital", with the continued mass production and excessive consumption of digital technologies set to become a key driver of climate crisis, ecological breakdown and ongoing societal instability.

Digital Degrowth is a call to completely rethink our digital futures in these fast-changing times. It explores how degrowth thinking and alternate forms of "radically sustainable computing" might support ambitions of sustainable, scaled-down and equitable ways of living with digital technologies. Neil Selwyn proposes a rebalancing of digital technology use: digital degrowth is not a call for simply making reduced use of the digital technologies that we already have - rather it is an argument to reimagine digital practices that maximise societal benefits with minimal environmental and social impact. Drawing on illustrative examples from across computer science, hacker and environmental activist communities, this book examines how core degrowth principles of conviviality, autonomy and care are already being used to reimagine alternate forms of digital technology.

Original and stimulating, this is essential reading for students and scholars of media and communication, sustainability studies, political ecology, computer/data sciences, and across the social sciences.'


Hard to do a search on the internet to get to a decent site with a display of this book. All commercial crap.

Also the reason probably why I have purchased so many books the last 20 years. Bearing the brunt now when I try to find a book, making my way through all those books and titles and being disturbingly confronted with them. 😪

It's double though. As Nietzsche writes: 'What and how little must one read?'

So many books. Too many books was already noticed to being a problem in antiquity.

A quote from the book:
'Anyone attempting to fight against this perpetual cycle of digital expansion is facing an uphill struggle.'

[hopefullytrusting]

Just picked this up for work:

[AnotherSpin]

Just finished Pierre Lemaitre's Alex in English translation. Bloody hell, what a ride. This isn't your standard thriller with a cop chasing clues and a tidy twist at the end. It's dark, clever, completely unpredictable, and honestly one of the scariest books I've read in years.

Alex herself is nothing like the usual female characters you get in crime fiction. She's victim, villain, and survivor all rolled into one, and you never quite know where you stand with her. The book keeps pulling the rug out from under you, and every time you think you've got it sussed, it hits you with something worse.

It's not a book that relies on flashy action scenes. Instead, it digs right into questions of revenge, trauma, and identity. That's what makes it feel so much more literary than the average thriller - it's properly French in that way, existential and deeply psychological.

And the ending... well, it floored me. Lemaitre gives you not one but two climaxes, and they're both as shocking as they are thought-provoking. You're left rattled, not just by the story, but by the way it forces you to rethink what justice and truth even mean.

If you want a thriller that messes with your head and leaves you rattled, Alex is the one.

[Henk]

[LKB]

'War and Peace' by Leon Tolstoy

I've only read it once before ... about 60 years ago.



By the way, the 2016 British TV series was pretty good.  I watched it more recently. 

Never read the novel, nor have I seen the 2016 adaptation. But I did see nearly all of the old miniseries back in the '70's with Anthony Hopkins et. al. ( I hoped to post a clip from that one, but apparently none are to be found... )