Thursday, April 3, 2025

What I have been studying since re:Invent

Illustration of Werner reading with a stack of books

Up to date: March 6, 2024

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. Nevertheless it doesn’t go away me with a lot time to learn completely 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 value doing one thing simple?

Right here’s a brief checklist of issues I’ve began, completed, and lately added to the pile…

  • Crucial factor I’ve learn lately was Proper/Fallacious: How Expertise Transforms Our Ethics by Juan Enriquez. It clearly lays out how our ethics and morals change below the affect of know-how in a reasonably brief period of time. For instance, utilizing gene enhancing know-how similar to CRISPR to change a baby’s genome could also be unethical proper now, however our grandchildren may really feel in a different way, figuring out that we might have eliminated or edited a gene identified to trigger breast most cancers. At a time of maximum polarization, this guide challenges us to consider how shortly mainstream opinions can shift and why.
  • In mild of latest election outcomes worldwide, and the upcoming presidential race in the USA, I made a decision to re-read The Age of American Unreason in a Tradition of Lies by Susan Jacoby. It supplies superb historic perception into how politics and the politicians that signify 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 prior to now few a long time. If it is a matter you’re involved in, I urge you to learn Richard 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 an analogous view of how you can stay, I’ve at all times been impressed by Bourdain’s storytelling skills. He was an empathetic narrator that centered on individuals and their experiences. This guide is concerning the man behind the tales that helped carry 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 worldwide 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 guide is in Dutch (sorry for now to my English readers), nevertheless it was tailored right into a four-hour lengthy documentary by Stigter’s accomplice 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, nevertheless it’s a bit extra superior than I would like for the time being, so I picked Command-line Rust: A Venture-based Primer for Writing Rust CLIs by Ken Youens-Clark and it appears to be like promising to date. I’ll present an replace as I progress.
  • Only for enjoyable, I purchased the fourth guide in John Burdett’s Sonchai Jitpleecheep collection: The Godfather of Kathmandu. You probably have ever spent any prolonged time period in Bangkok, you’ll take pleasure in this collection. The writing is totally sensible. I’m not completed but, however to date, it’s pretty much as good because the earlier three books.
  • The very last thing I’ll go away you with is a paper I lately 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 just’ve learn or are studying that you just’d advocate, let me know on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Reader suggestions

Unsurprisingly, it seems my readers are nicely learn. I obtained suggestions on Twitter, LinkedIn, and from fellow Amazonians, on nearly each matter conceivable. And with the hopes of getting via greater than a handful of those this yr (those I haven’t already learn), I’ve created a consolidated checklist.

Right here’s what you’ve all really useful as of March 6, 2024:


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