The Books in the Box
Alright. We're good there. Alright. So, I'm actually even even though we kinda did this, I thought we were punting a little bit on this by having a topic of just, like, read any good books lately. But, there were a lot of really good replies, and I actually I'm I'm actually really excited to talk about, the various books.
Speaker 1:Because I've been meeting Adam to put together, like, a software engineers reader for a long time of books that I that have been meaningful for me over my career. So we could be going through a lot of books today. I'm just gonna warn you.
Speaker 2:And you're talking about Twitter spaces and your, your unending RFP request. And I think that that also, it's our intention to lean into what they're giving us here. I think that most of the spaces I've listened to have been 2 talkers and maybe a guest or whatever. So it would be great to get folks cycling through.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Wanna hear other great recommendations. We are gonna hit, 2 little mental divots of mine. 2 2 little, old mental problems of mine. 1 so, Adam, I mean, you and I have known another for a very long time, so I'm almost certain I have dragged you through my issues with highlighting
Speaker 3:in both I mean
Speaker 1:Are you I I Other people high
Speaker 2:I mean, I I know that other people have highlighted your books, which is outrageous.
Speaker 1:This is what I'm talking about. I mean, so you know my position on highlighting book. I'm defacing books, really, which is what what what
Speaker 2:I'm I'm with you. I'm with you a 100%. Like, except and I think we shared on this one. The only times I've underlined or highlighted our comments in books is when I've passed the point where I've decided the book was trash and that, that I would, I wasn't defacing it. I was improving it by leaving my comments in the heart.
Speaker 1:So you were like, it was a rebuttal in for, as far as you were concerned.
Speaker 2:Kind of. I mean, and I know that I feel like I'm bringing us to Hati and the Nadi already from your Ishtar, but, like, you know, with, with, how to castrate a bull is
Speaker 1:is Oh, Jesus.
Speaker 2:A terrible
Speaker 1:That's how we're starting.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I gotta start there. Right?
Speaker 1:We're starting with the anti list. Alright.
Speaker 3:Let's just get it
Speaker 1:out. Let's get it done.
Speaker 2:That's but that's a place where, you know, where where leaving notes to the future reader, help them know, no, it's not just you. It's not just you. You're not you're not the crazy one, and it's the book crazy.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm sure that that future scholars will pour over your copy of from 0 to 1 like they're studying the Talmud.
Speaker 2:With great interest, I'm sure.
Speaker 3:With great interest to understand that this
Speaker 1:actually it may have it may have reflected a prevailing zeitgeist, but there was at least one counter opinion from whomever possessed this book, and it's angry margin notes. No. So I am reading, honestly, one of I I it a book that I cannot recommend highly enough. So I don't know if you this is a book that Rick Altheater, our coworker, recommended to me. And he was giving me a hard time because he first of all, he made a mistake.
Speaker 1:He recommended it being in all hands. He dropped it into the chat without having secured his own copy. That's a rookie mistake. And if I go and buy your copy after if I buy the copy that you've been looking at because you've dropped into the chat, like, that's not on me. That's what I'd like to say first.
Speaker 1:Fair. Okay. So this is The Inventor's Dilemma, the remarkable life of of h Joseph Gerber. So for those who if you've got any proximity to hardware, Gerber's are the are what you actually send for fabrication. I didn't realize that that was named after a person.
Speaker 1:And Joseph Gerber is an incredibly interesting person. Did you Adam, do you know anything about this book?
Speaker 2:No. Not at all. I I know that you own the last copy of manufacturing. That's the end of my knowledge.
Speaker 1:I think I own the last copy that you can find for 3.99 on Amazon. I think that that's I I think that one has to spend, like, an extra buck to get the the Well but the so this is a marvelous book. I did buy it used. I was punished for sniping Rick's copy because the previous owner is the world's biggest jackass. I don't know who this person is, but they are highlighting all of, like, the wrong passages, and they're relieving margin notes that are just inane, that are just ridiculously bad.
Speaker 1:So the the and so I'm like, I'm being you can imagine, like, if and and indeed, Adam, if you have orchestrated this, once again, this is an act of sheer genius if you pull
Speaker 3:this off.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. 15 years ago,
Speaker 3:since myself. That's right.
Speaker 1:Because and let me tell you. It feels that good. It feels like this is this has been this book has been sent to actually troll me because the the book itself is incredibly good. And so Gerber, who is a wildly inventive guy, invents indeed the the format that that bears his name and the, but also revolutionizes, the apparel industry, with automation. And, it does basically the first real plotters, the the photo plotters, what bears his name, taking an actual, using an actual computer generated image and putting that on, using that as for PCB manufacturing.
Speaker 1:Incredibly interesting book and and all the more so. It's actually it's written by his son, which normally would be, like, I I it would be but this person is is it is well written. So it's forgiven that it's written by a family member. And the in particular though, he grows up in Nazi occupied Vienna and escape he's Jewish and escapes. The first six chapters in consists of of his family's escape from Europe and holy shit.
Speaker 1:I mean, it is just I mean, it's incredibly vivid, terrifying So that's this is my the I'll be it with the caveat that you should not read my copy because the inane the the the inane margin notes are terrible. But it's an it's an outstanding book, and you and everyone, I think, would really like it a lot. So that Awesome. This is my first recommendation. I've got no idea what format gonna go over here, but I'm just gonna throw out my it's my first I don't know if you wanna go round round round
Speaker 2:round robin or what, but Well, do we do we wanna let folks kinda, put their hand up, volunteer to speak, talk about
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I know. Something that they read or listened to?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I think we should go Ron Robin. So that's mine. So whoever's next, go with a podcast or book that that maybe documentary that you've read that's meaningful to you maybe recently, maybe not so recently. One thing I've been definitely been trying to do in the in the the the pandemic that has worked for me is using that commute time for reading.
Speaker 1:The commute time that I know I have to spend, make sure that I'm studying that reading. So I would encourage everyone to do that. Hopefully, other people have been doing the same. It's been very good for my my own mental health. But, yes, Adam.
Speaker 1:Do you wanna go next? Then we'll then we'll get other folks in here.
Speaker 2:You know,
Speaker 1:you know, this is
Speaker 2:a little bit divisive, because I think I recommend this to you and, I don't think you loved it. But there's this book Drift Into Failure, and it describes a variety of disasters and how their their, the response to many of these disasters is to find the broken component or the broken part or or the broken process, the broken person, and repair it or fire them or whatever, when in fact, often these, failures are a result of like a cacophony of failure or this drifting into failure where a small change to a maintenance schedule kind of changed slowly over time to the point where it dramatically diverged from the the initial intention. And that initial intention got lost along the way. And this is everything from, aircraft disasters, which I know are favorite years, Brian, to things like medical failures where, the wrong medication was given, you know, intravenously where many bypasses or pardon me, many many safeguards have been bypassed. So I found it a really interesting read in particular as it applies to obviously our domain, and thinking about, you know, building a culture that inculcates safety and and correctness and robustness, and also focusing on how or navigating how we, like, find the broken pieces, but but don't stop there.
Speaker 2:But find the the broken processes that surround them and the and the broken aspects
Speaker 3:Can you remind is this do they use the phrase normalization of deviance in that book? Or are they just describing the concept?
Speaker 4:It's been
Speaker 2:a little while. I can't I can't remember that that turn of phrase.
Speaker 5:Okay. But
Speaker 3:it's been a few years.
Speaker 1:But I
Speaker 3:feel like that's what the book is about though. A a lot
Speaker 5:of it.
Speaker 2:I think that's right. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I struggle with the book because he really picks on aviation, which I think is which is strange to me because aviation is so it has is so safe relative to everything else. So that was the I and I I I maybe need to give that buck another shot. I I could not I and maybe you shouldn't just skip over the aviation bits.
Speaker 2:No. I you know, and I think like many of these, sort of, I don't know, kind of popularized science books. It it may draw, you know, focus too heavily. And and, you know, the incompleteness of the analysis of some of these examples can certainly undermine it for folks more familiar with the with the, you know, exigencies of the case.
Speaker 1:Well, so I actually got a a little bit of a different hypothesis. So it's by Sydney Decker, and I would like to know how old the author is. Because one thing I think is possible is aviation was has become much more yes. He's older than I am. He's 52.
Speaker 1:It has become much safer over my lifetime. And I do wonder if it it's, if it's reflecting kind of an older view of it. I mean, because it used to be that it's only when I was a kid. There were, and, actually, there's there's another book I'd recommend on during a low point of aviation. I guess I'm I'm cheating on our own game now.
Speaker 1:But the the rise and the fall of the DC 10. Have you've read you've read that?
Speaker 3:No. I
Speaker 1:haven't. Very good. And that I think represents, like, aviation at the age that he's kind of referring to aviation, which is like an air age where it did feel like it was a lot more that was not understood. And you had, like, the you had these major aircraft disasters on a regular basis and a lot of problems. And there are engineering problems and there are people problems and there was cascading failure and but so, yeah, I think Sydney Dicker, I think, deserves a shot
Speaker 3:for me.
Speaker 1:I I will
Speaker 2:say he he's an odd guy. I had the opportunity to meet him. He was supposed to give the keynote at a conference, but blew it off because he had an opportunity to, like, pilot one of the San Francisco Bay ferries, totally illegally. But, like, the pilot was willing to, like, hand over the controls to him. And he felt like that was, too tough
Speaker 1:of an offer. Wait wait wait a fucking minute. Wait. Oh, are you are you kidding me?
Speaker 2:Nope. Nope. And then so the conference reorganized the schedule and you spoke the next day.
Speaker 1:Okay. But no. Wait. It's not just the conference. It's not just the conference.
Speaker 1:You wrote a book on a trip called Drift Into Failure. Drift. Literal drift. Literal drift into failure. Admonishing people for for for taking safety critical pilot watercraft?
Speaker 1:I mean I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:I mean, you're saying it's a little a
Speaker 6:little on the nose,
Speaker 5:I guess.
Speaker 3:It's a little on the nose.
Speaker 1:It's a little on the nose. And what what's the what's the, Josh, what what what was the oil freighter that that that bonked into the Bay Bridge? The, it wasn't Costco, but I feel that's close. I can't remember. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 1:Or is this one of these things where I just sound crazy?
Speaker 3:No. I I think I think that happened.
Speaker 1:Anyway. Alright. Well, okay. So So
Speaker 2:that's my controversial pick. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Alright. Who's next? Who's got a who's
Speaker 1:got a maybe maybe a less controversial recognition.
Speaker 5:Written books, but but I like things which have, you know, random facts and figures. I think it comes from spending too much time with IBM manuals. But, the book I wanna recommend is the invention that changed the world.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love that book.
Speaker 5:Yeah. It's all about the MIT Rad Lab, the radiation laboratory, and, development and perfection of radar and all the other technologies that spun out of that, all those high frequency electronics.
Speaker 1:Adam, have you read this? No. Never. Oh, it's not saying anything. Okay.
Speaker 1:I actually think I actually think, Tom, you're selling it short a little bit. I think it's actually I think that maybe my god, is my
Speaker 5:I'm not implying this book is poorly written.
Speaker 3:Okay. Yeah. Because I
Speaker 1:think the book's pretty I
Speaker 5:don't I don't exactly remember.
Speaker 1:So the book is in the Sloan Technology series, and I would recommend just about every book in that series. It is Tom, I don't know. Have you read any of the other books in that series?
Speaker 5:Don't think so.
Speaker 1:So this is, the atomic sun, they're making the atomic bomb, dark sun, about the, that that one I could that's on the hydrogen bomb. I couldn't quite I that was just too dark. The, and then, crystal fire, one one of my one of my favorites, Dream Reaper by Craig Canine, about the bicombine rotor, about agricultural technology, and then the the invention that changed the world, Tube on television. There are a bunch of good ones. I love that book, Tom.
Speaker 1:I Yeah. Did are there anything did any things that stick with you from from that book in particular?
Speaker 5:Oh, it's been a while, but, yeah, just the whole context of World War 2 and then all these famous names of people involved this way and the other. And it's all all this stuff which is critical to the development of the electronics for computers, but really nothing to do with computers per se.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I just think he I mean, that book of Tom was one of the ones that really sharpened for me how much World War 2 I mean, there was World War 2 is a bottomless pit of history, but there there is so much technological history in World War 2. And the story of World War 2 is so much a technological story. I I mean, it's many different stories, but that's a big piece of it. And radar I mean, radar won the war just for Yeah.
Speaker 1:For those who are Spoiler. Spoiler alert.
Speaker 5:After after the war, the the Rad Lab published this 28 volume set, describing all this technology they developed. And these are really interesting reads because if you know nothing about some field like microwaves, you could read this book and it starts you at ground 0 and and takes you way up the curve.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's interesting.
Speaker 5:Yeah. You know, unlike modern techs, you so often dive in, and you're expected to know too much already.
Speaker 1:That is really interesting. Yeah. Because it's also written at a time when they're having to ramp everybody up. Right. Right.
Speaker 1:And, Tom, do you remember also when they were, they were they're at MIT developing radar, and they can't figure out why it's less effective on humid days? If I'm remembering this I'm not sure I remember this anecdote exactly correctly. But they basically discover NMR as part of this. They discover that, like, oh, shit. There's water there there are water molecules that are actually absorbing these certain wavelengths.
Speaker 5:Right.
Speaker 1:And and then we can actually turn that around and use that diagnostically. It's basically the birth of of NMR and MRI, as as well
Speaker 5:as microwave ovens.
Speaker 1:And microwave ovens. Yes. Oh my god. Yeah. I feel like I can't remember who's that, but, I mean, immediately, like, I'm a clumsy person, and I'm gonna injure myself.
Speaker 1:So I should not take things apart anyway. But, god, do not take apart your microwave oven. Yeah. That that motherfucker will kill you.
Speaker 5:And they have all all these cool names for things like Right? Right.
Speaker 1:Right. Right. Still not sure
Speaker 5:what that is. There's
Speaker 7:a there's a cool book if if you folks are interested in this called Big Science, which is kind of talking about the same history, but from the perspective of, Ernest Lawrence who, you know, he was worked as Robert Oppenheimer and kind of it was all about how, you know, they built cyclotrons and that kind of stuff. And and an aspect of that was also the nuclear medicine radiation therapy.
Speaker 1:Actually, that's and sorry. What was that? It's called it's called
Speaker 5:Big science.
Speaker 7:The book book is called Big Science. It has a subtitle. Yeah. It's it's kinda like the, you know, the beginning of the military industrial complex and how that came out of the war.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Alright. Good one. Alright. Tom, that's a great recommendation.
Speaker 1:And I and I have to feel like that's that's an entree to that whole series. Alright. Who's next? Who's got who's got another good one?
Speaker 4:I I
Speaker 8:have a little story. I've been reading Skunk Works.
Speaker 5:Oh, another Great book. Yeah. Favorite.
Speaker 8:Yeah. The memoirs of, Lockheed engineer slash chief executive Bill Rich. So this book, has the the cover of this book has a quote from Tom Clancy promoting it on the front of it. So Lockheed's Skunk Works built a u 2, which is which is a top secret spy plane commissioned by the CIA to penetrate Russian 3 big lenses had enough film to read every license plate from Pakistan to Moscow. So in this book, there's an excerpt from a CA from a CIA pilot telling a story so improbable, I don't think Tom Clancy himself could have, pulled it off in one of his novels.
Speaker 8:So the Soviets are struggling to stop these planes, these these pictures being taken over Russia. They send up MiG fighters, but their engines flame out. They they fall out of the sky, like, 15,000 feet too low to even intercept. So on this flight, the pilot is James oh, boy. James Sherbeneau.
Speaker 8:I apologize for that. So the pilot sees a nuclear bomb perched at the top of a high tower, looks just like Trinity test. He panics. No one's chasing him. Is it an ambush?
Speaker 8:Are the Soviets desperate enough to stop him that they'll nuke their own country to bring down you 2? So he passes directly over the tower. His cameras are whirring. He gets to safety. He files his reports, and it's the next day before he hears the intelligence.
Speaker 8:It was a secret nuclear test that no one knew about and the world's bomb. The whole thing was just a misunderstanding and a coincidence, which, again, even Tom Clancy couldn't pull off. I don't think.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, Kim, it sounds like you're are you reading it now or you did you read it recently, it sounds like.
Speaker 8:I finished it a couple months ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So and so Ben Rich, they they took over took over this KrogWorks from Clarence Kelly Johnson. Yes. And it's a mesmerizing read. It's so good.
Speaker 1:It is I feel it's it's in the first of a small number of books that I asked my coworkers to read it. Adam, I mean, you we obviously I think we all read it together. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. We all read it together. I mean, it was we we the the Fishworks project at Sun was was very much modeled, a lot of aspects of that Skunk Works.
Speaker 1:Well, in in particular, I feel the thing that was so amazing about that is in Silicon Valley, we had this idea that a skunk works was something that was done without management authorization. It was done kind of on the sly. It was done kind of in the spare time. And that's kind of the definition that I've had. It's just an accepted definition.
Speaker 1:And in reading Ben Rich's book, you realize, like, oh, that wasn't it at all. And the credits Kelly Johnson actually had authorization from the CEO of Lockheed and had set up this division to do, to work on these these military aircraft. And the condition was that he had to spend 2 thirds of his time still on I think it was 2 thirds, right, on the commercial side. I can only spend a third on the military side. But it was very much done with management's authorization, which is part of what
Speaker 5:Did you know the the NSE project at Sun? Was it Skunk Works, something like that?
Speaker 1:So okay. So, Tom, you should explain NSE. I actually want it this is something that actually should have a book written on it. So, I I I am increasingly believing that this is a big gap in our understanding of history. Do you but can you explain NSE?
Speaker 5:Okay. So NSE was a network software environment, and it was a, you know, distributed software environment, you know, thing for for developers. And, it was spun up as a skunkworks to get going quickly because Apollo had a much better, system. I think they call it DSC, or maybe that was I don't know. And and so for big software projects, you know, Apollo was still very, very much kicking Sun's ass in in many ways.
Speaker 5:But, but the NSE was started up, with John Fiber who went on to become venture capitalist. But he he and I were good buddies. And I I was on the team, but we were we were set up in a separate office at Menlo Park. And the, the sign on the door said Earth tone peanut butter warehouse.
Speaker 1:Is that okay. So many follow-up questions. Was that in was that in earnest? I first of all, Earth tone peanut butter warehouse feel I mean, this just makes me long long for the seventies. I feel like I can almost draw the logo.
Speaker 1:I mean, I just feel like it's I got, like, the free to be you and me record playing in the background as I see the the or the orthopedicabetta warehouse.
Speaker 5:Yep. It it was just silly. But,
Speaker 4:a light
Speaker 9:from your fork one of your talks, I think maybe it was the fork yat talk. You said NSE begat NSE lite, which was, which is one of which which was one of Larry McBois projects. And then he he went on to do BitKeeper and then BitKeeper begat Git. And am I missing a step or 2?
Speaker 1:No. That's it. That's exactly it. Yeah. So and I and I think it's a in reading some of these books, like Showstopper and so on of of software development in the nineties, boy, the the bring over, modify, merge model is so important to the history of software development.
Speaker 1:It is a very, very, very important development.
Speaker 5:Yeah. So so I I was never the guy behind, you know, big software. But I I contributed the 22 projects came out of that that were much lower level. 1 is the auto manner, came from that project. Oh, wow.
Speaker 5:And the other was the, translucent file system.
Speaker 1:Right. TFS? Yeah.
Speaker 5:Which is the granddaddy of the overlay file system, which is darker files.
Speaker 1:Right. Right. Right. Exactly. Alright.
Speaker 1:Well, Tim, very evocative book, obviously, for a lot of us. And that's, like, that is a that's a must read, I have to say. Folks have not read, Skunk Works. There are so many great anecdotes. I had actually totally forgotten about the anecdote you you mentioned.
Speaker 8:I'm not even sure what the lesson is from that, but I've never heard that story anywhere else, and I don't know why. It's such an amazing action packed story, and it's just, like, not even a chapter.
Speaker 1:It's, like, pages. So right I feel this book. And boy, and I feel like that is that book. I feel like like an amazing jaw dropping thing happens once per page in that book. And they did, I mean, the aircraft they they built, the the the u two, the s r seventy one, the f one 17 a are I mean, some of those amazing aircraft, the most innovative aircraft ever built.
Speaker 2:One of the key things the key lessons I took from that book was in these innovative aircraft, in these aircraft that were literally doing things that no one had done before, they were also using components from all these other aircraft. They were focusing on, say, the stealth technology in the SR 70 1, but then getting the avionics from one plane and the landing gear from another plane and really focusing on the unique properties of that plane, which I thought was a great lesson for startups everywhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We I remember, Adam. I remember we really grasped onto that. They used the cockpit, I think, of the f one 11 a in the SR 70 1 or something like that if I remember correctly. And then and because they didn't wanna innovate in avionics.
Speaker 1:It's like, no. This is not like avionics. We wanna take, like, off the shelf avionics because where we're innovating is in the airframe and the vents. I remember that. Like, there's so much with the SR 70 1.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Just a minute. You know, and my my dad is, like, cuckoo for the s r seventy 1, and I always thought I was a little bit like, alright. Just, like, tone it down. And then I I saw one of the last s r seventy ones, at Dryden Flight Research Center.
Speaker 1:It was just, like, sitting in a hangar as we were kinda walking between meeting rooms. It's like, we're walking between meetings with the customer. You're like, holy shit. That's an SR 70 1. It really is an amazing aircraft.
Speaker 1:I think it's just unbelievable. Yeah.
Speaker 5:They they have one on that aircraft carrier in New York, so anyone can go see it.
Speaker 1:Oh, that I'll have to put that on the list. Alright. Who's got a who else got a book? Yep. Matt, go ahead.
Speaker 9:The Friendly Orange Glow. And, I I know that, I know that you guys have talked about that before. And in fact, I read it on based on your, recommendation, during the the space that we did about a month ago. But, yeah. Now I I admit I have not yet read or rather listened to, all of part 3.
Speaker 9:But once I got to part 3, I was like, okay. The chapter about Brody Locker must be in here. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I look forward to getting to that chapter. Are you but you're liking it so far.
Speaker 9:Oh, I skipped, I I skipped to the, I skipped ahead to that chapter. But, yeah. One of one of the things that really stuck with me from that book was just how much, just how much, you know, research, from from things as varied as ARPA and NASA and educational research in research into education was was, spurred by the, the Sputnik launch in 1957. Because if you recall from chapter 2, that was, that was where it all started. And
Speaker 1:Yeah. It is it's amazing, the motivator. The I mean, boy, fear is a dangerously powerful motivator, but it it can have positive outcomes, I guess.
Speaker 9:Yeah. But, yes. I I enjoy Yes. I enjoyed, I enjoyed what I've what I've read of the book so far. I mean, I I did read all the way through parts 1 and 2, the, you know, part 1 about the the development of Plato itself.
Speaker 9:And then, you know, part 2 about the the community. So so many, yeah, many things were, you know, pioneered in that online community. Yeah. Online forums, real time chat, multiplayer games, just the whole, yeah, online community. They they had it all in the seventies in that well, in that small relatively small community.
Speaker 9:So, yeah, I, Yeah. I I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1:I I would also add, Ben. I don't know what what your take is. I also think that book is it is well written, and it is a clear it's very well researched, and it's a clear, like, labor of love. Clearly, this is not something that is, like the the this is I mean, got it. And it's I think he first started gathering material for it, like, in the eighties.
Speaker 1:But but it is I it's a it's a really, really good book. So
Speaker 9:Yeah. Yeah. Obviously, he wasn't he wasn't capitalizing, you know, cashing in on on some yeah. On a fad or anything. He was he he researched it because he he loved, Plato.
Speaker 9:And yeah. So sorry. I don't really have much more to say about it.
Speaker 1:No. No. No. That's alright. If you know and I and thank you, by the way, for agreeing with our recommendation without saying actually.
Speaker 1:Like, actually, you know. Right? Like, you don't have to say actually. You don't have to sound surprised? It was good.
Speaker 1:And Adam, you've not yet read the front of the orange glow. Right?
Speaker 2:No. No. I'm I'm like a book back. I'm still on, the the next book, on the Steve Jobs and the next big thing.
Speaker 1:How good is that?
Speaker 2:It's it's it's astounding, actually. And, I mean, I I felt like I couldn't recommend a book we had already recommended. But, like, man, that book is fascinating and it really reveals Steve Jobs, like, a totally false prophet. And,
Speaker 5:you know I just finished that too based on your guys' recommendation.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Tom, what'd you think?
Speaker 5:What an asshole that guy was.
Speaker 2:I mean, but asshole is is is too reductive in a way because because because it it, it denies the the sort of self imposed ignorance that he had. The and, because it it wasn't enough to to be right. It was being wrong and still insisting being right, across the board and enforcing this cognitive dissonance on all the folks around him. It's really astounding.
Speaker 1:It is. So I just thought, I gotta ask you because I was struck by the history of Sun in that book. That's something I was totally unprepared for that I thought was very interesting. What was your take on the history of sun in the
Speaker 4:next book?
Speaker 5:Oh, it was good. I mean, I I didn't see anything stand out as, you know, wrong or anything.
Speaker 1:Well, that's that's high praise. That's the Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, but the the the detail that he goes into about Sun, and then says something along the lines of, well, you know, but Sun's story is never gonna be written because these weren't self aggrandizing guys. They were just folks who built the fastest growing computer company of all time.
Speaker 1:It's just like Tom Linn. He's too nice a guy.
Speaker 5:Oh, man. There needs to be a book about Andy Bechtelsheim.
Speaker 1:I can't There does need a new book about Andy I Not a
Speaker 5:believable string.
Speaker 1:I do agree with that, actually, Tom. That's a very good point that, like, in terms of what I because I haven't kinda think about, like, what are the biographies waiting to be written? And, god, I hope the I just hope that Andy has kept stuff because that's the key. If he's kept stuff, the biography can be written. If he if he is been actually, I think
Speaker 5:Speaking of kept stuff, so I have I have another recommendation from the Sputnik era.
Speaker 1:Oh, go for it. Yeah.
Speaker 5:It's, makers of the microchip. It's a history of Fairchild.
Speaker 1:Ho ho ho ho.
Speaker 5:And I got it thinking, okay. This will be a nice light read. I know. I haven't really attempted it yet, but it's it's a serious book. And it's chock full of copies of the engineering notes from Jay Last, who was one of the traitorous 8 at Fairchild.
Speaker 1:Oh, that sounds good.
Speaker 5:They lay out these pages from this document, and they go over what it all meant and blah blah blah. And he wrote the whole forward for it, and so it looks really intense.
Speaker 1:So, Tom, if I can make you know, you read one of our recommendations in terms of Steve Jobs and the next big thing. If I can recommend one of your the recommendations you made to me on the book on Datapoint.
Speaker 4:The
Speaker 1:I Datapoint by Lamont Wood, the law story of the Texans who invented the personal computing revolution. I thought that I really enjoyed that book. That is does not sound nearly as heavy
Speaker 9:as Datapoint does basically design the instruction set of the Intel 8,008? That is more
Speaker 1:or less. Yeah. No. This book has a slight angle in that that's definitely the claim of this book. But, they are indisputably there at the dawn of the of the 40 4 and the 80 8.
Speaker 1:And they definitely influence it for sure.
Speaker 5:Yeah. The other the other book from that era I I posted on Twitter was the the book about Wang.
Speaker 1:Was this is this riding the runway the runaway horse?
Speaker 5:Yeah. Yeah. So that's pretty good.
Speaker 1:But that's another one that's okay. I I said that we were gonna hit 2 of my issues, Adam. One of which is the book highlighting. The other is that I we in our last move, I made a huge mistake in that I did not physically move every box of books myself and that I I outsourced this to one of my children. And one of my boxes of books has gone missing.
Speaker 1:And I I know I sound like I I I sound like I'm paranoid around the house because I like, another book will occur to me that's in the missing box of books.
Speaker 2:I feel like the one of my children moved it and now it's missing. Look, I'm not blaming anyone.
Speaker 1:I'm not blaming anyone. I'm blaming all 3 of them. That's right. They they can all share the blame. And I and it also would not be beyond them.
Speaker 1:It is not entirely conceivable that they're like, let's actually stash one of dad's books and just let's stash one of the boxes and just, like, watch him go slowly insane.
Speaker 2:Do you feel do you feel paranoid about that?
Speaker 5:Are the children. The books are the children, and the other toddlers are jealous.
Speaker 1:It that is true. That is that is what it is, Tom. It is what it is. They're they're they're angry at the baby. It's like, look.
Speaker 1:They I've got I can love all my children. My my love is large enough to expand to my bookshelf. Okay? Children, I can love you and the books. Don't make dad choose, please.
Speaker 1:Because dad is missing his biography on Wang, which is a cherished possession.
Speaker 5:But the Wang the the Wang book is a tragedy because, oh, man, the the guy was so obsessed with building the company and leaving it to his son. And his son didn't really want it, and that's not how America worked anyway, but it was a very Chinese thing. And,
Speaker 1:Yeah. It was a And I mean, that and Wang is because Wang and Prime, I feel there were kinda handful of these that are kind of the the the last of the 128 grades.
Speaker 5:But but Wang was the hottest company ever for a while even though I'm I never actually saw one of their products.
Speaker 1:Oh, really? Yeah. I feel like I I saw a lot of the terminals going up, but I never actually used them. The book was good, though.
Speaker 5:And he, he he was one of the the guys who made core memory work back in MIT. And, he and, Ken Olson both both working on core memory, and then they went off and started their companies.
Speaker 1:That's another book that's in the missing box. It's Deck is Dead, Long Live Deck, which I haven't even read yet.
Speaker 5:That's cool.
Speaker 1:And I and I can't bring myself to buy another copy because I know it's in the missing box that the children have misplaced. Ian, I saw you were unmuting yourself there.
Speaker 10:Yeah. I have a a recommendation for the group. There's a book that was released this year called Built to Fail, the Inside Story of Blockbuster's Inevitable Bust, which, is a very well written take by a long time franchisee of Blockbuster of his view from the inside as the why he believes the company failed, through complete failure to recognize the inventory management problem in front of them. The company kind of was built as this, mechanism by which to build blockbuster stores. And once it had built sufficient Blockbuster stores, they hadn't really worked out how to pivot into, like, managing them successfully.
Speaker 10:So very good read.
Speaker 1:That sounds good. Yeah. I I think I may have seen it, but I've not read it. And it's certainly a, a fascinating story. I feel like you know and I'm I'm sure I know plenty of people on this call had been to a blockbuster, but we are a dying breed.
Speaker 1:They're not making any more of us. And at some point, you know, I don't know if you ever trying to to tell my kids what we would go through to, rent a movie. It just sounds well, I just I don't know if
Speaker 4:it's a lot
Speaker 1:of time to question. Yeah. Exactly. Right. Oh, are you I don't know that.
Speaker 1:So sorry if you're asking that question earnestly, The, Blockbuster was a very large chain of video rental stores in the US.
Speaker 2:In a video is a thing that used to come on physical media.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And physical media was something that you would I had it's like
Speaker 11:That's right. That that one I do. Be kind. Please rewind.
Speaker 1:Ain't it? Be kind. Please rewind. Yes. So
Speaker 10:Yeah. The other thing that was kinda interesting in that that I didn't know because I did grow up with Blockbuster but I was not young enough for this era of of the medium. VHS tapes in their early days were extraordinarily expensive and that's why rental took off. To $80 range.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 10:So it made sense to to rent it. Whereas, you know, to ship to DVD meant that purchasing a copy was on the, you know, $20 range and, renting did not make as much sense. But this is also part of that, like, inventory management problem they're also referring to.
Speaker 1:That's really interesting. Yeah. The,
Speaker 5:Even with VHS tapes, you know, the Hollywood was still really concerned about multiple watches. Right? So they were always trying to figure out how to monetize. You know?
Speaker 1:Okay. So here's a question. Of you. Yeah. Right.
Speaker 1:Here's a question. Is there a book on VHS versus beta? It feels like we use that so frequently as metaphor. Yeah. And I would like to actually know the facts of that.
Speaker 1:Betamax being another rival format by Sony supposedly better?
Speaker 11:So I actually kinda ran that to ground once just because I was curious. The Wikipedia articles are actually pretty good. The thing is that VHS, you know, pretty much caught up to and then eclipse beta pretty rapidly, but beta had better image quality or something at the beginning. That was kind of beta's, you know, thing.
Speaker 8:There's no beating on narrower tape. It's it's physically less bandwidth.
Speaker 1:The beta is or VHS?
Speaker 8:VHS, it's a it's a narrower tape.
Speaker 1:Oh, interesting. And then when there was the the laserdisc as well, which is roughly contemporaneous, but laserdisc had to be flipped halfway through the movie. Laserdisc could only store about an hour of content, which kind of, I think, killed it for her. But that's a it's definitely a killer.
Speaker 3:You're gonna change reels at the cinema. I mean, come on. That's right.
Speaker 5:I can't bring myself to give away my my few remaining Laserdiscs even though I haven't had a working player for 20 years.
Speaker 11:Like me and LP.
Speaker 1:Tom, what do you what do you have on LaserDisc? I'm dying to know.
Speaker 5:Uh-oh. What was it? Lawrence of Arabia.
Speaker 2:That must have been, like, 13, like, discs. I mean, that was not a short movie. Right?
Speaker 5:It was several. I don't remember, but they were they were expensive. Right? So who knows?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So you actually had a laserdisc player?
Speaker 5:Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's that's okay.
Speaker 1:As you stopped. Speaking of movies
Speaker 5:Hey. Wait. Wait. When I bought my house, it came with a projector in the basement. The guy had it set up as a video cave, and we're talking about 30 years ago.
Speaker 5:And projectors were really unknown, especially for for movie quality. So the thing weighs about £300, and I've never been able to get it out of the basement.
Speaker 1:It's it's still there.
Speaker 11:Not that you haven't wanted to, just that you can't.
Speaker 5:Right.
Speaker 1:I mean, Tom, this whole pandemic is over. I think you need to invite us all over to watch Lawrence of Arabia. I think that's the only that's the I mean, that's the only answer.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Somebody has to bring the laser disc player.
Speaker 1:That's right. Yeah. That's right. We're missing with it.
Speaker 12:Hey. You know what? I I have a laser disc player, and, I'll I'll do you one better. I have a signed copy of hackers by Penn Jillette.
Speaker 5:Oh. Mister the You
Speaker 1:signed copy of oh, hack about hackers. They I think you're saying actually hackers, the book by Stephen Levy, which is
Speaker 12:also very good. No. No. No.
Speaker 11:No. The the film. The film
Speaker 12:I think the one with spandex and roller blades.
Speaker 4:Spandex and roller blades. Exactly.
Speaker 12:So I actually have a book recommendation that's a little bit out of the norm for this group. So my formal educational background is in mathematics. I never studied CS. In fact, looking at the algorithms that CS guys get into, I'm actually rather enamored by the fact that they're all less than quadratic time. So you've seen a proof in a in a paper, right, where you've got the little square at the end named after a mathematician by the name of Paul Halmas.
Speaker 12:He wrote what he called an automathography in 1980 5. And that is probably one of the only books that I've ever wanted to read cover to cover and never let down written by a mathematician. And what he does in this book is he sort of recounts his immigration to the US from Hungary and, like, goes back and and says, hey. So this whole mathematician thing is actually kind of an accident on my part. And I originally did chemical engineering, and, and he goes through, like, what math what mathematics departments are like with, second rate talent, attracting 3rd rate talent, and building a good organization within the math department.
Speaker 12:And it's actually a relevant read for this group because there's a lot of leadership and a lot of ideation that goes on. And this book goes through a lot of what his process was like.
Speaker 1:That sounds interesting. Certainly so this is in 1985. So he is gonna be of, like, the Paul Erdos vintage then. I mean, because there is something in the water in Hungary in, like, the 19 twenties.
Speaker 12:So it's it's funny that you mentioned that. There's a so I there's a whole group of Hungarians who are collectively called the Martians, because they they they they come they come from this this foreign land. They speak this inscrutable language. And this is actually sort of a moniker that they have, that they've all adopted. So like von Neumann, Erdos, and, Halmas.
Speaker 12:Halmas, in in this automathography, by the way, says that, no. Don't call me Halmas. Call me Halmas.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 12:So, yeah, he he sort of he sort of, like, sheds the Hungarian pronunciation of his
Speaker 4:last name. It's just
Speaker 12:kind of interesting. But, yeah, it's a very good read. I was quite fond of it when I was, when I was working on my master's coursework at SIU. And, it was one of those things that sort of stuck with me as I sort of made the transition away from mathematics into, you know, being an industrial technologist. And, I I found a lot of insight in that.
Speaker 1:Have you I have to ask if you've read The Man Who Loved Only Numbers about Paul Erdos.
Speaker 12:By Paul Erdos, I haven't
Speaker 1:Not by Paul Erdos. About Paul. The biography about Paul Erdos.
Speaker 12:Right. It's it's of Paul Erdos. I haven't yet. It's on my list of things to read.
Speaker 1:I that's a good it's a it it is a it's a it's a it's a short book. It's actually the strangely, that book is it's the book I was reading while waiting for what turned what what was the date my the first date with what became my wife. So it's like that that book has got, like is cemented in my the kind of my my own personal life story.
Speaker 4:Yeah. That's
Speaker 1:in a weird way.
Speaker 12:Yeah. It seared seared into your your brain. I I have books like that.
Speaker 1:Right. Exactly. Right. You've got books. Right.
Speaker 1:But that is a oh, literally, the very first words my wife my wife said to me was, like, what are you reading? And I said, it's a it's a biography, and I I kinda showed her the title. And I was only a couple pages into it. She's like, oh, you must be Hungarian. And I'm like, you know Paul Erdos?
Speaker 1:She's like, no. It just looks Hungarian. And she's like, she's she's she does linguistics, so it's like that was actually, I know. There we go.
Speaker 12:Sorry. No. No. No. You just it's it's just like the digression is is nice.
Speaker 12:But, another thing that he went into. So there's, there's a teaching style that he had. And that was actually one of the things that I adopted when I was doing, when I was a when I was a GA as a as a master's student, when I was teaching college algebra to incoming freshmen, is that he was a very sort of Socratic instructor. He pushed on his students to explore the subject themselves as opposed to spoon feeding it to them. And, that's one of the things that I try to get into when I teach people about technology and how to sort of, like, debug a core dump and and things like that.
Speaker 12:It's like, well, no. Let's let's walk through this together, and we'll, you know, we'll we'll figure this out. Right?
Speaker 1:And so he talks about that approach, about that that that pedagogical approach in the book.
Speaker 12:Yes. Yes. Yes.
Speaker 1:Site. Yeah. That sounds really good. I that that definitely sounds like winner read.
Speaker 4:No. No.
Speaker 9:Hey, Brian. Sorry. You mentioned, you mentioned Hackers by Steven Levy earlier. I have, I've I've read that one too. I have to say though, having having read the appendix about Richard Stallman, and just just how how extreme he was, not only on free software, but on on lack of passwords back in the day, it it kind of left me with less, less sympathy for for for his position because it it just seemed like he was Stallman is gone
Speaker 11:to the What? Stallman is toxic. Stallman is great toxicity.
Speaker 1:And I've forgotten that Stallman was but the play I'd say whatever and I have not read hackers in 25 years. I should probably go back and reread it. What I get in my head is a very vivid description of the Sierra online folks in their hot tub. It just feels like very on brand for Sierra online, which is the games maker. In the, Canon Roberta what was her last name?
Speaker 1:Williams. Williams. Thank you. I I I just visualized the hot tub. I had a hot tub that I have got no desire to be anywhere near.
Speaker 1:I think that the I'm not setting my time machine to pick your hot tub. But, yeah, I forgot that there was a storm in
Speaker 4:there.
Speaker 9:The the the audio book an audio book of hackers came out, like, 5 or 6 years ago. I mean, it's it's it's not spectacular as audio books goes, but it still beats
Speaker 1:text to speech, so I took it. And so it it hackers is I don't know if you've read hackers. It's very detail it, like, it goes into the Homebrew Computing Club, I would say, in in quite a bit of detail, if if my memory serves. You I think hackers is also in the missing box, by the way. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:I I'm sorry I keep doing this.
Speaker 2:This is like This is like such a treasure trove.
Speaker 1:Oh my god. This is what is this is what it's like to live with me. I'm so sorry. I'm really just dragging everyone in. It's like, that's also in the box.
Speaker 5:What was the more recent book about, the mother of all demos and the Silicon Valley scene?
Speaker 1:Yeah. There was the you mean by the angle part? Yeah. It was Yeah.
Speaker 5:Yeah. It's by the thing. I got it. I've got it. I've got it here somewhere.
Speaker 1:There's also Where Wizards Stay Up Late, which I enjoyed. Adam, have you read that one?
Speaker 4:That's a
Speaker 5:great book.
Speaker 1:Yeah. About the the Internet. That's with the dawn of the Internet and, the, the the IMS systems actually, Dan, you know what? I because you referred me to a video that I watched. Am I remembering this correctly?
Speaker 1:Yeah. You are. I was
Speaker 11:I was gonna mention that. It's called computer networks, heralds of resource sharing or something like that. I I think I responded to your tweet about this with a link to that. It's really fascinating. It's a half hour video shot in 1971.
Speaker 11:And it like, the interview Bob Kahn and and ACR Licklider and a bunch of other sort of early players in the ARPANET. It's a really fascinating video. Definitely worth a half hour.
Speaker 1:It is definitely worth a half hour. Yeah. It is definitely that was a great recommendation. Adam, I don't know if you saw this. I the the Dan had dropped it.
Speaker 1:I gave him a voice on Twitter. Dropped it in chat at some point. But the really and really interesting, Dan, I thought, to get this vision for the future that was, like, pretty accurate on the whole bunch of things about, like, you know, the ability to to they're talking about plain reservations and talking about some of the things that would that ultimately Internet working would would facilitate. I thought it was a great video.
Speaker 11:Yeah. It is amazingly pretty efficient. You know, 50 years into the future, they basically or 50 years ago, I guess, they basically predicted the rise of cloud computing in a way that, you know, I don't think was so clearly delineated in any other contemporary source that
Speaker 5:I've seen.
Speaker 1:So the another thing to go read, I know I and I've been, this is on brand for me because I've been speaking about this a bunch. But the, Gordon Moore's 1965 paper I mean, we obviously all know about Moore's Law, but that paper itself, I don't know if the last time anyone's read it. That is a ridonkulous off the chart future prediction that is just, like, must have seen out of his mind in 1965 where he basically predicts everything from cellular communication to personal computers to this an amazing paper, not just for the the law, which, of course, is not even coined in the paper. But
Speaker 12:let me, let me interject again. So I was I was actually sent a DM about this. I didn't actually name the title of the book. Oh. So Oh, yeah.
Speaker 12:Okay. So it's it's it's so it's his auto mathography, titled I want to be a mathematician. And, again, sort of the accidental, like, chemical engineering to mathematics pipeline kind of thing. And, it's written by him.
Speaker 1:Well, in in the video, you said that this is the the the most readable book by a mathematician as opposed to, like, was it a mathematicians apology or whatever, which basically is just like, good lord. Okay.
Speaker 12:Like Yeah. There's there's there's a there's a certain there's there's, like, there's, like, a certain sort of self that that a mathematician goes into, like, they they wanna talk about their their largest result or some or some not such nonsense, and it's, like, no. I wanna know sort of more about, like, how you came into mathematics and sort of how you view mathematics and and how you approach the subject. Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I was, Leon, with the the author of the god particle talks about he said that the the, physicists defer to mathematicians and mathematicians defer
Speaker 4:to God.
Speaker 1:But I've never met a mathematician that modest was his line from the God article that I
Speaker 3:thought was very funny.
Speaker 12:So so that's that's actually sort of an apropos kind of kind of, I guess, conceptualization of what a mathematician is. Like, people think about it as like numbers and and and things like this. And it's like, no. We we really sort of sit down and and define things, and then we we have God tell us, like, what comes out of the things that we define. No.
Speaker 12:And it's
Speaker 1:it's from the chains
Speaker 11:for turning coffee into theorems. That's
Speaker 3:Yeah. That that was that's a that's a
Speaker 12:that's a famous line from. Yeah. And it's it's one of those things where, like, he also he, Eirdash also had this thing called the book, capital b book.
Speaker 1:Oh, yes. The book.
Speaker 12:Yeah. Yeah. And and he's he's like, at this
Speaker 1:From the supreme fascist?
Speaker 3:Oh, boy.
Speaker 12:Yeah. In in in a sense, yes.
Speaker 1:No. That's what he call so Eretz called God the supreme fascist.
Speaker 12:Yes. Yes.
Speaker 1:And and the the the the book contained the oh, sorry. I didn't mean to short circuit. The book is the book of all proofs.
Speaker 12:Yes. And and it's one of those things where where, like, if you're a mathematician and you haven't gotten enough of the intuition sort of to to divine these things, you haven't yet seen the book.
Speaker 1:Well, and in particular, also, your proof may not be in the book. The other thing important to know about about Erdos's worldview is that the book contains the most elegant proofs.
Speaker 10:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So your proof and I when when I I with the the proof of Fermat's Law Theorem came out, I remember thinking, not in the book. That is this is what this is what Eric is talking about about this is, you know, a 150 page proof that, you know, only Andrew Wiles basically understands. Like, this is this is what he means by not in the book.
Speaker 12:How did we not broach the subject when you were visiting in Atlanta when I was still working at CNN?
Speaker 1:Oh, I yeah. I don't know. We we better show exactly. We better show avoid that one.
Speaker 12:We we we totally we totally avoided
Speaker 1:that one. Well, especially because I had a professor who I think at did you have professor Hofstein as a math
Speaker 2:professor? Yes. Yes. I did. Yeah.
Speaker 2:For, complex numbers. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay. And so in so that is good because have I told you my Hofstien story?
Speaker 2:Do you know I remember it being unflattering, but I'd I think No.
Speaker 3:No. It's not like math doesn't narrow down. Hop scene.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No. I think he this was a actually, I honestly feel that's the best best math professor I've ever had. Fight me. Alright.
Speaker 1:Okay. So the you know, he had an excitement
Speaker 4:for him.
Speaker 5:Math props, teach classes.
Speaker 1:Well, well, exactly. Well, okay. Look. It it is it is a little low bar. But so he, I took number theory from him, and he was a wildly wildly enthusiastic number theory.
Speaker 1:He explained and he would go on some and maybe this is more on Brad Adam. But he would definitely go extemporaneously on he would get you know, he would, color things with his personal worldview on many things, which I I liked. So in particular, we were talking about Moss' theorem. He said that, well, first of all, he prided himself on number theory because it had no applicability. He's like the beautiful thing about number theory is it can't be applied to anything, and that's what makes it beautiful.
Speaker 1:This is, of course, right before public key cryptography. So it's like right before number theory was ruined forever by public key cryptography. The, but on Fermat's law's theorem, he said there is no proof for for law's law's theorem. And indeed, if there is ever a proof for law's law's theorem, I will jump to my
Speaker 4:death from the sciences library.
Speaker 1:Wow. And this is, like, I would say classic Hofstein in that, like just like some, like, things that were okay. You didn't have to say that. But, okay. You did say that.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. Like, okay. That that's and that was in I took a course from him in the spring of 1993, and Andrew Wiles' first proof comes out in the summer 1993. And I'm like, has someone checked on Jeffrey Hofstein? Is this man alive?
Speaker 1:Did he and I actually went into him in the fall. And I'm like, how are we like, I didn't really know how to approach it, but like How are you how are
Speaker 3:you taking the proof?
Speaker 1:How are you taking proof? And he's like, that's not the proof. I I I there will be a flaw. And then he was right. There was a flaw.
Speaker 1:And then Andrew Wiles, like, locked I mean, in in what is to me, one of the a a singular human intellectual effort. And Simon Sings from law's last theorem. Trying to remember what they I think that that's Yeah.
Speaker 5:That's right.
Speaker 2:I read that one.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I like I thought that was very good. I realized that I do not I mean, that I don't understand anything
Speaker 11:about that person. That's how I
Speaker 2:went from being a math major to being a CS major, personally. What's
Speaker 1:what I remember thinking I remember Ken Roo was like, oh, I I understand, like, you know, loosely how this is all put together. I think it was Bonalik, actually. I'm like, okay. Can you explain modular forms to me? And, like, I just wanna understand the modular forms fit.
Speaker 1:And finally, it gets kinda, like, halfway into that and realizes that he is like, no. We're not gonna explain this.
Speaker 3:I guess I can't. I mean, the yeah. I guess I can't. So I have you ever
Speaker 1:so I have never read The Elegant Universe by Brian Green. No. But I have have you ever seen Brian Greene speak, Adam? No. Oh my god.
Speaker 1:He's such a good speaker. He's such a good speaker that I was there with my friend, Tim. I should have mentioned in passing last time at a Berkeley lecture. Brian Green speaks, mesmerizing. I walk out of it being like, I can't believe that I understand string it's string theory.
Speaker 1:It turns like we understand string theory now. And we went to explain string theory to one another, who we had just seen the lecture on it and realized we do not understand string theory at all. That
Speaker 4:that It
Speaker 2:all just fall apart in your hands.
Speaker 1:It just absolutely fell apart in
Speaker 4:hands. I
Speaker 3:think that's a similar property what stand up comics often have. Like, you try to recreate the joke that you heard, and it's just it's just gone.
Speaker 1:It is gone. Yeah. String theory, it turns out, needs to be enjoyed, the on stage.
Speaker 5:You you
Speaker 1:cannot, apparently. At least by me.
Speaker 3:At least by me. Without the without the show tunes, it's just no good.
Speaker 5:So is there the book for jokes?
Speaker 1:That's right. That's the the the Irish book.
Speaker 4:That's right.
Speaker 3:Good. The joke.
Speaker 1:The the other thing I do have is to say about Eirish. You know, Eirish is lives to 93, is on amphetamines more or less his entire life. I mean, I certainly by the time he and he's a child prodigy. He's, like, he's one of these rare, like, child prodigies that actually turns out to be, like, the real deal in adulthood. He's on it that it means never marries, has no familial obligations, and only does math his entire life.
Speaker 1:It is obviously exceedingly bright. And she's, like, clearly the most prolific mathematician. Do you know he's only the second most prolific mathematician? Leonard Euler, man. That guy is such an OG.
Speaker 1:Is there a good biography on Euler, by the way? I would love to read. I don't know if other people's. I would love to read a book on on Euler.
Speaker 5:Are you aren't the Euler's favorite in the Super Bowl?
Speaker 4:So, you
Speaker 11:know, I thought
Speaker 1:Were you both trying to make an artwork?
Speaker 5:I think so.
Speaker 1:No. I was
Speaker 11:I was saying that you already got me reading about modular forms, so my night shot. Thanks a lot.
Speaker 3:They might not be they might not be a bio a biography, but there might be an. I mean,
Speaker 1:no? No? That's even worse. And, like, and you, like, really took your time on it and, like, way walk us into it. I mean
Speaker 3:Listen. What I was saying was Okay. Alright.
Speaker 12:Have you read
Speaker 1:Josh, give us a buzz. Have you read turn, you must give us a buzz.
Speaker 3:Have you read Accidental Empires? The memoir. Accidental Empires. By Robert x Grinchley.
Speaker 1:I have, and it's a are are you re have you read it I've not read it recently.
Speaker 2:I read it.
Speaker 4:I think
Speaker 1:that's also
Speaker 11:on the box. I think
Speaker 1:it was also on the box.
Speaker 3:I read it when I was 12, I think, I wanna say, and it was a big part of my wanting to work on computers when I grew up. What's
Speaker 1:Robert x Cringeley? You remember him, Tom? Is he still around? Was that a pseudonym? Is that a real person for
Speaker 4:some reason?
Speaker 3:Like, mock real name. Mock Stevens, I think, or something like that. It's a it's a pseudonym for first and and column. Is real? No.
Speaker 3:It's it's a pseudonym for this column that that I wanna say info world, but I I I mean, they
Speaker 1:aren't magazines anymore, so I don't know. I think PC Magazine.
Speaker 6:PC Magazine?
Speaker 1:I wanna say. Tom, do what you with the
Speaker 5:I don't remember which magazine, but he was certainly all over the place in the eighties.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, Josh, I read that, but I read that 25 years ago. Yeah. So I have no idea what it
Speaker 3:is. It's definitely, like, I haven't read it for years, certainly.
Speaker 1:In the spirit of books, I have not read for a long time and I'm rereading now. I'm reading Startup by Jerry Kaplan, and it is terrific. I'm really, really enjoying it. Also, one of our angel investors appears as kind of a, like, a minor villain in it, which I find very interesting. But, it is Tom, this is on it.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you knew any of the Go folks. This is, the the tablet
Speaker 5:folks. Yeah. I know.
Speaker 1:Really interesting book though.
Speaker 11:Did anybody mention UNIX, A Memoir? Ryan Carnahan's new book?
Speaker 1:I I got read it. How was it, Dan?
Speaker 11:It's really good. It's really good.
Speaker 5:Really good. It's great.
Speaker 3:It's good. It's a little dry, but it is good.
Speaker 1:Josh Scott. Josh, did did do you feel that he they obviously gave short trip to something that you love doing? Was it TTYs?
Speaker 3:No. I just I remember I I read it recently. It was it's good. It covers a lot
Speaker 2:of stuff. Excessive excessive praise of something you hate.
Speaker 1:That's right. I can't get you closer. Listen up. Jeremy, I saw you hopping in there. Do you have a have a a recommendation?
Speaker 1:Maybe kids still catching up to the present. I know this is one of the things that tourist space is that's a little weird. Is the is the time shifting?
Speaker 6:No. I was, I had to walk over to the refrigerator, and the unmute button isn't, synced to the Bluetooth headset. And so maybe that's a a feature for the future.
Speaker 1:Do do you have a, a a book that you've, a book to
Speaker 5:recommend? Yeah.
Speaker 6:I want I want to read it again. It was actually my, the the first time I saw startups. And so from Vancouver, Douglas, Copeland, I guess 26 years ago, microserves. Microserves.
Speaker 2:I Okay. That's classic. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I know I'm on brand, but I'm certain that one's in the box. I know that one's in the fucking box.
Speaker 6:The little the little Lego dude on the cover, And it was it's such a, so it's it's fiction. Right? But very much
Speaker 1:It's fiction.
Speaker 6:The the product of its time. And so it's like and Mac user magazine and Silicon graphics workstations and, calling, you know, moving images on computers multimedia. That's a a thing that you were still hiring people for. And Yeah. I had grabbed it over the weekend and flipped it open.
Speaker 6:Somehow, it came to the Microsoft and Apple rundown, and somebody had written up on the whiteboard the differences between the two companies. Microsoft has better cafeteria. Apple has better nerd toys. Microsoft has Bill. Apple no longer has any equivalent because this is 95.
Speaker 6:Jobs has been for, like, 10 years. And so
Speaker 10:Yeah.
Speaker 6:They think they're gonna they think they're gonna slap into the ground. And, I mean, even Microsoft was, what, trading at a split adjusted, like, 60¢ a share. So, like, 50,000 percent back from where we are now. And it was, yeah. Like, all the all the pop culture references are really, are really neat.
Speaker 6:The people feel very real because I guess he was at Wired Magazine. And Wired Magazine was, I guess, 2 years old or so
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 6:At that point. And this was back when it was, like, heavy tech, and I was a kid in the Midwest and reading it and loving it. And I mean, now I can't stand it. I opened it up and it smells like, smells like perfume ads because it's full of perfume ads and it's lifestyle. It's like Jaguar cards and Rolex watches and Raytheon, right, advertisements in there for advanced war fighter solutions.
Speaker 6:And back back 26 years ago or 20, 8
Speaker 1:years god.
Speaker 6:Wired was magic.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Good. How representative is that of the fall though, Jeremy? That's it's like that's what we what we became is, like, Rolex perfume and, like, like, Raytheon against more fighter ads. It's like we Dude, you
Speaker 11:gotta write that down, man. That was a rant.
Speaker 1:I It's alright. So so, Jeremy, you read that as a kid. You read Microsoft. I love Microsofts, and I have actually been wanting to go reread it, but I have not read that since it came out. Is that when you that's when you read it too?
Speaker 6:Yeah. Yeah. And so, like, it's sitting on the shelf and then I was like, I thought it was like, man, I remember liking that book. And I'm looking through
Speaker 4:it and
Speaker 6:I was like, wow. So much is yeah. Like, all these companies aren't so like fries. Right? The the the trip to fries is not a is not a thing anymore.
Speaker 1:It's not a thing anymore. I know. And I am optimistic about that book holding up. I mean, Doug Copeland is obviously amazing. So Douglas Copeland coins gen x in the book of the same name, and it it is a great writer.
Speaker 1:So I yeah. I'm with you on that. That is a great recommendation. And, again, one I'm very convinced is in the box.
Speaker 5:Just just Because I don't know if the book that you have
Speaker 3:to find is in the box? I mean,
Speaker 5:you go show the
Speaker 11:book and Brian has the box.
Speaker 1:That that's it's in the box. I'm just saying and the box was hidden by one of my not supreme fascists, but one of my yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 5:So I found the title of the book I I was struggling with. It's What the Dormouse Said by John Markoff. And it's it's all about the the mother of all demos and Silicon Valley and the LSD scene and the Grateful Dead and Xerox PARC and all this stuff happening at the same time at the same
Speaker 1:place? That okay. Yeah. And Markov, obviously, is a long time New York Times reporter. That, yeah, that, so have you read that, Tom?
Speaker 1:You
Speaker 5:Yeah. That's really good.
Speaker 1:It was really good. That's
Speaker 5:Okay. That's good. I didn't know that.
Speaker 1:And then, Tom, did you read Dealers of Lightning? So that's another great one. I mean, it's Wow. Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's a classic on on Xerox PARC.
Speaker 5:There's a, a new book app about the development of the Xerox Star, but it's, it's fictionalized. So all the characters are fictionalized, but it's got kind of the whole development process and and all the little can run on.
Speaker 1:You're reading a fictionalized development of the Xerox Star?
Speaker 9:The names have been changed to protect the guilty.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 5:It's pretty strange. I don't know why he went to those lengths.
Speaker 1:What's the book? That sounds great.
Speaker 5:I mean get back here.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Inventing the Future by Albert Corey. And Albert Corey is a pen name of whoever the guy was, who was an actual engineer on the on the project.
Speaker 1:Are they are they deliberately why the fictionalized account, I wonder?
Speaker 5:It has some not flattering stuff, but it it's mostly about the tension between the researchy architects in Palo Alto versus the
Speaker 1:Oh, interesting. On the, the was the SRS side? Is that right? Am I remembering that correctly?
Speaker 5:I've x I I think the You
Speaker 9:mean SDS? SDS. Thank you. I knew
Speaker 1:I knew I was remembering that. Yes. Thank you, Matt. SDS. Right?
Speaker 1:Scientific Data Systems. Right?
Speaker 5:And this It it was long after that, but it was a few of those people left. But Xerox Xerox sold that whole computer business, and then they got back into the business with the Xerox Star.
Speaker 1:I think it's interesting that they're fictionalizing it because because I I think that, like, once a a a certain amount of time passes, we actually and we I have to say we we had a guest on on the metal who did ask us to go back and was like, hey. Could you change that particular anecdote about this particular company? Like, sure. We're happy to just, like, edit that out, but, like, I don't think that that was, like, well, I'm just worried that people are still gonna be are gonna have it's like, wow. Okay.
Speaker 1:That's a long time to have. I I'm waiting for enough time to pass for the actual book on the the e cash barrier from Sun. So but I guess not not not a time has passed yet.
Speaker 2:Brian, I don't I don't know if you wanna wrap it up, but I would thought I thought that one way to wrap it up might be what's the book that you want to read? I know you mentioned a couple of, is there a biography of this or that? But, what book do you want there to be out there? I want to be, written or want recommendations for in particular?
Speaker 1:Okay. So I am glad you asked. The I did not put you up to this user. I've never I I I've never I I've never seen you before in my life. The, so I feel that I mean, there are a bunch of technologies that I feel we don't have enough history on, and we don't we we lack authoritative biographies on.
Speaker 1:But I feel like the PCB is so important to everything that it's amazing how little, but I'm I'm looking for the definitive biography of the PCB. The printed Because it's amazing.
Speaker 12:The printed circuit board.
Speaker 1:Right. That's right. Hey, because I I remember as a kid marveling at it, they're like, wow. It's like we're gonna take this, like, image, and we're gonna kinda project it and okay. And we're gonna like, wow.
Speaker 1:That seems very that that that seems nuts. And it's still the more I feel I know about it, the more questions I have about I mean, I think it's it's wildly creative.
Speaker 3:Have you ever made one by hand with with a with a master pen and an etching tank?
Speaker 1:Or I've not. No. I would like to do that. I mean, I would be given my, you know, some of my I as we know, I have injured myself in every conceivable way in several Comfort not conceivable ways.
Speaker 3:Comparative. Definitely a new way.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Just do do it with a grown up, Brian.
Speaker 11:This is why this
Speaker 5:is why I ended up in software.
Speaker 1:It's why I ended up in software too, actually, because I actually but the, so I'm the the Adam, that's the that would be my answer to the question. I would love a a a book on but I really wanna go to this book on Fairchild that Tom is recommending. I think that sounds good. How how about you? Is there a is there a a a book that you've been
Speaker 2:looking for? This this is this is, like, sort of in almost in the bad blood vein. But, there is an anecdote I've heard from, like, 7 different people that feels like fodder for a book, which was in, in the late nineties or early 2000, there was a break in at VMware. And then, a few years later, parallels came out and the folks at VMware found that their hypervisor was bug for bug compatible. And, you know, I think enough that you talked about time passing like, you know, this I think there's a case of industrial espionage, some, like, you know, the the company was then acquired.
Speaker 2:This Russian company which came out with parallels was acquired. I I just feel like there's so much meat on the bone there, and and I've heard certain vignettes from lots of different folks about how VMware discussed it, but decides not to pursue this lawsuit because they were worried about Microsoft in the background and that focus. Anyway, that there's there's just so much story there that I wish that, you know, journalism was in a state where I can go dig at that.
Speaker 1:I am biologically incapable from refraining the from mentioning the Avanti and Cadence case. Do you remember this? No. So Avanti and Cadence are I mean, Cadence, obviously, we know Cadence. And Ivanti was a, was a software company that competed with Cadence.
Speaker 1:And, a a guy had gone from Cadence, to Avanti and, apparently, took a lot of software with him. And when he was ironically, when he was at Cadence, if I'm remembering the story correctly, when he was at Cadence, his mission was to kill Avanti, and he had this AK 47 program, which was like a violent metaphor. And one of the engineers working on this at Cadence recounted how he lined up 48 AK 47 shells. And which and and told him that this is what we're gonna use on the enemy. The guy's like, this is, like, super violent and scary.
Speaker 1:But he counts the shells, and he's like, woah. K. Wait a minute. There's, like, 48, not, like, 40 I mean, I'm kinda following you with the metaphor, but there are 48 shells here, not 47. Kind of one of those, like, Frankenstein monster Frankenstein's monster moments from Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1:I thought you're one of those guys. He said, no. The 48 is you use on yourself if we don't succeed. It's like, oh, well, this is this is uplifting. So Goodness.
Speaker 1:So he that guy leaves. He goes to Avanti, the company that he's gonna kill. He actually takes the Cadence software with him. And then this is discovered when a Cadence engineer is on site with an Avanti customer and sees his own bug in Cadence Software in Avanti Software. And then he he's like, I fixed well, this is very strange because they got the exact same bug.
Speaker 1:Do we and then he started looking for other bugs that he had had, and he found all the bugs that he had had in Cadence software that was actually in Ivanti software. And the reason that you may remember this is a manager of ours, Barry Cooks, was gonna be an alternate on for as a juror in this case. Wow. Do you remember this? No.
Speaker 1:I don't. Oh, no. This is like Barry is like, I'm gonna be away from work for 7 months. Oh. And it and it was a huge issue with Sun because, like, Sun is like, we are very accommodating on your for 7 months.
Speaker 1:Woah. Okay. Maybe he's not.
Speaker 3:I was like, hey.
Speaker 1:But the yeah. On so I'm I'm with you. I'm on on parallels and or I think a a history of industrial espionage in Silicon Valley would be really interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 5:Well, you you've heard about Cisco and Huawei. Right?
Speaker 11:No. No. This one's the
Speaker 5:got their whole start in the networking business, and and they got their start with networking by just lifting the Cisco code, you know, with no changes.
Speaker 1:This is a book that needs to be written, I think. This is the one to read.
Speaker 11:There were there were 2 guys at Bell Labs who tried to steal the inferno operating system and the Pathstar access server and basically take it to China, and their goal was to become the Cisco of China. And they're both doing time in federal penitentiary right now.
Speaker 1:This is the advantage of open source, so we don't have to worry about any of this stuff. It's like, please, like,
Speaker 10:yeah. Can you just put
Speaker 1:a star on our repo when you take
Speaker 12:They they tried to steal inferno? Like, the
Speaker 3:the plan non derivative thing?
Speaker 11:Well yeah. So so Lucid did this thing called the path to our access server, which was like a combination telephone switch and router, like IP router. It was a really weird box. And ended up getting canceled. But it ran Inferno natively on the sort of control, you know, whatever infrastructure on the backplane.
Speaker 11:And these guys were basically gonna take the remnants of the pass star server. They were gonna take all the IP and take it to China. And, you know, these 22 dudes were, like, from China originally. And, you know, they they got, like, they got wiretapped, and they were admitting to all of this crazy stuff. And, basically, the FBI came into Bell Labs one day and was like, alright.
Speaker 11:Like, who here worked on inferno? And a bunch of people had, and they were like, alright. Come into this room for interviews. And, that was an exciting story.
Speaker 1:Alright. Well, I know we've gone over. I just clearly, I think Adam, we got maybe you get to pick up this topic again. This is a this is a fruitful one.
Speaker 2:This is a good one. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So we'll have to, have anyone who any books not mentioned, I know they're open a lot. I'm gonna find that goddamn box. I swear. I cannot be that box is just gonna become like a metaphor if I don't actually find it. Thank you everyone.
Speaker 1:Thank you for for the time as always. Thank you for the reminders of some great books and some and some prompts for some new ones. We're gonna be excited to
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