Month: February 2014

tech

Advanced Internetting: Password Managers

Posted on by ch@rlesthom.as
Image via datenform.de

Did you know that your LinkedIn password is on display in a German Museum? Is your password “123456?” How’d I guess?  Well, it’s the most common password in use today. Scary isn’t it? Here’s something truly terrifying: for 20 years, the US secret nuclear launch code was “00000000.” Even if you aren’t launching nukes, your passwords are important. Why are they important? Unless you want someone you don’t know to have access to your Facebook, Gmail, and Twitter accounts, you need to care about your passwords.

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Book Reviews, Reviews

Freedom™ by Daniel Suarez

Posted on by ch@rlesthom.as

★★★★★

Since Freedom™ is a sequel, it’s hard to talk about it without first talking about the first book: Daemon. Daemon is the kind of book that hits right in my wheelhouse. It’s full of action and violence, but it’s also smart, very well thought out, semi-feasible sci-fi. Daemon is a fantastic book, and one I recommend to any nerds looking for a fun read. When I think of my favorite science fiction in terms of the technology it introduces, Daemon ranks among other favorites like Altered Carbon, Snow Crash, and Neuromancer (which I just recently read and reviewed). In fact, Daemon is at least part of the inspiration for this short story I wrote not long after I finished reading it. If you haven’t read Daemon, read it at your first opportunity. If you have, read Freedom™
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Book Reviews, Reviews

When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth by Cory Doctorow

Posted on by ch@rlesthom.as

★★★★★

When I was still in school, I remember Adrian telling me about a story he read where some sort of global Armageddon-level catastrophe happened, and the only survivors were the System Administrators who happened to be in their hermetically sealed, climate controlled, battery backed-up data centers. They communicated with each other via Usenet and IRC.

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Book Reviews, Reviews

Infamous Reign by Steve McHugh (Hellequin 2.5)

Posted on by ch@rlesthom.as

★★★★★

I am a total sucker for fantasy novels in an urban setting. I blame The Dresden Files. I’ve read tons of series in this vein. The Nightside, Iron Druid, etc. The Hellequin series is about Nate Garrett, a wizard living in modern England that is several hundreds of years old. The name of the series is just awful. “Hellequin” is Nate’s title, handed down by Merlin (yes, that Merlin). Its hard enough telling people you’re reading a book about magic, but the series could at least have a cooler name. Anyway, in the proper novels, the majority of the story takes place in the modern era with flashbacks to some semi-relevant event from centuries past. Since this is a short story, there apparently aren’t enough pages to do that, so it takes place solely in the 15th century.

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Book Reviews, Reviews

The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz

Posted on by ch@rlesthom.as

★★★★★

I hate grocery shopping. I never know what I want to eat and I don’t have a list, so I wander the isles looking at the choices and trying to figure out how to turn all the food into meals. There is a practically infinite number of meals you could make out of the food in even the smallest of grocery stores. I find the infinite possibilities overwhelming. I remember I once almost had a panic attack in a pharmacy while looking at their enormous selection of toothpaste. I finally grabbed a tube that was the shiniest, and I have stuck with that brand ever since because I can remember what it is. It turns out, while my particular case is extreme, I am not alone in being overwhelmed by choice.

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Book Reviews, Reviews

The Circle by Dave Eggers

Posted on by ch@rlesthom.as

★★★★★

I thought I first heard about this book on BoingBoing before it was even released. Except the only mentions of it I can now find on the site are for a bad review. Either I’m incorrectly remembering how I heard about it, or the BB editors realized their terrible mistake and took the post down. Whoever it was that told me about this book, I was intrigued enough to pre-order it. On paper, I should really like this book. It’s (as far as I can infer — we’ll get to this later) a pro-privacy, anti-Google/Facebook/etc, novel about a girl named Mae who goes to work for The Circle, a social network so big it puts the aforementioned web giants to shame. In practice, I hated just about everything about this book.

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