Project Hail Mary

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

A man wakes up without knowledge of who he is or what he is doing. His memories gradually filer back in bits. The story unravels with his current condition as well as flashback to the past. We realize that he is on a mission to outer space to save humanity. The others on his mission have died. He previously taught science to children and did research on mysterious "astrophages" on the side. This small organisms can suck enormous amounts of energy from the sun. This will lead to massive global cooling in short order. He is on a mission to space to attempt to find something to counteract this problem to allow humanity to survive. 

In space, he meets another alien whose society is in similar circumstances. The other alien has also had his crew wiped out. As the last member of the crew, they only survived because the astrophages being attended had served as a radiation shield. The two of them join together to try to find a solution. They discover a natural predator to astrophages and then attempt to breed it to properly inhabit the local conditions. There are a number of crisis, but eventually they send a message back to earth. The human is on the way back to earth when he encounters a issue. He realizes this will also endanger the alien, so he goes back to help the alien ship. He ends up helping him and going to the alien planet. There he lives a somewhat comfortable - the aliens are excited to have an extra-terrestrial and help him to adapt.

The book has a positive story of encounter with existential threats. The survival of humanity does depend on a single person making good decisions. The right decisions were made. Earth appeared to survive. He thinks that it was what he did that lead to the success. It was not quite clear to me why both lifeforms seemed to travel to the same area in space to look for a solution. How did they know? And did they think they could really get a message back before the earth totally turned on itself with warfare? It did seem to work, but there did seem to be many close calls.

Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker

Kevin Mitnick's story is a riveting, can't put down read. You just know he will manage to work himself out of a difficult situation (until he doesn't.) The book moves quickly, yet provides plenty of details. I could easily relate to some locations (such as those in Seattle) as well as different times and events.

Mitnick started out learning more and more about phone technology. He got a HAM radio license at a young age. He learned various special "codes" for getting free calls and doing other things within the phone lines. His primary method of gaining knowledge was through social engineering. He would often exude confidence and get somebody to give him information or access he was looking for. He had used this to learn more about the phone company and later computer systems.

Eventually his snooping caught up with him. He was imprisoned as s juvenile. There was a great deal of exaggeration and  trumped up charges. (Cybercrime was something new and the authorities just didn't know how to proceed.) After being free, he led a relatively normal life until things caught up with him again. He had suspicion of a hacking friend he met. He used his skills to learn more information and learned that he was going to be busted. He fled, used social engineering to obtain fake identities and tried working regular jobs. On the side, he led a sport of obtaining source code for major operating systems. He had a mobile phone that he could change at will as well as many other tricks of the trade. Eventually he was caught jailed and then set free.

It is interesting what has changed as well as remained the same. A lot of the information that he had gone through great trouble to obtain is now available online. Phone companies are pretty much "old news". There are probably still plenty of the hacks that can be done, but it is also easy to just grab a bunch of burner phones. Phone and internet usage is also so cheap that a lot of the free calling features are not worth the effort. (I do remember having a friend get "busted" after using some codes to get free long distance dial-up back in the days when a 9600 bps modem was blazing fast.)

Social Engineering and hacking is become even more powerful today. People are trusting. At one company, I called the helpdesk from home and had no problem getting a password reset. Social engineering is often the lead entry point for many attacks today. We continue to be just as vulnerable as we were in the past - despite more knowledge of attacks. Unfortunately there are also a large number of malicious players out there, making the scope of damage worse. How can we manage a society that relies on trust without letting the bad players ruin it?

What I Talk about When I Talk about Running: A Memoir

Haruki Marakami was running a jazz club. One day, while going to a baseball game, he felt he should write a novel. He did and won a prize. Later he decided to sell the club and dive in to writing. He went on to become an accomplished writer. Writing was a much more sedentary activity, leading to concerns about his health. He took up running to be active. It also helped him to give up smoking. He likes the solitary nature of running. He competes only with himself. (Though it is depressing that age tends to bring down running times, no matter how much training is done.)

This book is primarily about his experience running, with some sidelines of his life and experience writing. He doesn't think running is for everybody. Being forced to do something can make people hate it. However, when they discover it on their own, it can be a joy. This goes for both physical activities and academic interests. Keeping up at anything is important. Giving your body a rest from running gives it a chance to "relax" and drop some of the gains that have been made.

He would typically put in long time periods running, covering large numbers of miles each week. His first "marathon" was a solo run from Athens to Marathon in the summer heat. (It was not a great experience, and may not have been the full marathon distance.) He later did a marathon each year, and even did an ultra. (Though that seemed to suck the joy out of running.) He ran in New York, Boston and Japan. He achieved remarkable physical health, but he seemed to most enjoy the mental benefits.

The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap

Rich investment bankers can defraud the world of billions of dollars and get away with a slap on the wrist. Poor inner city residents can spend time in jail merely for standing in the wrong place. Mega banks are "too big to fail" and thus can get away with badness, while smaller ones are taken to the cleaners to "set an example". There does seem to be a good point there, but it suffers from being heavy on one-sided anecdotes. The "big bankers" do have many people that depend on them (including family, community organizations, etc.) The inner-city guys? Well, even the anecdotes given in the book were mostly single people without a lot of people that would care if they were gone for a while. From a pure calculus of the situation, the banker has done the "bad" and is likely to do more good than bad for the community in the future. The inner-city guy? He'll probably be neutral at best. He may work a job. He may get in a little scuffle. How do you balance the situation? Equality does sound nice. But, our world is not equal. True equality would result in a drab existence. While some of the "less equal" situations are outside a person's control (ethnicity, upbringing), others are within their control (drug use, work ethic.) How do we ensure equality in "uncontrollables" but still have accountability for things within somebody's control?

Another area indirectly touched on by the book is imbalanced assumptions of risk and reward. A corporate trader can make big gambles with the company money. If we wins, the company wins and he gets a big bonus. If he loses, the company takes the loss, but he doesn't lose. Similarly, if a corporation gets great gains through nefarious activities, the current employees will profit. However, it is the stockholders of the future that will suffer. How can we properly align the risks and rewards? We see something similar with sports. If a college team breaks the rules to win a championship, the rule breakers will enjoy their championship. The college itself will receive the punishment at a later date - impacting athletes and coaches that had no part in the rule breaking.

How do we reign in big institutions? How can we prevent the collective abrogation of responsibility, while still protecting the livelihood of the innocent? These are important questions that need answers. The mistreatment of the impoverished in the criminal justice system is also something that needs to be addressed. (How do you balance just treatment with fairness for all of society?) However, in the end these are very separate areas. Combining them makes for good stories, but not a good solution.