**spoiler alert** When you send a picture or some text over the internet, or you record your voice or some video , you make a call with someone, or wh**spoiler alert** When you send a picture or some text over the internet, or you record your voice or some video , you make a call with someone, or when DNA is replicated all of this can be seen as information and can be efficiently translated into a sequence of 0 or 1, that is BITS or binary format
This is what Claude Shannon gave to the world , a unified way of viewing , encoding , compressing information and sending it over a communication channel from the sender to the receiver. It was a blast, it changed the world as we know it. He was the ancestor of the digital age, the father of information theory , the theory upon whose shoulders lies the world we see today.
The second ground breaking theory was that Shannon solved the issue of noise. A sender encodes a message using a tranceiver , sends it over a channel, arriving at a receiver that decodes it. The channel is ALWAYS noisy , it will always distort your message. When you talk with someone over the phone , or on the street there is noise. When DNA is replicated , there are always faulty mutations that can lead to cancer , that is noise. When you send morse code , it can be distorted...etc.. So Shannon proved that there is a formula between the channel capacity, bandwidth and the ratio of noise to signal.
This second theory changed everything since it proved that if you can send messges with very high accurancy that are not affected by noise IF you keep your payload UNDER the channel's capacity.
But Shannon was not a man of ego or fame, what defines him was a brilliant playful mind always tinkering at some interesting mathematical-engineering problem. He had a brilliant intuition and he would first use his hands to tackle a problem (build a prototype) and then write the math to back it up. He didn't have time to fool around prizes , medals , fame glory ...he wanted to play , and played he did , monocycles , juggling , building robots , rat labyrinths.
What a book and what a man Claude Shannon was , and to think that he met and befriended, Alan Turing , Von Neumann , and many other collosus of his age in the 1940s and 1950s.
First 40% of this book is literally the history of the microchip, starting with the first transistor in late 50's designed by Shockley, tOutstanding !
First 40% of this book is literally the history of the microchip, starting with the first transistor in late 50's designed by Shockley, then mass produced in emerging companies like Texas Instruments and Fairchild initially for the Pentagon's guided missles used in Vietnam war then for general use.
We then hit the 60-70's when America outsources its production to Japan and loses its grip on memory chip DRAM technology. 3 engineers leave Fairchild and create Intel. In the 80's Intel loses market share to Japan which learned to integrate chips in consumer electronics (radios , walkman) via companies like Sony and Sharp.
Late 80's Intel gambles and leaves DRAM market and together with IBM and Bill Gates MSFT devise an alliance around IBM computers , running Windows OS , powered by Intel's x86 microchip architecture. This will dominate the next 30 years.
We also get to see how the smartphone arena changed the balance of pwoer from USA to Taiwan and how Intel refused to produce custom chips for the emerging Apple , thus throwing away a huge opportunity for divestment.
We get to understand the different types of chips (memory , logic and analog) and who specializes in what as well as the complex procedures required to.build a chip (design, production and assembly) and learn why everything now is centered around Taiwan's TSMC behemoth.
The transistor lessons are above par , as well as the complex machinery needed to build it nowadays via the process of litography , and why only Netherlands's ASML can do it (using no less then 460k parts ) including high precision lasers from Germany's Trumpf which in turn uses Carl Zeiss optics.
There are so many things explained regarding transistors , cpu's , memory , supply chains , the companies that design ,produce and consume (Intel, AMD, Nvidia, ARM, Micron , Huawei , Samsung , Apple) , world gonverments, USA trade war with China and the banning of Huawei....
This book is literally a compact enciclopedia involving topics such as history , electronics , science , politics , warfare and everything that has to do with microchips which is the new world's gold standard. Besides developers , and electronic nerds, people into tech and not only will find this book mind blowing !...more
**spoiler alert** Really awesome read bridging the gap between computer science and daily life , focusing on the complexity of life and how we make de**spoiler alert** Really awesome read bridging the gap between computer science and daily life , focusing on the complexity of life and how we make decisions based on intuition or common sense which for the most part turn out to be the optimal ones .
The book also presents some amazing mathematical solutions to problems we encounter in daily life such as : - choosing a new secretary , buying a new condo : look then leap approach (37% rule) - choosing a parking lot , cashing out : optimal stopping - choosing a new restaurant ( multi armed robber / gittins index) - creating a travel plan : Lagrangian Relaxation of constraints - solving an intractable problem (like solving chemical composition dependencies or even placing relatives to tables at a wedding) , one that has so many variables it is impossible to compute in a reasonable time : applying a Monte Carlo simulation , sampling solutions and taking the best one
One of the most interesting parts was the one regarding Exponential Backoff? How do you deal with a [drug/alcohol..etc] addict friend or relative that needs your help (money/shelter) but distresses you constantly? You can't turn him down without feeling guilty but you can not constantly be there for him. After helping him every time you will let him now he can use your help the next time in a period two times longer than the previous one.Thus you apply an exponential backoff. Some countries have started applying this method in the prison system regarding probationary periods , jail time etc...
A really great and fun read that admiringly is accesible to anyone (not just computer science people)....more
A hollistic approach on how we perceive reality and our imperfect ways (i shall not say futile) in trying to embed it in our information systems.
The bA hollistic approach on how we perceive reality and our imperfect ways (i shall not say futile) in trying to embed it in our information systems.
The book is more like a memorandum of pitfalls that humans encounter when trying to design data systems.The book does not advocate of a specific approach (e.g tabular vs graph vs network representation) but it does provide solid facts to help us get to the right mindset when designing our data systems....more
I had really high expectations on this book and it pretty much did not stand up to its hype.
I will split the book into 3 main parts and how i perceiveI had really high expectations on this book and it pretty much did not stand up to its hype.
I will split the book into 3 main parts and how i perceived them based on their span in %
1. 0-30% This is the most interesting part since the author sheds light onto the mechanisms of sleep , the brain parts that facilitate it , how it evolved (monophasic/biphasic) , and how it manifests within nature. It includes interesting info for example how birds manage to sleep when in transit , whales etc. This part also decomposes sleep by its type : REM Sleep and Non REM Deep Sleep and explains why we need both , which is used and how , how are each of these wavelengths looks like on an oscilloscope etc. Really really fun and cool stuff !
2. 30-75% The hardest part to read.This huge chunk is basically an entire manifesto on the proven (and mostly unproven) dangers of not sleeping enough. While i unnderstand the author tries to prove a point , he starts to just throw around hypotheses and as he himself admits unproven experiments , that sleep is the main culprit and heavily influences a whole range of diseases starting from cardiovadcular , cancers , digestive , brain etc. It starts to look like every human problem is a nail and sleep is THE hammer !
3. 75-100% This is somewhat an average part focusing on how humans could change their habits regarding sleep , how employers could improve their companies by letting workers get their sleep , how entire inndustries andd technology could be devised as to work for our health promoting sleep and not against us like it is now.
All in all i can say the first part was really good , the second part after some point starts to become boring and really painful to read , ending with a mediocre one where you can find a couple of good tips regarding your sleep.
All in all a letdown mostly due to the second part and all the hype around it....more
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