As someone who both develops and uses secure computing platforms like privacy-focused cellphones, this was an amazing story -- information about multiAs someone who both develops and uses secure computing platforms like privacy-focused cellphones, this was an amazing story -- information about multiple law enforcement agencies going after niche secure phone networks (Phantom Secure, based on BlackBerry) and the huge sting where law enforcement largely ran a honeytrap secure cellphone (Anom, based on a fork of Android).
This book describes the technical and especially user and law enforcement landscape around these devices and the sting operation which ensued. It raises many legal issues (especially in the US, which actually has meaningful free speech protections, unlike most of the other nations involved), and many of these are still unresolved....more
While I love the Trader Joe’s stores (and wish they’d come to Puerto Rico), and I fill some suitcases and coolers with Trader Joe’s products a couple While I love the Trader Joe’s stores (and wish they’d come to Puerto Rico), and I fill some suitcases and coolers with Trader Joe’s products a couple times a year in Florida, I never thought I’d be so impressed by someone working in “boring” retail as I was with the founder of Trader Joe’s, Joe Coulombe.
The essential lesson of this book, at least for me, is that even “boring” lines of business have high returns to intelligence and competence. Grocery retailing is low margin, but at lot of that is due to weird structural issues in the industry, and with slotting fees, distribution direct to store, consumer packaged goods juggernauts, union and FLRA rules, and everything else keeping paper profits down. Trader Joe’s always paid employees well, with successful store managers making more than executive leadership, and line employees at markedly more (2-3x it seemed like) of minimum wage. In addition, employees were treated well — rotated through jobs in the store, tasks optimized for being easier for staff, etc. A lot of this is stuff a product manager or designer might do with a green field business, but wasn’t generally done in retail. Trader Joe’s was innovative to the same degree Costco and ALDI were in their respective markets.
Trader Joe’s probably benefitted from, and certainly look advantage of, some Depression-era California protectionist laws which were in place from the 1930s to the 1970s ‘‘Fair Trade Laws”. In alcohol specifically, which was overturned by a court case in 1976, it prevented competition on price (generally), and let the early Trader Joe’s make huge amounts of money as a liquor and wine retailer, competing primarily on product knowledge and selection. Trader Joe’s also used some loopholes in importing (running their own winery, working with a great importing/distribution partner, etc.) to get wines at incredible prices — combined with recession and lack of demand, there were some amazing bottles of French wine sold for $3-8 at retail which would easily go for $500+ today. This cash cow helped subsidize the rest of the business as it went through multiple reincarnations.
Once these protectionist laws were obviously going away, Trader Joe’s shifted to a much more aggressive strategy. Joe calls it the “Mac the Knife” strategy. The store shifted to limited SKUs, and focused on selling only products where it had a deep competitive advantage, without any obligation to sell an entire product line (so, no bulk sugar or other pantry fillers, consumer packaged goods from the big vendors, sodas, etc. — you wouldn’t be able to do 100% of your grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s). Lots of arbitrage opportunities were capitalized on, and Trader Joe’s remained successful.
Two other parts of the book were striking to me. First, just how fucked up the tax and other regulations of the 20th century were. Pre-Reagan, Joe was in a 73% tax bracket, and many decisions were made (such as keeping the business split into 8 separate corporations, with less than 80% ownership by major shareholders) as a tax optimization strategy. The sale of Trader Joe’s to the German founders of ALDI was partially due to Carter threatening to end the privileged treatment of capital gains. Trader Joe’s remained a California-only business for a long time due to interstate commerce rules. Joe avoided debt except for real estate largely due to his experiences in the 50s-60s. He also pointed out that many of the individual regulators were themselves children of the Depression, and in the 1960s-70s were just trying to mark time until they could retire, so didn’t want to rock the boat.
Second, just how intellectual Joe Coulombe was. He cited Fred Brook’s Mythical Man-Month, excellent historical references, and extensive literary references. This isn’t what I’d expect of a grocery retailer, and might have influenced the target market of Trader Joe’s — “overeducated and underpaid” people like graduate students, adjunct professors, etc....more
Great retrospective on WW2 (and specifically, Army operations in the European Theater of Operations) -- mostly focused on how the US forces learned asGreat retrospective on WW2 (and specifically, Army operations in the European Theater of Operations) -- mostly focused on how the US forces learned as they went, created new strategies, overcame challenges, etc. Interesting deep dive on things like fighting in the Normandy Bocage (and how different units developed different strategies), forest fighting, combined arms, the Army's replacement system, etc. Some contrasts at the end with German and Russian solutions to similar problems....more
Amazingly well sourced. The definitive history of the formation of Ethereum and the drama between founding and approximately 2020. Lots of insight intAmazingly well sourced. The definitive history of the formation of Ethereum and the drama between founding and approximately 2020. Lots of insight into the personalities (and seems accurate for the ~4 of them I know reasonably well personally, so I'll assume accurate for the others), and for events. One of the most interesting revelations: the DAO Hacker is identified fairly conclusively for the first time as Tony Hoenisch, an Austrian living in Singapore, co-founder of TenX.
Shin is a great author and journalist and I'd love to see her write similar books about early Bitcoin and about other aspects of crypto....more
This is a truly exceptional book which both is the definitive account of a major population movement in the US (black people moving from the SoutheastThis is a truly exceptional book which both is the definitive account of a major population movement in the US (black people moving from the Southeast to Northern/Western cities from approximately WW1 until the 1970s) as well as a great example of how to tell history (using specific representative individuals and their personal journeys to motivate the broader history).
I was somewhat aware of the "labor demands of war industries" as well as "generally bad conditions living in the South under Jim Crow" before reading this, but I didn't realize how close to slavery the conditions were post reconstruction. Presumably a lot of this was due to the actually low productivity of farms under sharecropping -- the costs to maintain a subsistence farmer approximate their earnings anyway -- but there weren't economic analyses provided for the income of farms, just that the sharecroppers rarely ended up ahead.
Another interesting detail is whether this was more internal migration (i.e. motivated economic or political movement by the more capable members of a group) vs. refugee (broader based and thus lower average skill/resources) -- it appears it was much more a migration movement early on, and broader later, although the book doesn't really provide statistical arguments. I'd assumed it was the less skilled/wealthy people fleeing Jim Crow, but due to political and legal issues there really weren't opportunities outside very few professions ("black doctor for black people").
It did drag a lot toward the end, once it became "people who had resettled in the North/West and how their lives ended up"; the interesting parts of the book are life under Jim Crow and the migration itself. I'd love a comparable book which goes into the "white flight" era as well as general consequences from 1970s-1990s, and then a book on how foreign immigration has again caused internal migration/demographic changes (e.g. Oakland black people moving out) from the 1990s-now....more
A post-mortem written after the body is cold but before it's really buried, about a decade or so of economic insanity. Does a great job of exploring dA post-mortem written after the body is cold but before it's really buried, about a decade or so of economic insanity. Does a great job of exploring debt, responses, negotiations, failures, etc. Lots of political areas of focus -- Greece, China, and Russia/Ukraine. Lots of brinksmanship and blackmail, actions taken not merely in spite of but in opposition to the wishes of taxpayers, etc.
Mostly is reporting/history, not economics, and thus very accessible. A lot of the issues aren't really "settled" from an economic perspective, and a lot of the facts aren't even widely known to start the discussion.
I was pretty familiar with the US side (the intra-governmental, international, and popular aspects), but not as familiar with the subsequent related but independent European problems.
Three interesting things which were unaddressed: 1) All of this is the backdrop behind the decade crypto was building 2) None of this really affected me as a US 30-40 year old who wasn't poor and wasn't leveraged; experiences for young Europeans probably far worse. 3) Hilarious coincidence that all of this ended roughly a year or two before Covid (didn't fully end in Europe, but had mostly ended un the US by mid-decade). China had much more serious issues.
Long book is long. It would probably be 5 otherwise. Author is also a general Euro-leftist, and goes into hand-wringing mode when anyone to the right of Merkel is mentioned (and dispenses the standard level of anti-Trump rhetoric). Audiobook also has not my favorite narrator....more
An amazing period of time and a good book about it, showing why due to internal dynamics within the Soviet system collapse happened as it did, and howAn amazing period of time and a good book about it, showing why due to internal dynamics within the Soviet system collapse happened as it did, and how due to some exceptionally good luck, etc. things ended relatively safely. The 1990s remain a massive missed opportunity leading to the rise of Putin, but the 70s and 80s were essentially driven by economic and political dynamics within the Soviet empire.
It's interesting how the Communist Party essentially replicated all the organs of state internally in each country, and the path of each former Soviet state largely depended on the Communist Party within that state at time of collapse....more
An exceptional book about WW2. Essentially: Stalin was truly evil, and WW2 was more about Stalin than Hitler (!!!), which is contrary to mainstream hiAn exceptional book about WW2. Essentially: Stalin was truly evil, and WW2 was more about Stalin than Hitler (!!!), which is contrary to mainstream history. Stalin, unlike Hitler, had massively tentacles in Western governments, tricking us into propping up his evil regime through Lend-Lease, to the detriment of the US, UK, and the rest of the world. On top of Stalin (and Morgenthau) being evil, and FDR being basically spineless and pursuing "unconditional surrender" at the cost of many allied lives and extending the war, the mass murder of Germans, etc., there were was the essential horror done to Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, and Yugoslavians by Stalin as well....more
This book covers the most interesting period of the post-9/11 Afghan war: the first weeks, where CIA and Special Forces were on the ground, working wiThis book covers the most interesting period of the post-9/11 Afghan war: the first weeks, where CIA and Special Forces were on the ground, working with local allies, and rapidly taking territory from the Taliban and isolating Al Qaeda. It was during this stage where we had many choices -- a quick and relatively low cost victory against Al Qaeda, imperfect but pro-American local allies with their own extensive military forces defeating the Taliban and ruling the country, vs. nation-building, and CIA vs. DOD. In retrospect, we seem to have largely made the wrong choices, and I think it was obvious even at the time how bad the paths we were taking were.
Most of the focus of the book is the CIA/SF partnership with Dostum to fight to Mazar-i-Sharif and the prisoner revolt/false surrender at Qala-i-Jangi which led to the death of the first American combatant in the war, Mike Spann of CIA, and those around him, especially David Taylor, also of CIA. The administrative and political issues (CIA vs. DOD, how much to trust allies, human rights concerns, Rumsfeld, light vs. heavy footprint, "combat zone tourists". etc.) all remained issues for the following 20 years, but they were very clear during this early stage....more
Excellent overview of the strategic and policy aspects of US involvement in Afghanistan. Doesn't fall into the trap of focusing on one specific unit, Excellent overview of the strategic and policy aspects of US involvement in Afghanistan. Doesn't fall into the trap of focusing on one specific unit, policy, or commander, but overs the entire 20 year war with the same level of analysis. Nothing in this was particularly surprising to me (I was in Afghanistan for a couple years, and have compulsively read almost everything I can find about the conflict...), but it's an excellent presentation and seems to my experience to be accurate.
The only errors were maybe not applying enough tactical detail in specific areas (the CIA/SF 2001 operations, best covered by First In, and the imperial scale of Bagram and KAF, which I've not seen covered anywhere, and the insane wastefulness of contractor/military operations in building stuff), but there are other books for those details -- for the broad overview, this is probably the best book on the US-Afghanistan war yet written, and probably will be the definitive version for history....more
One of the best books written on the larger (century-long) trends of how technology influences society. Essentially, a focus on how the technology of One of the best books written on the larger (century-long) trends of how technology influences society. Essentially, a focus on how the technology of violence (capex vs. opex, specialist personnel vs. mass armies, materiel vs. human, offense vs. defense) influence structures of governments, and thus overall society. The book goes into agricultural vs. industrial revolutions, changes in European and global structure, but then is primarily focused on the modern era -- the transition from broad-scale mass movement political structures where overall force amount is most relevant, to information-age systems where efficiency is most relevant.
As a consequence, individuals and small groups, which are very efficient but don't have comparable total force levels to existing nation states, will be able to exist as first-class participants in the world. Osama Bin Laden was an example from this book (before 9/11...) of an individual capable of challenging a nation state; plenty of others exist in the commercial and scientific sphere, such as Bill Gates who appears to be more significant in the Covid-19 situation than many governments, and even middle-tier tech companies being more significant than most governments in information/commerce.
This book was written in the early 1990s and has accurately predicted the past 25 years, and seems on track for the rest of the century. The one area not addressed was the rise of China, although this might just be a nationalist rear-guard action as suggested in the book for Western countries facing this change. Otherwise, a book full of highly specific and highly accurate predictions.
The one thing the book got wrong was at the end -- saying "becoming a programmer isn't necessarily the best way to exploit the change toward computerization" -- this was wrong, as it's a very useful skill (even if not one's primary role), in addition to the general problem-solving skills they advocate. I think this was just because the author isn't a technologist and thus doesn't appreciate the skills of programming beyond just rote coding. Otherwise, the book is full of excellent and highly actionable advice....more
This is the best book about COVID-19 and the response to it. It's also one of the best post-mortems of a public policy fiasco I've ever read -- on parThis is the best book about COVID-19 and the response to it. It's also one of the best post-mortems of a public policy fiasco I've ever read -- on par with Richard Feynman's post-mortem of the Challenger shuttle disaster. There's a common element -- the author in each was a highly intelligent expert in the domain, but not directly involved in a leadership position at the time of the incident, so as to be a truly impartial expert. Gottlieb was formerly head of FDA, one of the government entities key to the response, and intimately familiar with the strengths and challenges of different parts of the US Government, yet was willing and able to point out these issues publicly.
Essentially, there are a few specific problems with the USG (and to some extent, world) Covid response which are now clear, and which unfortunately still exist and are likely to contribute to a future pandemic (likely much worse).
1) China's ongoing secrecy, control of WHO, lax domestic controls, and generally being a bad actor seems to be increasing 2) CDC is not operational -- they are largely backward-looking and focused on producing academic after-the-fact papers on rock-solid science, rather than providing as-needed surveillance and actionable information in an uncertain environment. CDC either needs to be completely reprogrammed, or all operational aspects of CDC moved to another entity. When even FDA is faster and more responsive (itself a too-slow and too-cautious regulator), you know you're doing it wrong. 3) No "JSOC-equivalent" entity in USG for pandemic response which could coordinate across all of government (and industry, and society) and which actually had expertise and experience in dealing with these threats. (To extend this analogy -- we were similarly unprepared for counterterrorism on 9/11, and only developed this capacity through 20 years of war.)
And specific flaws: 1) China failing to share data, and local authorities in China likely not releasing information to the central government -- strong possibility of spread late 2019 well before it was announced. China still hasn't provided early samples to anyone (and the way we got the DNA sequence was likely an unsanctioned release by a scientist) 2) The politicization of response, especially in the US (and to some extent, Europe), and differential costs/benefits to the population (younger, healthy, small business owners suffered, minorities suffered, but the "public policy class" who could work by Zoom didn't to the same degree.) 3) The CDC testing fiasco -- for which individuals probably should be removed, in addition to regulatory and organizational changes -- which largely precluded any possibility of US containment of covid, forcing us to costly mitigations. We burned through public goodwill by doing nationwide lockdowns early when spread was much more localized, such that no public willingness for NPIs existed in other areas by the time they were needed there. The root causes of this were CDC being basically organizationally unsuited for the task, but specific decisions to try for a perfect test vs something adequate, a slow contracting process which encouraged them to do things in-house (which they didn't know how to do well at large scale), rather than contracting efficiently to expert companies, and poor oversight leading to continued delays rather than working on multiple solutions in parallel. We could have simply guaranteed purchase of tests in a certain quantity from private manufacturers early on who would have produced them -- instead there were intellectual property issues with CDC, unwillingness to share information, production problems, and a risk that the CDC tests would eliminate demand for private tests. These private companies had been burned during Zika a few years earlier. 4) US response was largely designed for influenza rather than covid, and covid accelerated timelines for a lot of things. There was some lingering post 9/11 biowarfare defense capability from DOD/DHS which was also not general enough for this. Absent more specific data, we made bad decisions (focus on surface spread/fomites vs. aerosols, weird focus on rules like 6' separation for droplets for far too long) 5) CDC being an active impediment to various efforts by other entities throughout the crisis - restricting independently developed tests, etc
And new concerns: 1) Countries are now highly likely to delay reporting any new infectious disease outbreaks due to risk (well, certainty) of being isolated with travel bans and other economic hardships 2) Now that we've seen how much a relatively low fatality respiratory disease can wreck a country, and this is specifically worst in the US and Western democracies, the risk of a terrorist or military employment of a future pathogen is higher -- way easier to re-create something after you know it's possible, and all the components are out there already.
The one bright spot appears to be vaccine technology and genetic/molecular medicine (i.e. things largely in the private sector). I'm not particularly convinced we'll get better US Government (or international governmental) pandemic preparedness, although the need for a better response is clear....more
A remarkably detailed exploration of life in the worst part of a dumb war. Covers the individual personalities of soldiers in a place which tries to eA remarkably detailed exploration of life in the worst part of a dumb war. Covers the individual personalities of soldiers in a place which tries to eliminate distinction, the inanity of daily life, constant but not consistent mortal peril, and the essential goodness of the men in an essentially inhuman situation.
I can't believe I'd not read this book earlier, but I watched Restrepo which largely covers the same time and place. Both are excellent.
Junger is a truly exceptional writer. Most of what he wrote was naturally unbelievable, but was documented in photos and video by the excellent photojournalist accompanying him (Tim Hetherington), the soldiers, as well as through extensive fact checking and military reports....more
This is one of my favorite books of 2021, although not quite "favorites of all time". An excellent look into some of the lesser-known people involved This is one of my favorite books of 2021, although not quite "favorites of all time". An excellent look into some of the lesser-known people involved in public health, and through them the challenges facing the entire system. That CDC has become largely a "reporting organization" rather than a "planning, preventing, and execution organization" seems widely acknowledged, and this explains some of why that has happened. It also shows how either ad hoc organizations or positions with little power (the local/county public health officer) end up filling in for the national-level planning one would expect CDC to provide.
Two interesting points which haven't been brought up as widely elsewhere: the 1976 Swine Flu fiasco, and the Sonia Angell (California public health director) affair, where a woman who was essentially unqualified (never having worked in contagious diseases) was appointed from CDC (also unusual, usually promoted from within), largely for social justice reasons (her work was primarily about racial disparities in cardiology care, and she herself identified as a racial/ethnic minority), over exceptionally qualified people within the public health system.
It's likely this isn't a completely objective look into the pandemic response, but it's engaging, and does seem self-consistent....more
This book does a great job of documenting early SpaceX, especially the first 4 launch attempts of Falcon 1 (of which only the fourth reached orbit). TThis book does a great job of documenting early SpaceX, especially the first 4 launch attempts of Falcon 1 (of which only the fourth reached orbit). The author spoke to many current and former employees and was given pretty free rein to tell the whole story. Elon's own biography by Vance also focused on the terrible time when the world financial markets had collapsed, Elon was getting divorced, Tesla and SpaceX both desperately needed funding, and the third Falcon 1 launch failed (for a very minor reason), but this book included a lot more information about the actual engineering and implementation challenges the team was facing.
There's some additional information about Falcon 9, and some passing references to Starlink, the Mars vehicle, etc., but overall it's much more focused on the first ~6-8 years of SpaceX....more
A truly exceptional book -- analyzing things by their defects is a generally good approach, and showing how the financial system works, what it optimiA truly exceptional book -- analyzing things by their defects is a generally good approach, and showing how the financial system works, what it optimizes for, and what is ultimately important is well illustrated through frauds. These frauds also have the advantage of being very interesting in their own right, as some things are repeated, but the exceptional ones have pretty unique aspects.
The book describes a few major categories of fraud -- long firm (aka the "bustout" from Boston), counterfeiting (which goes beyond just "producing fakes" but a variety of subversions of chain of provenance), control fraud (where someone takes a firm over and then uses it to do a variety of things beyond simple embezzlement -- a great example of principal-agent), and crimes against the market itself.
Several of the examples are exceptionally well known (Ponzi, Theranos) but I enjoyed learning about the Portuguese Banknote Affair, Poyais, Pigeon King International, Boston Ladies’ Deposit Company, and especially the Great Salad Oil Swindle.
As the author said, the book is useful for understanding how the economy works, and leads you into developing some effective anti-fraud controls. A great point is that the ideal level of fraud is not zero, since that implies very high anti-fraud costs, but a level somewhat above zero, and that the amount of anti-fraud measures in an industry have something to do with the society in which they operate (high trust societies actually need more anti-fraud machinery than low trust ones to catch frauds; before the modern era, no one trusted anyone in anything except shipping to the point where complex fraud was a serious concern.)
Overall, one of my favorite books of the year (so far)....more
This is probably my favorite book about NASA (at least that I've read so far). While Apollo 13 was only a "successful failure", this book does a greatThis is probably my favorite book about NASA (at least that I've read so far). While Apollo 13 was only a "successful failure", this book does a great job of showing the culture of NASA, engineering issues of large-scale space systems, and the personalities of those involved -- astronauts, engineers and technicians, and their families. It also makes President Nixon look good(!!!).
The complexity of a system like Apollo (with literally millions of subassemblies produced by different vendors around the country, staff from multiple organizations, changing requirements, etc) being managed by people with only 1960s computing resources seems pretty amazing. That Apollo 13 was the closest the capsule-based programs got to killing astronauts in space even more so. It's hard to read this without thinking about Challenger and Columbia, which got even more complex and had an ultimately worse safety record, at a time when NASA had a large but proportionately smaller budget, and with future private space missions which will hopefully have a good safety record (likely due to simplification and better management of complexity)....more
One of the best books written about the Iraq war -- starting in 2001/2002 with the initial hesitating deployment of CIA personnel to work with KDP andOne of the best books written about the Iraq war -- starting in 2001/2002 with the initial hesitating deployment of CIA personnel to work with KDP and PUK in the no-fly zone, and continuing to the beginning of the ground war in 2003. Written by Sam Faddis, who was the head of this operation for CIA,
This book answers a few big questions: why was the initial invasion of Iraq so understaffed, especially in the North (answer: DOD kept wishing Turkey would act against its own long-term interests and repeatedly revealed preferences and support the Kurds, and somehow policymakers never accepted reality and prepared an alternative plan); what was the deal with WMD (CIA on the ground was providing accurate and inconclusive information about WMD, and never found any solid evidence; the internal USG reasons for invading Iraq were not about immediate WMD threat, but WMD threat was used to sell the invasion to the public for political reasons, which had the disadvantage of being a lie); why didn't the Kurds get to do more in the initial war anyway (DOD-CIA rivalry and a political desire to not have the Kurds appear to be invading Arab cities, even when the alternatives were worse); why was the post-invasion so bad (people like Paul Bremer at CPA, genuine incompetence and bureaucracy in Washington, and unwillingness to face reality.)
As you'd expect by a CIA officer, it's well structured, and provides a lot of interesting details of daily life in Kurdistan before the war started. The most comparable book to this is First In by Gary Schroen, who did basically the same thing in Afghanistan with much more success (due to a more supportive US Government and less meddling)....more
This is a good account of some of the Coinbase story (it's ongoing, but it's been about 8 years already...), including the internal political and prodThis is a good account of some of the Coinbase story (it's ongoing, but it's been about 8 years already...), including the internal political and product debate, concerns about how Coinbase fits in with the rest of the broader crypto (and broader financial) community, and some of the concerns about Coinbase vs. future competitors. There's a brief intro to crypto generally, but I think it assumes you're somewhat familiar with Bitcoin at this point, and the book probably isn't good as a first introduction. I know a lot of the people involved in the story (and actually was involved in reviewing Coinbase's application to Y Combinator back when they originally applied, plus have been to their various offices a few times), and everything presented about which I have some knowledge appears consistent with reality....more
This is a historical novel of the final years of the Roman Empire -- the fall of the ordered world. To some degree speculative, but trying to be as acThis is a historical novel of the final years of the Roman Empire -- the fall of the ordered world. To some degree speculative, but trying to be as accurate as possible, and making a few pretty reasonable extrapolations from accepted historical evidence.
Essentially the core argument is that the Goths had become highly Romanized in a lot of ways, and the intrigue at the end wasn't the very simply taught "Rome became weak and was overrun by attackers from outside". The former part is well supported by history; the specific characters and intrigues in the book might or might not be accurate but are plausible, supported by some evidence, and highly entertaining. It's obvious that there were some truly great people involved in an event as momentous as this, and the book makes a reasonable attempt at portraying them.
Unfortunately there's no way to buy this book on Amazon in digital format in the US (some rights issue); I ended up using Rakuten Kobo with a VPN to Germany to buy a copy (in English, though)....more
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