Category: books

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Book Review: The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman

Mustafa Suleyman’s The Coming Wave is a book in two parts: the first details how technological advancements have propelled humanity forward in waves — he uses the analogy of waves and how these natural forces can change the world around us (e.g., think of massive floods and tsunamis). He argues that these metaphorical waves of innovation are both unstoppable and transformative. The second part of the book serves as a warning about the potential dangers of artificial intelligence and other rapidly developing technologies, questioning whether humanity can harness these creations or if they will spiral beyond our control.

Suleyman co-founded DeepMind, an AI research company ultimately acquired by Google in 2014.  DeepMind was known for its work in artificial intelligence — particularly in developing systems like AlphaGo, which defeated human world champions in the game of Go (once thought to be an impossible task for AI). Suleyman illustrates how these innovations have reshaped industries, improved lives, and spread rapidly throughout society:

“General-purpose technologies become waves when they diffuse widely. Without an epic and near-uncontrolled global diffusion, it’s not a wave; it’s a historical curiosity. Once diffusion starts, however, the process echoes throughout history, from agriculture’s spread throughout the Eurasian landmass to the slow scattering of water mills out from the Roman Empire across Europe.”

He gives a number of interesting examples to support this. Such as:

“Or take electricity. The first electricity power stations debuted in London and New York in 1882, Milan and St. Petersburg in 1883, and Berlin in 1884. Their rollout gathered pace from there. In 1900, 2 percent of fossil fuel production was devoted to producing electricity, by 1950 it was above 10 percent, and in 2000 it reached more than 30 percent. In 1900 global electricity generation stood at 8 terawatt-hours; fifty years later it was at 600, powering a transformed economy.”

However, the book shifts dramatically in tone as it progresses, focusing on the challenges of controlling and regulating these emerging technologies. Suleyman presents a case for why containment is necessary (and that it is even possible) in order to ensure these technologies positively serve humanity rather than disrupt it. Though he acknowledges that this will be difficult, especially in today’s highly charged political environment:

“Going into the coming wave, many nations are beset by a slew of major challenges battering their effectiveness, making them weaker, more divided, and more prone to slow and faulty decision-making. The coming wave will land in a combustible, incompetent, overwrought environment. This makes the challenge of containment—of controlling and directing technologies so they are of net benefit to humanity—even more daunting.”

Well, that’s fun! But I think he’s mostly right.

However, in my opinion, I think trying to contain these technologies is no longer possible. Pandora’s box has already been opened, and it’s likely too late for any meaningful containment or regulation to happen due to the pace at which these advancements are occurring. It’s effectively an arms race as various AI laboratories build upon each others’ work and compete to outdo one another. An earlier passage in the book says as much:

“Of course, behind technological breakthroughs are people. They labor at improving technology in workshops, labs, and garages, motivated by money, fame, and often knowledge itself. Technologists, innovators, and entrepreneurs get better by doing and, crucially, by copying. From your enemy’s superior plow to the latest cell phones, copying is a critical driver of diffusion. Mimicry spurs competition, and technologies improve further. Economies of scale kick in and reduce costs. Civilization’s appetite for useful and cheaper technologies is boundless. This will not change.”

Looking at the reviews of this book on Goodreads, I noticed a lot of 1-star reviews. They seem to mostly be from those who dislike, fear, or otherwise loathe this technology. While I can understand their concerns, I think The Coming Wave offers a balanced take from someone on the inside, someone who is working (and has worked) on creating these AI models. Some of the arguments made in these reviews call into mind Neo-Luddism. Which Suleyman has an answer for:

“The Luddites were no more successful at stopping new industrial technologies than horse owners and carriage makers were at preventing cars. Where there is demand, technology always breaks out, finds traction, builds users.”

Overall, I thought that The Coming Wave was a good read, balancing optimism with caution. Suleyman’s first-hand expertise in developing state of the art AI models lends credibility to his arguments, and makes this an interesting read for anyone who wants to know about the potential societal impacts of AI tools.

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Using AI: Extracting reading list from GoodReads

I feel like I want to start creating some posts related around how I, as a software engineer, personally use generative AI tools. I think they are a huge boon for increasing productivity, exploring new ideas, and even learning new things

Reading Reddit, Hacker News, and various other forums, there’s a lot of anxiety among software engineers about how AI is going to steal our jobs. It’s not without merit:

A recent blog post by Dustin Ewers adds some needed sanity to the discussion. In a post titled, “Ignore the Grifters – AI Isn’t Going to Kill the Software Industry“, he argues that:

He argues that we should ignore the grifters.

I feel like half of my social media feed is composed of AI grifters saying software developers are not going to make it. Combine that sentiment with some economic headwinds and it’s easy to feel like we’re all screwed. I think that’s bullshit. The best days of our industry lie ahead.

It’s highly unlikely that software developers are going away any time soon. The job is definitely going to change, but I think there are going to be even more opportunities for software developers to make a comfortable living making cool stuff.

I am inclined to agree. Hey, I will drink this Kool-Aid!

—

Well, let’s get to the real reason I’m making this post. I posted about my 2024 reading list and shared all the books I had read during the year. Try to compile that list and add links by hand would be a huge pain. There has to be an easier way. (Cue super hero music)

There is!

If you go to my GoodReads “read” list, it looks like this. And it keeps going. It’s a lot of data.

If we open up the browser console, we can see that it’s just a good old fashioned HTML table.

So, using an AI tool like ChatGPT or Claude, how do you get this data in a manageable way? One area that I’ve personally seen people struggle with is how to write a prompt in a way that helps them. You need to provide context. You say:

  1. Describe the problem: “I want to output a list of books from an HTML table into a JSON object using a JavaScript function that I can paste into the browser console.”
  2. Provide some example date: “Here is the table’s head with names for each column: [paste block of code]. Oh! Here is also an example row of data: [paste block of code]”
  3. Provide an example of the output: “Can you create a JSON object in the following shape?”

Using Claude as an example, here is what that looks like and you can also see the generated output:

Moment of truth — does it work? Let’s paste it into the browser console and see the result:

Yes! Victory! One problem though. I did not read 60 books in 2024. Oh, no. We are pulling all books visible from the page. This isn’t a problem. We can fix it by simply asking a followup question: “Can we modify the function so that it only returns books where date read is in the year 2024?”

Claude modifies the function to add a filter for 2024. If we paste that into the browser console, we now get the correct number of hooks: 30!

There is still another thing to do. I want to make this into a nice, unordered list that I can just add into my blog post. Again, we follow the steps outlined above:

  1. Can you create an unordered HTML list that shows links to each book? Please add a link around the title, but keep the author name unlinked.
  2. Here is my JSON object: [paste block of code]
  3. I essentially want a list that looks like this: <li><a href=”[booklink”>Book title</a> by Author</li>

Hot diggity! It works. It generates a block of code that I can just paste into my blog’s text editor. Pretty neat. It took a total of 5 minutes. (Hey, writing this post took a lot longer than that.)

Anyway, this has been a production of “How I use AI”. Stay tuned for more exciting updates, coming to a blog near you.

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Book Review: The Alignment Problem by Brian Christian

The Alignment Problem, (released in 2020 but still highly relevant today, especially in the age of generative AI hype), is a fascinating exploration of one of the most interesting issues in artificial intelligence: how to ensure AI systems safely align with human values and intentions. The book is based on four years of research and over 100 interviews with experts. Despite the technical depth, I feel that this book is written to be accessible to both newcomers and seasoned AI enthusiasts alike. A word of warning though: this book is has A LOT of info.

Before we get too deep into this review, let’s talk about safety and what it means in the context of AI. When we talk about AI safety, we’re referring to systems that can reliably achieve their goals without causing unintended harm. This includes:

  • The AI must be predictable, behaving as expected even in novel situations.
  • It must be fair, avoiding the amplification of existing societal biases.
  • It needs transparency, allowing users and developers to understand its decision-making process.
  • It must be resilient against failures and misuse.

Creating safe AI tools is both a technical challenge, as well as a psychological challenge: it requires understanding human cognition, ethics, and social systems, as these elements become encoded in AI behavior.

The book is divided into three main sections: Prophecy, Agency, and Normativity, each tackling different areas of aligning artificial intelligence with human values.

Prophecy explores the historical and technical roots of AI and highlights examples of unintended outcomes, such as the biased COMPAS recidivism prediction tool. COMPAS (Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions) is a risk assessment algorithm used in the criminal justice system to predict the likelihood of a defendant reoffending. However, investigations revealed that the tool disproportionately flagged Black defendants as higher risk compared to white defendants, raising critical questions about fairness and bias in that AI system.

Agency delves into reinforcement learning and the parallels of reward-seeking behavior in human, showcasing innovations like AlphaGo and AlphaZero. His explanation of reinforcement learning, and its connection to dopamine studies, is particularly insightful. Christian dives into psychological experiments from the 1950s that revealed the brain’s pleasure centers and their connection to dopamine. Rats in these studies would press a lever to stimulate these areas thousands of times per hour, foregoing food and rest. Later research established that dopamine serves as the brain’s “reward scalar,” which helps influence decision-making and learning. This biological mechanism has parallels in reinforcement learning, where AI agents maximize reward signals to learn optimal behaviors.

Normativity examines philosophical debates and techniques like inverse reinforcement learning, which enables AI to infer human objectives by observing behavior. Christian connects these discussions to ethical challenges, such as defining fairness mathematically and balancing accuracy with equity in predictive systems. He also highlights key societal case studies, including biases in word embeddings and historical medical treatment patterns that skew AI decisions.

Christian interweaves these sections with interviews, anecdotes, and historical case studies that breathe life into the technical and ethical complexities of AI alignment.

He also delivers numerous warnings, such as:

“As we’re on the cusp of using machine learning for rendering basically all kinds of consequential decisions about human beings in domains such as education, employment, advertising, health care and policing, it is important to understand why machine learning is not, by default, fair or just in any meaningful way.”

This observation underscores the important implications of deploying machine learning systems in critical areas of human life. When algorithms are used to make decisions about education, employment, or policing, the stakes are insanely high. These systems, often trained on historical data, can perpetuate or amplify societal biases, leading to unfair outcomes. This calls for deliberate oversight and careful design to ensure these technologies promote equity and justice rather than exacerbate existing inequalities. (Boy, oh boy — fat chance of that in light of current events in January 2025)

Christian also highlights some of the strengths of machine learning. These systems can detect patterns in data that are invisible to human eyes, uncovering insights that were previously thought impossible. For example:

“They (doctors) were in for an enormous shock. The network could almost perfectly tell a patient’s age and sex from nothing but an image of their retina. The doctors on the team didn’t believe the results were genuine. ‘You show that to someone,’ says Poplin, ‘and they say to you, “You must have a bug in your model. ‘Cause there’s no way you can predict that with such high accuracy.” . . . As we dug more and more into it, we discovered that this wasn’t a bug in the model. It was actually a real prediction.”

Examples like this show the real-world potential of machine learning to revolutionize fields such as healthcare by identifying patterns that humans might overlook. However, these benefits are accompanied by significant challenges, such as the “black box” nature of AI decision-making, where it remains difficult to determine what features a model is actually using.

Christian shows how understanding these technical challenges, alongside ethical frameworks, can lead to more robust and equitable AI systems. These considerations emphasize the nature of AI safety, which requires combining insights from cognitive science, social systems, and technical innovations to address both immediate and long-term risks.

While the book is dense (very dense!) and information-rich, this strength can also be a drawback. Some sections felt overly detailed, and the pacing, especially in the latter half, left me feeling fatigued.

Despite this, The Alignment Problem remains a compelling and optimistic exploration of how researchers are tackling AI safety challenges. I think this book is an insightful read for anyone interested in AI and will leave you thinking about our future AI overlords long after you’ve turned the last page.

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My 2024 Reading List

Here’s another “year-in-review” post (I’m done, I swear). Over the course of 2024, I read 30 books. My favorite books this year were Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and The Cuckoo’s Egg (I wrote about visiting the author at his Oakland house). My least favorite was easily Palo Alto (it was one of the few reviews I wrote this past year).

EDIT: Fixed hyperlinks. GoodReads changed how their reading challenge page is displayed and I did not update my parsing tool to account for this.

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“Nexus” by Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Noah Harari’s latest book, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI, was a fascinating (if sometimes overwhelming) journey through human history that explores the power (and the peril) of information. From the first markings inscribed on stone walls to the potential all-seeing eye of artificial intelligence, Harari takes readers on a sweeping tour of how information and stories have shaped human networks — and, by extension, civilization.

The central idea in Nexus is that information is one of the key forces that connects people, enabling us to cooperate on a massive scale. Harari illustrates this point with a bunch of historical examples, from the canonization of the Bible to the use of propaganda under totalitarian regimes. He argues that information doesn’t merely represent reality; rather, it creates new realities through the power of shared stories, myths, and ideologies. This gives us some insight into the forces that have shaped society—sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.

One interesting part of the book is Harari’s thoughts on the relationship between information and truth. Harari references a Barack Obama speech in Shanghai in 2009, where Obama said, ‘I am a big believer in technology and I’m a big believer in openness when it comes to the flow of information. I think that the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes.‘

Harari calls this view naive, pointing out that while openness is important, the reality of how information is used is much more complicated. He argues that information isn’t inherently the same as truth; it’s been manipulated countless times throughout history to serve those in power. This kind of manipulation is especially evident in the recent rise of populism, which, as Harari explains, is all about the belief that there’s no objective truth and that power is the only reality.

He explains, ‘In its more extreme versions, populism posits that there is no objective truth at all and that everyone has “their own truth,” which they wield to vanquish rivals. According to this worldview, power is the only reality. All social interactions are power struggles, because humans are interested only in power. The claim to be interested in something else—like truth or justice—is nothing more than a ploy to gain power.‘

Harari warns that when populism uses information purely as a weapon, it ends up eroding the very concept of language itself. Words like ‘facts,’ ‘accurate,’ and ‘truthful’ lose their meaning, as any mention of ‘truth’ prompts the question, ‘Whose truth?’ This theme feels especially relevant today, with misinformation and propaganda shaping public opinion in big ways.

Harari gives a sobering take on the rise of AI and how it could impact our information networks. He says, “silicon chips can create spies that never sleep, financiers that never forget and despots that never die” and goes on to warn that AI, with its power for massive surveillance and data processing, could lead to levels of control and manipulation we’ve never seen before—potentially an existential threat we need to face.

For me, Nexus was a thought-provoking and engaging read, though at times it felt very alarmist. While Harari’s concerns are definitely worth thinking about, I think adaptation is key: these AI systems and tools are here, and we have to learn how to use them and live with them — like right now — today!

Overall, I’d give Nexus 4 out of 5 stars. Harari offers a sweeping narrative that makes you think about the role of information in our lives, and the choices we need to make as we stand on the brink of the AI era. It’s a worthy read for anyone interested in understanding the historical roots of our current information age and what it might mean for our future.

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Exploring Mount St. Helens blast zone using Google Earth

May 18th marked the 44th anniversary of the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. Over on Threads, someone started an account that posted pseudo-realtime updates leading up to the eruption and its aftermath. It’s been really fascinating to follow and it stoked my interest in learning more about the eruption (no surprise, given my past geology background, eh?).

Like most things that I start digging into, I ended up finding  a book!

Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens by Steve Olson. It details events surrounding the eruption and explores how a number of victims ended up around the mountain on the fateful Sunday morning. Reading it sent me down a rabbit hole of Wikipedia entries, USGS reports and Google Earth sleuthing…

—

In the summer of 2009, I visited Johnston Ridge Observatory and was able to see the volcano first hand (see image below). Johnston Ridge Observatory is located on the site of the Coldwater II observation post — where volcanologist David Johnston famously radioed his last words before the lateral blast swept over the ridge, destroying his encampment (Johnston’s body was never found): “Vancouver, Vancouver! This is it!”

Source: Me

The lateral blast, the result of a M5.1 earthquake that triggered the largest landslide in recorded history (sheering 1,300 feet off the top of the mountain), sent a violent pyroclastic blast northward, scouring the landscape for miles. You can still see the results of the blast to this day.

When we visited in 2009 — 29 years after the blast, evidence of the lateral blast was evident in obvious signs of tree fall (below image) — gigantic trees snapped over in the direction of the blast as if they were toothpicks.

Source: Me

Johnston Ridge (and the site of the Coldwater II Observation Post) sit about 5 miles from the Mount St. Helens. Looking out over this grand vista, your sense of scale is completely messed up. The mountain is so huge that it looks like you can reach out and touch it — you swear to yourself that it’s just right there, a short hop and skip away.

“I’m going to go on a quick hike to the volcano. I’ll be back by lunchtime,” you say.

Everyone else: “lol”

The shockwave and pyroclastic blast that resulted from the lateral blast were estimated to have reached upwards of 670 miles per hour. At that speed, it would have taken 30 seconds to travel from the volcano to overtopping the ridge.

Looking at my own photos from the observation post, you can’t help but wonder what David Johnston was thinking as he saw the shockwave and pyroclastic blast rapidly spread across the valley below, approaching his location. It was probably an awesome sight to see, quickly followed by “Oh. Shit.”

—

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, we have some fantastic exploration tools. I loaded up the Google Earth web app and set about exploring the area.

One of the first things I notice is how huge the mountain is (err… was?) and how small and insignificant Johnston Ridge seems, especially in the face of the resulting landslide and pyroclastic blast.

Via Google Earth

Zooming in on the Spirit Lake area, you can still see floating tree trunks grouped together, covering the northern part of the lake (I assume due to prevailing southerly winds in the area).

Via Google Earth

If we turn toward the west and look at Johnston Ridge, you can see deposits left over as the pyroclastic blast topped the ridge. They are the lighter grey outcrops you see around the map. (I’ve attempted to poorly outline them below).

Via Google Earth

Let’s pop over the the valley just to the north of Johnston Ridge (where Spirit Lake Highway runs). We can zoom in and see a mess of tangled tree trunks along the banks of South Coldwater Creek.

Via Google Earth

At the top of that valley, we can see more evidence of pyroclastic blast deposits. Like the image of Johnston Ridge above, look for the light grey outcrops and exposures.

Via Google Earth

Alright, let’s check out how far the effects of the lateral blast were felt. If we zoom out a bit and go to the top of the ridge (the next ridge north of Johnston Ridge — I am unsure of the name), we see more evidence of blast zone tree fall. At this point, we’re about 6.5 miles from the volcano.

Via Google Earth

If we skip north across the next valley that contains Coldwater Lake, we get to the third ridge we’re going to look at. Again, at the top, we see evidence of blast zone tree fall. This is 8 miles from the volcano.

Via Google Earth

Now that we’re getting a sense of the scale of the blast, we can zoom out and start putting things together. Wherever this sort of tree fall exists, it almost looks like the landscape was scoured (it was!).

Let’s see if we can find anything else interesting. We zoom out and see some scour marks on ridges way off to the north.

Via Google Earth

The area I circled looks interesting. It’s called Goat Mountain and it’s nearly 12 miles from the volcano. Let’s zoom in… ah, yes. There is the distinct “hash mark” pattern we keep seeing, that represents the blast zone tree fall.

Via Google Earth

From our computer screen, it’s hard to get a proper sense of scale. If we use Google Earth to measure the length of one of these “match sticks” (a big dead tree!), we get about 33 feet!

Via Google Earth

A USGS report on the lateral blast showed evidence of 100 foot tall trees knocked over that were located 19 miles from the volcano! Try as I might, I am unable to find evidence of this via Google Earth, as the margins of the blast zone seem to merge with areas where loggers have clear cut the forest.

Below is an example of a clear cut logging area about 30 miles away from the volcano (this was not affected by the blast zone).

Via Google Earth

“But Dave,” I hear you say, “how do you know some of those are from the blast and some are from logging?”

You’re right! In a way, I don’t.  However, one potentially easy way to tell is by the presence of logging roads. In my example from Goat Mountain above (12 miles from the volcano), the tree fall was located on a ridge, away from any sort of easily accessible logging road.

—

There was one section of Steve Olson’s book that I found particularly fascinating, especially because I hadn’t heard about it before. At the exact time the mountain erupted, a small plane was flying overhead with two geologists as passengers — Keith and Dorothy Stoffel.

They were on their fourth pass over the north rim of the crater, flying west to east, when Keith noticed something moving. “Look,” he said, “the crater.” Judson tipped the Cessna’s right wing so they could get a better view. Some of the snow on the south-facing side of the crater had started to move. Then, as they looked out the plane’s windows, an incredible thing happened. A gigantic east-west crack appeared across the top of the mountain, splitting the volcano in two. The ground on the northern half of the crack began to ripple and churn, like a pan of milk just beginning to boil. Suddenly, without a sound, the northern portion of the mountain began to slide downward, toward the north fork of the Toutle River and Spirit Lake. The landslide included the bulge but was much larger. The whole northern portion of the mountain was collapsing. The Stoffels were seeing something that no other geologist had ever seen.

A few seconds later, an angry gray cloud emerged from the middle of the landslide, and a similar, darker cloud leapt from near the top of the mountain. They were strange clouds, gnarled and bulbous; they looked more biological than geophysical. The two clouds rapidly expanded and coalesced, growing so large that they covered the ongoing landslide. “Let’s get out of here,” shouted Keith as the roiling cloud reached toward their plane.

Excerpt From Eruption by Steve Olson

Now, wait a minute! You’re telling me that at the exact time the volcano erupted, there were people flying overhead? I know this happened in 1980, but there just has to be photos of this, right?

Yes, there are photos!

Via Dorothy Stoffel

Via Dorothy Stoffel

Via Dorothy Stoffel

Via Dorothy Stoffel

The photos correlate well to a famous series of images captured by Gary Rosenquist as the initial moments of the landslide and eruption unfolded.

Via USGS / Gary Rosenquist

Here’s a fun aside (if you can call something related to an epic natural disaster “fun“). A YouTuber took the series captured by Rosenquist and ran some magical AI frame interpolation on them (essentially — an AI tries to generate content to fill in missing information between frames of a video). The result is a near real-time simulation of what those initial moments of the blast may have looked like.

After taking the photos, Rosenquist and his fellow friends correctly decided it was time to leave. Immediately.

He took one last photo (this is another one I don’t remember seeing before).

Via Gary Rosenquist

Do you like geology? Want more? Here’s a post I wrote in 2010 that took a deep dive into earthquake frequency.

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Adventures in topology: The Cuckoo’s Egg and meeting Cliff Stoll

I recently finished up reading “The Cuckoo’s Egg” by Cliff Stoll. It was a fascinating story that details some of the first examples of computer hacking and computer forensics.

This post isn’t a review of his book, however! It’s more to document some adventures that resulted after reading it.

First, a quick summary:

In 1986, Cliff Stoll was  an astronomer working at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory when he was tasked to look into a $0.75 discrepancy in compute time billed to physicists and other scientists who remotely connected to their machines.

What resulted was a year long wild-goose chase that ended up in the arrest of a KGB operative in Germany who remotely connected to university computers in the United States in order to gain access to military networks through ARPANET (precursor to the Internet of today).

Cliff wrote a book about his experience that went on to become a best seller. For fans of esoteric computer history, this was one of the first documented examples of hacking and marked the beginning of computer forensics. This book was published 35 years ago and deals with (now) antiquated technology that the young ones around here know nothing about — but oh wow, did I thoroughly enjoy this!

Anyway! That’s not why I’m here. I’m here, because I keep seeing his name pop up in various places (more recently Hacker News). A post mentioned his TED talk in 2008. It’s a hoot — and pretty inspiring, too!

One person mentioned that he makes Klein Bottles (an interesting manifold that ends up being a container with zero volume, as it only has a single surface) out of his home in… North Oakland. Oh, he also enjoys visitors.

Oh, really?!

The Klein Bottles are a really interesting object and have been a fun talking point with friends. I ended up purchasing a Klein Bottle from Cliff and asked if I could pick it up, since I live nearby. He happily obliged.

I ended up bringing our oldest kiddo and we had an absolute blast. He spent an hour with us, showing some of the artistic stuff he’s been working on (mathematical quilts!), showing off various gadgets he’s made (a fun device that draws images on his shipping boxes using Sharpies — an automated personal touch), and letting my kiddo drive the remote controlled robot he built that runs under his crawl space (!).

Just an absolutely memorable time. Thanks so much, Cliff!

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Book Review: Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris

I really struggled and finished this out of spite.

I went into it wanting to like it and hoping to learn more about the history of a specific part of California (I recently read and enjoyed “California: An American History” by John Faragher and it stoked my interest in looking for more books related to our state).

Oh, wow. What did I get myself into? This book could have been half as long and still tried to make its point: Palo Alto is the center of all evil and suffering on Earth, anyone who went to school at Stanford or started a company there had ulterior motives on world domination and fantasies of oppression, everyone is driven by a profit motive above all else, here’s 1,000 reasons why capitalism is bad, the only way to right the wrongs of the millions that have suffered or been killed due to Palo Alto ideas and inventions is to give the land back, blah, blah, blah.

Okay, Yes! There are unfortunate things that happened due to people and companies in this town that have caused people around the world to suffer. But this is not an exclusively Palo Alto problem, nor is it exclusively a capitalist problem. There are a lot of things that happened or been created here that have also been a benefit and this book just takes every opportunity to tear down and complain… about literally everything.

Maybe 1.5 stars? I am loathe to round up because I think this book is a bit disingenuous in its claims and the author has an axe (probably made in Palo Alto) that they wish to grind.

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Hometown tidbits: The first modern hydroelectric plant

I’m currently reading California: An American History, by Jack Mack Faragher. There is an interesting historical tidbit that calls out the area where I grew up.

A robust economy pulled migrants to California. That had not always been the case. The economy had grown slowly in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, held back in part by the absence of coal deposits on the Pacific coast. In the 1890s, however, Californians began exploiting other forms of energy that would power a takeoff into sustained economic development.

They first harnessed the power of the water that coursed down the watercourses draining the state’s many mountain ranges. In 1893, utilizing technology developed for the mining industry, the first modern hydroelectric plant in the nation began operation on a fast-flowing creek near the southern California town of Redlands. Local orange growers needed a source of power that would enable them to pump water up into the hills, where they wanted to lay out more groves. The Redlands generating station became the model for dozens of others, many in the Sierra Nevada, designed to provide power for both domestic and industrial use.

Hey, that’s neat! I grew up on a property with a creek near the town of Redlands (and have even done a small bit of research on it back in the ‘ol university days).

I wonder… is it the same creek (or rather the bigger creek near this small creek I grew up on). To the Google machine!

Search: “redlands first hydroelectric plant”

Yup!

Built by the Redlands Electric Light and Power Company, the Mill Creek hydroelectric generating plant began operating on 7 September 1893. This powerhouse was foremost in the use of three-phase alternating current power for commercial application and was influential in the widespread adoption of three-phase power throughout the United States.

[…]

The success of the 3-phase generators at the Mill Creek No. 1 was apparent, for these original generators were used until 1934. Although the original units have been replaced, this plant is still in operation to this day. Today, more than 100 years after Mill Creek’ completion. 3- phase generators are still the primary form of power generation around the world.

Hah, that is pretty cool! I distinctly remember this building from playing nearby and exploring the “wash” (as we called the area). You can see it via Google Street View, here, just to the north of Highway 38.

This is just one of the many wonders about this area.

See also:

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Re-reading the Three-Body Problem

Way back in 2015, I read The Three-Body Problem and thought it was an alright book, if a bit dry at times. This probably goes along with me liking the idea of hard science-fiction more than I actually like reading it.

That said, the upcoming Netflix release of Three-Body Problem reminded me that I still wanted to continue reading the trilogy, especially since I’ve heard absolutely rave reviews of the second book, The Dark Forest.

The only problem?

I honestly don’t remember what happened in the first book. Something something about science, space,, first contact, invasion, quantum entanglement, etc.

So, I decided to go ahead and re-read it this past week.

Oh, man! I enjoyed it immensely. Maybe it’s just a time-and-place kind of thing.

I am definitely looking forward to this.