Blindsight
Blindsight

Author: Peter Watts

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2006-10-03

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 1429955198

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Hugo and Shirley Jackson award-winning Peter Watts stands on the cutting edge of hard SF with his acclaimed novel, Blindsight Two months since the stars fell... Two months of silence, while a world held its breath. Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route. So who do you send to force introductions with unknown and unknowable alien intellect that doesn't wish to be met? You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist—an informational topologist with half his mind gone—as an interface between here and there. Pray they can be trusted with the fate of a world. They may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Dust & Grooves
Dust & Grooves

Author: Eilon Paz

Publisher: Ten Speed Press

Published: 2015-09-15

Total Pages: 577

ISBN-13: 1607748703

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A photographic look into the world of vinyl record collectors—including Questlove—in the most intimate of environments—their record rooms. Compelling photographic essays from photographer Eilon Paz are paired with in-depth and insightful interviews to illustrate what motivates these collectors to keep digging for more records. The reader gets an up close and personal look at a variety of well-known vinyl champions, including Gilles Peterson and King Britt, as well as a glimpse into the collections of known and unknown DJs, producers, record dealers, and everyday enthusiasts. Driven by his love for vinyl records, Paz takes us on a five-year journey unearthing the very soul of the vinyl community.

Grokking the System Design Interview
Grokking the System Design Interview

Author: Design Gurus

Publisher:

Published: 2021-12-18

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13:

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This book (also available online at www.designgurus.org) by Design Gurus has helped 60k+ readers to crack their system design interview (SDI). System design questions have become a standard part of the software engineering interview process. These interviews determine your ability to work with complex systems and the position and salary you will be offered by the interviewing company. Unfortunately, SDI is difficult for most engineers, partly because they lack experience developing large-scale systems and partly because SDIs are unstructured in nature. Even engineers who've some experience building such systems aren't comfortable with these interviews, mainly due to the open-ended nature of design problems that don't have a standard answer. This book is a comprehensive guide to master SDIs. It was created by hiring managers who have worked for Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon. The book contains a carefully chosen set of questions that have been repeatedly asked at top companies. What's inside? This book is divided into two parts. The first part includes a step-by-step guide on how to answer a system design question in an interview, followed by famous system design case studies. The second part of the book includes a glossary of system design concepts. Table of Contents First Part: System Design Interviews: A step-by-step guide. Designing a URL Shortening service like TinyURL. Designing Pastebin. Designing Instagram. Designing Dropbox. Designing Facebook Messenger. Designing Twitter. Designing YouTube or Netflix. Designing Typeahead Suggestion. Designing an API Rate Limiter. Designing Twitter Search. Designing a Web Crawler. Designing Facebook's Newsfeed. Designing Yelp or Nearby Friends. Designing Uber backend. Designing Ticketmaster. Second Part: Key Characteristics of Distributed Systems. Load Balancing. Caching. Data Partitioning. Indexes. Proxies. Redundancy and Replication. SQL vs. NoSQL. CAP Theorem. PACELC Theorem. Consistent Hashing. Long-Polling vs. WebSockets vs. Server-Sent Events. Bloom Filters. Quorum. Leader and Follower. Heartbeat. Checksum. About the Authors Designed Gurus is a platform that offers online courses to help software engineers prepare for coding and system design interviews. Learn more about our courses at www.designgurus.org.

Sword of the Rightful King
Sword of the Rightful King

Author: Jane Yolen

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 9780152025335

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The newly crowned King Arthur has yet to win the support of the people. Merlin must do something before the king is betrayed, or murdered, or--worst of all--gets married. So Merlin creates a trick: a sword magically placed into a slab of rock that only Arthur can withdraw. Then he lets it be known that whosoever removes the blade will rule all of England, and invites any man who would dare, to try to pull out the sword. But then someone else pulls the sword out first. . . .

The Kingdoms
The Kingdoms

Author: Natasha Pulley

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2021-05-25

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 1635576091

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For fans of The 7 1⁄2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and David Mitchell, a genre bending, time twisting alternative history that asks whether it's worth changing the past to save the future, even if it costs you everyone you've ever loved. Joe Tournier has a bad case of amnesia. His first memory is of stepping off a train in the nineteenth-century French colony of England. The only clue Joe has about his identity is a century-old postcard of a Scottish lighthouse that arrives in London the same month he does. Written in illegal English-instead of French-the postcard is signed only with the letter “M,” but Joe is certain whoever wrote it knows him far better than he currently knows himself, and he's determined to find the writer. The search for M, though, will drive Joe from French-ruled London to rebel-owned Scotland and finally onto the battle ships of a lost empire's Royal Navy. Swept out to sea with a hardened British sea captain named Kite, who might know more about Joe's past than he's willing to let on, Joe will remake history, and himself. From bestselling author Natasha Pulley, The Kingdoms is an epic, romantic, wildly original novel that bends genre as easily as it twists time.

The Power of Survey Design
The Power of Survey Design

Author: Giuseppe Iarossi

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 082136393X

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A practical how-to guide on all the steps involved with survey implementation, this volume covers survey management, questionnaire design, sampling, respondent's psychology and survey participation, and data management. A comprehensive and practical reference for those who both use and produce survey data.

Instant Influence
Instant Influence

Author: Michael Pantalon

Publisher: Little, Brown Spark

Published: 2011-05-09

Total Pages: 167

ISBN-13: 0316134651

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If you want to motivate your employees to be more productive, convince your customers to use more of your products and services, encourage a loved one to engage in healthier habits, or inspire any change in yourself, renowned psychologist Dr. Michael Pantalon can show you how to achieve Instant Influence in six simple steps. Drawing on three decades of research, Dr. Pantalon's easy-to-learn method can create changes both great and small in 7 minutes or less. This scientifically tested method succeeds in every area of work and life by helping people tap into their deeply personal reasons for wanting to change and finding a spark of "yes" within an answer that sounds like "no."

Yakuza Pride
Yakuza Pride

Author: H. J. Brues

Publisher:

Published: 2011-06

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 9781615819522

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When yakuza underboss Shigure Matsunaga meets Kenneth Harris at a boring social event, he's surprised to find himself attracted to the blond gaijin with the mismatched eyes. Shigure is even more pleased when he discovers Ken not only speaks Japanese fluently, but is fluent in Japan's ways, even the more violent of the martial arts. Ken's expertise at kendo is not his most striking quality--it's the passion beneath his quiet, almost fragile exterior that ignites Shigure's lust, and the two come together as explosively as they spar. Shigure is a dangerous man in a dangerous position. He's been trying to keep the peace with the Daito-kai--his hated rivals--but the danger on the streets is escalating, threatening those Shigure most wants to protect. He may claim to love his gaijin, but before he can keep Ken safe, Shigure will have to overcome hostility from his people, a hidden enemy, and, the most insidious opponent of all, his own hard-won pride.

The Buried Giant
The Buried Giant

Author: Kazuo Ishiguro

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2015-03-03

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 0385353227

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of Never Let Me Go and the Booker Prize–winning novel The Remains of the Day comes a luminous meditation on the act of forgetting and the power of memory. In post-Arthurian Britain, the wars that once raged between the Saxons and the Britons have finally ceased. Axl and Beatrice, an elderly British couple, set off to visit their son, whom they haven't seen in years. And, because a strange mist has caused mass amnesia throughout the land, they can scarcely remember anything about him. As they are joined on their journey by a Saxon warrior, his orphan charge, and an illustrious knight, Axl and Beatrice slowly begin to remember the dark and troubled past they all share. By turns savage, suspenseful, and intensely moving, The Buried Giant is a luminous meditation on the act of forgetting and the power of memory.