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.

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.

Making Choices about Hydrogen
Making Choices about Hydrogen

Author: Lynn Krieger Mytelka

Publisher: IDRC

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 928081155X

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Since the mid-1990s, the emergence of a hydrogen economy and the speed with which it will arrive have been vigorously debated. As a disruptive technology, dominant designs for the production, storage and distribution of hydrogen have not yet been established. Neither have performance characteristics been achieved to compete with the existing combustion engine, though the efficiency and durability of hydrogen fuel cells are improving. This publication highlights the uncertainties involved in making choices about hydrogen and fuel cells in planning the development policies on national energy, environment and transport sector.--Publisher's description.

Families Caring for an Aging America
Families Caring for an Aging America

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2016-12-08

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 0309448069

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Family caregiving affects millions of Americans every day, in all walks of life. At least 17.7 million individuals in the United States are caregivers of an older adult with a health or functional limitation. The nation's family caregivers provide the lion's share of long-term care for our older adult population. They are also central to older adults' access to and receipt of health care and community-based social services. Yet the need to recognize and support caregivers is among the least appreciated challenges facing the aging U.S. population. Families Caring for an Aging America examines the prevalence and nature of family caregiving of older adults and the available evidence on the effectiveness of programs, supports, and other interventions designed to support family caregivers. This report also assesses and recommends policies to address the needs of family caregivers and to minimize the barriers that they encounter in trying to meet the needs of older adults.

System Design Interview - An Insider's Guide
System Design Interview - An Insider's Guide

Author: Alex Xu

Publisher: Independently Published

Published: 2020-06-12

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13:

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The system design interview is considered to be the most complex and most difficult technical job interview by many. Those questions are intimidating, but don't worry. It's just that nobody has taken the time to prepare you systematically. We take the time. We go slow. We draw lots of diagrams and use lots of examples. You'll learn step-by-step, one question at a time.Don't miss out.What's inside?- An insider's take on what interviewers really look for and why.- A 4-step framework for solving any system design interview question.- 16 real system design interview questions with detailed solutions.- 188 diagrams to visually explain how different systems work.

Pragmatic Thinking and Learning
Pragmatic Thinking and Learning

Author: Andy Hunt

Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf

Published: 2008-10-28

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1680504223

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Printed in full color. Software development happens in your head. Not in an editor, IDE, or designtool. You're well educated on how to work with software and hardware, but what about wetware--our own brains? Learning new skills and new technology is critical to your career, and it's all in your head. In this book by Andy Hunt, you'll learn how our brains are wired, and how to take advantage of your brain's architecture. You'll learn new tricks and tipsto learn more, faster, and retain more of what you learn. You need a pragmatic approach to thinking and learning. You need to Refactor Your Wetware. Programmers have to learn constantly; not just the stereotypical new technologies, but also the problem domain of the application, the whims of the user community, the quirks of your teammates, the shifting sands of the industry, and the evolving characteristics of the project itself as it is built. We'll journey together through bits of cognitive and neuroscience, learning and behavioral theory. You'll see some surprising aspects of how our brains work, and how you can take advantage of the system to improve your own learning and thinking skills. In this book you'll learn how to: Use the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition to become more expert Leverage the architecture of the brain to strengthen different thinking modes Avoid common "known bugs" in your mind Learn more deliberately and more effectively Manage knowledge more efficiently

Thoughtful Interaction Design
Thoughtful Interaction Design

Author: Jonas Lowgren

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2007-01-26

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 0262296926

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The authors of Thoughtful Interaction Design go beyond the usual technical concerns of usability and usefulness to consider interaction design from a design perspective. The shaping of digital artifacts is a design process that influences the form and functions of workplaces, schools, communication, and culture; the successful interaction designer must use both ethical and aesthetic judgment to create designs that are appropriate to a given environment. This book is not a how-to manual, but a collection of tools for thought about interaction design. Working with information technology—called by the authors "the material without qualities"—interaction designers create not a static object but a dynamic pattern of interactivity. The design vision is closely linked to context and not simply focused on the technology. The authors' action-oriented and context-dependent design theory, drawing on design theorist Donald Schön's concept of the reflective practitioner, helps designers deal with complex design challenges created by new technology and new knowledge. Their approach, based on a foundation of thoughtfulness that acknowledges the designer's responsibility not only for the functional qualities of the design product but for the ethical and aesthetic qualities as well, fills the need for a theory of interaction design that can increase and nurture design knowledge. From this perspective they address the fundamental question of what kind of knowledge an aspiring designer needs, discussing the process of design, the designer, design methods and techniques, the design product and its qualities, and conditions for interaction design.

Taking the Work Out of Networking
Taking the Work Out of Networking

Author: Karen Wickre

Publisher: Gallery Books

Published: 2019-10-29

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781501199288

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“For introverts who panic at the idea of networking, Wickre’s book is a deep, calming breath.” —Sophia Dembling, author of The Introvert’s Way Former Google executive, editorial director of Twitter, self-described introvert, and “the best-connected Silicon Valley figure you’ve never heard of” (Walt Mossberg, Wall Street Journal), offers networking advice for anyone who has ever canceled a coffee date due to social anxiety. Learn to nurture a vibrant circle of reliable contacts without leaving your comfort zone. Networking has garnered a reputation as a sort of necessary evil. Some people relish the opportunity to boldly work the room, introduce themselves to strangers, and find common career ground—but for many others, the experience is awkward, or even terrifying. The common networking advice for introverts are variations on the theme of overcoming or “fixing” their quiet tendencies. But Karen Wickre is a self-described introvert who has worked in Silicon Valley for thirty years. She shows you how to embrace your quiet nature and “make genuine connections that last, that we can nurture across the world for all kinds of purposes” (Chris Anderson, head of TED). Karen’s “embrace your quiet side” approach is for anyone who finds themselves shying away from traditional networking activities, or for those who would rather be curled up with a good book on a Friday night than out at a party. With compelling arguments and creative strategies, this “practical, easy-to-use” (Sree Sreenivasan, former chief digital officer of Columbia University) book is a perfect guide.

Making Learning Whole
Making Learning Whole

Author: David Perkins

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2010-09-28

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 0470633719

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New in Paperback! Make learning more meaningful by teaching the "whole game" David Perkins, a noted authority on teaching and learning and co-director of Harvard's Project Zero, introduces a practical and research-based framework for teaching. He describes how teaching any subject at any level can be made more effective if students are introduced to the "whole game," rather than isolated pieces of a discipline. Perkins explains how learning academic subjects should be approached like learning baseball or any game, and he demonstrates this with seven principles for making learning whole: from making the game worth playing (emphasizing the importance of motivation to sustained learning), to working on the hard parts (the importance of thoughtful practice), to learning how to learn (developing self-managed learners). Vividly explains how to organize learning in ways that allow people to do important things with what they know Offers guidelines for transforming education to prepare our youth for success in a rapidly changing world Filled with real-world, illustrative examples of the seven principles At the end of each chapter, Perkins includes "Wonders of Learning," a summary of the key ideas.