Book picks similar to
Cyber Crisis: Protecting Your Business from Real Threats in the Virtual World by Eric Cole
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Project 333: The Minimalist Fashion Challenge That Proves Less Really Is So Much More
Courtney Carver - 2020
Project 333 promises that not only can you survive with just 33 items in your closet for 3 months, but you'll thrive just like the thousands of woman who have taken on the challenge and never looked back. Let the de-cluttering begin!Ever ask yourself how many of the items in your closet you actually wear? In search of a way to pare down on her expensive shopping habit, consistent lack of satisfaction with her purchases, and ever-growing closet, Carver created Project 333. In this book, she guides readers through their closets item-by-item, sifting through all the emotional baggage associated with those oh-so strappy high-heel sandals that cost a fortune but destroy your feet every time you walk more than a few steps to that extensive collection of never-worn little black dresses, to locate the items that actually look and feel like you. As Carver reveals in this book, once we finally release ourselves from the cyclical nature of consumerism and focus less on our shoes and more on our self-care, we not only look great we feel great-- and we can see a clear path to make other important changes in our lives that reach far beyond our closets. With tips, solutions, and a closet-full of inspiration, this life-changing minimalist manual shows readers that we are so much more than what we wear, and that who we are and what we have is so much more than enough.
Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--And How to Think Deeply Again
Johann Hari - 2022
From the New York Times bestselling author of Chasing the Scream and Lost Connections comes a groundbreaking examination of why this is happening--and how to get our attention back. "The book the world needs in order to win the war on distraction."--Adam Grant, author of Think Again"Read this book to save your mind."--Susan Cain, author of QuietIn the United States, teenagers can focus on one task for only sixty-five seconds at a time, and office workers average only three minutes. Like so many of us, Johann Hari was finding that constantly switching from device to device and tab to tab was a diminishing and depressing way to live. He tried all sorts of self-help solutions--even abandoning his phone for three months--but nothing seemed to work. So Hari went on an epic journey across the world to interview the leading experts on human attention--and he discovered that everything we think we know about this crisis is wrong.We think our inability to focus is a personal failure to exert enough willpower over our devices. The truth is even more disturbing: our focus has been stolen by powerful external forces that have left us uniquely vulnerable to corporations determined to raid our attention for profit. Hari found that there are twelve deep causes of this crisis, from the decline of mind-wandering to rising pollution, all of which have robbed some of our attention. In Stolen Focus, he introduces readers to Silicon Valley dissidents who learned to hack human attention, and veterinarians who diagnose dogs with ADHD. He explores a favela in Rio de Janeiro where everyone lost their attention in a particularly surreal way, and an office in New Zealand that discovered a remarkable technique to restore workers' productivity.Crucially, Hari learned how we can reclaim our focus--as individuals, and as a society--if we are determined to fight for it. Stolen Focus will transform the debate about attention and finally show us how to get it back.
Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age
Sherry Turkle - 2015
And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection. Preeminent author and researcher Sherry Turkle has been studying digital culture for over thirty years. Long an enthusiast for its possibilities, here she investigates a troubling consequence: at work, at home, in politics, and in love, we find ways around conversation, tempted by the possibilities of a text or an email in which we don’t have to look, listen, or reveal ourselves. We develop a taste for what mere connection offers. The dinner table falls silent as children compete with phones for their parents’ attention. Friends learn strategies to keep conversations going when only a few people are looking up from their phones. At work, we retreat to our screens although it is conversation at the water cooler that increases not only productivity but commitment to work. Online, we only want to share opinions that our followers will agree with – a politics that shies away from the real conflicts and solutions of the public square. The case for conversation begins with the necessary conversations of solitude and self-reflection. They are endangered: these days, always connected, we see loneliness as a problem that technology should solve. Afraid of being alone, we rely on other people to give us a sense of ourselves, and our capacity for empathy and relationship suffers. We see the costs of the flight from conversation everywhere: conversation is the cornerstone for democracy and in business it is good for the bottom line. In the private sphere, it builds empathy, friendship, love, learning, and productivity. But there is good news: we are resilient. Conversation cures. Based on five years of research and interviews in homes, schools, and the workplace, Turkle argues that we have come to a better understanding of where our technology can and cannot take us and that the time is right to reclaim conversation. The most human—and humanizing—thing that we do. The virtues of person-to-person conversation are timeless, and our most basic technology, talk, responds to our modern challenges. We have everything we need to start, we have each other.
The Developer's Code: What Real Programmers Do
Ka Wai Cheung - 2012
There are no trite superlatives here. Packed with lessons learned from more than a decade of software development experience, author Ka Wai Cheung takes you through the programming profession from nearly every angle to uncover ways of sustaining a healthy connection with your work. You'll see how to stay productive even on the longest projects. You'll create a workflow that works with you, not against you. And you'll learn how to deal with clients whose goals don't align with your own. If you don't handle them just right, issues such as these can crush even the most seasoned, motivated developer. But with the right approach, you can transcend these common problems and become the professional developer you want to be. In more than 50 nuggets of wisdom, you'll learn: Why many traditional approaches to process and development roles in this industry are wrong - and how to sniff them out. Why you must always say "no" to the software pet project and open-ended timelines. How to incorporate code generation into your development process, and why its benefits go far beyond just faster code output. What to do when your client or end user disagrees with an approach you believe in. How to pay your knowledge forward to future generations of programmers through teaching and evangelism. If you're in this industry for the long run, you'll be coming back to this book again and again.
What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend: A Short Guide to Making the Most of Your Days Off (a Penguin Special from Portfolio)
Laura Vanderkam - 2012
Yet too often our precious weekends seem to disappear, eaten up by unproductive work or leisure that fails to energize us. Monday morning comes too fast, finding us still unrested, with too much still undone. Time management expert Laura Vanderkam, continuing her series on "What the Most Successful People Do," shows how we can take control of our weekends to get necessary R&R, while also using our downtime as a springboard to a productive week. Drawing on real-life anecdotes and scientific research, Vanderkam explains why doing nothing can be more exhausting than doing something and why happy people make weekend plans in advance. She shares weekend tips gleaned from busy people such as politician and talk show host Mike Huckabee, former CEO Frank Baxter, and TV producer Aliza Rosen. She reveals the kind of weekend activities that make people happiest, explains why it's important to unplug at least for a little while, and shares the secret of why Sunday night may be the most important part of any weekend. "What the Most Successful People Do On the Weekend" is a fun, practical guide that will inspire you to rethink your weekends and start your workweek refreshed, renewed, and on track.
Hacking: The Art of Exploitation
Jon Erickson - 2003
This book explains the technical aspects of hacking, including stack based overflows, heap based overflows, string exploits, return-into-libc, shellcode, and cryptographic attacks on 802.11b.
The Sweet Spot
Christine Carter - 2015
Not long ago, Christine Carter, a happiness expert at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center and a speaker, writer, and mother, found herself exasperated by the busyness of modern life: too many conflicting obligations and not enough time, energy, or patience to get everything done. She tried all the standard techniques—prioritizing, multitasking, delegating, even napping—but none really worked. Determined to create a less stressful life for herself—without giving up her hard-won career success or happiness at home—she road-tested every research-based tactic that promised to bring more ease into her life. Drawing on her vast knowledge of the latest research related to happiness, productivity, and elite performance, she followed every strategy that promised to give her more energy—or that could make her more efficient, creative, or intelligent. Her trials and errors are our reward. In The Sweet Spot, Carter shares the combination of practices that transformed her life from overwhelmed and exhausting to joyful, relaxed, and productive. From instituting daily micro-habits that save time to bigger picture shifts that convert stress into productive and creative energy, The Sweet Spot shows us how to • say “no” strategically and when to say “yes” with abandon • make decisions about routine things once to free our minds to focus on higher priorities • stop multitasking and gain efficiency • “take recess” in sync with the brain’s need for rest • use technology in ways that bolster, instead of sap, energy • increase your ratio of positive to negative emotions Complete with practical “easiest thing” tips for instant relief as well as stories from Carter’s own experience of putting The Sweet Spot into action, this timely and inspiring book will inoculate you against “The Overwhelm,” letting you in on the possibilities for joy and freedom that come when you stop trying to do everything right—and start doing the right things. Advance praise for The Sweet Spot “Illuminates the simple and sustainable path toward a precious and happy balance.”—Deepak Chopra “A gift, like a good friend drawing a personal road map out of the crazy busy swirl of our overloaded lives.”—Brigid Schulte, author of Overwhelmed “This book did something I thought was impossible: It seemed to give me more time.”—Martha Beck, author of Finding Your Way in a Wild New World “A page-turning thriller full of proven ways to have the life you want.”—Rick Hanson, Ph.D., author of Hardwiring Happiness “Timely, lively, and vital, The Sweet Spot is an immediately useful must-read.”—Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage“The Sweet Spot inspired me to make immediate changes that have increased my productivity and lowered my stress.
Clutter Free: Quick and Easy Steps to Simplifying Your Space
Kathi Lipp - 2015
Building off the success of her The Get Yourself Organized Project, this book will provide even more ideas for getting your life and your stuff under control.Do any of these descriptions apply to you?You bought a box of cereal at the store, and then discovered you have several boxes at home that are already past the “best by” date.You bought a book and put it on your nightstand (right on top of ten others you’ve bought recently), but you have yet to open it.You keep hundreds of DVDs around even though you watch everything online now and aren’t really sure where the remote for the DVD player is.You spend valuable time moving your piles around the house, but you can never find that piece of paper when you need it.Your house makes you depressed the moment you step into it.As you try out the many easy, doable solutions that helped Kathi win her battle with clutter, you'll begin to understand why you hold on to the things you do, eliminate what's crowding out real life, and make room for the life of true abundance God wants for you.
Surviving AI: The promise and peril of artificial intelligence
Calum Chace - 2015
If we get it right it will make humans almost godlike. If we get it wrong... well, extinction is not the worst possible outcome.“Surviving AI” is a concise, easy-to-read guide to what's coming, taking you through technological unemployment (the economic singularity) and the possible creation of a superintelligence (the technological singularity).Here's what some of the leading thinkers in the field have to say about it:A sober and easy-to-read review of the risks and opportunities that humanity will face from AI. Jaan Tallinn – co-founder of Skype Understanding AI – its promise and its dangers – is emerging as one of the great challenges of coming decades and this is an invaluable guide to anyone who’s interested, confused, excited or scared. David Shukman – BBC Science Editor We have recently seen a surge in the volume of scholarly analysis of this topic; Chace impressively augments that with this high-quality, more general-audience discussion. Aubrey de Grey – CSO of SENS Research Foundation; former AI researcher It's rare to see a book about the potential End of the World that is fun to read without descending into sensationalism or crass oversimplification. Ben Goertzel – chairman of Novamente LLC Calum Chace is a prescient messenger of the risks and rewards of artificial intelligence. In “Surviving AI” he has identified the most essential issues and developed them with insight and wit – so that the very framing of the questions aids our search for answers. Chace’s sensible balance between AI’s promise and peril makes “Surviving AI” an excellent primer for anyone interested in what’s happening, how we got here, and where we are headed. Kenneth Cukier – co-author of “Big Data” If you’re not thinking about AI, you’re not thinking. “Surviving AI” combines an essential grounding in the state of the art with a survey of scenarios that will be discussed with equal vigor at cocktail parties and academic colloquia. Chris Meyer – author of “Blur”, “It’s Alive”, and “Standing on the Sun” The appearance of Calum Chace's book is of some considerable personal satisfaction to me, because it signifies the fact that the level of social awareness of the rise of massively intelligent machines has finally reached the mainstream. If you want to survive the next few decades, you cannot afford NOT to read Chace's book. Prof. Dr. Hugo de Garis – former director of the Artificial Brain Lab, Xiamen University, China “Surviving AI” is an exceptionally clear, well-researched and balanced introduction to a complex and controversial topic, and is a compelling read to boot. Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh – executive director of Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk In “Surviving AI”, Calum Chace provides a marvellously accessible guide to the swirls of controversy that surround discussion of what is likely to be the single most important event in human history - the emergence of artificial super
The Hacker Playbook 2: Practical Guide To Penetration Testing
Peter Kim - 2015
The Hacker Playbook provides them their own game plans. Written by a longtime security professional and CEO of Secure Planet, LLC, this step-by-step guide to the “game” of penetration hacking features hands-on examples and helpful advice from the top of the field.Through a series of football-style “plays,” this straightforward guide gets to the root of many of the roadblocks people may face while penetration testing—including attacking different types of networks, pivoting through security controls, privilege escalation, and evading antivirus software.From “Pregame” research to “The Drive” and “The Lateral Pass,” the practical plays listed can be read in order or referenced as needed. Either way, the valuable advice within will put you in the mindset of a penetration tester of a Fortune 500 company, regardless of your career or level of experience.This second version of The Hacker Playbook takes all the best "plays" from the original book and incorporates the latest attacks, tools, and lessons learned. Double the content compared to its predecessor, this guide further outlines building a lab, walks through test cases for attacks, and provides more customized code.Whether you’re downing energy drinks while desperately looking for an exploit, or preparing for an exciting new job in IT security, this guide is an essential part of any ethical hacker’s library—so there’s no reason not to get in the game.
Win at Work and Succeed at Life: 5 Principles to Free Yourself from the Cult of Overwork
Michael Hyatt - 2021
Yet career wins can come at great cost to your health, relationships, and personal well-being. Why does it seem impossible to both win at work and succeed at life?Michael Hyatt and Megan Hyatt Miller know we can do better because he's seen it in his more than four decades as a successful executive and a loving and present husband and father. Today Michael and his daughter, Megan Hyatt Miller, coach leaders to live the double win. Backed by scholarly research from organizational science and psychology, and illustrated with eye-opening case studies from across the business spectrum and their own coaching clients, Win at Work and Succeed at Life is their manifesto on how you can achieve work-life balance and restore your sanity.With clarity, humor, and plenty of motivation, Win at Work and Succeed at Life gives you- an understanding of the historical and cultural forces that have led to overworking- 5 principles to rethink work and productivity from the ground up- simple but proven practices that enable you to slow down and reclaim your life- and moreRefuse the false choice of career versus family. You can achieve the double win in life.
JavaScript & jQuery: The Missing Manual
David Sawyer McFarland - 2008
This jargon-free guide covers JavaScript basics and shows you how to save time and effort with the jQuery library of prewritten JavaScript code. You’ll soon be building web pages that feel and act like desktop programs, without having to do much programming.The important stuff you need to know:Make your pages interactive. Create JavaScript events that react to visitor actions.Use animations and effects. Build drop-down navigation menus, pop-ups, automated slideshows, and more.Improve your user interface. Learn how the pros make websites fun and easy to use.Collect data with web forms. Create easy-to-use forms that ensure more accurate visitor responses.Add a dash of Ajax. Enable your web pages to communicate with a web server without a page reload.Practice with living examples. Get step-by-step tutorials for web projects you can build yourself.
Web Operations: Keeping the Data on Time
John Allspaw - 2010
It's the expertise you need when your start-up gets an unexpected spike in web traffic, or when a new feature causes your mature application to fail. In this collection of essays and interviews, web veterans such as Theo Schlossnagle, Baron Schwartz, and Alistair Croll offer insights into this evolving field. You'll learn stories from the trenches--from builders of some of the biggest sites on the Web--on what's necessary to help a site thrive.Learn the skills needed in web operations, and why they're gained through experience rather than schoolingUnderstand why it's important to gather metrics from both your application and infrastructureConsider common approaches to database architectures and the pitfalls that come with increasing scaleLearn how to handle the human side of outages and degradationsFind out how one company avoided disaster after a huge traffic delugeDiscover what went wrong after a problem occurs, and how to prevent it from happening againContributors include:John AllspawHeather ChampMichael ChristianRichard CookAlistair CrollPatrick DeboisEric FlorenzanoPaul HammondJustin HuffAdam JacobJacob LoomisMatt MassieBrian MoonAnoop NagwaniSean PowerEric RiesTheo SchlossnagleBaron SchwartzAndrew Shafer
Clark Howard's Living Large for the Long Haul: Consumer-tested Ways to Overhaul Your Finances, Increase Your Savings, and Get Your Life Back on Track
Clark Howard - 2013
For many, home values are still too low and unemployment is still too high. Others have prospered despite the ups and downs. In Clark Howard's Living Large for the Long Haul, the renowned broadcaster examines our new paradigm through the eyes of those whose financial portfolios have beaten the odds, and those whose economic situation has gone off course. Through these fascinating personal accounts, listeners will uncover amazing opportunities and smart decisions, finding advantages in bleak times for lasting payoffs in the long run.
Kindness Wins
Galit Breen - 2015
With compassion, humor, insight, and practical wisdom born of firsthand experience, Galit Breen makes a compelling case for online decency. What would happen if parents and kids everywhere could read these 10 simple rules of conduct, learn them by heart, and live by them each and every time they log in? The world would change dramatically--and for the good of us all."--Katrina Kenison, author of Mitten Strings for God and The Gift of an Ordinary DayIf kindness wins, accountability rules. The need for this mantra is never clearer than when scrolling through posts and comments online.Approximately four out of ten kids (42 percent) have experienced cyberbullying. When we were young, our bullies weren't usually strangers. They were the kids who passed mean notes about us in class, the ones who didn't let us sit at their table during lunch, and the ones who tripped us in the hallway or embarrassed us in gym class. Cyberbullying isn't all that different from the playground bullying of our youth and nightmares. But with social media, our bullies have nonstop access to us--and our kids. In fact, we're often "friends" with our bullies online.When freelance writer Galit Breen's kids hinted that they'd like to post, tweet, and share photos on Instagram, Breen took a look at social media as a mom and as a teacher and quickly realized that there's a ridiculous amount of kindness terrain to teach and explain to kids―and some adults―before letting them loose online. So she took to her pen and wrote a how-to book for parents who are tackling this issue with their kids.Kindness Wins covers ten habits to directly teach kids as they're learning how to be kind online. Each section is written in Breen's trademark parent-to-parent-over-coffee style and concludes with resources for further reading, discussion starters, and bulleted takeaways. She ends the book with two contracts―one to share with peers and one to share with kids. Just like we needed to teach our children how to walk, swim, and throw a ball, we need to teach them how to maneuver kindly online. This book will help you do just that.