Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy


Jonathan Taplin - 2017
    Since 2001, newspaper and music revenues have fallen by 70%, book publishing, film and television profits have also fallen dramatically. Revenues at Google in this same period grew from $400 million to $74.5 billion. Google's YouTube today controls 60% of the streaming audio business and pays only 11% of the streaming audio revenues. More creative content is being consumed than ever before, but less revenue is flowing to creators and owners of the content.With the reallocation of money to monopoly platforms comes a shift in power. Google, Facebook, and Amazon now enjoy political power on par with Big Oil and Big Pharma, which in part explains how such a tremendous shift in revenues from artists to platforms could have been achieved and why it has gone unchallenged for so long.The stakes in this story go far beyond the livelihood of any one musician or journalist. As Taplin observes, the fact that more and more Americans receive their news, music and other forms of entertainment from a small group of companies poses a real threat to democracy. Move Fast and Break Things offers a vital, forward-thinking prescription for how artists can reclaim their audiences using knowledge of the past and a determination to work together. Using his own half-century career as a music and film producer and early pioneer of streaming video online, Taplin offers new ways to think about the design of the World Wide Web and specifically the way we live with the firms that dominate it.Table of contentsIntroduction1. The Great Disruption2. Levon's Story3. Tech's Counterculture Roots4. The Libertarian Counterinsurgency5. Digital Destruction6. Monopoly in the Digital Age7. Google's Regulatory Capture8. The Social Media Revolution9. Pirates of the Internet10. Libertarian and the 1 Percent11. What It Means to Be Human12. The Digital RenaissanceAfterword

How Linux Works: What Every Superuser Should Know


Brian Ward - 2004
    Some books try to give you copy-and-paste instructions for how to deal with every single system issue that may arise, but How Linux Works actually shows you how the Linux system functions so that you can come up with your own solutions. After a guided tour of filesystems, the boot sequence, system management basics, and networking, author Brian Ward delves into open-ended topics such as development tools, custom kernels, and buying hardware, all from an administrator's point of view. With a mixture of background theory and real-world examples, this book shows both "how" to administer Linux, and "why" each particular technique works, so that you will know how to make Linux work for you.

The Protocols (TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1)


W. Richard Stevens - 1993
    In eight chapters, it provides the most thorough coverage of TCP available. It also covers the newest TCP/IP features, including multicasting, path MTU discovery and long fat pipes. The author describes various protocols, including ARP, ICMP and UDP. He utilizes network diagnostic tools to actually show the protocols in action. He also explains how to avoid silly window syndrome (SWS) by using numerous helpful diagrams. This book gives you a broader understanding of concepts like connection establishment, timeout, retransmission and fragmentation. It is ideal for anyone wanting to gain a greater understanding of how the TCP/IP protocols work.

The Rails 3 Way


Obie Fernandez - 2010
    "The Rails(TM) 3 Way"is the only comprehensive, authoritative guide to delivering production-quality code with Rails 3. Pioneering Rails expert Obie Fernandez and a team of leading experts illuminate the entire Rails 3 API, along with the idioms, design approaches, and libraries that make developing applications with Rails so powerful. Drawing on their unsurpassed experience and track record, they address the real challenges development teams face, showing how to use Rails 3 to maximize your productivity. Using numerous detailed code examples, the author systematically covers Rails 3 key capabilities and subsystems, making this book a reference that you will turn to again and again. He presents advanced Rails programming techniques that have been proven effective in day-to-day usage on dozens of production Rails systems and offers important insights into behavior-driven development and production considerations such as scalability. Dive deep into the Rails 3 codebase and discover why Rails is designed the way it is--and how to make it do what you want it to do.This book will help youLearn what's new in Rails 3 Increase your productivity as a web application developer Realize the overall joy in programming with Rails Leverage Rails' powerful capabilities for building REST-compliant APIs Drive implementation and protect long-term maintainability using RSpec Design and manipulate your domain layer using Active Record Understand and program complex program flows using Action Controller Master sophisticated URL routing concepts Use Ajax techniques via Rails 3 support for unobtrusive JavaScript Learn to extend Rails with popular gems and plugins, and how to write your own Extend Rails with the best third-party plug-ins and write your own Integrate email services into your applications with Action Mailer Improve application responsiveness with background processing Create your own non-Active Record domain classes using Active Model Master Rails' utility classes and extensions in Active Support

A People's History of Computing in the United States


Joy Lisi Rankin - 2018
    But throughout the 1960s and 1970s a diverse group of teachers and students working together on academic computing systems conducted many of the activities we now recognize as personal and social computing. Their networks were centered in New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Illinois, but they connected far-flung users. Joy Rankin draws on detailed records to explore how users exchanged messages, programmed music and poems, fostered communities, and developed computer games like The Oregon Trail. These unsung pioneers helped shape our digital world, just as much as the inventors, garage hobbyists, and eccentric billionaires of Palo Alto.By imagining computing as an interactive commons, the early denizens of the digital realm seeded today's debate about whether the internet should be a public utility and laid the groundwork for the concept of net neutrality. Rankin offers a radical precedent for a more democratic digital culture, and new models for the next generation of activists, educators, coders, and makers.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power


Shoshana Zuboff - 2018
    The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth.Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new "behavioral futures markets," where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new "means of behavioral modification."The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a "Big Other" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled "hive" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit--at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future.With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future--if we let it.Table of contentsINTRODUCTION1. Home or exile in the digital futureI. THE FOUNDATIONS OF SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM2. August 9, 2011: Setting the stage for Surveillance Capitalism3. The discovery of behavioral surplus4. The moat around the castle5. The elaboration of Surveillance Capitalism: Kidnap, corner, compete6. Hijacked: The division of learning in societyII. THE ADVANCE OF SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM7. The reality business8. Rendition: From experience to data9. Rendition from the depths10. Make them dance11. The right to the future tenseIII. INSTRUMENTARIAN POWER FOR A THIRD MODERNITY12. Two species of power13. Big Other and the rise of instrumentarian power14. A utopia of certainty15, The instrumentarian collective16. Of life in the hive17. The right to sanctuaryCONCLUSION18. A coup from aboveAcknowledgementsAbout the authorDetailed table of contentsNotesIndex

Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America


Matt Taibbi - 2010
    The stunning rise, fall, and rescue of Wall Street in the bubble-and-bailout era was the coming-out party for the network of looters who sit at the nexus of American political and economic power. The grifter class—made up of the largest players in the financial industry and the politicians who do their bidding—has been growing in power for a generation, transferring wealth upward through increasingly complex financial mechanisms and political maneuvers. The crisis was only one terrifying manifestation of how they’ve hijacked America’s political and economic life.Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi here unravels the whole fiendish story, digging beyond the headlines to get into the deeper roots and wider implications of the rise of the grifters. He traces the movement’s origins to the cult of Ayn Rand and her most influential—and possibly weirdest—acolyte, Alan Greenspan, and offers fresh reporting on the backroom deals that decided the winners and losers in the government bailouts. He uncovers the hidden commodities bubble that transferred billions of dollars to Wall Street while creating food shortages around the world, and he shows how finance dominates politics, from the story of investment bankers auctioning off America’s infrastructure to an inside account of the high-stakes battle for health-care reform—a battle the true reformers lost. Finally, he tells the story of Goldman Sachs, the “vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.” Taibbi has combined deep sources, trailblazing reportage, and provocative analysis to create the most lucid, emotionally galvanizing, and scathingly funny account yet written of the ongoing political and financial crisis in America. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the labyrinthine inner workings of politics and finance in this country, and the profound consequences for us all.

You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It's Making the World a Weirder Place


Janelle Shane - 2019
    according to an artificial intelligence trained by scientist Janelle Shane, creator of the popular blog "AI Weirdness." She creates silly AIs that learn how to name paint colors, create the best recipes, and even flirt (badly) with humans--all to understand the technology that governs so much of our daily lives.We rely on AI every day for recommendations, for translations, and to put cat ears on our selfie videos. We also trust AI with matters of life and death, on the road and in our hospitals. But how smart is AI really, and how does it solve problems, understand humans, and even drive self-driving cars?Shane delivers the answers to every AI question you've ever asked, and some you definitely haven't--like, how can a computer design the perfect sandwich? What does robot-generated Harry Potter fan-fiction look like? And is the world's best Halloween costume really "Vampire Hog Bride"?In this smart, often hilarious introduction to the most interesting science of our time, Shane shows how these programs learn, fail, and adapt--and how they reflect the best and worst of humanity. You Look Like a Thing and I Love You is the perfect book for anyone curious about what the robots in our lives are thinking.

Defensive Security Handbook: Best Practices for Securing Infrastructure


Lee Brotherston - 2017
    For companies obliged to improvise, this pragmatic guide provides a security-101 handbook with steps, tools, processes, and ideas to help you drive maximum-security improvement at little or no cost.Each chapter in this book provides step-by-step instructions for dealing with a specific issue, including breaches and disasters, compliance, network infrastructure and password management, vulnerability scanning, and penetration testing, among others. Network engineers, system administrators, and security professionals will learn tools and techniques to help improve security in sensible, manageable chunks.Learn fundamentals of starting or redesigning an InfoSec programCreate a base set of policies, standards, and proceduresPlan and design incident response, disaster recovery, compliance, and physical securityBolster Microsoft and Unix systems, network infrastructure, and password managementUse segmentation practices and designs to compartmentalize your networkExplore automated process and tools for vulnerability managementSecurely develop code to reduce exploitable errorsUnderstand basic penetration testing concepts through purple teamingDelve into IDS, IPS, SOC, logging, and monitoring

Practical Reverse Engineering: x86, x64, ARM, Windows Kernel, Reversing Tools, and Obfuscation


Bruce Dang - 2014
    Reverse engineering is not about reading assembly code, but actually understanding how different pieces/components in a system work. To reverse engineer a system is to understand how it is constructed and how it works. The book provides: Coverage of x86, x64, and ARM. In the past x86 was the most common architecture on the PC; however, times have changed and x64 is becoming the dominant architecture. It brings new complexity and constructs previously not present in x86. ARM ("Advanced RISC Machine) "is very common in embedded / consumer electronic devices; for example, most if not all cell phones run on ARM. All of apple's i-devices run on ARM. This book will be the first book to cover all three.Discussion of Windows kernel-mode code (rootkits/drivers). This topic has a steep learning curve so most practitioners stay away from this area because it is highly complex. However, this book will provide a concise treatment of this topic and explain how to analyze drivers step-by-step.The book uses real world examples from the public domain. The best way to learn is through a combination of concept discussions, examples, and exercises. This book uses real-world trojans / rootkits as examples congruent with real-life scenariosHands-on exercises. End-of-chapter exercises in the form of conceptual questions and hands-on analysis so so readers can solidify their understanding of the concepts and build confidence. The exercises are also meant to teach readers about topics not covered in the book.

Kali Linux Revealed: Mastering the Penetration Testing Distribution


Raphaël Hertzog - 2017
    They provided a secure and reliable foundation, allowing us to concentrate on securing our digital world.An amazing community has built up around Kali Linux. Every month, more than 300,000 of us download a version of Kali. We come together in online and real-world training rooms and grind through the sprawling Offensive Security Penetration Testing Labs, pursuing the near-legendary Offensive Security certifications. We come together on the Kali forums, some 40,000 strong, and hundreds of us at a time can be found on the Kali IRC channel. We gather at conferences and attend Kali Dojos to learn from the developers themselves how to best leverage Kali.However, the Kali team has never released an official Kali Linux manual, until now.In this book, we'll focus on the Kali Linux platform itself, and help you understand and maximize Kali from the ground up. The developers will walk you through Kali Linux features and fundamentals, provide a crash course in basic Linux commands and concepts, and then walk you through the most common Kali Linux installation scenarios. You'll learn how to configure, troubleshoot and secure Kali Linux and then dive into the powerful Debian package manager. Throughout this expansive section, you'll learn how to install and configure packages, how to update and upgrade your Kali installation, and how to create your own custom packages. Then you'll learn how to deploy your custom installation across massive enterprise networks. Finally, you'll be guided through advanced topics such as kernel compilation, custom ISO creation, industrial-strength encryption, and even how to install crypto kill switches to safeguard your sensitive information.Whether you're a veteran or an absolute n00b, this is the best place to start with Kali Linux, the security professional's platform of choice.

Zero Trust Networks: Building Secure Systems in Untrusted Networks


Evan Gilman - 2017
    Hosts behind the firewall have no defenses of their own, so when a host in the trusted zone is breached, access to your data center is not far behind. This practical book introduces you to the zero trust model, a method that treats all hosts as if they're internet-facing, and considers the entire network to be compromised and hostile.Authors Evan Gilman and Doug Barth show you how zero trust lets you focus on building strong authentication, authorization, and encryption throughout, while providing compartmentalized access and better operational agility. You'll learn the architecture of a zero trust network, including how to build one using currently available technology.Understand how the zero trust model embeds security within the system's operation, rather than layering it on topExamine the fundamental concepts at play in a zero trust network, including network agents and trust enginesUse existing technology to establish trust among the actors in a networkLearn how to migrate from a perimeter-based network to a zero trust network in productionExplore case studies of zero trust on the client side (Google) and on the server (PagerDuty)

Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice


Bill BrowderBill Browder - 2014
    It continued in Moscow, where Browder made his fortune heading the largest investment fund in Russia after the Soviet Union's collapse. But when he exposed the corrupt oligarchs who were robbing the companies in which he was investing, Vladimir Putin turned on him and, in 2005, had him expelled from Russia. In 2007, a group of law enforcement officers raided Browder's offices in Moscow and stole $230 million of taxes that his fund's companies had paid to the Russian government. Browder's attorney Sergei Magnitsky investigated the incident and uncovered a sprawling criminal enterprise. A month after Sergei testified against the officials involved, he was arrested and thrown into pre-trial detention, where he was tortured for a year. On November 16, 2009, he was led to an isolation chamber, handcuffed to a bedrail, and beaten to death by eight guards in full riot gear. Browder glimpsed the heart of darkness, and it transformed his life: he embarked on an unrelenting quest for justice in Sergei's name, exposing the towering cover-up that leads right up to Putin. A financial caper, a crime thriller, and a political crusade, Red Notice is the story of one man taking on overpowering odds to change the world.

The Infinite Machine: How an Army of Crypto-hackers Is Building the Next Internet with Ethereum


Camila Russo - 2020
    He convinced a crack  group of coders to join him in his quest to make a super-charged, global computer.The Infinite Machine introduces Vitalik’s ingenious idea and unfolds Ethereum’s chaotic beginnings. It then explores the brilliant innovation and reckless greed the platform—an infinitely adaptable foundation for experimentation and new applications—has unleashed and the consequences that resulted as the frenzy surrounding it grew: increased regulatory scrutiny, incipient Wall Street interest, and the founding team’s effort to get the Ethereum platform to scale so it can eventually be  accessible to the masses.Financial journalist and cryptocurrency expert Camila Russo details the wild and often hapless adventures of a team of hippy-anarchists, reluctantly led by an ambivalent visionary, and lays out how this new foundation for the internet will spur both transformation and fraud—turning some into millionaires and others into felons—and revolutionize our ideas about money.

Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology


Ellen Ullman - 2017
    In 1997, she wroteClose to the Machine, the now classic and still definitive account of life as a coder at the birth of what would be a sweeping technological, cultural, and financial revolution.The intervening twenty years has seen, among other things, the rise of the Internet, the ubiquity of once unimaginably powerful computers, and the thorough transformation of our economy and society—as Ullman’s clique of socially awkward West Coast geeks became our new elite, elevated for and insulated by a technical mastery that few could achieve.In Life in Code, Ullman presents a series of essays that unlock and explain—and don’t necessarily celebrate—how we got to now, as only she can, with a fluency and expertise that’s unusual in someone with her humanistic worldview, and with the sharp insight and brilliant prose that are uniquely her own. Life in Code is an essential text toward our understanding of the last twenty years—and the next twenty.