Dare
Great bizmodel visualization technique, but the book is mostly filler from page 40 on. Excellent for beginners and it's going to be useful to me as a (beautifully designed) reference to the technique. But I cannot give the whole book more than 3 stars.
Very relevant stuff about the internet's onslaught on our attention but I expected the guy to have some ideas about what to do about it, not just complain (ok, raise awareness).
very basic, repetitive, misleading title, worn-out business examples. did like the idea about working capital, though.
Influenced by glorious reviews, I found the book a bit underwhelming (I'd give it 3.5/5 if it was possible). It belabours its main point way to hard, getting quite repetitive. As many reviewers mentioned, chapters about plant and animal domestication were the best part.
Satira, mestoma dejansko smešna, ampak večinoma se preveč trudi. Kakšnega resnega pointa nisem ujel.
Zelo berljiva zgodba o nekaj redkih vlagateljih, ki so predvideli financno “subprime” krizo 2008.
Mal razočaran, ker sem praktično vse ideje že prebral v povzetkih, recenzijah, blogih... Vsekakor koristne ideje, ampak mogoče še vedno premalo primerov.
first third is common knowledge by now, the last one appears a bit dated, but the middle part still has something to offer to today's tech entrepeneur
Bryson is a funny guy and I quite enjoyed this, it's a bit dated. In the 20 years since this book was written, you've probably already heard and made fun of many of the oddities of America and Americans that he so delightfully describes. Also, it's a collection of newspaper columns which i'm sure works a lot better in that context than in a book (here it gets a bit repetitive sometimes). But i've had quite a few good laughs.
So do read Bill Bryson but maybe try something newer or something more focused (I tremendously enjoyed his Short history of nearly everything).
A great overview of the current state of AI - relatively accessible even if you're not in computer science, but still interesting enough if you are. It helps you understand the intuition behind the main techniques currently used in vision, gameplay, language processing (convolutional nets, reinforcement learning etc). Even more importantly, it explains the limitations (through adversarial examples) and the way results are measured in all these fields so you are able to read the media hype more critically.
The author being a student of Douglas Hofstadter, she goes into philosophical parts a bit, but kinda avoids the hard question about AGI. It's understandable to me when non-engineers make fun of the topic (and it's true that AGI has been “just 10 years away” since the 50s). But I imagine a practitioner like the author should have a firmer opinion: it's either on the horizon (meaning visible next steps and, dare I say, some kind of expected timeline) or it's completely impossible to say, because we're still not sure there's not some immortal soul in humans or whatnot. Saying “my intuition is it's going to take a really long time” is weaseling out a bit.
Nevertheless, a great read if you want to get up to speed with current AI.
As a castaway story, it's quite imaginative stuff. I almost stopped reading after the first 100 pages in which the protagonist tries to be cute by embracing multiple religions at once. I liked the realistic talk about animals, didn't care for the writing style too much. Really not sure how it's supposed to make me believe in god.
Great if you've never read Harrari's books, a bit repetitive if you have (although I've also read a few long articles, so I might be over-exposed to his stuff). He still doesn't provide any answers, only problems, but he's also right about most of the stuff.
Some chapters are new and interesting, e.g. last two on meditation (and no. 15?)
Still, if you're reading only one of his books, read Sapiens.
I don't doubt the sincerity and good intentions of the author but the book is just too verbose and overdramatized. The topics are heavy enough that they don't really need artificial drama added - in some parts the author describes details that he couldn't possibly know when telling a 2nd hand story.
As for the main idea of the book, the 10 types, I don't know, some presented research is quite interesting but altogether it doesn't really click into a comprehensive theory of human beings that the title implies.
On the other hand, it's optimistic dealing with very difficult subjects and quite well written using what seem like best practices for fiction: mixing stories, leaving cliff hangers at the ends of chapters... I must admit it was a quicker read than it seems from its 700+ pages and didn't really think about not finishing it. Would be a 4 for good intentions but it's a 3 for execution.
Maybe I expected too much, but all this stuff seems kinda of common sense. It might be a useful introduction to university students (of many subjects) but I didn't get very much out of it.