i couldnt get a single one right lol

thats the first sample i ever read that got me to read a book. not particularly great writing, but clean and propulsive and i hope the mystery pays off.

Is my brain now subject to GDPR regulations?

Not an attack on you, but my word am I thankful I don’t participate in the European regulatory regime.

It’s a shame that, as you said, but modern standards the book has a lot of rough edges. If it were half as long it would be 10x better.

If you got through C&P unscathed, I’d *highly* recommend The Gambler. It is absolutely a modern, tight, fast paced thriller. It is a deep, disturbing look into addiction and compulsive behavior.

I found it as thought provoking and insightful as C&P but, crucially, I also enjoyed reading the whole thing.

- Fiction: Pure entertainment, with no shame, although I do enjoy working in a mix of slop and more high-brow works. I generally go through one of these every 5-10 days.

- Non-fiction: Big, meaty, interesting book. These take me forever to finish but I really enjoy them. I get through like 100 pages in a good month.

- Children’s: I have been reading to my son, which is entirely for me as he’s only ~5mo old. But I have a stack of lovely children’s classics that I have greatly enjoyed going through.

Here’s what I’m currently reading and some recommendations on previous stuff I’ve read.

Fiction

Right now I’m finishing up The Kremlin’s Candidate. Not great, the series has been going a bit downhill. Some recent hits:

- The Dog Stars (Heller): Awful movie, incredible book. Highly recommended.

- True Grit (Portis): For everyone recommending Lonesome Dove, definitely get a copy of True Grit. A fantastically fun masterpiece. A real achievement.

- The Force (Winslow): The first 80 pages are deep cringe but it picks up into a really compelling and fast crime novel. Pulp for sure but fun.

- All the Pretty Horses (McCarthy): Incredible book. I could read it 100 times.

Nonfiction

- The Politics of Heroin (McCoy): Dense but very very good. First hand reporting of the CIA’s role in the global drug trade and how it has, to a surprising degree, shaped the modern world.

Children’s

- The Last Unicorn (Beagle): Surprisingly nice. Some rough edges but I’m enjoying it. If my son was able to understand more than just that he’s spending time with me and that I’m making comforting noises I think he’s enjoy it.

- The Wind in the Willows (Grahame): Stop everything you’re doing and go read this. Aloud, your kids if you have them but as a treat to yourself if you don’t. What a joy this is.

————

Some things I haven’t read that are on the shelf thaf I really want to dig in to:

- Challenger: History of the tragic NASA accident.

- First Casualty: Inside the CIA’s paramilitary ops and the early days of the Afghanistan war.

- The Great Game: Historic book on the power struggles of the British and Russian empire in Afghanistan.

- Lonesome Dove: I love westerns, I have this whole series on the shelf, and am kind of just waiting and keeping it in my back pocket for a rainy day.

- Power of the Dog series: I just know I’m going to love this. Cartel/DEA saga spanning decades.

- McCloskey’s CIA series: It’s slop, and the tradecraft is dated to the point that what is happening in the field now is completely unrecognizable from the dead drops and SDRs and such of the cold war, but… it’s fun!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49763971

Points: 7

# Comments: 3

I have had Kindles since v1. And the pattern was always the same: Read some books and then get to a boring patch in one and stop and then dont read anything for 6-24mo.

When we had my son we decided we wanted to create an environment where he was more likely to make reading a habit (over touchscreen brainrot etc).

We figured the best way to do that would be to:

1. Make sure he saw us reading for pleasure, often. 2. We read to him regularly as a habit. 3. Create spaces ideal for reading. 4. Put books everywhere.

Even before you get to point 4, it’s clear that physical books are just simply the best possible solution.

So I just bought a ton of books, hooked Openclaw up to my Goodreads and had it regularly scan the inventory of local used bookstores, bought some bookcases, and set aside time every morning and evening to read.

And you know what, I’ve never read as much or enjoyed it as much as now. And I attribute it entirely to having a beautiful wall of books next to a nice comfortable chair right in the middle of the living room.

I see my book on my bedside table every day. It’s a book, not another device. Another nice benefit is when people come over we invariably end up standing in front of the book shelf talking about books. And then they often leave with one to borrow.

Physical books have their issues and drawbacks etc but they definitely have changed our family’s life for the better.

The security issues with WordPress aren’t fake, but they are not nearly as bad as the reputation is. The main reason WordPress gets a bad rap is companies like Patchstack have a financial incentive to abuse CVEs and scare people into buying their products.

For example, we have had numerous CVEs from them stating that they found an RCE in our plugins (!). Oh no! CVE filed. Reproduction steps:

1. Log in as a site admin with full access to the database and file system of the site. 2. Scroll past an input field in our plugin where you can type in arbitrary PHP and have it executed. 3. Do some magical incantation to fire some useless hook.

——

Hello Toyota, I found a security problem- the center console inside the car can be opened by unauthorized users. As some vehicle owners may place valuables there, it exposes them to the possibility of theft.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Unlock the car door and enter the vehicle using your key.

2. Open the center console.

Proposed security fix: Require the vehicle’s key, an RSA fob, and iris scan to open the center console. You have 15 days to recall all vehicles in your fleet that have an unsecured center console. Here are several blog posts that will be going live after the deadline:

• All Toyota Cars Insecure And Anything You Put Inside Can Be Stolen By Anyone Unless You Give Us $50/mo

• Toyota Car Alternatives Because of Vulnerability

• How To Secure Toyota Cars

• Safe Toyota Cars Near Me

• Toyota Car Discount Code Security

——

Their whole business model is to file CVEs, get to them to rank on Google, and then blast out press releases scaring people into paying for their garbage plugin.

There have been real issues, like the Bricks thing, where actual sites did get hacked. But this is a fact of life, if you expose your server/data to the internet at some point it very well may get compromised. I’m sure a few people had a bad day, but if you have a WordPress site and care about security literally all you need to do is put it on a half decent host and they will use a WAF and won’t have to worry about anything.

There are plenty of household names running WordPress at scale like Rolling Stone, Time, the White House, Techcrunch, etc. They aren’t doing much different from what a $5/mo blog on GoDaddy gets in terms of security, and they certainly aren’t running Patchstack (I really hope someone doesn't sniff their sites or tell me they are providing a WAF for them etc and prove me wrong lol).

WordPress and a nice page builder with MCP is actually a joy to use, and the absolutely enormous catalog of plugins that are easily extensible and endlessly modifiable makes it so easy to work with when building via agent.

Having worked with WordPress for over a decade, I find it hilarious that WooCommerce (the bane of my existence that has inexplicably paid my rent for a gigantic chunk of my adult life) is easier to use and better positioned for building with AI than Shopify.

The future is actually pretty bright for WordPress I think.

Siam was never colonized by Europe, it was colonized by Bangkok.

I found this blog post to be much better at getting the point across: https://tombedor.dev/human-attention-and-human-effort/