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Always day one : how the tech titans plan to stay on top forever / by Kantrowitz, Alex,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."An acclaimed tech reporter reveals the inner workings of the most powerful companies in the world, taking you behind the scenes with Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Google's Sundar Pichai, and Microsoft's Satya Nadella. At Amazon, "Day One" is code for working inventively and urgently, as if it were the first day of your startup. Day Two is, in Bezos's own words, is "stasis, followed by irrelevance, followed by excruciating, painful decline, followed by death." Amazon and its fellow tech giants are under fire for their size and power, but there's more to their story than anti-competitive practices and tax avoidance. These companies have kept ahead of the competition by embracing a new leadership model, one built for an age where companies can spin up new products and services at record speed. On the inside, these tech giants operate nothing like the corporate giants of the past -- like Exxon and GM -- which built core advantages and did everything they could to defend them. For these new goliaths, it's always day one. They are in a constant state of reinvention despite their massive size, understanding that once you become obsessed with the past, you will miss the future. Always Day One takes you deep inside these companies, revealing the uncommon cultures and leadership practices that have kept them from being picked apart by smaller, nimbler competitors. It details how their CEOs will do away with any obstacle blocking the free flow of ideas within their companies, how they're creating systems to bring the best of these ideas to life, and how they're using advanced workplace technology to make it all possible. Kantrowitz reveals a new model propelling their dominance at a stage when most big companies begin to decline. And he shows the way forward for anyone who wants to compete with -- and beat -- the existing tech giants"--
Subjects: High technology industries; Internet industry;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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How to stay human in a fucked-up world : mindfulness practices for real life / by Desmond, Tim,author.;
"A modern approach to mindfulness from an esteemed Buddhist scholar and Psychology professor. Everywhere we go, we hear about the benefits of mindfulness--to bring us joy, peace, and productivity, and even to make us look younger and live longer. Meanwhile, in the real world, things aren't so rosy: suicide rates are skyrocketing; prescription drug use is on the rise; exposure to negative news is causing PTSD-like symptoms; and we continue to report feeling disconnected, distracted, and depressed. How can we be more mindfulwhen the world is this fucked up? Tim Desmond--esteemed Buddhist scholar and lecturer on Psychology at Yale Medical School--is the fresh, engaging answer to this important question. Using techniques cultivated from the monastery of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and at Google headquarters in Silicon Valley, Tim has been inventing new ways to bridge the gap between the ancient tradition of mindfulness and modern life. In How to Stay Human in a Fucked Up World, he presents readers with exactly that--the first mindfulness practice designed for surviving the sometimes-miserable world we live in, with advice, strategies, and guidance you can start using to feel more connected, joyful, and presenttoday. Direct, witty, and surprising, with chapters titled "Why Bad Things Happen," "You're Not Crazy," and "Becoming Fearless," How to Stay Human in a Fucked Up World gets right to the heart of our collective pain with a simple practice rooted in science, self-compassion, and psychotherapy. If you've tried mindfulness before and failed, Tim gets it. Likely you were told to sit on a pillow in a dark room, meditate, or count your breaths. But mindfulness isn't about separating ourselves from the problems in the world. Instead, it is about re-learning how to get out there, connect with the suffering of every living being and in so doing, embrace our own personal suffering, let go, and move on"--
Subjects: Happiness.; Meditation; Self-actualization (Psychology);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The Coming Wave Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century's Greatest Dilemma [electronic resource] : by Suleyman, Mustafa.aut; Bhaskar, Michael.; cloudLibrary;
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An urgent warning of the unprecedented risks that AI and other fast-developing technologies pose to global order, and how we might contain them while we have the chance—from a co-founder of the pioneering artificial intelligence company DeepMind “A fascinating, well-written, and important book.”—Yuval Noah Harari “Essential reading.”—Daniel Kahneman “An excellent guide for navigating unprecedented times.”—Bill Gates A Best Book of the Year: CNN, Economist, Bloomberg, Politico Playbook, Financial Times, The Guardian, CEO Magazine, Semafor • Winner of the Inc. Non-Obvious Book Award • Finalist for the Porchlight Business Book Award and the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award We are approaching a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change.    Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organise your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy.    None of us are prepared.   As co-founder of the pioneering AI company DeepMind, part of Google, Mustafa Suleyman has been at the centre of this revolution. The coming decade, he argues, will be defined by this wave of powerful, fast-proliferating new technologies.    In The Coming Wave, Suleyman shows how these forces will create immense prosperity but also threaten the nation-state, the foundation of global order. As our fragile governments sleepwalk into disaster, we face an existential dilemma: unprecedented harms on one side, the threat of overbearing surveillance on the other.    Can we forge a narrow path between catastrophe and dystopia?   This groundbreaking book from the ultimate AI insider establishes “the containment problem”—the task of maintaining control over powerful technologies—as the essential challenge of our age.
Subjects: Electronic books.; Future Studies; Intelligence (AI) & Semantics; Social Aspects;
© 2023., Crown,
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Data cartels : the companies that control and monopolize our information / by Lamdan, Sarah,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."In our digital world, data is power, and information hoarders reign supreme. The practices of these digital pillagers are analogous to those of cartels--they use intimidation, aggression, and force to maintain control and power. Sarah Lamdan brings us into the unregulated underworld of the "data cartels," demonstrating how the entities mining, hoarding, commodifying, and selling our data and informational resources perpetuate social inequalities and threaten the democratic sharing of knowledge. The companies at the center of this book are not household names like Google. They fly under the radar and self-identify as "data analytics" or "business solutions" operations. These companies supply the digital lifeblood that flow through the circulatory system of the internet. With their control over data, they can prevent the free flow of information to places where it is needed, and simultaneously distribute private information to predatory entities. Just a few companies dominate most of our critical informational resources, from scientific research and financial data to the law. They are also data brokers, selling our personal data to law enforcement and other government agencies that determine whether we should be eligible for social services, and they sell "risk" products that insurance companies, employers, landlords, and healthcare systems use to make decisions. Alarmingly, everything they're doing is perfectly legal. Ranging from small information firms to billion-dollar data giants like Thomson Reuters and RELX Group, these companies masterfully exploit outdated information and privacy laws, curating online information in a way that amplifies digital racism and targets marginalized communities. In this book, Lamdan contends that privatization and tech exceptionalism have prevented us from creating effective legal regulation. Lack of legal intervention has allowed oversized information oligopolies to coalesce. In addition to specific legal and market-based solutions, Lamdan calls for treating information like a public good and creating digital infrastructure that supports our democratic ideals"--
Subjects: Antitrust law; Cartels; Data protection; Freedom of information; Information services industry; Information services industry;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Over the influence : a memoir / by JoJo,1990-author.;
"Joanna Levesque, better known as "JoJo", knew she was her family's ticket to financial freedom. Born in Foxborough, MA, to parents who self-identified as addicts, her smooth voice captured the attention of a record label exec when she was just twelve years old. That exec put the machine in motion, and JoJo would go on to be the face for the ever-more-popular hip hop and R&B sounds of the early aughts. She'd be the kind of star young girls could relate to as they dressed up for dances and football games. In 2004, you couldn't leave the house without hearing her hit single "Leave (Get Out)". Nearly two decades later, she remains the youngest-ever solo artist to have a debut #1 single in the U.S. But what happened to JoJo? That's the first question Google suggests when you search for her name. In this debut memoir, JoJo mines diary entries, photos, song lyrics, and conversations with loved ones to share what really happened. From growing up in a broken home to being raised by a broken music industry, to tales from her darkest ten years, when a marathon lawsuit with her music label prompted a period of proper rebellion, complete with drugs, drinking, sex, and complicated relationships, JoJo holds nothing back in these pages. She also interrogates how race intersected with her career, her relationships, and the public's perception of her, reflecting on how operating with a victim mentality left her feeling stuck in her ability to move forward in life and as an artist. By sharing her story in the tradition of other child stars like Drew Barrymore and Jennette McCurdy, JoJo hopes to help readers who see themselves in her journey see the light sooner -- and avoid making the same mistakes she did. As intimate as it is inspiring, and as refreshing as it is revelatory, this breathtakingly candid memoir is JoJo's chance to finally tell her story in her own words for the first time"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; JoJo, 1990-; Actresses; Singers;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Dark mirror : Edward Snowden and the American surveillance state / by Gellman, Barton,1960-author.; Soltani, Ashkan,contributor.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Edward Snowden chose three journalists to tell the stories in his Top Secret trove of NSA documents: Barton Gellman of The Washington Post, Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian and filmmaker Laura Poitras, all of whom would share the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Poitras went on to direct the Oscar-winning Citizenfour. Greenwald wrote an instant memoir and cast himself as a pugilist on Snowden's behalf. Gellman took his own path. Snowden and his documents were the beginning, not the end, of a story he had prepared his whole life to tell. More than 20 years as a top investigative journalist armed him with deep sources in national security and high technology. New sources reached out from government and industry, making contact on the same kinds of secret, anonymous channels that Snowden had used. Gellman's reporting unlocked new puzzles in the NSA archive. And as Snowden's revelations faded somewhat from the public consciousness, the machinations he exposed continue still, with many policies unaltered despite societal outrage. Dark Mirror is a true-life spy tale that touches us all, told with authority and an inside view of extraordinary events. Within it is a chilling personal account of the obstacles facing the author, beginning with Gellman's discovery of his own name in Snowden's NSA document trove. Google notifies him that a foreign government is trying to compromise his account. A trusted technical adviser finds anomalies on his laptop. Sophisticated impostors approach Gellman with counterfeit documents, attempting to divert or discredit his work. Throughout Dark Mirror, the author wages an escalating battle against unknown digital adversaries who force him to mimic their tradecraft in self-defense. With the vivid and insightful style that marked Gellman's bestselling Angler, Dark Mirror is an inside account of the surveillance-industrial revolution and its discontents, fighting back against state and corporate intrusions into our most private spheres. Along the way, and with the benefit of hindsight, it tells the full story of a government leak unrivaled in drama since All the President's Men"--
Subjects: Snowden, Edward J., 1983-; Gellman, Barton, 1960-; United States. National Security Agency/Central Security Service.; Electronic intelligence; Electronic surveillance; Domestic intelligence; Leaks (Disclosure of information); Whistle blowing; Journalists;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The coming wave : technology, power, and the twenty-first century's greatest dilemma / by Suleyman, Mustafa,author.; Bhaskar, Michael,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A stark and urgent warning on the unprecedented risks that a wave of fast-developing technologies poses to global order, and how we might contain them while we have the chance--from a cofounder of the pioneering AI company DeepMind. Imagine a world in which anyone with a $20,000 desktop DNA synthesizer could develop and unleash a deadly virus. Imagine an undetectable deepfake video of a U.S. president making a racial slur racing across the internet on the eve of an election. Imagine terrorists or paramilitaries stockpiling autonomous weapons designed to make their own decisions about when to engage. As cofounder of DeepMind, the pioneering AI company now owned by Google, Mustafa Suleyman has witnessed firsthand just how rapidly our technology is advancing--and how flawed our approaches to grappling with these changes are. The coming decades, he argues, will be defined by a burst of innovation, an inevitable wave of powerful, fast-proliferating new technologies across fields like synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing. Driven forward by immense strategic and financial incentives, these breakthroughs will solve huge challenges and create vast wealth--but upheaval, too, on a once unimaginable scale. Will humankind make it through the narrow corridor between dystopia and catastrophe? In The Coming Wave, Suleyman shows how this new technological super-wave fits a historical pattern of innovation and proliferation, while departing from it in key ways: namely, the speed of change, the breadth of risks, and the wave's potential to democratize access to dangerous, world-altering power. The cumulative risks threaten the very nation state, humanity's centuries' old "grand bargain" of living under centralized authority in exchange for security. As our fragile governments sleepwalk into catastrophe, humanity is left in an existential bind, with techno-authoritarianism on one side and even more catastrophic outcomes, like societal collapse, on the other. We are about to cross a critical threshold in the history of our species. In this groundbreaking book from the ultimate AI insider, Suleyman firmly establishes "the containment problem"--or the challenge of maintaining human control over dangerous technologies--as the essential dilemma of our age, showing that radical steps must be taken if we are to live alongside technology of once unimaginable power"--
Subjects: Artificial intelligence; Information technology;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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Fourth Wing [electronic resource] : by Yarros, Rebecca.aut; Soler, Rebecca.nrt; Hamilton, Teddy.nrt; cloudLibrary;
Now with two bonus chapters read by Teddy Hamilton. Re-download the title now to listen to the extended version! A #1 New York Times bestseller • Optioned for TV by Amazon Studios • Amazon Best Books of the Year, #4 • Apple Best Books of the Year 2023 • Barnes Noble Best Fantasy Book of 2023 • NPR “Books We Love” 2023 • Audible Best Books of 2023 • Hudson Book of the Year • Google Play Best Books of 2023 • Indigo Best Books of 2023 • Waterstones Book of the Year finalist • Goodreads Choice Award, semi-finalist • Newsweek Staffers’ Favorite Books of 2023 • Paste Magazine's Best Books of 2023 "Suspenseful, sexy, and with incredibly entertaining storytelling, the first in Yarros' Empyrean series will delight fans of romantic, adventure-filled fantasy."—Booklist, starred review "Fourth Wing will have your heart pounding from beginning to end ... A fantasy like you've never read before."?Jennifer L. Armentrout, #1 New York Times bestselling author Enter the brutal and elite world of a war college for dragon riders from USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Yarros. Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders. But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away … because dragons don’t bond to “fragile” humans. They incinerate them. With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter—like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant. She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise. Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom’s protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret. Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda—because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die.
Subjects: Audiobooks.; Romantic; Epic;
© 2023., Recorded Books,
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Saving Sam : the true story of an American's disappearance in Syria and his family's extraordinary fight to bring him home / by Goodwin, Sam,1989-author.;
"What would you do if your son suddenly disappeared in Syria, and you had no idea what had happened to him? Would you contact the FBI? The State Department? Pray? Would you Google "What to do if your son disappears in Syria"? When the unthinkable happened, the answer, in the case of Ann Goodwin and her husband Tag, was: all of the above. Their 30-year-old son Sam, who was attempting to become one of the few people in history to travel to every single country on the planet, vanished in a supposed safe-zone run by the Kurds on the Turkish border. At first, they didn't even realize he had been abducted: maybe the phone reception had gone down, they told themselves, as had happened plenty of times before when Sam was in an off-the-beaten-path place. Just wait, he'll call back soon. But Sam never did call back, and over the coming days, the horror of their situation quickly bore down on the Goodwins, a devout Catholic family of seven living a middle-class suburban lifestyle in St. Louis, Missouri. Frustrated and increasingly terrified, the Goodwins came to realize that they couldn't rely on their government to save Sam. They were going to have to do it themselves. This is the extraordinary story of Sam's abduction by the Syrian regime, who threatened to hand him over to ISIS for beheading if he did not confess to being a CIA spy. It's also the story of a Midwestern American family who transformed themselves into their own detective agency, building up a network of journalists, hostage negotiators, Middle East experts, Russian diplomats, Vatican envoys, and shady mercenaries, until eventually -- by nothing short of a miracle -- they found a secret backdoor into the heart of the Syrian intelligence service itself. Through multiple first-person narrators, Saving Sam recounts an inspiring and unforgettable saga that includes a travel journey to every country in the world, famous celebrities, heads of state, high-stakes diplomacy and critical life lessons around curiosity, uncertainty, prayer and what it ultimately means to be free. In a genuine, straightforward and sometimes humorous style, Sam draws on his experience as a hostage to demonstrate how we can all turn our own adversities into assets, whether it be in our personal, professional or spiritual lives"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Goodwin, Sam, 1989-; Goodwin, Sam, 1989-; Prisoners; Prisoners; Travelers;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Traffic : genius, rivalry, and delusion in the billion-dollar race to go viral / by Smith, Ben(Journalist),author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The origin story of the Age of Disinformation: the candid inside tale of two online media rivals, Jonah Peretti of HuffPost and Buzzfeed and Nick Denton of Gawker Media, whose delirious pursuit of attention at scale in the first two decades of the 21st century helped release the dark forces that would overtake the internet and American society. If attention is the new oil, Ben Smith's Traffic is the story of the time between the first gusher and the impact of climate change. The curtain opens in Soho in the early 2000's, in that brief moment after the first dotcom crash and before Google, Apple, and Facebook exploded, when it seemed that New York City rather than Silicon Valley might become tech's center of gravity. There, within a few square blocks, Nick Denton's merry band of nihilists at his growing Gawker empire and Jonah Peretti's sunnier crew at HuffPost and Buzzfeed were building the foundations of click-bait media. It was tech's age of innocence: the old establishment might have been discredited by the Iraq War, but digital news would facilitate the spread of truth. Progressive activists were first to the scene, and for a while it seemed they were the scene. After all, didn't they get Barack Obama elected? Ben Smith, who would go on to earn a controversial reputation as Buzzfeed's editor-in-chief, was either there or talked to everyone who was, and in his trademark fashion, he chronicles it all with marvelous lucidity scored with dark wit, sparing no one--and certainly not himself. Denton and Gawker were seen at the time as the black hats, but in Smith's hands the story is much more nuanced: yes, Denton's ideology of radical transparency was problematic, but at least he had an ideology. Jonah Peretti survived long after Denton's Gawker perished because his focus on clicks was relentlessly content-agnostic. But as with the proverbial sorcerer's apprentice, unintended consequences began to gain momentum. At the heart of Traffic is one of the great ironies of our time: the internet, which was going to help the left remake the world in its image, has become the motive force of right populism. As Smith and his colleagues and rivals thought they were inventing digital media, other figures, flickering around the margins of their story, had different designs. People like Steve Bannon and Andrew Breitbart and Gavin McInnes and Chris Poole, the creator of 4chan, all seemed like minor characters in the narrative in which Nick and Jonah and crew were the stars. By 2020, any reasonable observer might wonder if the opposite wasn't the case. To understand how we got here, Traffic is essential and enthralling reading"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Denton, Nicholas.; Peretti, Jonah.; Digital media; Internet industry; News Web sites;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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