Felipe Antolinez's Weblog: books

Die Vermessung der Welt by Daniel Kehlmann

2026-02-02T08:03:55+00:00

Die Vermessung der Welt by Daniel Kehlmann

Rating: 4 – Really Good

Started: 31st January 2026 • Finished: 1st February 2026

Summary

A fictionalized dual biography of 19th-century German scientists Carl Friedrich Gauss and Alexander von Humboldt. The two geniuses pursued radically different approaches to understanding the world. Humboldt explored jungles, climbed mountains, and measured everything he encountered, while the reclusive Gauss concluded that space must be curved without leaving his home.

My Thoughts

The story has two main themes: experimental vs. theoretical science and aging.

The naturalist von Humboldt tried to understand the world by personally experiencing the unknown, while the theoretician Gauss studied it by observing the stars and measuring magnetic fields from his home in Göttingen—drawing conclusions from pen and paper alone.

The aging theme runs quietly through the book. Both men achieved their greatest insights young, and the novel doesn't shy away from showing what comes after. The brilliance that came so easily in youth becomes harder to access. And now the world has moved on without them.

The book is entertaining, funny, and thought-provoking at the same time. However, I found myself wishing the scientific side had a bit more depth. Kehlmann keeps the actual discoveries, especially Gauss's mathematics, deliberately light. Some more detail on how their work shaped their era and influenced what came after would have made it even better.

Tags: books, fiction, german, biography

Quoting Daniel Kehlmann, Die Vermessung der Welt (p. 293)

2026-02-01T16:31:00+00:00

Aber während die ersten Vororte Berlins vorbeiflogen und Humboldt sich vorstellte, wie Gauß eben jetzt durch sein Teleskop auf Himmelskörper sah, deren Bahnen er in einfache Formeln fassen konnte, hätte er auf einmal nicht mehr sagen können, wer von ihnen weit herumgekommen war und wer immer zu Hause geblieben.

— Daniel Kehlmann, Die Vermessung der Welt

Tags: books, german

Wenn Russland Gewinnt: Ein Szenario by Carlo Masala

2026-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

Wenn Russland Gewinnt: Ein Szenario by Carlo Masala

Rating: 2 – Just Okay

Started: 4th January 2026 • Finished: 7th January 2026

Summary

A thought experiment ("scenario") by political scientist Carlo Masala, professor of international politics at the Bundeswehr University Munich. Russia wins in Ukraine, keeps its occupied territories, and Europe fails to rearm. A few years later, Russia tests NATO's Article 5 commitment with a limited operation in Estonia. How does the NATO alliance react?

My Thoughts

I read this because Alastair Campbell recommended it on the podcast The Rest is Politics. At ~120 pages it's a quick read, and it does what it sets out to do: make you think about uncomfortable questions.

Would NATO be prepared to go to war? Under what circumstances? And what about Switzerland? Where are the actual red lines, and what happens when they're crossed? What about nuclear weapons? European countries have become accustomed to resolving conflicts through diplomacy and consensus. But at what point do we accept that diplomacy failed? And what do you do then?

Those questions stuck with me more than the book itself. The scenario follows a single linear path. Russia wins, Europe sleeps, NATO struggles to decide how to react. I would have found it more interesting if the scenario explored different branches and was something closer to a decision tree than a fixed narrative. The title also oversells what's inside. The end of the book gets to the start of "Russia winning", but the book stops before dealing with what that actually means.

Tags: books, german, politics

Note on 22nd December 2025

2025-12-22T14:00:00+00:00

Looking for a last-minute gift for someone technical who wants to get into AI, or an entry point for yourself?

I highly recommend "Natural Language Processing with Transformers" by Lewis Tunstall, Leandro von Werra & Thomas Wolf. It's a practical guide to training and scaling transformer models, written by the people who built the library at Hugging Face.

This is where I learned the fundamentals of modern transformer models a few years ago, and despite being from 2022, the notes I took while reading the book remain the resource I go back to most on the topic.

Happy Holidays!

View the original LinkedIn post

Tags: linkedin, ai, books

Quoting Ananyo Bhattacharya, The Man from the Future (p. 251)

2024-09-29T13:00:00+00:00

If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.

— Ananyo Bhattacharya, The Man from the Future, A remark that John von Neumann made at the first national meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery in 1947.

Tags: books, biography

The Man from the Future by Ananyo Bhattacharya

2024-09-29T13:00:00+00:00

The Man from the Future by Ananyo Bhattacharya

Rating: 4 – Really Good

Started: 26th September 2024 • Finished: 29th September 2024

Summary

A biography of John von Neumann, one of the most extraordinary scientific minds of the 20th century. The book weaves von Neumann's scientific contributions into a broader history of 20th-century science and technology, showing how one person's work shaped computing, nuclear weapons, economics, and physics.

My Thoughts

Fascinating biography of one of the greatest minds of the 20th century. Von Neumann's scientific contributions span an almost unbelievable range: computing (the von Neumann architecture that still underpins virtually all general-purpose computers), quantum mechanics (he wrote the book that gave the field its mathematical foundations), the Manhattan Project (he developed the mathematical framework for the explosive lenses that were critical to the plutonium bomb's implosion design), and game theory (which he co-founded with Oskar Morgenstern in their 1944 book). The biography ties together so much history and technology from the 20th century that it reads almost like a history of modern science told through one person's life.

Tags: books, biography

Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson

2023-12-06T14:00:00+00:00

Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson

Rating: 3 – Good

Started: 14th November 2023 • Finished: 6th December 2023

Summary

A sweeping biography of Elon Musk, tracing his turbulent childhood in South Africa through the founding and scaling of PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, and his acquisition of Twitter. Isaacson, who shadowed Musk for two years, captures both the relentless intensity that drives his companies and the personal chaos that surrounds him, offering an intimate, unvarnished look at one of the most polarizing figures in technology.

My Thoughts

I haven't followed Elon Musk closely until reading this book, and I get raised eyebrows when I mention having read his biography. However, reading about someone isn't the same as agreeing with them, and there's plenty to learn here regardless of where you stand.

Musk has a pretty unique ability to cut through complexity and jargon, reducing things to their simplest possible form. If you're not interested in the personal drama, the most valuable part of the book is Isaacson's documentation of Elon Musk's "Algorithm", a set of principles he applies to everything. It's extreme in some respects, but it contains a lot of truth.

My main criticism: by the time the book was published in September 2023, Musk's story was far from over. His involvement in the 2024 election and the second Trump presidency hadn't even begun. Compared to Isaacson's classic biography of Steve Jobs, which ended with Jobs' funeral and could contextualize an entire life, it feels too early to do the same for Musk.

Tags: books, biography

Elon Musk's Algorithm

2023-12-06T08:38:00+00:00

Elon Musk’s Algorithm

The Algorithm

Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from "the legal department" or "the safety department." You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb.
Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn't delete enough.
Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist.
Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should have been deleted.
Automate. That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out.

Corollaries

The algorithm was sometimes accompanied by a few corollaries, among them:

All technical managers must have hands-on experience. For example, managers of software teams must spend at least 20% of their time coding. Solar roof managers must spend time on the roofs doing installations. Otherwise, they are like a cavalry leader who can't ride a horse or a general who can't use a sword. Comradery is dangerous. It makes it hard for people to challenge each other's work. There is a tendency to not want to throw a colleague under the bus. That needs to be avoided.
It's OK to be wrong. Just don't be confident and wrong.
Never ask your troops to do something you're not willing to do.
Whenever there are problems to solve, don't just meet with your managers. Do a skip level, where you meet with the level right below your managers.
When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant.
A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle.
The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation.

On Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson

Tags: books, biography

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

2023-11-12T19:47:29+00:00

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Rating: 5 – Highly Recommended

Started: 14th October 2023 • Finished: 12th November 2023

Summary

Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, written with Jobs' cooperation during the final years of his life, covers the full arc from his adoption and early hacking days with Wozniak to the creation of Apple, his exile, and the extraordinary second act that reshaped computing, music, phones, and animated film. Isaacson doesn't soften the edges around Jobs' cruelty, reality distortion field, and obsessive control, but shows how these traits were entangled with a genuine, almost spiritual drive to make beautiful things.

My Thoughts

A must-read for anyone working in product or tech. It's Silicon Valley history told through the lens of one of its most important figures, covering not just Apple but the broader ecosystem of companies that defined the industry.

What surprised me most was how uniquely strange and intense Jobs was as a person: his spirituality and the extreme dietary obsessions, like living on nothing but carrots for weeks on end. The products are iconic, but the man behind them was far more eccentric than the polished image suggests.

Tags: books, biography

Quoting Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs

2023-11-05T14:00:00+00:00

Steve Jobs focused on getting the first iteration perfectly. Bill Gates shipped a lousy Windows 1.0 but was persistent at iteratively improving it until it dominated.

— Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates

Tags: books, biography

High Output Management by Andy Grove

2022-07-05T14:00:00+00:00

High Output Management by Andy Grove

Rating: 5 – Highly Recommended

Started: 28th February 2022 • Finished: 5th July 2022

Summary

Intel CEO Andy Grove's management philosophy, distilled from his experience building Intel from startup to industry giant. Written by a practicing CEO directly rather than a consultant or ghostwriter, the book applies production principles to management: measuring output, maximizing leverage, and building high-performing teams. First published in 1983, it became a cult classic in Silicon Valley. This book also introduced the OKR framework, which became standard across Silicon Valley.

My Thoughts

A must-read for anyone in tech who starts managing people. Many later management books simply rehash what Grove laid out in his book first, over 40 years ago. The book distills decades of experience building Intel into something remarkably clear and practical.

What sets it apart is Grove's clarity of mind. He had a PhD in chemical engineering and wrote a foundational textbook on semiconductors, sharing much of my own scientific training. This is probably why this book was immediately accessible to me in a way no other management book has been before and since.

The first chapter uses a breakfast factory to teach production principles. If you have a technical background, it will be obvious, but I encourage you to push through it anyway. Everything after is gold. I still return to my notes on this book regularly, and I point others to it whenever they bring me management problems.

Tags: business, management, books