Alternatives
Products that do what Secrets of the Quantum Universe does
The SysAdmin's guide to the Universe.
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2022 · networksfromscratch.com
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- 4ES
Hi HN! My name's Robert Escriva. I got my PhD from Cornell's Computer Science department back in 2017. And three years ago I had a psychotic episode that irreversibly shook up my world. Since then I've been applying a skill I learned in grad school---namely, debugging distributed and complex systems---to my own mind. What I've found I've put into a [book (pdf)](https://rescrv.net/engineering-schizophrenia.pdf) on engineering, my particular schizophrenic delusions, and how people who suffer as I once did can find a way through the fog to the other side. This is not a healing…
Jan 2026
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- 6IW
The book page links to a blog post that explains how I got about it (and has a link to sample content), but the TL&DR is that I could not find a lot of books that were on "our" history _and_ were larded with technical details. So I set about writing one, and some five years later I'm happy to share the result. I think it's one of the few "computer history" books that has tons of code, but correct me if I'm wrong (I wrote this both to tell a story and to learn :-)). My favorite languages are Smalltalk and Lisp, but as an Emacs user, I've been using the latter for much longer and for my…
Feb 2026 · berksoft.ca
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- 8TC
Looking to get some feedback from the Hacker News community. I wrote the book with a focus on penetration testers and red teamers, but there are great examples for network admins, developers, and blue team defenders as well. You can pick up a copy for free here through May 19, 2019: https://gumroad.com/l/the_cyber_plumbers_handbook/hackernews... Please note, because it's hosted on Gumroad, it does require an email. If you don't want to give out your actual email, check out an anonymous email service. I give it away to students for free, so if you know of one that…
2019
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- 10SP
Hi HN, Over the past 6 months I've been working on a technical book focused on helping aspiring data scientists to get hands-on experience with cloud computing environments using the Python ecosystem. The book is targeted at readers already familiar with libraries such as Pandas and scikit-learn that are looking to build out a portfolio of applied projects. To author the book, I used the Leanpub platform to provide drafts of the text as I completed each chapter. To typeset the book, I used the R bookdown package by Yihui Xie to translate my markdown into a PDF format. I also used Google docs…
2020
- 11TM
Hey HN, I recently launched a podcast called The Multiverse Employee Handbook, where I mix light-hearted humor with some science fiction and a sprinkle of quantum physics. It’s set in a surreal corporate universe where office politics, interdimensional HR dilemmas, and wormhole deliveries are all part of the daily grind. Each narrative episode explores a different aspect of this multiverse, like quantum entanglement in the mailroom or cosmic deadlines. It’s definitely more on the fun and absurd side of things, but I try to weave in real science concepts (in the simplest way possible, of…
2024 · multiverseemployeehandbook.com
- 12TM
I recently published a book called “The Magic of Code” which is about the delights of the computational world, examining computing as a kind of “humanistic liberal art” that connects to so many topics, from art and biology to philosophy and language. The link I’ve shared is to a page on my book’s website where you can download a pdf of the introduction, to give HN readers a taste of what is inside. Right now there is so much worry and concern around technology that I feel like some people—though not the folks here—have forgotten how much fun that code and computation can also be. So I wanted…
2025 · themagicofcode.com
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- 14RW
hey folks! My book Real-World Cryptography was just released and is now shipping. I've been working on this thing for the last two years and a half, and the goal was to give a good overview of everything that can be classified as "real-world" about crypto. You'll find all the basics in the first half of the book, and the second half contains chapters on TLS, noise, PAKEs, post-quantum cryptography, zero-knowledge proofs, MPC, cryptocurrencies, FHE, etc. So it's a good pick if you're learning, but also if you've been in the field for a while and want an intro to some subfield you're…
2021
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- 18MC
Hey HN, I don’t know who else has the same issue, but: Textbooks often bury good ideas in dense notation, skip the intuition, assume you already know half the material, and get outdated in fast-moving fields like AI. Over the past 7 years of my AI/ML experience, I filled notebooks with intuition-first, real-world context, no hand-waving explanations of maths, computing and AI concepts. In 2024, a few friends used these notes to prep for interviews at DeepMind, OpenAI, Nvidia etc. They all got in and currently perform well in their roles. So I'm sharing. This is an open & unconventional…
Feb 2026 · github.com
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- 20LF
This has been my Covid burnout project and I would love any thoughts or input, especially about the Bash code. I just am finishing the first chapter of the audiobook and would love any thoughts, positive or negative. The full pdf here: https://KyleBenzle.com/BlueScreen.pdf Free first chapter of the audiobook: https://soundcloud.com/landgrant/blue-screen-chapter-1 Giving away the Amazon ebook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084GHLYSX Blurb: Peter Gustafson wants to save the world. In the year 2984, Peter is an average kid with a secret; he’s…
2023
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- 23SA
Hey HN, I’m a physicist turned quant. Some friends and I 'built' SymDerive because we wanted a symbolic math library that was "Agent-Native" by design, but still a practical tool for humans. It boils down to two main goals: 1. Agent Reliability: I’ve found that AI agents write much more reliable code when they stick to stateless, functional pipelines (Lisp-style). It keeps them from hallucinating state changes or getting lost in long procedural scripts. I wanted a library that enforces that "Input -> Transform -> Output" flow by default. 2. Easing the transition to Python: For many…
Feb 2026
- 24IW
Hey HN! Recently published a book developing new frameworks of meaning and value informed by our most advanced cosmology and physics. It makes the argument for the necessity of spiritual revolution in order to free the abundance trapped in the world, a reimagination that interlinks the spiritual project to systemic reformation. The inspiration for the text draws from my history of social impact work and the frustrations and lessons learned along the way. If it's of interest you can learn more/read it/download it in a variety of formats for free at https://singletruth.org.
2022
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