A well thought out book that covers ground from stats, to information and quantum theory, to computer science in an attempt to understand our information infrastructure and how it may evolve in the future. Burgess talks rather a lot about his CFEngine project, using it to illustrate a good half of the points he makes (I may be exaggerating a little for rhetorical effect here). Nevertheless there is a good deal of insight in the book at the same time, not to mention the occasional humorous moment. It is a shame that the proofreading was not up to O’Reilly’s usually very high standards. A reason to buy the second edition perhaps?

It isn’t every day that I spot a new Charles Stross book. I get excited when I do. The latest in the Laundry series takes off where The Rhesus Chart left off, but tells the story from the perspective of Mo — the partner of Bob who was previously the main character in the series. As usual, Stross is hilarious, clever and slightly silly as he tells the story of the battle to deal with the increasing number of everyday folks who are developing superpowers.

What self-respecting hipster web dev can be without a source to source transpiler these days? I am currently reviewing this for FLOSSUK. It is a short but excellent introduction to CoffeeScript.

Daoud has written a sort of sequel to Camus’s classic novel The Outsider where he tells the story of the brother of the Arab shot by Mersault in Camus’s book. His postcolonial retelling is compelling, amusing and deadly serious at the same time.