Sauter looks at DDoS actions to think through if they can be ethically justified — and concludes that they can, but only if they aren’t very effective. Actually her argument is rather more subtle than this, and she also makes what I think is a more compelling case, that we should consider the relative power of the participants in a DDoS action. It is different if GCHQ try and shut down an IRC server from when EDT or the electrohippies do. She focusses mostly on a small number of explicitly political DDoS actions situating them in the tradition of civil disobedience while avoiding direct comparisons to the direct actions practiced by earlier generations.

I am shortly to review Kyle Simpson’s ES6 and beyond for the FLOSSUK, formerly the UK Unix Users Group. The "You Don’t Know Javascript" series is targetted at folks like me who do bits of professional Javascript programming but don’t fully grok why things are the way they are. This is the final book of the series, which was funded by a kickstarter. Simpson covers the material in reasonable depth, thought this is definitely a book for experienced JS devs. He is not afraid to be opinionated when he has good reason to be and that makes for a stronger book.

This is PJ Harvey’s first book of poetry and she shares its pages with some haunting photographs from Murphy. The words and images were created as part of 3 journeys to Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington DC. I am not sure if there is any special significance to the choice of destinations, but I did enjoy reading some poetry for once. It’s been a while. Like her lyrics, Harvey’s words are simple and full of disturbing imagery. This aesthetic fits well with Murphy’s imagery to make a beautiful and compelling book.