I got my copy today! Ordered it after reading a related comment on a previous HN discussion. I have high expectations with this one especially after reading the reviews on Goodreads.
I can't speak on too many scrapers, but Selenium offers a whole lot over just Web scraping. It's a wonderful tool to automate functonal tests, perform monotonous tasks, and other handy things.
If you do any sort of Web development, I would recommend writing tests using it. It's quite easy to pick up, and is available in different languages, and for different browsers.
Nassim Taleb said this about the NYT list: "There is close to ZERO probability that a "Notable book" in the NYT will be discussed in 5-20 years. Look at 1990-2009 lists."
OK, but what's the value in that statement–what does "discussed" mean for him? Looking at the 2009 list, there are plenty of books still circulating in discourse. Asterious Polyp and the Dan Chaon, Margaret Atwood and Jonathan Lethem novels are still quite talked about. Without context, I'm going to assume that is this just an acerbic, arms-crossed way to snub a popularly considered list.
It is well worth a read and I think HNers and fellow geeks will find it interesting