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British open-standards and open-source technologist, formerly of the UK Government Digital Service and the W3C Advisory Committee. Blogs at shkspr.mobi, where he posts a book review most weeks.

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  Coding Literacy

  Their words

  This is a disappointing and frustrating book - not least because it so nearly hits the mark. The subtitle is "How Computer Programming Is Changing Writing" - but it never gets close to discussing that topic, let alone deeply examining it.

  shkspr.mobi

Professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M; writes The Climate Brink with Zeke Hausfather.

From one piece Fixing one of climate’s worst plots 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The post-1970s global increase in heatwave frequency is caused by greenhouse gas emissions from human activity.

  Their words

  This differs from the Dust Bowl because it is a global signal, occurring essentially everywhere. This is almost certainly due to greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.

  Fixing one of climate’s worst plotstheclimatebrink.com

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  Expanded irrigation in the central U.S. during the mid-20th century cooled the surface and suppressed heatwave frequency there.

  America

  Their words

  Irrigation cools the surface, and the expansion of agriculture and irrigation in the central U.S. in the middle of the 20th century played a key role in why heatwaves were low in the middle of the 20th century

  Fixing one of climate’s worst plotstheclimatebrink.com

Geneticist at Harvard; reads ancient DNA to work out how populations moved and mixed, and wrote Who We Are and How We Got Here.

From one piece David Reich – Bronze Age shock, the Neanderthal puzzle, & the sudden spread of farming 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  Adaptation accounts for only about 2% of the change in human gene frequencies; the other 98% is migration, mixture and drift.

  Their words

  Uh and 98% of it is other factors, especially genetic drift. So it's overwhelmingly migrations and population structure causing fluctuations in frequency.

  youtube.com

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  Periods of migration are the worst moments to look for natural selection, not the best, because they drown the signal in huge frequency swings.

  Their words

  And really from a statistical point of view, what happens at these times of migration is there's just huge fluctuations in frequencies, and these are extremely uninformative times for looking and detecting natural selection.

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Economist at George Mason University, co-author of Marginal Revolution, host of Conversations with Tyler. Writes in short, dense claims about economics, culture and AI, and has moved position on AI in public more than once.

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  Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better

  Their words

  A good popular look at what the subtitle promises.

  marginalrevolution.com

Head of growth at Chess.com, previously growth and monetization lead at Grammarly and Duolingo and a product manager at Google.

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  For a daily-frequency product it is existing-user retention, not new-user retention, that compounds — and mature companies should put most of their energy there.

  energy

  Their words

  I think especially if you have a product that has daily frequency like that's actually the retention that matters the most is that like of your existing user base that has developed a habitual pattern how sticky is your product and it's that retention rate that really compounds and build that builds that daily habit.

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Founded CD Baby in 1998 and sold it in 2008, giving the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education. Since then a writer and speaker: five books and 550+ articles, published first at sive.rs, which they hand-code and keep free of advertising.

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  How something is presented completely changes a person’s experience, enjoyment, or frequency of use of it.

  Their words

  How you present something to somebody completely changes their experience of it, their enjoyment of it, or even how often they're going to use it.

  sive.rs

Archaeologist of the Maya and the ancient Americas; directs the Maya Exploration Center and presents the ArchaeoEd podcast.

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  Spain and Portugal are unfairly maligned by the Black Legend: it was the diseases that killed the Americas.

  America

  Their words

  I think that the Spanish and the Portuguese get unfairly maligned in what’s been called the Black Legend, that they just marched into America and murdered everyone. That’s not the fact. It was the diseases that murdered everyone.

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Investment researcher and engineer who runs Lyn Alden Investment Strategy, writing on macroeconomics, currency systems and equity analysis.

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  As Bitcoin's ecosystem matures and regulatory clarity increases, idiosyncratic 'Black Swan' shocks to its price will become less frequent.

  Their words

  as the Bitcoin ecosystem matures, infrastructure improves, and more regulatory clarity emerges, I expect the frequency of these 'Black Swan' events to diminish over time.

  Bitcoin: A Global Liquidity Barometerlynalden.com

Co-founder and CEO of Perplexity, an AI answer engine; previously a research scientist at OpenAI and a PhD student at UC Berkeley.

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  Vector embeddings will not solve search: a decades-old term-frequency algorithm still beats most of them at ranking.

  Their words

  There is an algorithm called BM25 precisely for this, which is a more sophisticated version of TF-IDF. TF-IDF is term frequency times inverse document frequency, a very old-school information retrieval system that just works actually really well even today. And BM25 is a more sophisticated version of that, that is still beating most embeddings on ranking.

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Founded CD Baby in 1998 and sold it in 2008, giving the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education. Since then a writer and speaker: five books and 550+ articles, published first at sive.rs, which they hand-code and keep free of advertising.

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  China’s World View

  Their words

  Senior academic advisor to the Chinese Communist Party feels most political tensions come from a misunderstanding of China’s world view, hence the subtitle “demystifying to prevent global conflict”, and his intrinsic desire to explain. I love its insights and historical context, especially around “Respect-centered diplomacy” and how the CCP is structured.

  sive.rs

Machine learning engineer working on recommender systems, personalization and information retrieval. Previously worked on LLMs and LLM infrastructure at Mozilla.ai and on ML and recsys at Duo, Tumblr, Automattic and Comcast; wrote the 'What are embeddings?' text and ran the Normconf conference.

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  The Outlaws

  Their words

  The Outlaws by Javier Cercas - This book, translated from Spanish, covers the years of Spain after the Franco dictatorship but only obliquely hints at them.

  vickiboykis.com

Development economist; argues that letting people move to rich countries does more for the poor than aid, and wrote Let Their People Come.

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  Immigration policy should run on three separate tracks: future citizens, people allowed to work, and people admitted out of necessity.

  immigration

  Their words

  Governments should create three tracks for people who come to live in their country. One track is that of people who hope to become Spanish. Another is that of those who we are going to allow to live and work here; the third is that of those of we are going to allow to be in Spain out of necessity.

  english.elpais.com

Founded CD Baby in 1998 and sold it in 2008, giving the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education. Since then a writer and speaker: five books and 550+ articles, published first at sive.rs, which they hand-code and keep free of advertising.

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  You Look Like a Thing and I Love You

  Their words

  A funny book explaining the basics of AI! The subtitle is How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It's Making the World a Weirder Place. A great introduction to AI. With a cute cartoon mascot. The title is from her training an AI to write romantic greeting cards.

  sive.rs