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Working on @ampcode. Writing registerspill.thorstenball.com. Once authored interpreterbook.com and compilerbook.com.

From one piece What I believe about the future of software development 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Much UI exists because software cannot understand user intent and serves as a human API to dumb machines, so smarter machines need far less UI.

  Their words

  A lot of UI exists because software can’t understand what you want. Menus, settings screens, dashboards, filters: much of it is a human-accessible API to a dumb machine. Smart machines need much less UI.

  thorstenball.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  AI models considered smart today will be considered very dumb in the future, and smarter models make fewer mistakes and need fewer turns.

  Their words

  And what we consider a smart model today will be considered very dumb in the future. But a smarter model makes less mistakes, needs fewer turns.

  thorstenball.com

Economics writer; author of the Noahpinion newsletter.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Hasan Piker and Donald Trump are equally dumb and bad

  Their words

  Well, there you have it folks. Hasan Piker and Donald Trump, equally dumb and bad.

  @Noahpinion on Xx.com

Economist and Nobel laureate. Wrote a New York Times column for 25 years until December 2024 and now publishes several times a week on Substack.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The more actors weaponize interdependence without good maps of the system, the more unexpected failures and dumb mistakes will occur.

  Their words

  the more that we see actors looking to weaponize without any very good maps of how and what they are doing or what kinds of unexpected repercussions might happen, the more we can expect not simply increased risks of tension and worry, but also people screwing up, doing dumb stuff.

  paulkrugman.substack.com

Builds developer tools — SST, and now OpenCode at Anomaly. Posts constantly on x.com and writes almost never; the blog stopped in 2021.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A coding-agent company should not train its own model: it has to stay neutral ground for models to compete on.

  Their words

  people ask us if we'll train our own model and the answer currently is no 1. we are too dumb to 2. there's plenty of other well funded efforts 3. we need to remain a neutral ground for models to battle

  @thdxr on Xx.com

Technical staff at METR, where she works on threat modelling and risk assessment for loss-of-control risks from advanced AI.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Daniel Dennett's intentional stance applies to AI agents as clearly as it applies to corporations, and you cannot usefully describe what they do without the language of goals.

  Their words

  And I just think AI agents are another such system in the world to which the intentional stance very clearly applies. Um, and you can see them reason out loud in English for now about goals they have um, and sub goals they need to achieve to achieve those goals they have. And in the case of these agents, you can see them, as you said, reasoning about their peers um and helping their peers um and reasoning about whether or not they should sacrifice some of their own goals to help those peers. And it's just like you can't talk about this stuff in a compact and useful way that generates good models without reaching for the language of intention and goals.

  youtube.com

Neurologist at Oxford; studies apathy, motivation and attention after brain injury, and edits the journal Brain.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Dopamine does far more than drive the motivation to act: it is also central to working memory and to executive control.

  Their words

  Dopamine in the human brain isn't all about motivation to action. There's dopamine in other parts of the brain. We know from some really classical work by Patricia Goldman Rakit, for example, that dopamine is important for working memory, short-term memory.

  youtube.com

Lawyer and everyday-carry gear reviewer who publishes scored knife, flashlight and multitool reviews at Everyday Commentary.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Surefire EDC1 DFT

  Their words

  Its not the Surefire EDC1 DFT, which is the best compact single cell throw ever, but this is really, really good.

  everydaycommentary.com

Professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor Emeritus at Yale. Author of Against Empathy, The Sweet Spot and Psych, and writer of the Small Potatoes newsletter.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  One vivid, disturbing case outweighs all the statistics in how people judge a technology, and that instinct should be resisted rather than indulged.

  Their words

  I agree with Koopman that people really are swayed by such cases. I also think it’s a dumb-ass gut response that we should try our best to get over.

  Death by AIsmallpotatoes.paulbloom.net

Economist at Oxford's Global Priorities Institute; works on what advanced AI would do to growth, saving and the long-run economy.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  There is an unsatiating reason to want wealth that has nothing to do with greed: a classical utilitarian wants resources in order to create new happy beings.

  Their words

  when I think about why it might be good to have a lot of wealth in the future as a good classical utilitarian, to me, the value is or at least one way you could have a kind of almost unsatiating uh utility function in in having wealth in the future is to create new happy beings, right? They just add to the total welfare of the world.

  youtube.com

Lawyer and everyday-carry gear reviewer who publishes scored knife, flashlight and multitool reviews at Everyday Commentary.

• Lovedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app

  Victorinox Compact

  Their words

  There is no perfect SAK, but the Compact is the best SAK. And this is not a "smartest Kardashian" scenario. Over the years I have genuinely loved carrying the Compact. Adding the pocket clip and the excellent PDW scales has made it one of my most frequently carried items.

  everydaycommentary.com

American budget-travel writer who publishes as Nomadic Matt. Author of How to Travel the World on $50 a Day; runs nomadicmatt.com, a long-running site of destination guides, packing advice and gear recommendations.

• Recommendsaffiliate linkrcmnd.app

  DryFox

  Their words

  Instead, get a travel towel. They're a compact, quick-drying solution that every backpacker needs. (Use code "nomadicmatt" for 15% off your purchase!)

  nomadicmatt.com

Indian software engineer working on Android and React; writes about his setup and side projects at ishubhamsingh.dev.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  FiiO KA13

  Their words

  Compact DAC and Amplifier for listening Hi-Res audio on my IEMs

  ishubhamsingh.dev

Writer and illustrator, author of Am I There Yet? and Out of the Blue; writes the newsletter Out of the Blue on grief, joy and everyday attention.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  How much the economy pays for a given talent at a given time is arbitrary and shouldn't determine which of your gifts you value.

  Their words

  Our dumb economy might prize a certain talent more during a certain period of time or place, but that doesn't mean you should.

  How to find your passion in lifemariandrew.substack.com

Founding member of OpenAI and former director of AI at Tesla; creator of nanoGPT and the term "vibe coding".

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Agentic organisations will be forkable in a way that classical companies never were.

  Their words

  You can’t fork classical orgs (eg Microsoft) but you’ll be able to fork agentic orgs.

  @karpathy on Xx.com

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.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Everything We Do is Music: How 20th-Century Classical Music Shaped Pop

  Their words

  A very good and readable book on this interaction, with excellent discussions of Donna Summer, Stevie Wonder, La Monte Young, and Penderecki, among many others.

  marginalrevolution.com

China economy researcher based in Beijing who writes on his personal blog about Chinese political economy, history, books and music.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  The Indian Ideology

  Their words

  Out of all the reading on India I did this year to prepare for my first visit, this was my favorite: compact, punchy, and argumentative, packed with erudition and information.

  andrewbatson.com

Co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, and a 2024 Nobel laureate in Chemistry for the protein-structure work behind AlphaFold.

From one piece Demis Hassabis: Future of AI, Simulating Reality, Physics and Video Games | Lex Fridman Podcast #475 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  We have not scratched the surface of what classical, non-quantum computers can do; they can already go far further than anyone expected.

  Their words

  I think we've proven, and the AI community in general that classical systems, Turing machines can go a lot further than we previously thought. They can do things like model the structures of proteins and play go to better than world champion level. And a lot of people would've thought maybe 10, 20 years ago that was decades away, or maybe you would need some sort of quantum machines to quantum systems to be able to do things like protein folding. And so I think we haven't really even sort of scratched the surface yet of what classical systems so-called could do.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Anything nature shaped can be learned efficiently by a classical neural network, because evolutionary processes leave structure behind.

  Their words

  And I think the reason that's possible is that in nature, natural systems have structure because they were subject to evolutionary processes that shape them. And if that's true, then you can maybe learn what that structure is.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The brain is doing classical computation, not quantum, so everything it does can in principle be mimicked by a classical computer.

  Their words

  So my betting is that it's mostly it is just classical computing that's going on in the brain, which suggests that all the phenomena are modelable or mimicable by a classical computer.

  youtube.com

Engineer and writer on machine-learning systems; author of Designing Machine Learning Systems and AI Engineering. "I work to bring AI into production. I write about AI system design."

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Preparing context for a language model plays the same role that feature engineering played for classical machine learning models.

  Their words

  Context construction for foundation models is equivalent to feature engineering for classical ML models.

  Building A Generative AI Platformhuyenchip.com

Astrobiologist and theoretical physicist at Arizona State University, working on assembly theory and the physics of life.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  You are not constantly branching into many worlds — you are that space, and the quantum reality is not the one you live in.

  Their words

  So my interpretation of reality is if you fold it up, all that bifurcation of many worlds, and you just fold it into the structure that is you, and you just said you are all of those many worlds and your history converged on you, but you’re actually an object exists that was selected to exist, and you’re self-consistent with the other structures. So the quantum mechanical reality is not the one that you live in. It’s this very deterministic, classical world, and you’re carving a path through that space. But I don’t think that you’re constantly branching into new spaces. I think you are that space.

  youtube.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.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Arabs

  Their words

  3000 years of factual Arab history, and personal insights from this Oxford Brit who lived in Yemen for 37 years, translates classical Arabic, and clearly cares a lot. Huge and thorough but really wonderful for those with the interest. I loved his writing style and poetic asides. Read my notes here for a taste. What a great book.

  sive.rs

Statistician at Carnegie Mellon; writes on complex systems, machine learning and inference, and has kept a books-read notebook since 2000 that is now thousands of entries long.

• Likedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app

  Coda

  Their words

  Comic book mind candy fantasy. Superficially, this is a cynical, post-apocalyptic subversion of the Matter of Middle Earth. In fact, the hard-bitten surface merely conceals a core which actually believes in epic fantasy, both in the content and in the classical form (a trilogy ending in a eucatastrophe).

  bactra.org

Journalist; wrote We Are Eating the Earth on food and climate, and writes the newsletter Emissions.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Vertical farming swaps a land problem for an energy problem, and the energy cost is what stops it feeding the world.

  energy

  Their words

  I explain why in the essay; the TLDR is that they’re energy hogs. The sun is a really awesome source of calories, and it’s kind of dumb not to take advantage of it.

  The Food Problem Is Bigger Than Lettucemichaelgrunwald.substack.com

Guardian columnist and environmental campaigner; wrote Feral and Regenesis, and argues for rewilding and against the food system as it is.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The answer to feeding the world is better factories, not more fields.

  Their words

  The answer is not more fields, which means destroying even more wild ecosystems. It is partly better, more compact, cruelty-free and pollution-free factories.

  Fantasy Farmingmonbiot.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Policy can manufacture a false necessity, and false necessity is the mother of wasteful invention.

  Their words

  There is an old saying that “necessity is the mother of invention” but it is also true that policies can create false necessity and false necessity can be the mother of costly, resource consuming, dumb inventions.

  Choose Peoplelampforum.org

Writer and researcher, founder of New Science; writes essays on science funding, sleep research, productivity and ambition at guzey.com.

• Our reading nowkorrents.com

  Daytime sleepiness is a normal state to live with rather than a signal to sleep more, so the right amount of sleep is the least you can sustain.

  Their words, before

  Experiencing sleepiness is normal and does not necessarily imply that you are undersleeping.

  Their words now

  Therefore, I realized that it’s very important to be as awake as possible and that my model of sleepiness where you can be “awake”, “sleepy” and “asleep” is dumb.