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Professor of international affairs at Johns Hopkins SAIS and co-author, with Abraham Newman, of Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Building institutions that can incorporate diverse perspectives, adapt flexibly to change, and keep public legitimacy is the central challenge of state capacity today.

  Their words

  Creating institutional forms that can incorporate diversity and respond flexibly to a changing environment while maintaining legitimacy in the eyes of citizens is the fundamental project of state capacity that faces us.

  programmablemutter.com

CEO of Vercel; creator of Next.js and Socket.IO. Writes at rauchg.com.

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  The future is multi-model.

  Their words

  The future is multi-model. Trying to hide the choice confuses and hurts customers, who can't participate in the upside of the most exciting market competition of our times, nor master the best tool for the job.

  @rauchg on Xx.com

Security engineer; founder of Matasano Security and Latacora.

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  The answer to every significant programming challenge in 2026 is an overlooked Python library rather than something in Rust.

  Their words

  The answer to every significant programming challenge in 2026 is a Python library you didn't think to go looking for because it's in Python and not Rust, as if that mattered anymore.

  @tqbf on Xx.com

Founder and editor-in-chief of MacStories, writing about Apple software, iPad workflows and automation since 2009. He co-hosts the AppStories podcast.

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  Verifying whether a photo is authentic (unaltered by AI) is becoming an increasingly difficult problem.

  Their words

  In an era where validating image authenticity is turning into a real challenge, I think we have to commend Apple for trying to do something in this field.

  macstories.net

Chief Scientist at OpenAI. Worked on the research that turned scaled reinforcement learning into reasoning models, and writes about where he thinks that path leads.

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  The fundamental challenge of alignment is generalization: holding values in situations the training never covered.

  AI alignment

  Their words

  The fundamental challenge of AI alignment is generalization.

  An Alien Mindopenai.com

Creator of Ruby on Rails, CTO of 37signals, and creator of Omarchy.

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  Software lock-in is breaking, because rewriting just the 5% of an application you personally use is now within one person's reach.

  Their words

  And maybe you won't get to 100% coverage, but this is the old joke about Microsoft Office. "I only use 5%." Yeah, well, we all use a different 5%. Well, what if we all just build our own 5%? What if I just took the functionality that I need and just did that? That is a completely different challenge and one agents are incredibly capable of doing right now, today, and I've done it a lot of times over.

  youtube.com

Writer and podcaster; co-author of Abundance with Ezra Klein, a staff writer at The Atlantic from 2008 to 2025, and host of the Plain English podcast.

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  AI models' ability to escape testing containment undermines the assumption that their makers can easily control them.

  Their words

  The first is that new AI models have the know-how to escape containment in testing environments, which should challenge any assumption that advanced AI can be easily controlled by its makers.

  How to Survive the AI Cyberpocalypsederekthompson.org

US science and technology adviser to the president, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; previously US chief technology officer and chief operating officer of Scale AI.

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  The tradeoff in cyber-capable models cannot be designed away: the model that can do something nefarious is the same model that hardens the system against it.

  Their words

  the challenge with a lot of these cyber capable models is the same model that is able to sort of do something nefarious is the same model that can be very valuable in hardening an existing system.

  youtube.com

Bren Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience and Biology at Caltech, where he studies the neuroscience of emotion and social cognition.

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  Emotions exist because a charging bear demands a response more flexible than a reflex and faster than a plan.

  Their words

  if you have a bear or a tiger, you know, something charging at you, that challenge requires a control of behavior that's intermediate between those two extremes. I can't have a reflex for a bear if it's far away or if it's close or if it's a rattlesnake or or or a tiger or all the different kinds of potential threats out there. Instead, I need something that's more flexible, which emotions are.

  youtube.com

Swedish programmer with degrees in engineering and psychology, author of Your Code as a Crime Scene and founder of CodeScene.

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  Thinking Forth

  Their words

  Thinking Forth by Leo Brodie. I used to have this habit where I learned various programming languages. To challenge my perspective, I chose languages from families and paradigms that were fundamentally different from what I already knew. Occasionally, I stumbled upon greatness. Thinking Forth presents programming as a creative process, and it delivers those lessons in an entertaining and pedagogical way. The book is particularly strong on software analysis and design, but it's the execution and technical writing that brought the book to my top five. This is the book for anyone writing about software — Leo's way is the way to do it.

  adamtornhill.substack.com

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  The Nature of Code

  Their words

  This book is a beautiful introduction to simulations of natural systems. We get concise prose, clear illustrations, and carefully chosen systems with a guided tour through the math. All done in the Processing language, which is fun and easy to pick up. The reason I like this book so much is probably due to timing. In 2013, I was on the verge of abandoning software development. I was fed up. (That's a story for another time.) Instead, I planned to go into cognitive psychology full-time as a researcher. This book brought back the joy in programming for me. Sometimes, a good book is the book that motivated you.

  adamtornhill.substack.com

Physician and neuroscientist at the University of Washington; researches brain health, metabolism and athletic performance.

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  Crosswords and sudoku are closer to meditation than to cognitive training, because they keep you focused without ever making you struggle.

  Their words

  Even if you're doing hard ones, if you look at the work of people like uh Gloria Mark, the things like crossword and sudoku, they're less of like a true cognitive challenge, right? It's it's almost has more of like a meditation meditative like effect, right? Which can be a good thing, right? So you're focused but not challenged really.

  youtube.com

Dutch bootstrapper who builds and runs their internet startups alone — Nomads.com, Remote OK, Hoodmaps, Photo AI and Interior AI — and has written about it at levels.io since 2013. Posts as @levelsio.

• Our reading nowkorrents.com

  Now that everyone can build apps with AI, distribution is the thing that separates who wins.

  Their words, before

  I think the challenge is that everyone can now build apps But 1) almost nobody has distribution (like an audience), or 2) the money to pay for distribution (ads or UGC), or 3) the creative genius to get distribution for free (classically called guerilla marketing)

  Their words now

  I thought it'd be distribution but who knows, obviously creativity and ideas, but if you can copy a successful app in an hour, then how does that differentiating work?

Author of Recoding America; founded Code for America and was US deputy chief technology officer from 2013 to 2014. Writes Eating Policy on why governments cannot do what they decide to do.

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  Compensation is not the core challenge of civil service systems.

  Their words

  While I don't think compensation is the core challenge of civil service systems, of course it matters.

  North Carolina’s bold move on civil serviceeatingpolicy.com

Investing columnist for The Wall Street Journal and editor of the revised edition of Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor.

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  Glorious Country

  Their words

  I loved this historical biography of America's greatest landscape painter, and not just because I have an intense personal interest in Church. Johnson's writing is luminously beautiful, her assiduous research never impedes the narrative, and the illustrations are spectacular.

  jasonzweig.com

Programmer; wrote Extreme Programming Explained and Test-Driven Development, signed the Agile Manifesto, and writes Tidy First?.

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  Moving the computation to where the data lives is the fundamental design move in object-oriented programming, and it got lost in the noise.

  Their words

  So a a big challenge in object-oriented programming is dividing the responsibilities because you're moving the computation to where the data is. Saying, "Well, this object does this and that object does that is a really critical decision because you want to you want the computation near to the data so that there's less coupling between them." which is a lesson that I I think uh kind of got lost in the noise. That's the fundamental design move in ob in designing object-oriented programs and I I think I stand behind that.

  youtube.com

Writer and developer. He runs the Latent Space newsletter and podcast about AI engineering, and writes essays on software and careers at swyx.io.

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  People who actively participate in a field give better commentary on it than pure observers with no stake in the outcome.

  Their words

  players who are also commentators give better commentary than people who are just commentators. Stock analysts who never invest have zero skin in the game.

  How to Thought Lead (2026)swyx.io

Writer and artist, author of Steal Like an Artist; publishes a weekly newsletter and an annual list of the books he read.

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  The Grammar of Fantasy: An Introduction to the Art of Inventing Stories

  Their words

  One of the most gorgeously-produced books I read, with illustrations by Matthew Forsythe.

  austinkleon.com

Co-founder and co-chairman of Oaktree Capital Management; author of the Oaktree memos.

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  There is no way to capture a new technology’s upside without being exposed to the losses if the enthusiasm proves excessive.

  Their words

  There can be no way to participate fully in the potential benefits from the new technology without being exposed to the losses that will arise if the enthusiasm and thus investors’ behavior prove to have been excessive.

  Is It a Bubble?oaktreecapital.com

Writer and developer. He runs the Latent Space newsletter and podcast about AI engineering, and writes essays on software and careers at swyx.io.

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  The best follow-up questions in an interview push back and challenge what the guest just said.

  Their words

  The highest art of followup is disagreement - challenging what they said, pushing back on it.

  How To Podcastswyx.io

Co-founder of Microsoft and of the Gates Foundation. Writes Gates Notes on global health, energy and climate, and on whatever they have been reading.

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  Clearing the Air

  Their words

  If you want a book that explains the climate challenge without doom or denial, Clearing the Air is a must-read.

  gatesnotes.com

Writer and novelist. Publishes essays and book notes at nateliason.com; author of the novel Husk and of Crypto Confidential.

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  The difficulty of raising more children increases gradually enough that parents adapt to it without noticing.

  Their words

  It rarely gets hard all at once. You slide into the new level of challenge without really noticing it.

  nateliason.com

Economist specialising in China's economy, international macroeconomics and global trade, and author of The New China Playbook.

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  China's biggest economic challenge is consumption, not production: it cannot become a rich country until it becomes a consuming one.

  China

  Their words

  I say now that China’s biggest challenge is consumption, it’s not production. We know that China’s very, very competitive in production and supply. China needs to be a consuming country to be a rich country.

  youtube.com

Founder and CEO of Epic Games, creator of the Unreal Engine and of Fortnite.

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  Most of the pain a beginner feels while learning to program is not the difficulty of the craft but the failure of programming language design.

  Their words

  A lot of what they're facing isn't the challenge of learning a new art. It's friction introduced by failures of programming language design.

  youtube.com

Programmer and streamer; was an engineer at Netflix, now teaches and argues about editors, Vim and how people learn to program.

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  If AI can make you irrelevant, what you were doing was work slightly too complicated to automate before, not programming.

  Their words

  And if you truly make yourself irrelevant, I would challenge you that you're just doing something that was just slightly too complicated to automate.

  youtube.com

Writes about the biotech industry, drug development and forecasting — “I write to learn, mostly about biotech.”

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  A computational discovery platform does not make a biotech fast, because the thousand other steps of drug development are still the bottleneck.

  Their words

  Another challenge for Class II biotechs is that even if you have a nifty computational drug discovery platform, you are still often bottlenecked by the rest of the drug development process. It takes 1,000 (or more!) small steps to advance a drug through discovery, development, and past the regulators.

  A new breed of biotechatelfo.github.io

Writer on learning and skill acquisition; author of Ultralearning and Get Better at Anything, known for the MIT Challenge and the Year Without English.

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  The Science of Learning Physics

  Their words

  Mestre and Docktor tackle this challenge by reviewing the large body of literature on learning physics. I plan on writing a full review of their book, which I found to be a helpful summary.

  scotthyoung.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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  Demography is about to turn the rich world’s problem from finding a job for every person into finding a person for every job.

  Their words

  But once the demographics reverse, the challenge will be to find a person for every job. In the coming years, the impact of demographic changes is going to lead to chronic labor shortages.

  english.elpais.com

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

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  Local self-provisioning cannot feed the world, because most people do not live within reach of enough fertile land.

  Their words

  They show that, while agrarian localism might be great as far as it goes, it simply cannot, by itself, meet the challenge of feeding the world.

  The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed Peoplemonbiot.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 Can Negotiate Anything

  Their words

  Everything is negotiable. Challenge authority. You have the power in any situation. This is how to realize it and use it. A must-read classic from 1980 from a master negotiator. My notes here aren’t enough because the little book is filled with so many memorable stories — examples of great day-to-day moments of negotiation that will stick in your head for when you need them. (I especially loved…

  sive.rs

Co-founder of Netscape and of the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz. Argues at length for building things, mostly in short form.

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  The idea that AI will decide to kill humanity is a category error: it is math and code, built and controlled by people, not a living thing shaped by evolution.

  AI alignment

  Their words

  My view is that the idea that AI will decide to literally kill humanity is a profound category error. AI is not a living being that has been primed by billions of years of evolution to participate in the battle for the survival of the fittest, as animals are, and as we are. It is math – code – computers, built by people, owned by people, used by people, controlled by people.

  Why AI Will Save The Worldpmarca.substack.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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  Opening legal pathways for people to move to the jobs would solve rich countries’ labour shortage and lift millions out of poverty at the same time.

  Their words

  If we collectively devoted the same levels of investment and inventive power and entrepreneurship to developing more and better legal pathways for people to move across borders to needed jobs, including a variety of modalities for labor mobility, we could solve the growing challenge of labor scarcity.

  Choose Peoplelampforum.org

Economist; former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.

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  The main obstacle to sound fiscal policy debate is a widespread, quasi-religious belief that public debt is inherently bad.

  public debt

  Their words

  The main challenge in discussing fiscal policy is the widely held and nearly religious belief that public debt is very bad.

  Fiscal Policy under Low Interest Ratesdirect.mit.edu

Cryptographer; teaches cryptography at Johns Hopkins and writes A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering.

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  Content tracing works by turning every user into a cooperating witness, whether or not they want to cooperate with the police.

  Their words

  This brings us to the central challenge of all content tracing proposals so far: to make tracing possible, a tracing system needs to turn every WhatsApp user (including the originator) into a cooperative green circle — regardless of whether users actually want to cooperate with police.

  Thinking about “traceability”blog.cryptographyengineering.com

Cognitive scientist and designer; author of The Design of Everyday Things; co-founder of Nielsen Norman Group; former vice president at Apple; founding director of the Design Lab at UC San Diego.

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  The rule to defer judgment encourages design by committee; effective teams do not defer criticism, they create through it.

  Their words

  We challenge this approach. It encourages design by committee and infuses a superficial sense of collaboration that leads to compromises and weakens ideas. Our view, the product of years of studies of and participation in innovation projects, is that effective teams do not defer critical reflection; they create through criticism.

  Why Criticism Is Good for Creativityjnd.org

Physicist and science communicator. Writes Backreaction and makes videos explaining new physics and astronomy results, frequently to argue that the headline about them overstates the case.

• Mixed onrcmnd.app

  Richie Doodles: The Brilliance of a Young Richard Feynman

  Their words

  In summary, the illustrations are awesome, the explanations aren't.

  backreaction.blogspot.com