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Computer science professor who works on fast data processing; co-author of the simdjson parser and a weekly blogger about software performance since 2004.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Subnormal floating-point numbers remain a real performance cost on Intel processors, but not on AMD or ARM processors.

  Their words

  Thus it appears that on the latest AMD and ARM processors subnormals might not be a concern. But they remain very much a performance issue under Intel processors.

  lemire.me

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.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Commandeering the Intelligence sector would give more limited power over society than it appears, because necessary complements are lacking.

  Their words

  In this model, if someone or something could “commandeer” the Intelligence sector, their power over society would be much more limited than it might appear at first. The world does not change that much at first, because the necessary complements are lacking.

  A simple model of AI-aided economic growthmarginalrevolution.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.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Telegram

  Their words

  IFTTT -> Telegram bot (saves ~$100/mo)

  x.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Smarter people hold their opinions firmly but revise them quickly when new information appears, while clinging to consistency for its own sake is a mark of lower intelligence.

  Their words

  The smartest people I know have strong opinions weakly held and change them when new information arises The dumbest people I know keep their opinions the same just so they can remain consistent Time changes too fast try remain consistent, better to sail the waves to wherever they are taking you!

  levels.io

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  You cannot know what a program should do until you play with it, so in the agentic age you should be as vague as you can up front and then interact with what appears.

  Their words

  No one was happy. Because no one knows what they want until they receive it. You don't know what a program should do until you play with it. So in the agentic age, you should resist the temptation to be overly specific upfront. Be as vague as you can to manifest something, then interact with the something. The way you arrive at good software is you write a little bit of software, and then you try to use it. It is in the process of using software that you discover what you really want.

  youtube.com

Co-founded Neuralink and founded Science Corp, which is building a retinal implant; writes about neural interfaces and biology.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  It is very hard to actually get stuck, because the action space is always larger than it appears.

  Their words

  Now, the good news is that in my experience, it's very difficult to actually get stuck. Um, you can get yourself into trouble and the action space is always larger than it appears.

  Max Hodak: Average Is Not Good Enoughyoutube.com

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  llama3.2:3b

  Their words

  Right now: llama3.2:3b appears to be the model for: is this email urgent?qwen3:8b appears to be the model for: summarize this 5000-word article. llama3.3:70b(q8) appears to be the model for: let’s write or debug some computer code.

  braddelong.substack.com

Co-founder and chief executive of Meta Platforms, the company he started as Facebook in 2004.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Disease will never be finished, because the body is a dynamic system: fix one thing and the next appears.

  Their words

  I mean, I'm optimistic it'll be sooner. I mean, I think that the thing that's complicated is that it's a dynamic system, right? So, if you fix something, there will obviously be future things that you need to work on.

  youtube.com

Danish software engineer and Microsoft technical fellow, creator of Turbo Pascal and Delphi and lead architect of C# and TypeScript.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The language that actually delivered write-once-run-anywhere was not Java but JavaScript, because every new device turned out to ship a browser.

  JavaScript

  Their words

  but lo and behold, they all run browsers with JavaScript in it. Lo and behold, the real cross-platform language isn't Java. It's JavaScript.

  youtube.com

Author and journalist writing on food, plants and consciousness. Professor at UC Berkeley and co-founder of its Center for the Science of Psychedelics.

• Recommendstheir ownrcmnd.app

  A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

  Their words

  a panoptic exploration of consciousness—what it is, who has it, and why—and a meditation on the essence of our humanity.

  michaelpollan.com

Co-creator of Django and creator of Datasette; writes daily at simonwillison.net.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  MCP may turn out to be a one-year wonder, because coding agents that can run arbitrary shell commands make Bash the best general-purpose tool interface.

  MCPcoding agents

  Their words

  The reason I think MCP may be a one-year wonder is the stratospheric growth of coding agents. It appears that the best possible tool for any situation is Bash—if your agent can run arbitrary shell commands, it can do anything that can be done by typing commands into a terminal.

  2025: The year in LLMssimonwillison.net

Founder of Telegram, and before it of VK.

From one piece Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature | Lex Fridman Podcast #482 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Telegram's Secret Chats are the most secure means of communication today.

  Their words

  At the same time, if you were really paranoid, you think, I don't want to be screenshotted, I don't want to have any leaks, I don't even trust Telegram, I only trust code. Secret Chats are the best option. I believe is the most secure means of communication today.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Telegram has never shared a single private message with anyone, governments and intelligence services included.

  data centers

  Their words

  No, never. Telegram has never shared a single private message with anyone, including governments and intelligence services. If you try to access any server in any of the data center locations, it's all encrypted.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Telegram would rather shut down in a country than change its system to let anyone read users' messages, because it promised its users it would not.

  Their words

  No. We designed a system in a way that's impossible. It'll require us to change the system and we won't do that because we made a promise to our users. We would rather shut Telegram down in a certain country than do that.

  youtube.com

+ 2 more

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Telegram leaves perhaps 80 percent of its potential revenue on the table by refusing to exploit personal data for advertising.

  Their words

  So premium is one source of our revenue. We also have ads, but they're context-based, not targeted. Of course, we leave probably 80% of value on the table because we're not ready to engage in all this practices, exploiting personal data.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  There is no such thing as an unbiased source of information; understanding the world means reading conflicting sources that hate each other.

  Their words

  Because there's no such thing as an unbiased source of information. When the war in Ukraine started in 2022, I instantly realized Telegram is going to be used to spread propaganda by both sides.

  youtube.com

Hosts the Lex Fridman Podcast — long, unhurried conversations with scientists, engineers and public figures. Several of the interviews quoted elsewhere on this site are episodes of it.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Arresting Pavel Durov was a historic wrong and a gigantic PR mistake that will keep founders from building in France.

  startups

  Their words

  I think this situation, this historic wrong that’s been done is, put simply, is just a gigantic PR mistake for France. There’s no entrepreneur that sees, that aspires to be the next Pavel Durov to create the next Telegram, sees this and wants to operate in France after seeing this.

  youtube.com

Founder and chief executive of Superhuman, the email client; previously founder of Rapportive, which he sold to LinkedIn; a professional game designer before that.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Rewards undermine intrinsic motivation, which is why gamification does not work; where it appears to work, the underlying experience was already designed as a game.

  Their words

  And that's the problem with rewards is they just massively undermine intrinsic motivation. And that's why gamification doesn't work. And when gamification does work, it's because the underlying experience was already designed like a game.

  youtube.com

Structural engineer and senior infrastructure fellow at the Institute for Progress; writes Construction Physics on why physical things cost what they cost.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Whether a country builds ships well comes down to whether it actually wants to compete internationally, and America never has.

  America

  Their words

  The U.S., on the other hand, never appears to have been strongly motivated to make its shipbuilding industry an international success.

  Why Can't the U.S. Build Ships?construction-physics.com

Founder and editor of Techdirt; coined the Streisand effect, and writes on platform liability, speech law and copyright.

From one piece Durov’s Arrest Details Released, Leaving More Questions Than Answers 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The encryption-licensing charges against Durov are pretextual, a legal hook for prosecuting things France dislikes about Telegram.

  Their words

  But, here, it’s hard not to see that as totally pretextual: an excuse to arrest Durov over other stuff they don’t like him doing.

  techdirt.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Telegram reports no child sexual abuse material at all to the clearing house that handles it, and that is indefensible even if no law compels a non-US company to.

  Their words

  I know from the report that Stanford put out earlier this year that Telegram does not report CSAM to NCMEC at all. That is very stupid. I would imagine Telegram would argue that as a non-US company it doesn’t have to abide by such laws.

  techdirt.com

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

From one piece Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app? 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Telegram urges people away from default-encrypted messengers while refusing to build the features that would encrypt its own users.

  Their words

  Indeed, it no longer feels amusing to see the Telegram organization urge people away from default-encrypted messengers, while refusing to implement essential features that would widely encrypt their own users’ messages.

  Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app?blog.cryptographyengineering.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Almost every one-to-one Telegram chat, and every group chat, is readable on Telegram’s own servers.

  Their words

  The practical impact is that the vast majority of one-on-one Telegram conversations — and literally every single group chat — are probably visible on Telegram’s servers, which can see and record the content of all messages sent between users.

  Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app?blog.cryptographyengineering.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Telegram is not an encrypted messenger in the sense that matters, because it does not end-to-end encrypt conversations by default.

  Their words

  Telegram clearly fails to meet this stronger definition for a simple reason: it does not end-to-end encrypt conversations by default.

  Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app?blog.cryptographyengineering.com

Investor and writer. Previously a partner at Andreessen Horowitz and a product leader at Twitter, Facebook, Snap and Microsoft. Writes essays and memos at sriramk.com.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Private group chats have become the primary venue for the most interesting conversations in tech.

  Their words

  Most of the interesting conversations in tech now happen in private group chats: Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal, small invite-only Discord groups.

  Group chats rule the worldsriramk.com

Novelist and critic, author of The Body Scout and Metallic Realms; writes the newsletter Counter Craft on fiction craft and the publishing industry.

• Lovedtheir ownrcmnd.app

  The Werewolf at Dusk

  Their words

  Obviously, my text appears in the book but I would have loved it even if that wasn't the case. Small is just an astounding artist—see his bestselling memoir Stitches

  countercraft.substack.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  No amount of animal testing can guarantee a drug is safe in humans, so human volunteers must carry some irreducible risk for medicine to advance.

  Their words

  Biology is unpredictable, especially when the immune system is involved, and there is no guarantee that a drug that appears safe in animals will be safe in humans.

  atelfo.github.io

Economist; former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.

• Our reading nowkorrents.com

  When safe interest rates are expected to remain below growth rates for a long time, rolling over public debt without later tax increases is feasible and public debt may carry no fiscal cost.

  public debtinterest rates

  Their words, before

  If the future is like the past, this implies that debt rollovers—that is, the issuance of debt without a subsequent increase in taxes—may well be feasible. Put bluntly, public debt may have no fiscal cost.

  Their words now

  Across advanced economies, the celebrated ( r - g ), i.e., the difference between the interest rate and the growth rate, appears to have durably changed sign or, at a minimum, to have gone from a substantially negative number to a number closer to zero.

Astrophysicist and coffee researcher; author of The Physics of Filter Coffee and The Physics of Espresso, and writer of the Coffee ad Astra blog on brewing science and equipment.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Burr geometry matters more than burr size for how uniform and unimodal a grinder's output is.

  Their words

  It therefore appears that burr geometry may be more important than burr size in determining unimodality and uniformity.

  coffeeadastra.com

Programmer; makes Handmade Hero and teaches Performance-Aware Programming, and argues loudly about how software got slow.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Software performance is central to long-term business success rather than a niche engineering concern.

  Their words

  Software performance appears to be central to long-term business interests.

  Performance Excuses Debunkedcomputerenhance.com