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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.

• 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

Economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury. Author of Slouching Towards Utopia and writer of the Grasping Reality newsletter.

• 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

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 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

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