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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.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Lack of interest, not lack of technology, is why practices like water recycling remain rare in buildings.

  Their words

  We have the technology - but we don't seem to be interested in using it.

  shkspr.mobi

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The difference between software engineering at large corporations and small ones will increase, and startups adopting Google practices will look sillier as they can build faster with fewer constraints.

  Googlestartups

  Their words

  The difference between software engineering at large corporations and small ones will increase. Start-ups adopting practices of Google will look even sillier than before, because they can now build so much faster and with so much less constraints.

  thorstenball.com

Technology writer of Spyglass, a newsletter about technology and media. Previously a reporter at TechCrunch and an investor at GV.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Apple TV's overall show quality now exceeds Netflix's and Prime Video's, though it still lacks HBO's peak-level top-tier content.

  Their words

  While the average overall quality of Apple's shows are higher than those on Netflix or Prime Video, they still don't have the type of 'A+' content that HBO was regularly pumping out at their peak.

  Apple TV Dethrones HBOspyglass.org

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

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Quake

  Their words

  I trace my skills as a programmer, racer, and leader directly back to StarCraft, Quake, Unreal, and tens of thousands of hours of overall gameplay.

  x.com

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  StarCraft

  Their words

  I trace my skills as a programmer, racer, and leader directly back to StarCraft, Quake, Unreal, and tens of thousands of hours of overall gameplay.

  x.com

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Unreal

  Their words

  I trace my skills as a programmer, racer, and leader directly back to StarCraft, Quake, Unreal, and tens of thousands of hours of overall gameplay.

  x.com

Economics writer; author of the Noahpinion newsletter.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The era of heavy U.S. involvement in the Middle East has been a disaster for U.S. power and prestige and should end.

  America

  Their words

  But overall, the era of heavy U.S. involvement in the Middle East has been a disaster for U.S. power and prestige, and it’s time for that era to end.

  Get the Middle East out of my politics!noahpinion.blog

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

  Overall, America is a better and more tolerant society than it was in 2001.

  America

  Their words

  the truth is that while there are plenty of haters, overall we are a better, more tolerant society than we were in 2001.

  The Long Decline of Americapaulkrugman.substack.com

Climate journalist; founded HEATED in 2019 after reporting on climate at The New Republic and ThinkProgress.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  "Carbon intensity" metrics let oil companies claim climate progress even as their total emissions rise from increased production.

  Their words

  "Carbon intensity" is a greenwashing term: It measures pollution per barrel, allowing oil companies to claim climate progress even as rising production drives up total overall emissions.

  heated.world

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A knife company's clip design quality is a sign of the maturity of its overall design aesthetic.

  Their words

  Good, endemic clip designs are the sign of a mature design aesthetic in a knife company

  Spyderco SpyNano Revieweverydaycommentary.com

Forecaster, founder of FiveThirtyEight, author of The Signal and the Noise and On the Edge. Writes Silver Bulletin, where the predictions come with numbers and the numbers are later checked against what happened.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Quarterbacks account for almost a third of a football team's total player value.

  Their words

  QBs literally account for almost a third of overall player value in the NFL, based on our analysis.

  2026 ELWAY NFL projectionsnatesilver.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.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  AI is grown rather than designed, which is why its overall behaviour resists any description we can fully understand.

  Their words

  AI is grown more than designed - it is, to first degree, the product of repeating a straightforward optimization step many times on a hard-to-imagine amount of compute.

  An Alien Mindopenai.com

Co-founder and CEO of Stripe and co-founder of the Arc Institute. Keeps a personal site of reading lists, open questions and notes on scientific progress and how research is funded.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The OpenAI-Hugging Face attack is one of the most important things to happen this year, and has gone strikingly under-covered.

  OpenAIHuggingFace

  Their words

  Overall, I’m very surprised at how little media coverage there’s been around the OpenAI / Hugging Face attack. It’s clearly one of the most important things to happen this year.

  @patrickc on Xx.com

Clinical psychologist, EMDR consultant and yoga teacher in Boulder, Colorado. Author of The Complex PTSD Workbook and EMDR Therapy and Somatic Psychology; writes on trauma, attachment and the nervous system.

• Recommendstheir ownrcmnd.app

  Vagus Nerve and Polyvagal Practices retreat, Cancun

  Their words

  Join me in Cancun Jan 30–Feb 6, 2027 with Leading Edge Seminars!

  x.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The specific rules taught as clean code are simply bad programming practices, and they get worse when you apply them together.

  Their words

  If you look at those things, they're kind of just bad programming practices. I I don't really know how else to say them. They don't mesh well when you put them together.

  youtube.com

Writes on effective altruism, energy and the arithmetic behind arguments people repeat — including how much electricity a chatbot query actually uses.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The data-centre backlash is about the buildings themselves, not about what people think of AI.

  data centersAmerica

  Their words

  All this combined with the survey data on Americans’ stated reasons for opposing data centers makes me think that attitudes toward AI are probably a meaningful factor for a minority of people opposed to data centers, but I don’t think the backlash overall is driven by people’s thoughts on AI.

  blog.andymasley.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Excelling at one attribute doesn't make a product superior overall to alternatives.

  Their words

  just because something does one thing better than another thing doesn't mean it is superior.

  Cloud Defensive MCH Micro Revieweverydaycommentary.com

Writes Strange Loop Canon, on the intersection of technology, economics and business — "building models of the world to understand these problem areas and to define them better".

• Our readingkorrents.com

  AI alignment should be approached like governing a corporation through institutions, not like raising a virtuous individual.

  AI alignment

  Their words

  If you do think it's the overall system that matters, then the alignment that's needed is far less like training a virtuous child and more like managing a semi-virtuous corporation!

  AIs are companies, my friendstrangeloopcanon.com

Mathematician at UCLA, working mainly in harmonic analysis and partial differential equations. Writes What's new, a long-running blog on their research, open problems and expository notes.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Mathematics is entering a period of turbulence that will stress-test its implicit values and practices rather than its foundations of truth.

  Their words

  I believe that we are now entering a era of comparable turbulence in mathematics. This time, though, what is being stress-tested is not our foundational framework for mathematical truth, but rather the largely implicit framework of mathematical values and practices: what we consider a contribution to be, what we reward, what we regard as understood, and who - or what - we regard as having done the work.

  Mathematics in the age of AIarxiv.org

Software engineer and writer; worked on Mapbox and built Placemark and Simple Statistics, and blogs at macwright.com.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Longer device upgrade cycles are beneficial because they reduce e-waste, pollution, and churn.

  Their words

  But either way, it's good that upgrade cycles are longer: it means less e-waste, less pollution, less churn overall.

  Technology optimism hourmacwright.com

Chief scientist at Redwood Research, where he works on technical AI safety and AI control.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Deep properties of a model are inherited through the previous generation's data, which is why AI systems from different companies end up correlated with one another.

  Their words

  And so there's some like deep underlying properties of the model that are being sort of transferred between model generations because basically you you train your AI on data from the prior generation and keep going.

  youtube.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The 1930s U.S. Dust Bowl heat wave was caused by destructive farming practices rather than fossil-fuel emissions.

  America

  Their words

  The relevant human activity was not fossil-fuel combustion but bad farming practices that contributed to the Dust Bowl.

  Fixing one of climate’s worst plotstheclimatebrink.com

Climate scientist and energy systems analyst; writes The Climate Brink with Andrew Dessler and leads climate research at Stripe.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The US warming trend since 1970 is consistent across raw, adjusted, satellite, and surface temperature datasets

  Their words

  The overall US warming trend (around 0.5F per decade since 1970 in max, min, and mean temperatures) is robust in every dataset, raw or adjusted, satellite or surface.

  Hot days, cold thermometerstheclimatebrink.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  No single food explains the link between a Mediterranean diet and lower dementia risk, so what matters is overall diet quality rather than olive oil or avoiding meat.

  Their words

  And there was no food or you know olive oil or food group or you eating more or less meat that changed the relationship between the Mediterranean diet and dementia risk. So what that tells me is it's much more about whole foods.

  youtube.com

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

• Mixed onaffiliate linkrcmnd.app

  Stay Calm: Learn to Embrace Uncertainty in Investing and Life

  Their words

  It might have worked even better as two separate books, rather than as one short book trying to do two things. But Booth's writing is soothing, and his overall message — investing is simply a bet on human innovation and progress — is a truism worth repeating. Young people, in particular, might benefit from reading it.

  jasonzweig.com

Programmer and writer known for detailed source code reviews of classic game engines, and author of the Game Engine Black Book series on Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM.

• Mixed onrcmnd.app

  Caldigit TS4

  Their words

  I got the CalDigit TS4 as soon as it was released, in 2022. It was perhaps a little bit better but overall I was disappointed to still sometimes encounter a machine that would not wake up.

  fabiensanglard.net

Programmer and writer known for detailed source code reviews of classic game engines, and author of the Game Engine Black Book series on Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  8BitDo Retro Mechanical Keyboard

  Their words

  sounds like a dream, and is overall an excellent keyboard that I have used a lot to play Diablo II: Resurrected.

  fabiensanglard.net

Writer and author of All the Wrong Moves; his newsletter covers meditation, relationships and creativity, and he co-runs a perfume line.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The mind's planning and goal-setting function is only a small fraction of a person's overall intelligence.

  Their words

  The planning part of your mind, the one that generates ambitions and hypothetical situations, is a small part of your overall intelligence.

  Surrender as a non-stupid life strategysashachapin.substack.com

Swedish essayist who writes Escaping Flatland, a newsletter of essays on relationships, thinking, writing and homeschooling.

From one piece How not to forget what matters 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Practices marketed as transformative, such as therapy, meditation, and psychedelics, often produce little real progress despite years of use.

  psychedelicsPsychotherapy

  Their words

  There are many practices that promise to transform and improve us-therapy, meditation, psychedelics-, but that branding doesn't mean that they actually do much for us: it is common to see people use these techniques for years without any obvious progress on their problems.

  How not to forget what mattershenrikkarlsson.xyz

• Our readingkorrents.com

  People tend to assume their habitual practices achieve what they intend, even without evidence that they do.

  Their words

  It is common to think that what we do achieves what we want it to achieve, even if there is no evidence for it.

  How not to forget what mattershenrikkarlsson.xyz

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

  A human life has no overall narrative arc, so nothing is lost by refusing to see it as a story that needs an ending.

  Their words

  But there’s no overall narrative arc—it’s just been one thing after another.

  Immortality Sounds Pretty Good, Actuallysmallpotatoes.paulbloom.net

Full-stack Laravel developer based in Madison, Wisconsin; maintains open-source Laravel, Livewire and Alpine.js packages and writes at randallwilk.dev.

• Lovedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app

  Sanodesk 72x30 Standing Desk

  Their words

  Another part of my recent office upgrade was the Sanodesk 72x30 Standing Desk. Overall, I love this desk so far. The bamboo top looks and feels great, and I have plenty of room on the desk to set it up how I want to. Being able to raise it to a standing position is also nice too when I get sick of sitting.

  randallwilk.dev

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  16-inch MacBook Pro M4 Max

  Their words

  Overall, I'm loving the M4 Max so far, and I've noticed that it does handle certain tasks such as running Pest PHP tests about twice as fast sometimes as the M1 Pro did, which is nice.

  randallwilk.dev

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

  Some goods really will get a fully automated supply chain, and yet what that does to the overall capital share is genuinely ambiguous.

  Their words

  I do think there's this qualitative shift that we I think we agree is coming, which is that there will be at least some goods whose network-adjusted capital share goes to one, right? Because the whole supply chain can be automated and there's no part in it that we care intrinsically about having a human do. Um, so that'll be a, you know, that'll be a qualitative shift. Interestingly, the implications of that shift for the overall capital share are ambiguous

  youtube.com

Author of The Lean Startup and Incorruptible, and founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, who advises companies on corporate governance and mission protection.

From one piece How Anthropic, Costco, and Patagonia all build incorruptible companies | Eric Ries 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Only a fifth of venture-backed founders are still CEO three years after going public, and the standard documents their lawyers gave them are why.

  startups

  Their words

  According to Harvard Law School, among venturebacked companies that have the standard best practices set up that you got from your lawyer, okay, only 20% of founders are still the CEO 3 years after going public.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The corporate best practices lawyers and bankers push on founders are younger than the trees in the local park.

  startups

  Their words

  so many of the best practices that your lawyers, your bankers, whoever advisers you have, they're going to be pushing best practices on you that are younger than the trees in your local park.

  youtube.com

Member of technical staff at Anthropic. He has led ML/AI teams at Amazon, Alibaba and Lazada, and writes about LLMs, recommender systems and engineering at eugeneyan.com.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The practices that make someone effective at working with an AI model are the same practices that make someone effective at onboarding any new human collaborator.

  Their words

  none of this is specific to AI. It's simply how you onboard and work with any new collaborator.

  How to Work and Compound with AIeugeneyan.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

  It has virtually never got cheaper to build a house or an office: construction costs rise at or above general inflation, in every rich country and over a century of data.

  inflation

  Their words

  Construction costs tend to rise at, or above, the level of overall inflation, and it rarely (if ever) gets cheaper to build houses, offices, or other buildings.

  Construction Costs Rarely Fallconstruction-physics.com

Software engineer; co-founder and former CTO of Tailscale, previously on the Go team at Google.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Making code easier to write will lead to much more software being created overall.

  Their words

  Agents, by making it easiest to write code, means there will be a lot more software.

  I am building a cloudcrawshaw.io

Economics professor at George Mason University and author of The Myth of the Rational Voter, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, The Case Against Education and Open Borders. Writes Bet On It.

• Recommendstheir ownrcmnd.app

  Unbeatable: The Brutally Honest Case for Free Markets

  Their words

  It is definitely my broadest and least inhibited book — and in my judgment, the best-written and the best overall.

  betonit.ai

Professor of economics at George Mason University and Bartley J. Madden Chair at the Mercatus Center. Co-writes the blog Marginal Revolution and co-authors the textbook Modern Principles of Economics with Tyler Cowen.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Under binding ceilings, cost-minimizing suppliers drive allocations to corners rather than Harberger or random benchmarks, producing larger losses and discontinuous welfare jumps.

  benchmarks

  Their words

  We show that equilibrium generically occurs at neither the Harberger nor Glaeser-Luttmer benchmark. Cost-minimizing suppliers drive allocations to vertices, not interiors. Corners are not an assumption but an outcome about what cost-minimizing suppliers choose. The correct benchmark is corners, not random, and corners generate qualitatively different welfare properties: losses far larger than either efficient or random distributions, and discontinuous jumps from small parameter perturbations.

  arxiv.org

Independent AI policy researcher; led policy research at OpenAI from 2018 to 2024, latterly as senior adviser for AGI readiness.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  AI companies should not be the ones certifying their own safety and security practices

  Their words

  In short, whether AI is a normal technology or an unusually dangerous one, it doesn't make sense for companies to check their own homework on safety and security.

  The Launch of AVERImilesbrundage.substack.com

Writer and researcher on China, technology and industry; author of Breakneck, research fellow at Stanford, known for a widely read annual letter.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary

  Their words

  There is something deeply satisfying with reading out loud phrases like: “for in mere breath did it come, and into darkness it goes, and in darkness its name is covered.” Though King James is iconic, Robert Alter better conveys overall the literary power of the Hebrew Bible.

  danwang.co

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

  Stagnant construction productivity is not an American failure but a worldwide one, and most rich countries that once had it have lost it.

  America

  Their words

  Overall, my take when looking at this data is that stagnant construction productivity is an extremely widespread problem.

  construction-physics.com

Computer performance engineer working on datacenter performance at OpenAI, previously Netflix and Sun/Joyent. Author of Systems Performance and BPF Performance Tools, and creator of flame graphs.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Relying on AI to replace performance engineers reduces an organization's overall technical expertise over time.

  Their words

  If a company spends less on performance engineers as it's considered AI'd, it will reduce the company's effective "performance IQ."

  On "AI Brendans" or "Virtual Brendans"brendangregg.com

Chairman and chief executive of Microsoft since 2014; joined the company in 1992 and ran its cloud business before that.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The biggest competitor to any new AI accelerator is the previous generation of Nvidia.

  Their words

  the thing that is the biggest competitor for any new accelerator is kind of even the previous generation of Nvidia right I mean in a fleet what I'm going to look at is the overall TCO

  Satya Nadella – How Microsoft thinks about AGIyoutube.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The knowledge a model soaks up in pre-training is holding it back; what we actually want is the intelligence with the knowledge stripped out.

  Their words

  And actually, you don't actually need or want the knowledge. I actually think that's probably actually holding back the neural networks overall because it's actually like getting them to rely on the knowledge a little too much sometimes.

  youtube.com

Machine learning engineer and independent AI consultant. He writes about LLM evaluation, tooling and applied ML at hamel.dev, and previously worked on machine learning at GitHub.

• Mixed onrcmnd.app

  Langsmith

  Their words

  The overall workflow is intuitive, especially for those new to formal evaluation processes. The UI guides you through creating datasets, running experiments, and annotating results.

  hamel.dev

Founder of Telegram, and before it of VK.

From one piece Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature | Lex Fridman Podcast #482 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• 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

  The best way to hire engineers is a coding contest, because competition leads to progress and picks the most qualified people for the task.

  Their words

  Well, it's in line with my overall philosophy. I think competition leads to progress. If you want to create an ideal process for selecting the most qualified people for certain specific tasks you have in mind, what can be better than a competition?

  youtube.com

Runs the mechanistic interpretability team at Google DeepMind; worked on interpretability at Anthropic under Chris Olah before that, and teaches the field to newcomers.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Complete reverse-engineering of neural networks is a less promising research direction than studying model biology and applying interpretability usefully

  Their words

  I'm now fairly pessimistic about ambitious interpretability (i.e. complete reverse-engineering), and I'm excited about model biology (studying qualitative high-level properties of models) and applied interpretability (rigorously doing useful things with interp).

  MATS Applications Open (Due Aug 29)neelnanda.io

Founder of Terraform Industries and formerly a physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory; writes about energy, space and manufacturing.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A solar-powered data centre can cut its power draw a great deal while giving up very little compute, which is how it survives a run of bad weather.

  solardata centers

  Their words

  actually it turns out that you can significantly decrease power consumption with a very small reduction in overall compute. So if you if you've got like three really bad days in a row or something, you can actually just like you can dial back your power usage quite a lot without compromising your inference or or um or training.

  youtube.com

Chief executive of Alphabet and Google; joined Google in 2004 and led Chrome and Android before taking over in 2015.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  We are in the phase of artificial jagged intelligence: dramatic progress alongside models that still trip on counting letters.

  Their words

  I feel like we are in the AJI phase where dramatic progress, some things don't work well, but overall you're seeing lots of progress.

  youtube.com

Software engineer who writes the blog Made of Bugs about performance, debugging and understanding computer systems. Previously worked at Anthropic on interpretability, at Stripe on Sorbet, and at Ksplice.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  AI tooling and interface design lags behind the underlying models' actual capabilities.

  LLMs

  Their words

  Overall, though, this experience reinforced my belief that the tooling and interface design around LLMs is lagging way behind the actual capabilities, and is an area of active experimentation and development, even aside from any future model improvements.

  Building personal software with Claudeblog.nelhage.com

Growth advisor and operator who has led growth at Miro, Amplitude, Dropbox and SurveyMonkey.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Hiring a head of growth to reverse a declining business is destined to fail, because the cause of the decline is deeper than the missing team.

  Their words

  If you have the overall business slowing down, your head of growth is destined to fail because the reason business is slowing down is much deeper than not having a growth team.

  youtube.com

Software engineer and essayist who writes about programming, formal methods, philosophy and literature at thoughts.wyounas.com.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Principles of the SPIN Model Checker

  Their words

  This book gave me both insight and a deeper curiosity about the subject. This book introduces the SPIN model checker and exposes the reader to the nuances of verifying programs using SPIN. A nice feature of the book is how it explains concepts using thoughtfully developed, freely available tools (such as jSpin) that the author created for pedagogical purposes. It's a demanding book, but the content was interesting. The book presents details about concurrency, temporal logic, non-determinism, advanced SPIN topics, and even case studies. I've already written a few blog posts about the topics I explored while reading this book, and I plan to write more. Overall, it's a good book. I'm sure I'll revisit the latter half again.

  thoughts.wyounas.com

Writes The Pragmatic Engineer, the software-engineering newsletter, and wrote The Software Engineer's Guidebook. Formerly an engineering manager at Uber, and at Microsoft/Skype and Skyscanner before that.

• Readrcmnd.app

  Software Engineering at Google

  Their words

  the second part is interesting in getting a proper look into Google software engineering practices.

  blog.pragmaticengineer.com

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  The Engineering Executive's Primer

  Their words

  "It’s honest in how it covers topics like navigating tricky power dynamics with CEOs, surviving 'peer panic,' dealing with competition within leadership teams, and in its overall breadth and depth."

  blog.pragmaticengineer.com

Energy and decarbonisation analyst; publishes an annual chart deck on the state of the transition, and was chief content officer at BloombergNEF.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Riding in a Waymo robotaxi is a better overall experience than being driven by a human driver.

  self-driving cars

  Their words

  I found it to be a superior experience to a human driver, for a few key reasons.

  Inflecting and Overtaking, SunPower, Waymonathanielbullard.com

Co-founder and CEO of Stripe and co-founder of the Arc Institute. Keeps a personal site of reading lists, open questions and notes on scientific progress and how research is funded.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  The Dream Machine

  Their words

  The Dream Machine -- probably the best overall book about the early days of computing and the internet.

  patrickcollison.com

Writes jvns.ca, turning "hard and scary" topics — networking, debugging, Linux internals — into plain explanations and hand-drawn comics. Publishes Wizard Zines, illustrated programming zines. Software developer based in Montreal.

• Our reading nowkorrents.com

  Nix is worth switching your day-to-day package management to, over Homebrew.

  Nixdeveloper tools

  Their words, before

  I’m also still not sure how much I like nix – it’s very confusing! But it’s helped me compile some software that I was struggling to compile otherwise, and in general it seems to install things faster than homebrew.

  Their words now

  I’ve mostly switched back to Homebrew, nix was interesting but overall I think it’s not worth the complexity for me

Monetary economist known for NGDP-level targeting. Wrote TheMoneyIllusion until it closed in 2024 and now writes The Pursuit of Happiness.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint

  Their words

  Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint (Germany, 2019, CC) 3.6 When thinking about the most overlooked female artist, Artemesia Gentileschi often comes to mind. This documentary makes a persuasive case for Hilma af Klint. To my eyes, her most appealing works are not the large scale abstractions, rather it’s the small Klee-like gems that stand out. Don’t assume that if you have seen a half dozen of her most famous works that you have any conception of her overall career.

  themoneyillusion.com

Pseudonymous essayist. Writes at gwern.net on AI scaling, statistics, genetics and long-running internet research, with heavy citation and a habit of revising old essays in place rather than leaving them wrong.

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  Amy

  Their words

  Overall, required viewing for any Winehouse fan and of general psychiatric interest; possibly too painful to watch for others.

  gwern.net

Writes The Convivial Society, on technology and the moral life — what our tools do to attention, memory and how we treat each other.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A good life rests on things that demand skill and effort from you, not on goods that arrive requiring none.

  Their words

  A good life is supported by a diverse array of focal things and practices, which tend to reward us with deeper, more meaningful experiences; a gratifying measure of bodily skill and competence; and possibly even a stronger fabric of relationships.

  The Stuff of (a Well-Lived) Lifetheconvivialsociety.substack.com

American backpacking guide, writer and endurance athlete who has hiked more than 30,000 miles; author of The Ultimate Hiker's Gear Guide and publisher of gear reviews and trip-planning tutorials at andrewskurka.com.

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  La Sportiva Mutant

  Their words

  The La Sportiva Mutant (men's, women's) is my overall pick for backpacking and light canyoneering, and my personal favorite.

  andrewskurka.com

Research scientist at Meta in Berlin working on multilingual models and evaluation; led the multilingual team at Cohere and was a research scientist at Google DeepMind before that.

From one piece NeurIPS 2023 Primer 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  LLM-based planning currently works best when combined with external tools rather than relying on the model's own generated plans alone.

  LLMs

  Their words

  Overall, while initial plans of LLMs can be useful as a starting point, LLM-based planning currently works best mainly in conjunction with external tools.

  NeurIPS 2023 Primerruder.io

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Current large language models still struggle to compose operations into correct multi-step reasoning paths.

  LLMs

  Their words

  Overall, current LLMs still struggle with composing operations into correct reasoning paths.

  NeurIPS 2023 Primerruder.io

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

  Milton Friedman's chief intellectual flaw was wanting to make economics too simple.

  Their words

  And indeed overall that interaction fits with my more general reservation about Friedman: he wanted to make economics just a little bit too simple.

  tylercowen.com

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.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Violations of Bell inequalities reveal only properties of models, not of nature itself.

  Their words

  Since Local Causality is a property of a model, observing violations of Bell's inequality cannot tell us anything about nature itself, but merely about the properties of the model that we use to describe nature.

  Quantum Confusions, Cleared Up (or so I hope)arxiv.org

Deep-learning researcher and Turing Award laureate; founder of the Mila institute.

• Our reading nowkorrents.com

  AI research is on a good trajectory overall — good for science and good for society — and existential concerns will only become relevant in the distant future.

  Their words, before

  Reading the book had not changed my fundamental belief that, in balance, we were on a good trajectory with AI research: good for science and good for society with expected positive impacts in many domains.

  Their words now

  I now believe that I was wrong and short-sighted to ignore that dual-use nature. I also think I was not paying enough attention to the possibility of losing control to superhuman AIs.

Game designer; chief creative officer at Spry Fox (Triple Town, Realm of the Mad God) and author of the Lost Garden design blog.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The social sciences have theory but not a design practice, which is why building working social systems falls to game designers.

  Their words

  A big moment of realization for me is that most of the social sciences are not design practices.

  A design practice for social systemslostgarden.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The programming practices taught as best practice are ruinous for performance and should not be followed.

  Their words

  The ideas underlying the “clean” code methodology are almost all horrible for performance, and you shouldn’t do them.

  "Clean" Code, Horrible Performancecomputerenhance.com

Writes Pedestrian Observations on public transit and why infrastructure costs what it does; a pure mathematician by training, comparing how different countries build.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  American transit agencies stay expensive out of incuriosity: the practices that would fix them are written in languages nobody in the room reads.

  America

  Their words

  This is not about precarity, because this is not a precarious project; this is about total ignorance and incuriosity about best practices, which emanate from a place that doesn’t natively speak English and doesn’t trade in American political references.

  High Costs are not About Precaritypedestrianobservations.com

Psychologist and science writer; wrote Science Fictions on how research goes wrong, and writes the newsletter of the same name.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The replication crisis is not an aberration; many of the things we believe are wrong

  Their words

  We know how easily these practices can distort the scientific record and give us false-positive, nonsense results.

  Science isn't storytellingsciencefictions.org

Pseudonymous essayist. Writes at gwern.net on AI scaling, statistics, genetics and long-running internet research, with heavy citation and a habit of revising old essays in place rather than leaving them wrong.

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  The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution

  Their words

  It is, overall, an excellent book and one of the better ones on grand history I’ve read

  gwern.net

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  The Histories

  Their words

  Overall, far more interesting than I had expected. Surprisingly funny or interesting anecdotes.

  gwern.net

Technical educator, conference speaker and developer relations engineer based in Ottawa, Canada. Author of the Anubis bot filter and of over 400 articles at xeiaso.net.

• Dislikedrcmnd.app

  Anbernic Win600

  Their words

  I don't know who I would reccomend this device to. The premise of this device has a lot of promise, but in practice it has so many problems that it's overall not really worth choosing in comparison to devices like the Steam Deck.

  xeiaso.net

Release engineering manager at the Wikimedia Foundation. Keeps a public log at tylercipriani.com of every book he reads, with a rating and notes.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  The Sense of Style

  Their words

  Overall, I'm still firmly on team Strunk and White. But this was a pretty damned entertaining grammar book.

  tylercipriani.com

Economist; former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Central bank purchases of government bonds are not bailouts and do not automatically cause inflation, since they only change the composition of the consolidated government's liabilities, not their total.

  inflationinterest ratesgovernment

  Their words

  Governments have not been bailed out by their central banks. As I discussed earlier, central bank intervention does not reduce the overall liabilities of the consolidated government, just their composition. And it does not automatically lead to more inflation: It increases the size of the balance sheet of the central bank, but it does not increase the size of the non-interest-paying money stock.

  Fiscal Policy under Low Interest Ratesdirect.mit.edu

Experimental psychologist and author of the blog Experimental History, on psychology, science reform and creativity.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Stereotypes of the past lead people to misperceive attitude change, and those misperceptions can legitimize policies people may not actually prefer.

  Their words

  Overall, our findings suggest that widely shared stereotypes of the past lead people to misperceive attitude change, and these misperceptions can lend legitimacy to policies that people may not actually prefer.

  doi.org

Software engineer; co-founder and former CTO of Tailscale, previously on the Go team at Google.

• Mixed onrcmnd.app

  Debian

  Their words

  Debian is a decent programming environment. It has some of the consistency properties like macOS, but fails unexpectedly.

  usesthis.com

Founder and CEO of Get Lighthouse, a management-coaching software company, and previously a product lead at KISSmetrics. Writes about leadership, management and product at jasonevanish.com.

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  Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business Into A Sales Machine With The $100 Million Best Practices Of Salesforce.com

  Their words

  If you're looking to understand the basics of building and scaling a sales process and team, this book is a great primer. It also goes into great detail in how the author built a better, more reliable method than pure cold-calling to generate leads beyond the marketing team at Salesforce's efforts.

  jasonevanish.com

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  The Lean Startup

  Their words

  If you actually want to learn how to actually BE a lean startup or how to actually do it, this book will not help you. If you want to learn the high level concepts only then this is a great book. The other books I have above I encourage you to read before this one if you want to truly learn and implement lean practices. 7. On the Shortness of Life by Seneca (3.13.18)

  jasonevanish.com

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  Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired

  Their words

  Who are the best engineers and designers in the world? Nature. This book is an interesting, science-heavy look at some really interesting properties in nature we could use to learn from as we try to design new technology. Benyus takes us across the spectrum from photosynthesis, to agriculture, to spiders. If you want to geek out on a little biology while applying it to technology this is a good read.

  jasonevanish.com

Ancient and military historian; writes A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, long series checking what history actually says against how popular culture tells it.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Pre-modern subsistence farmers were minimising the risk of starvation rather than maximising output, and their apparently backward practices are rational once that is understood.

  Their words

  These small subsistence farmers generally seek to minimize risk, rather than maximize profits. After all, improving yields by 5% doesn’t mean much if everyone starves to death in the third year because of a tail-risk that wasn’t mitigated.

  acoup.blog

Indian software developer and prolific blogger on PHP, Laravel and JavaScript; open-source enthusiast publishing near-daily at amitmerchant.com.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  JetBrains Mono

  Their words

  I’m using JetBrains Mono fonts across all my text editors and IDEs. These looks great overall and supports ligatures which is nice!

  amitmerchant.com

Engineering leader and writer; wrote An Elegant Puzzle, Staff Engineer and The Engineering Executive's Primer, and blogs at Irrational Exuberance.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Organisational fixes are slow because they have to drain years of accumulated state, and that same slowness is what makes them durable once they take.

  Their words

  This is because systems accumulate months or years of state, and you have to drain that all away. Conversely, the same properties that make them slow to fix make them extremely durable once in effect!

  Staying on the path to high performing teams.lethain.com

Game developer and moral philosopher; made QWOP, GIRP and Getting Over It, and teaches at the NYU Game Center.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Maze puzzles are unengaging on their own but become interesting when paired with a strong extrinsic motivator.

  Their words

  Mazes are not the most interesting gameplay element if you're relying on intrinsic motivation - they're just not very entertaining - but if there's some sufficiently compelling extrinsic motivator I think their irritating properties become quite interesting.

  Hidden Homework (updated 2021)foddy.net

Designer, illustrator and writer; author of The Shape of Design and of widely read essays on design and the web.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The legibility of the source is one of the most important properties of the web, because it keeps the door open to the next generation.

  Their words

  Illegibility comes from complexity without clarity. I believe that the legibility of the source is one of the most important properties of the web. It’s the main thing that keeps the door open to independent, unmediated contributions to the network.

  Everything Easy is Hard Againfrankchimero.com

Philosopher and historian of existential risk; wrote Human Extinction, and coined "TESCREAL" with Timnit Gebru for the cluster of ideologies they argue underpins the AI industry.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Never project human mental properties onto an artificial intelligence; the difference between the two architectures is the reason to worry, not a reason not to.

  AI alignment

  Their words

  One of the most commonly emphasized points in the AI safety literature is that one must never anthropomorphize AI—that is, don’t project human mental properties onto artificially intelligent systems.

  thebulletin.org

Physician and author on addiction, stress and childhood development. Wrote In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts and The Myth of Normal, and developed the Compassionate Inquiry approach taught to therapists.

• Mixed onrcmnd.app

  Facing Addiction in America: The Surgeon General’s Report on Alcohol, Drugs, and Health

  Their words

  Facing Addiction in America is also the first governmental attempt to ground policy not in prejudice but in research, not in conjecture but in science. It collates an impressive body of evidence to illuminate the pathological processes and impacts of substance addiction in the human brain and body, and suggests evidence-based practices for treatment and prevention.

  drgabormate.com

Programmer; builds Mac and iOS apps, wrote WatermelonDB, and writes about tools, focus and software craft.

• Readrcmnd.app

  The Now Habit

  Their words

  A guide to procrastination: why we do it, how we do it, and a number of tips and strategies to help overcome it. Overall a dry read, but there are a few bits I found useful.

  radex.io

Programmer and writer on computer architecture, performance, and software reliability. He has worked on CPU design at Centaur Technology and on software at Google and Microsoft, and writes long-form technical essays at danluu.com.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  People reliably skip the practices known to prevent rare catastrophes, and then rationalise the shortcut as the reasonable thing to do.

  Their words

  The data are clear that humans are really bad at taking the time to do things that are well understood to incontrovertibly reduce the risk of rare but catastrophic events.

  Normalization of deviancedanluu.com

Co-founder and chief executive of GiveWell, which researches where a donation buys the most measurable good and publishes the arithmetic behind its recommendations.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  An excellent organisation is significantly more likely to succeed than a weaker one, so organisational strength belongs in the decision about where to give.

  Their words

  This has reinforced my intuition that excellent organizations are significantly more likely to succeed than others, and GiveDirectly’s overall excellence increases my estimate of the impact it will achieve.

  blog.givewell.org

Freelance research analyst and writer of the blog Aceso Under Glass, known for 'epistemic spot checks' of non-fiction claims.

• Mixed onrcmnd.app

  Why Does He Do That

  Their words

  Overall, I think this book has some really good points and brings a lot to the table. It also propagates some really toxic ideas.

  acesounderglass.com