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Founder and editor of ToolGuyd, a tool review site covering power tools, hand tools, workshop equipment and EDC gear. He writes under his first name on the site.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Premium-priced brands draw complaints about cost, not about quality.

  Their words

  When workers talk about more premium brands, such as Occidental Leather, they often complain about the price, and rarely the quality.

  Can You Recommend a Good Tool Belt?toolguyd.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.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The financial payoff from a college degree has stopped growing and may be declining.

  Their words

  The value of a degree is in question, as tuition costs have increased in the last few decades while the college premium-the expected benefit from getting a diploma-has flatlined and possibly even declined in the last few years.

  derekthompson.org

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

  While the money premium from college is falling, the friends and marriage premium from college is going up and will rise further.

  Their words

  while the money premium from college is falling, the friends and marriage premium from college is going up and probably will rise further still.

  Reasons to go to collegemarginalrevolution.com

Economist at George Mason University, co-author of Marginal Revolution, host of Conversations with Tyler. Writes in short, dense claims about economics, culture and AI, and has moved position on AI in public more than once.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  AI is not the primary driver of the recent decline in the college wage premium

  Their words

  I do not see AI as driving these changes, but an interesting result nonetheless

  marginalrevolution.com

Professor of finance at NYU's Stern School of Business, known for his work on valuation. He publishes his data, spreadsheets and classes free at Damodaran Online and writes the Musings on Markets blog.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Companies now go public later, bigger and unprofitable: fewer than a quarter of the last decade’s IPOs were making money.

  Their words

  While it was routine for companies going public in the 1980s to be profitable (>80% were), less that a quarter of the companies that have gone public in the last decade have been profitable.

  aswathdamodaran.blogspot.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.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Fellow

  Their words

  You look at Fellow, another premium coffee machine brand, and all their stuff that touches water is high grade stainless steel

  levels.io

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

  Renouncing your own cognitive ability because the models are good is premature, because companies still pay an enormous premium for it.

  Their words

  there still seems to be an enormous premium on cognitive ability. And so, I wouldn't I I I I think, um, renouncing that before there's evidence that we've saturated, uh, those benefits would be premature.

  youtube.com

Economist specialising in global income inequality; formerly lead economist in the World Bank research department, now at the CUNY Graduate Center and author of the Global Inequality and More newsletter.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  China's cultural and intellectual output to the world is far smaller than its economic weight.

  China

  Their words

  It surely does not “produce” one quarter of world culture or intellectual activity (if the latter is defined as influential books, of fiction and non-fiction, politics, history; films, plastic arts, music, theater etc.)

  A self-absorbed giantbranko2f7.substack.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

  A steady pipeline of transit projects does not by itself prevent costly systems-engineering mistakes, as shown by London's Crossrail.

  Their words

  Standardized systems are important, and there is a systems premium in the US and UK, but it can't be about a regular pipeline because London has that and yet Crossrail engaged in some really dodgy systems decisions that drove costs up.

  IFP’s Transit Abundance Playbookpedestrianobservations.com

Behavioural economist at Chicago Booth, professor of behavioural science and economics and director of AGI economics at Google DeepMind.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  People value a human-made good for the connection to its maker, which is why the premium disappears once five hundred copies exist.

  Their words

  So with one, you get the effect that the person produced art print is valued much much higher than the than the AI version. And then what we do is to say there's in a set of other conditions, there's 500 of these being produced. So for the human made one, the price goes down a lot because it's no longer seen as like you're not like making a connection with this one artist versus with AI, there's no difference. AI is already viewed as like a commodity.

  youtube.com

Founder and chief analyst of SemiAnalysis; reports on semiconductor supply chains, AI datacentre economics and what the chip export controls actually do.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The world can make roughly 200 gigawatts of AI chips a year by 2030, which makes a gigawatt a week a plausible quarter of the market rather than a fantasy.

  data centers

  Their words

  Um, and then you stack on 70 this year, 80 next year, growing to 100 by 2030. You're at like 700 EV tools by the end of the decade. Um, 700 EV tools, three and a half tools per gigawatt. um assuming it's all allocated to AI which it's not but three and a half tools per gigawatt gets you to 200 gigawatts worth of AI chips for the data centers to deploy

  youtube.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Most of the gain in tokens per dollar per watt comes from software, not from new hardware — 5x, 10x, sometimes 40x on one model family.

  Their words

  the improvement software improvements of really throughput in terms of tokens per dollar per watt that we're able to get uh you know quarter over quarter year over year is massive uh right so it's 5x 10x maybe 40x in some of these cases

  Satya Nadella – How Microsoft thinks about AGIyoutube.com

Head of growth at Chess.com, previously growth and monetization lead at Grammarly and Duolingo and a product manager at Google.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A freemium product's free tier should sample everything the paid product can do, because a limited free experience teaches users the product is limited.

  Their words

  and so I think this is interesting just modernization learning that especially if you work on a premium product try to have your free product be a reflection of like everything that your product can offer you. Obviously, to an extent, there's some costs involved with some of the paid features and things like that, but it generally will pay it for itself if you're able to put your best foot forward um and go do that.

  youtube.com

Founder of Telegram, and before it of VK.

• 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

Technology analyst whose weekly email on tech reaches over 150,000 readers. Publishes essays and an annual presentation on where the industry is going.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Cars are becoming Android with no iPhone, which makes Tesla just another handset maker rather than the premium platform owner.

  Their words

  The interesting Tesla point is people always looked at it and said, "It's the iPhone of cars." No, it's not. What's happening is that cars are becoming Android with no iPhone. And then Tesla is just selling and is is in that metaphor Tesla is just another android phone maker

  youtube.com

Co-founder of the AI agent company Sierra, and previously an eighteen-year Google executive who ran product for Workspace, virtual and augmented reality, and Google Labs.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A coding agent left to run over a weekend returns work that is half good, a quarter garbage and a quarter in need of repair.

  Their words

  And it came back and half of them were great, a quarter of them were total garbage and a quarter needed some work. But like it was, you know, in a way him working the entire weekend with, you know, guidance from him.

  youtube.com

Chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, which he has led since 2005 after turning around Bank One.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Give a banker twenty per cent of the profits on a thirty-times-levered book and he will take it to forty times, because the extra leverage is worth a quarter of his bonus.

  Their words

  So you if you look at the leverage in some of these securitization books and mortgage books if you have 30 times leverage and you're getting 20% of the profits you'll go to 40 times leverage. It's just going to it's literally will add you know 25% to your bonus.

  youtube.com

Writes Where's Your Ed At and hosts Better Offline; runs a tech PR firm, and argues at length that the AI business does not add up.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A "good business" now means one that can display quarter-on-quarter stock growth, not one that makes good products at a fair price.

  Their words

  the definition of a “good business” has changed from one that makes good products at a fair price to a sustainable and loyal market, to one that can display the most stock price growth from quarter to quarter.

  The Era Of The Business Idiotwheresyoured.at

Engineer writing about the physical economy — oil and gas, manufacturing, batteries, drones and what it costs to build things.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Making a commodity cheaply is a harder startup problem than making something valuable, because the product cannot carry a premium.

  startups

  Their words

  Making ultra cheap products requires different rules and strategy.

  Startup Strategy for Commodity Productsaustinvernon.site

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A growth team should spend a fifth to a quarter of its year, measured annually rather than by sprint, introducing a new growth loop.

  Their words

  I try to focus 20% 20 to 25% of growth team's time annually, not every given sprint, not every given quarter, but annually, to introduce a new growth loop.

  youtube.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  China now starts about a quarter of the world's new clinical trials, more than Europe does.

  EuropeChina

  Their words

  Chinese companies are now responsible for about a quarter of new trial starts — more than Europe.

  Will all our drugs come from China?atelfo.github.io

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

  New York's subway cost premium is overstaffing, oversized stations and procurement, not high wages.

  Their words

  Well, we’ve divided the New York cost premium into three tranches: labor (mostly overstaffing, not high wages), station and system design, and procurement and soft costs.

  pedestrianobservations.com

Software engineer and writer; former CTO of Wave, now at Anthropic. Blogs at benkuhn.net on attention, engineering management and doing hard things well.

• Dislikedrcmnd.app

  Slack

  Their words

  A special dishonorable mention goes to Slack, which can easily suck away a quarter of your time without you noticing. If you use Slack and you haven’t disabled the “unread messages” badge, stop reading this post and do it now.

  benkuhn.net