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Founder of the Free Software Movement and the GNU Project, original author of GNU Emacs and the GNU General Public License, and long-time president of the Free Software Foundation.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Providing people with stable, home-like housing makes real progress toward ending homelessness, while cutting that spending drives homelessness back up

  government

  Their words

  Finland made great progress towards eliminating homelessness by giving people houses which they could feel was home. Alas, right-wing government has cut some of the spending and is driving homelessness back up.

  Urgent: Raise the Wage Actstallman.org

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Internet points that convert into CV and promotion material are far more valuable than spending them on a quick dunk.

  Their words

  Scoring internet points that can be converted into CV line items and promotion package paragraphs is vastly better than squandering it all for a quick dunk.

  @dhh on Xx.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Manufacturers generally prefer cutting per-unit production costs over retooling a design for small improvements.

  Their words

  Over time companies would vastly prefer to decrease the cost per unit rather than retool for a small tweak.

  Benchmade Mini Bugout in S90V Revieweverydaycommentary.com

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

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  Newly discovered, costly climate impacts like wildfire smoke should strengthen the case for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

  Their words

  This should turbocharge our resolve to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

  ♫ Smoke Gets in Your Eyes ♫theclimatebrink.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Misalignment shows up most where a model is pushed to the very edge of its capability, which is exactly the regime that automating research will put it in.

  AI alignment

  Their words

  I would also note that my sense is that like the place where the misalignment most lives is the place where you're trying to really push the eyes hard and get them to like do work that's really on the cutting edge of what they are capable of

  youtube.com

Investment researcher and engineer who runs Lyn Alden Investment Strategy, writing on macroeconomics, currency systems and equity analysis.

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  Private equity's short fund cycles push firms toward aggressive cost-cutting that erodes what made an acquired business successful.

  Their words

  PE funds optimize for a 4-7 flip and typically resort to aggressive cost-cutting and near-term optimization at the cost of the "soul" of the business or what made it successful in the first place.

  lynalden.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Cutting sulfur air pollution is now unmasking greenhouse-gas warming that aerosols had been offsetting.

  Their words

  As air quality regulations cut sulfur emissions, warming from greenhouse gases is being unmasked.

  What drove the early 20th century warming?theclimatebrink.com

Housing and development writer at Strong Towns, arguing that the professional, large-scale housing industry cannot produce widespread affordability no matter how it is deregulated or subsidised.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Cutting development costs does not cut housing prices, because prices are set by what buyers will pay and the saving is capitalised into land value.

  Their words

  As is the case with most businesses, suppliers in the housing industry generally set prices based on market conditions and what buyers or tenants are willing to pay, rather than on production costs.

  Some Things YIMBYs Tend To Get Wrong (and Right)strongtowns.org

AI researcher at OpenAI; built the poker systems Libratus and Pluribus and the Diplomacy agent Cicero, and works on reasoning models.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Extra thinking time cannot help with factual recall: a model that does not know a date will not know it after a week either.

  Their words

  if you ask a person when was Abraham Lincoln born and they don't know the date. They could sit there, they could think about it for a week, if they if they don't have access to Wikipedia or something, they're not going to be able to do better answering that question if they thought about it for a week compared to 5 seconds. Same with the model.

  youtube.com

Founded Bridgewater Associates in 1975 and led it until stepping back from control in 2022. Author of Principles, The Changing World Order and How Countries Go Broke; publishes economic analysis at economicprinciples.org.

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  Systematising principled decision-making with AI is now the line between staying competitive and not; there is no position in between.

  Their words

  What this process can now do in creating understanding of the timeless and universal cause:effect relationship and enhancing and systemizing whatever one is thinking is mind-blowing. I believe that you will either stay at the cutting edge of doing this or you will be uncompetitive.

  Principled Thinking and AI Need to Go Togetherraydalio.substack.com

Economist at Oxford's Global Priorities Institute; works on what advanced AI would do to growth, saving and the long-run economy.

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  The long trend of making it easier for ordinary people to index more of the economy will resume, and AI itself will help by cutting the cost of going public.

  Their words

  if I had to guess I would guess that the kind of long kind of general trend of just like lowering those frictions and making it easier for more and more people to index more and more will continue despite the recent bump in the other direction.

  youtube.com

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

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  A lunar mass driver cannot pay for itself by cutting launch costs, because launch is already a small part of what an orbital computer costs.

  Their words

  At even $500/kg, launch cost is only 5% of the total satellite deployment cost, so a lunar mass driver is unlikely to drastically improve the economics of space-based AI, by reducing launch costs.

  How to build a lunar mass drivercaseyhandmer.wordpress.com

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

• Lovedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app

  Victorinox Compact

  Their words

  There is no perfect SAK, but the Compact is the best SAK. And this is not a "smartest Kardashian" scenario. Over the years I have genuinely loved carrying the Compact. Adding the pocket clip and the excellent PDW scales has made it one of my most frequently carried items.

  everydaycommentary.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  AI researchers should contribute ideas but stop enacting them: a single queue of ideas and automated workers should run the experiments.

  Their words

  But okay, they shouldn't actually be enacting these ideas. There is a queue of ideas and there's maybe an automated scientist that comes up with ideas based on all the archive papers and GitHub repos and it funnels ideas in or researchers can contribute ideas, but it's a single queue and there is workers that pull items and they try them out.

  youtube.com

American game designer and director, for nineteen years at Blizzard as a World of Warcraft quest designer and then game director of Overwatch; now runs the independent studio Kintsugiyama.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Scope is a creative decision, not a production one: the game, art and tech directors have to do the cutting themselves.

  Their words

  The mistake I see on a lot of game teams is scope becomes a production problem.

  youtube.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.

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  AI datacenter growth makes performance engineering critical for saving the planet, not just cutting costs.

  data centers

  Their words

  The staggering and fast-growing cost of AI datacenters is a call for performance engineering like no other in history; it's not just about saving costs - it's about saving the planet.

  Why I joined OpenAIbrendangregg.com

Founder of WP Engine and Smart Bear; writes A Smart Bear, long essays on strategy, pricing and how startups actually fail.

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  A cancellation-reason drop-down measures list order rather than reasons: randomise the options and every one of them gets picked equally.

  Their words

  And I realized it was the first one on the list and I thought, huh, I wonder if people are just picking the first one. So then then we randomized the list so everyone saw a different order of the list and now all the items were picked equally

  youtube.com

Economist; Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy at Harvard, nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute, and Chairman of the US Council of Economic Advisers from 2013 to 2017.

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  Fixed: Why Personal Finance Is Broken and How to Make It Work for Everyone

  Their words

  But it also is exciting and refreshing to see it addressed with such originality and cutting-edge research.

  fivebooks.com

Writer living in Brooklyn and former Man Repeller features director; writes the weekly newsletter Maybe Baby on culture and consumption.

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  Boos block

  Their words

  Bought after much cutting-board deliberation and based on your recommendations. We love this thing. We got one that nearly fills a section of our counter (between the stove and wall) and it's heaven to have so much space to cut various things at the same time.

  haleynahman.substack.com

Vice chairman of Ogilvy & Mather Group, the advertising agency; author of Alchemy (2019) and the Wiki Man columnist at The Spectator.

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  Cutting a job defined by its narrowest function destroys the tacit value that job was quietly creating.

  Their words

  the dorman was doing multiple things, many of which were human and kind of tacit. Security would be one. You know, there are no vagrants to sleep in the doorway, hailing taxis, dealing with luggage, recognizing regular guests, providing status to the hotel. There are loads and loads of value creation components to that dorman which aren't captured in the open the door definition.

  youtube.com

Data scientist at Our World in Data and author of Not the End of the World. Writes By the Numbers, working through energy and climate questions with the numbers in front of them, and revising in public when they say something unexpected.

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  Cheap clean energy has broken the old trade-off between raising living standards and cutting environmental harm.

  energy

  Their words

  The rapid drop in renewable energy costs in the last decade (alongside huge improvements in battery technologies) has started to break this deadlock.

  sustainabilitybynumbers.com

Co-founder and chief executive of Figma, the collaborative design platform he started in 2012 and took public in 2025.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A company can treat AI as a way to grow and do more or as a cost-cutting exercise, and the growth reading is the better one.

  Their words

  you can either see AI as an opportunity for your company to grow and do more or you can look at it as like cost cutting efficiency but I think the growth part is way more exciting.

  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

  Language models lack catalog-specific knowledge, so their recommendations tend to be generic and biased toward popular items.

  Their words

  language models have world knowledge and can eloquently talk about products, but are unaware of our catalog. Also, their recommendations are generic and suffer from popularity bias.

  eugeneyan.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The United States could localise the entire solar supply chain, from dirt to finished module, in two years or less if it started today.

  solarAmerica

  Their words

  And I think the United States could probably do that in 2 years or less if you started today. Like it's currently 11:00, so like we're going to start cutting checks by noon.

  youtube.com

Anthropologist; wrote Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World and The Secret History of the Mongol Queens.

From one piece Jack Weatherford: Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire | Lex Fridman Podcast #476 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  The Mongols manufactured almost nothing themselves, so raiding was not aggression but their way of getting the trade goods of China.

  China

  Their words

  Mongols produced nothing. They could produce felt to make their tents, but they were not craftsmen. And so they had to get these items from somewhere, and it was through raiding.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Kublai Khan's invasion of Japan failed on its own terms but achieved its real purpose, which was cutting the Southern Song off from Japanese sulphur for gunpowder.

  China

  Their words

  But there actually, I think there's a very, very good reason for invading Japan. Several. The main one was to cut off the supply of sulfur. They needed it for gunpowder in the South Song. They lost their sources in northern China when they were driven out. They got it from Japan. It was a great source.

  youtube.com

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

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  A margin only counts while you are still investing heavily, because cutting the investment raises this year's margin and lowers the long-term one.

  Their words

  we can cut billions of dollars of marketing out tomorrow. We can stop opening branches and save a billion dollars next year. We could do a lot of things. Your margins will go up. Your growth will go down. Your long-term margins will probably get worse.

  youtube.com

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

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  As AI systems become more capable, the danger of false or unverifiable safety claims grows, pushing competing companies toward cutting corners.

  Their words

  As AI gets more capable, the risks associated with mistaken claims, fraudulent claims, or too-vague-to-be-verified claims will increase, and a cloud of suspicion between competitors could drive corner-cutting (indeed, this is happening already and could get worse).

  milesbrundage.substack.com

Economist at the Hoover Institution; wrote The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level and blogs as The Grumpy Economist.

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  Cutting off trade with tariffs would force a huge interest-rate spike and probably a debt crisis, because the budget deficit would have to be financed at home.

  interest rates

  Their words

  But the spike in interest rates require to do this would be huge. And the trade shock will cause a sharp recession, or worse, putting even more stress on the budget. A debt crisis is likely along the way as the US finds it impossible to roll over debt.

  Tariffs, saving, and investmentgrumpy-economist.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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  AI helps exactly as far as the work is predictable and well documented, and stops helping on anything cutting edge.

  Their words

  Okay, my general view is it comes down to something that's pretty simple, which is that if you're doing something in which is very predictable, AI is really nice. When you're doing something that is just not predictable, AI is not very nice to use. If you're using anything that's more cutting edge, AI will not be using it, or AI won't be very good at doing stuff with it.

  youtube.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Companies do not have sufficient incentives to mitigate the major risks of AI, and competition between them is driving corner-cutting.

  Their words

  Contrary to some people’s beliefs, companies do not in fact have sufficient incentives to mitigate all major risks, and competition is driving corner-cutting that needs to be reined in somehow.

  milesbrundage.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 city's first rail line comes in at a reasonable cost and every line after it does not, because the follow-up outgrows the in-house team that oversaw the pilot.

  Their words

  So Portland managed to build one very small line for fairly reasonable costs, but they were not cutting edge; this is a common pattern to Western US cities, in that the first line has reasonable costs and then things explode, even while staying self-funded and self-directed.

  Low Spanish Costs are not About Decentralizationpedestrianobservations.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

  The chip industry split into fabless designers and a handful of foundries because fabs got too expensive to own, not because anyone chose that structure.

  Their words

  But as fab costs increased, it became more and more burdensome for manufacturers to operate cutting edge manufacturing facilities due to the high costs, and fewer manufacturers had the production volume to spread those costs over.

  How to Build a $20 Billion Semiconductor Fabconstruction-physics.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.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Joining an early-stage startup can now expose someone to cutting-edge AI research work, offering a real alternative to a PhD.

  startups

  Their words

  In light of the applied nature of current research problems, there is another path that exposes you to cutting-edge AI work: joining a startup.

  Thoughts on the 2024 AI Job Marketruder.io

Founder of Amazon in 1994 and of the space company Blue Origin in 2000.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Cutting the cost of something is not a lesser achievement than inventing it, because inventing a cheaper way is precisely how the whole world gets richer.

  Their words

  And when you invent a better way, you make the whole world richer. So whatever it was, I don't know how many thousands of years ago, somebody invented the plow. And when they invented the plow, they made the whole world richer because they made farming less expensive. And so it is a big deal to invent better ways. That's how the world gets richer.

  youtube.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Cheap clean energy has broken the old trade-off between raising living standards and cutting environmental harm.

  solarenergy

  Their words

  Cheap solar is the unlock that brings human progress and climate action from the realm of fundamental incompatibility to complimentary inevitability.

  Radical Energy Abundancecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  AI will improve warfare by cutting wartime death rates, because commanders now decide under pressure on sharply limited information.

  Their words

  I even think AI is going to improve warfare, when it has to happen, by reducing wartime death rates dramatically. Every war is characterized by terrible decisions made under intense pressure and with sharply limited information by very limited human leaders.

  Why AI Will Save The Worldpmarca.substack.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Cutting drag is worth far more in an electric vehicle than in a combustion one, because carrying the energy is so much more expensive.

  energy

  Their words

  Drag and tire friction dominate energy expenditure. Engineering effort to improve drag is worth so much more with electric vehicles.

  Electric Trucks are Ready for the Roadaustinvernon.site

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

• Dislikedrcmnd.app

  End the Fed

  Their words

  It's a book by a politician, about what you expect. Some interesting tid bits on the history of the Fed but you could get it from Wikipedia.

  nateliason.com

Engineering leader and writer; wrote The Manager's Path and Platform Engineering, and blogs at Elided Branches.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Passing tasks to a team without the context behind them tells them they are the doers and the manager is the decider.

  Their words

  When you don’t give your team the context for the work and just pass on tasks and work items to them, you make it clear that they are simply “doers” and your job is the job of “decider.”

  How New Managers Fail Individual Contributorselidedbranches.com

Front-end web developer at Paravel and co-host of the ShopTalk Show podcast; blogs at daverupert.com.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Squoosh

  Their words

  Online image compression tool, great for cutting WebPs.

  daverupert.com

Software design writer and chief scientist at Thoughtworks; wrote Refactoring and Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Poor internal quality begins to slow a team down within a few weeks, so almost no project is short enough for cutting corners to pay off.

  Their words

  Developers find poor quality code significantly slows them down within a few weeks.

  Is High Quality Software Worth the Cost?martinfowler.com

Artist and writer based in Oakland, California; author of How to Do Nothing and Saving Time, and a longtime teacher of digital art.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Photoshop

  Their words

  Photoshop is my mainstay, for cutting things out and making animated GIFs.

  usesthis.com

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

• Readrcmnd.app

  This Is Your Brain on Parasites

  Their words

  Another biology-related book. Explores the role of parasites (and bacteria, disease, disgust) in human behavior, attraction, even politics, morality, religion. Some of this is is cutting-edge, speculative, or not fully proven — but very interesting stuff indeed.

  radex.io