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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.

From one piece @levelsio on X 2 beliefs · x.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Gray hair is at least partly due to oxidative stress from diets mostly of processed food, lack of heavy exercise, and obesity.

  Their words

  I'm increasingly convinced gray hair is at least partly due to oxidative stress from the average diet now that's mostly processed food, as well as lack of heavy exercise and obesity

  @levelsio on Xx.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Gray hair can be at least partly avoided by eating clean, exercising heavily, and sleeping well.

  Their words

  you can at least partly avoid it by eating clean, exercising heavy and sleeping well I think

  @levelsio on Xx.com

Co-founder of Y Combinator and Viaweb; essayist at paulgraham.com.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Paul Buchheit ranks with Jobs, Zuck, and Elon in meme status and coined Don't be evil.

  Their words

  Paul Buchheit meme-ranks with Jobs, Zuck, and Elon. (He's the one who came up with "Don't be evil.")

  @paulg on Xx.com

Writer and climate campaigner; wrote The End of Nature in 1989, founded 350.org and Third Act, and writes The Crucial Years.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Opposition to AI data centers is driven partly by resistance to concentrated corporate power, not only by local environmental concerns.

  data centers

  Their words

  it was a chance to stand up to the oligarchs and this technology they've staked their future on.

  The Two Horsemen, Riding in Formationbillmckibben.substack.com

Professor of international affairs at Johns Hopkins SAIS and co-author, with Abraham Newman, of Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  AI labs fund social science partly to manage the fact that the AI buildout is unpopular, seeking ways to make it more acceptable to the public.

  Their words

  I suspect that some of the labs' willingness to put money into the social sciences stems from the realization of senior people that the practical build out of AI is highly unpopular in the U.S and their urgent desire to figure out how to sugarcoat the pill so that it will get swallowed

  How should social science think about AI?programmablemutter.com

Writes The Diff, a newsletter on inflections in finance and tech read by hedge fund managers, founders and VCs. Previously worked in finance at SAC Capital/Point72.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A more fragmented but media-savvy population will lead to more small-scale, meme-driven terrorism.

  Their words

  One potential upshot of this: a more fragmented media environment but a much more media-aware population will lead to more small-scale, meme terrorism.

  Longreads + Open Threadthediff.co

American-Polish journalist and historian, staff writer at The Atlantic; author of Gulag, Iron Curtain, Twilight of Democracy and Autocracy, Inc.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  US support for far-right anti-EU political parties is partly driven by a wish to let US tech companies evade European regulation and taxation.

  EuropeAmerica

  Their words

  Worse, U.S. officials now openly support and encourage politicians from far-right anti-European political parties, partly because they are ideologically aligned, but partly because Americans now want to weaken the European Union so that U.S. tech companies can evade any regulation, or even taxation.

  The Myth of the “Censorship Industrial Complex”anneapplebaum.substack.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

  AI companies are disrupting entire industries, causing a partial collapse of the traditional SaaS business model.

  SaaS

  Their words

  I think you have the real economic effects of AI companies sucking up entire industries now (a lot where indie hackers operate) I do think the SaaSpocalypse is at least partly real

  @levelsio on Xx.com

Investigative journalist on policing, forensics and criminal justice; wrote Rise of the Warrior Cop and writes The Watch.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Recorded crime partly measures policing: a neighbourhood policed harder produces more crime in the statistics.

  Their words

  Particularly with gun and drug crimes, communities with more aggressive policing tend to produce more crimes in part because law enforcement polices them more aggressively.

  A guide to racism in the criminal justice systemradleybalko.substack.com

Programmer; wrote Extreme Programming Explained and Test-Driven Development, signed the Agile Manifesto, and writes Tidy First?.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  TDD fell out of fashion partly because its advocates turned it into a moral test of professionalism, when people write very good software with a wide variety of workflows.

  Their words

  And then there were people who used it as a moral cudgel. Like you should be if you're not using TDD, you're not professional. And that's just such People can write very good software with a wide variety of workflows.

  youtube.com

Statistician at Carnegie Mellon; writes on complex systems, machine learning and inference, and has kept a books-read notebook since 2000 that is now thousands of entries long.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Forty Signs of Rain

  Their words

  I loved this, but partly this was the pleasant shock of recognition: much of the action revolves around the National Science Foundation and, physically, its old headquarters in Arlington, which Robinson captures extremely well (even the atmosphere of review panels).

  bactra.org

Software engineer at PlanetScale and creator of the vim-go plugin. Writes at arslan.io about Go, tooling, industrial design and books.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Typing on a standard, non-split keyboard for extended periods causes hand and wrist pain.

  Their words

  Using a keyboard in this position for a long time causes pain

  Review of the MoErgo Go60 Keyboardarslan.io

Writes Very Serious, a newsletter on politics, the economy and culture, and hosts the podcast of the same name.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Seeking special tax treatment that could not sustainably be extended to everyone is morally wrong.

  Their words

  it's also morally wrong to seek out special treatment that could not sustainably be offered to everyone.

  Stop Microlooting the Tax Codejoshbarro.com

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

• Our reading nowkorrents.com

  The meme that programmers no longer need to be competent is a trap: the path is competence, and AI does not change that.

  Their words, before

  Where I get fired up, and this ties back to the AI discussion, is when that's turned into this meme, that programmers no longer have to be competent. I mean the AI is gonna figure it out. The generators is gonna figure it out. I don't need to know SQL, active record is gonna abstract it away from me. No, no, no dude, hold up. The path here is competence.

  Their words now

  really good programmers are currently more valuable than ever because they're the ones who are able to get the most out of the AI acceleration.

Long-time Debian developer and free-software maintainer (remctl, INN, pam-krb5) who has published book reviews on his personal site since the 1990s.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Number Go Up

  Their words

  I didn't read much non-fiction this year, but the best of what I did read was Zeke Faux's Number Go Up about the cryptocurrency bubble. This book will not change anyone's mind, but it's a readable and entertaining summary of some of the more obvious cryptocurrency scams. I also had enough quibbles with it to write an extended review, which is a compliment of sorts.

  eyrie.org

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

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Claude Code

  Their words

  Claude Code (CC) emerged as the first convincing demonstration of what an LLM Agent looks like - something that in a loopy way strings together tool use and reasoning for extended problem solving.

  karpathy.bearblog.dev

Assyriologist and curator at the British Museum; reads cuneiform, and wrote The Ark Before Noah and The First Ghosts.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Cuneiform survived three millennia partly because the people who could read it guarded their monopoly, and literacy for all was unthinkable.

  Their words

  And it was in no one’s interest whatsoever. Nobody would ever concede any interest in the idea of literacy for all.

  youtube.com

Writer on learning and skill acquisition; author of Ultralearning and Get Better at Anything, known for the MIT Challenge and the Year Without English.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Reading a great deal about a subject works partly by holding your attention on it long enough to change, not only by adding facts.

  Their words

  Reading is attentional, not just informational.

  scotthyoung.com

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

• Our reading nowkorrents.com

  The meme that programmers no longer need to be competent is a trap: the path is competence, and AI does not change that.

  Their words, before

  it's a luxury good like you're not paying the penalty for that the people who embrace it and think that they can just ask AI for everything or they can just look everything up but they don't have to understand the copy pasta that they slam into their project they're the ones who going to suffer

  Their words now

  Where I get fired up, and this ties back to the AI discussion, is when that's turned into this meme, that programmers no longer have to be competent. I mean the AI is gonna figure it out. The generators is gonna figure it out. I don't need to know SQL, active record is gonna abstract it away from me. No, no, no dude, hold up. The path here is competence.

Roboticist; co-founded iRobot and Rethink Robotics, directed the MIT AI Lab, and publishes a scorecard grading his own dated predictions about AI, robots and self-driving.

• Our reading nowkorrents.com

  Cars people own will double as driverless taxis when the owner is not using them, in ten major US cities, some time from the mid-2020s.

  Their words, before

  Such "taxi" services where the cars are also used with drivers at other times and with extended geography, in 10 major US cities NET 2025

  Their words now

  This is unlikely to happen in the first half of this century.

Writer on a lost civilisation of the Ice Age; wrote Fingerprints of the Gods and presented Ancient Apocalypse. Archaeologists reject the claims, which he disputes at length.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Archaeology's hostility to him is territorial defence of a profession, and it grew with the size of his audience rather than with anything in his evidence.

  Their words

  I think it’s partly territorial. I cannot speak of all archeologists, but some archeologists feel very territorial about their profession. They do not feel happy about outsiders entering their realm, especially if those outsiders have a large platform.

  youtube.com

Astrobiologist and theoretical physicist at Arizona State University, working on assembly theory and the physics of life.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  We are conscious because we are objects extended deep in time — consciousness is all of that history rolled up in us.

  Their words

  Yeah. I think if you’re thinking about this thinking about living things as these giant causal structures or these objects that are deep in time or whatever language we end up using to describe it seems to me that consciousness is about the fact that we have a conscious experience is because we are these temporally extended objects. Consciousness and the abstraction that we have in our minds is actually a manifestation of all the time that’s rolled up in us.

  youtube.com

Programmer; founded comma.ai and tinygrad, and was the first to unlock the iPhone.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Social and advertising businesses come and go; a technology company that wants to endure has to build hardware.

  Their words

  The two companies that have endured through technology are Apple and Microsoft. And what do they make? Computers and business services, right. All the meme, social ads, they all come and go. But you want to endure, build hardware.

  youtube.com

Guardian columnist and environmental campaigner; wrote Feral and Regenesis, and argues for rewilding and against the food system as it is.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The answer to feeding the world is better factories, not more fields.

  Their words

  The answer is not more fields, which means destroying even more wild ecosystems. It is partly better, more compact, cruelty-free and pollution-free factories.

  Fantasy Farmingmonbiot.com

Non-fiction writer, podcaster and occasional TV host. Author of thirteen books including The Ghost Map, Where Good Ideas Come From and Extra Life, host of the PBS series How We Got To Now, and author of the Adjacent Possible newsletter on innovation.

• Recommendstheir ownrcmnd.app

  Enemy Of All Mankind

  Their words

  The other book of mine that makes a thoughtful gift for the history buff in your extended clan is my 2020 book, Enemy of All Mankind

  adjacentpossible.substack.com