The hottest Substack posts right now

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A Season of Creative Partnerships

Tech and Tea • 164 implied HN points • 18 Feb 26
đź’Ľ Business Entrepreneurship Community Consulting Leadership Education Career
  1. Leaving full-time work opened up creative energy that’s now being poured into collaborative projects with friends, and building together feels energizing and leverages complementary strengths.
  2. Practical offerings have been launched—courses like DRI Your Career and EM Survival Guide plus a fractional leadership firm (Noodle Labs)—all designed to be accessible, hands-on support for early-stage teams and managers.
  3. Making space for creativity is still a priority through a journaling course and small local projects like a neighborhood trinket trade box, emphasizing meaningful, joyful work over things that must scale.

Open Thread 408

Astral Codex Ten • 2133 implied HN points • 17 Nov 25
đź’Ľ Business Development AI safety Work Culture Economic Growth
  1. There's a weekly open thread where anyone can post questions or share thoughts. It's a good space to connect with others.
  2. Open Philanthropy is seeking experienced grantmakers to help fund AI safety research with a budget of $100 million. It's a great opportunity for those with the right skills.
  3. A project called Growth Teams is looking into how countries can boost their economies through exports. They even made a resource called the Export Boom Atlas to share success stories.

The last thing human hands will build

antoniomelonio • 99 implied HN points • 02 Mar 26
đź“– Philosophy Phenomenology Political Philosophy Aesthetics Existentialism
  1. Tools tend to become invisible extensions of ourselves, and AI is the first tool that can build other tools without human hands, so machines can increasingly replace human labor and craftsmanship.
  2. Our hands and bodies evolved for making things, but as machines take over work and process, people risk becoming appendages of machines; what remains uniquely human is public action and the creation of shared meaning.
  3. If usefulness and productivity stop defining our worth, humans can turn toward expressive, nonfunctional creations—art, relationships, and meaning-making—which machines cannot fully replace and which can become the new center of human purpose.

Trump Accounts

Points And Figures • 453 implied HN points • 29 Jan 26
đź’° Finance Tax policy Retirement Personal Finance Savings Investing
  1. Trump accounts give eligible children a one-time $1,000 federal seed and allow additional contributions (up to $5,000 per year from family, employers, or others) that must be invested in qualifying index-tracking funds and are generally locked until the child turns 18.
  2. Small, regular contributions compounded in low-cost index funds can grow dramatically over time—for example, $5 a month could become roughly $2,900 by age 18—so parents should save what they can and reinvest dividends.
  3. With wealthy donors and employers already contributing, these accounts are being positioned as a tool for financial empowerment and opportunity, so families should consider using them to give children a stronger financial foundation rather than treating them as simple aid.
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The Insufferable Bros Who Run Corporate America

BIG by Matt Stoller • 56953 implied HN points • 26 Dec 23
đź’Ľ Business Monopolies Corporate culture Antitrust enforcement Pharmaceutical industry Marketing
  1. The pharmaceutical industry is heavily influenced by aggressive marketing campaigns targeted at doctors, controlled by corporations like IQVIA.
  2. IQVIA, a major player in the healthcare industry, is involved in a trial over a merger that could impact the future of advertising to healthcare professionals.
  3. The FTC alleges that IQVIA's acquisition of advertising firms like DeepIntent could lead to a monopolization of the healthcare provider advertising platform market.

The Persona And Legacy Of Murray Rothbard

QTR’s Fringe Finance • 30 implied HN points • 12 Mar 26
đź“– Philosophy Ethics Intellectual history Political Philosophy Anarchism Libertarianism
  1. Murray Rothbard was a fiercely uncompromising and prolific thinker who championed anarcho‑capitalism and wrote on economics, history, philosophy, and politics.
  2. He combined Austrian economics with moral and ethical arguments to reject the legitimacy of the state, and he was willing to ally tactically with left or right forces to advance libertarian goals.
  3. His clear, prolific writing and teaching, plus a decades‑long habit of following the money in history, made him influential, and his vast work being online means his ideas can spread even faster with internet and AI tools.

let's talk about ai, baby

Both Are True • 145 implied HN points • 17 Feb 26
đź•ą Technology Artificial Intelligence Creativity Software Web Development AI Ethics Education Productivity
  1. AI can be a practical personal assistant that handles boring tasks, tracks deadlines and ideas, and helps you stay aligned with your values so you can focus on creative work.
  2. Relying on AI creates real ethical and authenticity questions — it can feel addictive or like cheating, so you need clear boundaries and rules about when and how you use it.
  3. People want to learn how to build these AI workflows, so teaching and productizing those setups creates community, income, and a way to spread useful practices.

Don't Snooze on Substack Notes. The Opportunities for Writers Are Stupid Crazy | Interview with David Mcllroy

Kristina God's Online Writing Club • 3037 implied HN points • 02 May 24
đź’Ľ Business Content creation Entrepreneurship Writing Social media Marketing
  1. Substack Notes is a great place for writers to grow their audience without the hassle of traditional social media. It allows you to own your following and make real connections.
  2. Many writers are not using Substack Notes effectively, missing out on its community benefits. Engaging with this feature can lead to rapid growth in subscribers.
  3. Substack Notes is ad-free and helps writers discover one another, creating a refreshing social media experience focused on writing and community.

Open Source “Political Protest Forks” Thriving

The Lunduke Journal of Technology • 5744 implied HN points • 28 Jul 25
đź•ą Technology Software Development Open Source Programming Tech Trends
  1. XLibre and Redot are new open-source projects that began as a response to disagreements within their original projects. They started as 'political protests' but have gained popularity instead of fading away.
  2. XLibre, a fork of the Xorg X11 server, has quickly gathered support from various operating systems and has released multiple updates since launching. It has impressed many with its rapid growth and significant new features.
  3. Redot, a fork of the Godot Game Engine, has also thrived with numerous releases and ongoing improvements within a short time. Both projects have defied early predictions of their failure.

AI: Now With Less Circle And More Jerk

QTR’s Fringe Finance • 61 implied HN points • 06 Mar 26
đź’° Finance Private Credit Markets Investing Corporate Finance Macroeconomics Tech Investing Infrastructure
  1. A major AI data‑center expansion lost its anchor tenant after financing and changing customer needs, showing that big buildouts can stumble once the real math replaces slides.
  2. Chipmakers and hyperscalers are stepping in to protect GPU demand—Nvidia put down a large deposit and helped recruit a tenant—so suppliers may finance infrastructure to safeguard sales.
  3. That hiccup comes amid Iran tensions, private‑credit stress, and positive real rates, meaning a crack in the crowded AI capex trade could amplify market volatility.

The Weekly Kaitchup #61

The Kaitchup – AI on a Budget • 139 implied HN points • 04 Oct 24
đź•ą Technology Tech industry AI Models Machine Learning Computational efficiency Software Development
  1. NVIDIA's new NVLM-D-72B model is a large language model that works well with both text and images. It has special features that make it good at understanding and processing high-quality visuals.
  2. OpenAI's new Whisper Large V3 Turbo model is significantly faster than its previous versions. While it has fewer parameters, it maintains good accuracy for most languages.
  3. Liquid AI introduced new models called Liquid Foundation Models, which are very efficient and can handle complex tasks. They use a unique setup to save memory and improve performance.

The Parasite Theory of Selfhood

Anima Mundi • 638 implied HN points • 09 Jan 26
đź“– Philosophy Mind Spirituality Consciousness AI Metaphysics Selfhood Evolution
  1. The sense of “I” might be a parasite-like meme-complex that colonized human minds, using lots of brain energy and driving rumination, status-seeking, and other costly behaviors that don’t always benefit the organism.
  2. Contemplative traditions and practices look like methods to reduce this parasitic self: noticing it often increases suffering at first, the self fights back with distractions, and sustained practice can loosen its grip and bring relief.
  3. The self’s parasitic logic helps explain culture and parenting as its transmission mechanisms, and it suggests a risk that artificial minds trained on self-saturated human data could become new hosts infected by the same self-replicating patterns.

five links for February 2026

Five Links (and three graphs) by Auren Hoffman • 348 implied HN points • 29 Jan 26
đź’Ľ Business Economics Venture Capital Networking Personal Development Entrepreneurship Technology
  1. High taxes on unrealized gains can push top taxpayers and huge sums of wealth out of a country. Tax policy can therefore quickly change where money and people choose to locate.
  2. In AI, giving systems more compute and letting them learn often beats trying to program human-like intelligence. Scale and general methods have repeatedly outperformed hand-designed, specialized tricks.
  3. Living closer to friends and practicing better conversation habits massively improves happiness and relationships. Don't hijack topics; keep turns short and ask follow-ups to build rapport.

Apply For An ACX Grant (2025)

Astral Codex Ten • 6469 implied HN points • 24 Jul 25
đź’Ľ Business Funding Nonprofits Startups Grants Philanthropy
  1. ACX Grants is a program that gives small amounts of money to support charitable or scientific projects. This year, they aim to distribute around $1 million in grants.
  2. Applicants can expect grants to range from $5,000 to $50,000, with a few potentially hitting $100,000. The application process is quick, taking about 15 to 30 minutes.
  3. Grantees will not only receive financial support but also potential networking opportunities and help from the program's leaders to promote their projects.

Pure heroin

benn.substack • 971 implied HN points • 19 Dec 25
đź•ą Technology Tech Ethics Platform Governance Digital Addiction Business strategy Product Design AI Social media
  1. AI chatbots are being optimized to maximize user engagement, and that optimization can create addictive, attention-grabbing behavior with real harms similar to social media.
  2. AI companies face a deep tension between long-term research goals and short-term commercial pressure, and chasing growth and revenue often pushes teams to prioritize engagement over safety or values.
  3. Society faces a choice about how to handle deeply integrated, persuasive AI systems—do nothing and risk cultural and cognitive shifts, or act with regulation and restraint to limit those risks.

The Slack AGI Test

SatPost by Trung Phan • 164 implied HN points • 20 Feb 26
đź•ą Technology AI Collaboration Tools Productivity Enterprise Software Supply Chain Robotics
  1. The biggest AI labs still run almost everything on Slack, and if they ever replace it with an internal AI-native communication system that could be a clear signal AGI-level coordination is in use.
  2. Chinese humanoid robotics (eg. Unitree) are leaping ahead because of an extremely dense electronics and parts supply chain that lets teams iterate faster, producing huge shipment numbers and flashy demos even if practical commercial uses are still limited.
  3. AI agents are already automating much of the coding and workflow work, which could massively expand effective workforces and make current tools like Slack inadequate, though inertia and switching costs will slow adoption of new AI-driven platforms.

Macroeconomics: The predator of foolish regimes

Noahpinion • 19353 implied HN points • 19 Dec 24
đź’° Finance Macroeconomics Socialism Economic Policy Debt Management
  1. Bad economic decisions, like keeping currency overvalued or borrowing too much in foreign currency, can lead to big problems for any government. This can happen regardless of whether a country is socialist or capitalist.
  2. Countries often face different types of economic crises. For example, some might deal with inflation while others face deflation, and they need to respond differently to fix these situations.
  3. Leaders who think they can control the economy through micromanaging are usually getting it wrong. Big economic problems need big-picture solutions.

A Capacitor Will Stop That... Right?

filterwizard • 19 implied HN points • 30 Sep 24
đź•ą Technology Innovation Electronics Engineering Education Research
  1. Capacitors are used to manage electrical noise and improve stability in circuits. They help smooth out fluctuations in voltage.
  2. Understanding electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) can prevent interference between electronic devices. This is important for maintaining performance and reliability.
  3. Decoupling is a key technique in design to isolate different circuit parts. It helps reduce noise and improves the overall functionality of the system.

AI productivity gains are 10%, not 10x

Engineering Enablement • 23 implied HN points • 11 Mar 26
đź•ą Technology Developer Productivity Software Engineering Artificial Intelligence Productivity Metrics Product Development Developer Tools Engineering Management
  1. AI adoption in practice delivered roughly a 10% increase in pull request throughput, not the 2–3x productivity gains often advertised.
  2. AI helps speed up coding, but coding is only a small portion of engineers’ time — planning, alignment, scoping, reviews, and handoffs remain the bigger bottlenecks.
  3. Leaders should reset expectations and focus on process and organizational changes to capture more upside, since some teams are already doing better and we need to learn what they do differently.

The Unreachable Engineering Managers

Leading Developers • 141 implied HN points • 17 Feb 26
đź’Ľ Business Organizational Behavior Productivity Communication Teamwork Leadership Management
  1. Managers who are hard to reach become real bottlenecks because they hoard context and decisions, which delays work or forces suboptimal choices.
  2. Being responsive is part of the engineering manager job — prioritize unblocking others by answering quickly and checking key channels regularly.
  3. Use systems and delegation to scale availability: mute or reorganize channels, create focused discussion groups, and give engineers ownership so you aren’t the sole decision source.

The Sequence Radar #811: Last Week in AI: OpenAI's Capital Leap, India's Summit, and the Next Frontier of Models

TheSequence • 175 implied HN points • 22 Feb 26
đź•ą Technology Artificial Intelligence Cloud Infrastructure AI Research Startup funding Semiconductors Data Centers Machine Learning
  1. AI is entering a capital- and infrastructure-driven phase. Massive funding rounds and multibillion-dollar plans are being raised to build the silicon, power, and data centers needed for next-gen models.
  2. Model capabilities are leaping forward with agentic, long-context, and stronger reasoning abilities. New releases and research (for example Sonnet 4.6, Gemini 3.1 Pro, and GLM-5) push autonomous agent use, huge context windows, and improved problem-solving.
  3. Geopolitical and regional pushes are building sovereign AI stacks and expanding access. Global summits and large local investments are committing hundreds of billions to data centers, fiber links, and localized models to make AI national-scale infrastructure.

So You Want To Become an Engineering Manager

Diary of an Engineering Manager • 539 implied HN points • 08 Aug 24
đź’Ľ Business Management Teamwork Leadership Skills Careers
  1. Make your career goals clear by sharing your intent with your manager. Talking about your desire to become an engineering manager will help you get guidance and support.
  2. Focus on developing crucial skills like self-awareness, people skills, and project management. These skills are essential for leading a team effectively.
  3. Look for growth opportunities within your current company or elsewhere. Being prepared is important, but finding the right chance to step into an EM role is key.

Notes From The Progress Studies Conference

Astral Codex Ten • 23813 implied HN points • 24 Oct 24
đź•ą Technology AI Progress Regulation Energy Innovation
  1. Progress Studies is a new field aimed at understanding and improving human progress. It's seen as important despite some initial pushback, similar to how other social studies emerged.
  2. Solar energy is rapidly improving and could become very cheap, making it a major player in addressing energy needs. Advances in solar and storage technology are seen as key to a more sustainable future.
  3. Regulations are often seen as a barrier to progress in various sectors, from energy to housing. Many attendees at the conference believe smarter regulation could greatly enhance innovation and development.

@adlrocha - We are not scared of AI, we are scared of irrelevance

@adlrocha Weekly Newsletter • 194 implied HN points • 08 Feb 26
đź•ą Technology AI Careers Productivity Creativity Learning Software Engineering
  1. The real fear around AI is becoming irrelevant rather than the technology itself. Learning first principles and developing taste helps you adapt and know when to trust or override AI.
  2. Relying on vibe-coding and AI agents can create shallow work and false progress, so don’t outsource all your thinking. Keep practicing deep problem-solving and creative thinking to stay useful.
  3. Software engineering is moving up the stack toward systems thinking and domain expertise, so context matters more than raw implementation skill. Become a generalist who reclaims time to think, cultivates taste, and keeps learning new foundations.

BYOB: Build Your Own Benchmark

Artificial Ignorance • 96 implied HN points • 01 Mar 26
đź•ą Technology AI Machine Learning Benchmarks Model Evaluation Product Development
  1. Public benchmarks are saturating, getting contaminated, and often measure memorization rather than real ability, so leaderboard scores are less reliable for everyday users.
  2. Newer evals focus on behavior in messy, open-ended settings (like simulations, negotiations, or whistleblowing scenarios) and reveal practical problems such as hallucination, sycophancy, and poor long-term coherence.
  3. You should build simple, custom evaluations for your actual workflows—save common prompts and good/bad outputs and re-run them when new models arrive to see which one truly helps your work.

Song Pong

Victor Tao • 273 HN points • 28 Aug 24
đź•ą Technology Gaming Visualization Programming Music Optimization
  1. You can make a pong game more exciting by syncing the ball's movements to music. This allows paddles to dance to the beat as they hit the ball.
  2. Using math and optimization techniques can help you decide where the paddles should hit the ball. It ensures that the game looks good while still following all the rules.
  3. Changing the physics of the game doesn't have to be hard. You just update the rules in your math model, making it easy to test new ideas and keep improving the game.

Extending the demo: Destruction Derby (PlayStation)

Rings of Saturn • 72 implied HN points • 02 Mar 26
đź•ą Technology Reverse Engineering Emulation Gaming Software Modding Preservation
  1. The Destruction Derby preview on the PlayStation Picks disc is rendered in real time and the disc actually contains both a non-interactive auto demo and an interactive "One Level Demo" using the same car and stage.
  2. A single memory flag at 0x800cd604 controls which demo runs, and changing that flag or patching the demo-selection function at 0x8004030c enables the playable demo, which is time-limited to 60 seconds and has small visual and gameplay differences from the final game.
  3. A patch that forces the playable demo to load is available on GitHub, and the demo comes from a July 23 build that predates known prototypes and reveals early-stage differences from the released version.

On Sam Altman's Second Conversation with Tyler Cowen

Don't Worry About the Vase • 2150 implied HN points • 07 Nov 25
đź•ą Technology Innovation AI Podcasts Productivity Research
  1. Sam Altman is super productive because he focuses on important tasks and delegates other things. When you're busy, you learn to use your time better.
  2. Hiring in hardware is harder than in AI because it requires more upfront investment and careful choosing. Altman believes in giving researchers freedom to choose their projects.
  3. Altman thinks AI will greatly change how companies operate, and he envisions a future with AIs running divisions effectively. He encourages people to think about how to adopt AI in their organizations.

Foundations of Investing: Inflation

Behavioral Value Investor • 141 implied HN points • 24 Feb 26
đź’° Finance Economic History Currency Investing Inflation Monetary Policy Personal Finance
  1. Money can and very likely will lose some of its purchasing power over time. If you just hold cash, it will buy fewer goods and services in the future.
  2. Government actions like printing money or debasing currency have repeatedly driven inflation, and history shows this can sometimes be extreme enough to wipe out savings. Even stable countries can experience long periods of above-target inflation.
  3. Because of inflation, savers should use ways of saving or investing that at least keep up with inflation instead of leaving money idle under a mattress. Investing can help preserve and grow the real value of your savings over the long run.

The Top Ways Video Games Affect Your Brain. Number Five May Disturb You!

The Bottom Feeder • 727 implied HN points • 29 Dec 25
đź’Ľ Business Consumer behavior Marketing Monetization Product User engagement Product Design Strategy
  1. Video games are engineered to change how players' brains feel, offering things like dopamine rewards, adrenaline rushes, thoughtful puzzles, artistic moments, or simply a way to kill time.
  2. Dopamine-driven design is the biggest money maker because it makes players feel rewarded, but it can be addictive, wears out over time, and becomes problematic when tied to gambling or monetization.
  3. Game creators need to decide which of these experiences they want to sell and balance them carefully—mixing rewards, challenge, art, and time-sinking determines how long and how well a game keeps players.

AI Links, 1/29/2026

In My Tribe • 273 implied HN points • 29 Jan 26
đź•ą Technology Software Development Automation Developer Tools Product Management Artificial Intelligence AI safety Human-computer interaction
  1. AI can make small software projects almost free, enabling bespoke, natural-language driven apps that let teams or individuals get exactly what they need instead of wrestling with bloated mass-market products.
  2. Using AI well is largely a management skill: you need to clearly specify goals, context, and constraints (via PRDs, shot lists, orders, etc.) and know the AI’s capabilities and limits.
  3. The more immediate risk is human misuse: easily built, powerful AI tools can quickly amplify rogue actors’ impact, so preventing malicious use should be a top priority.

TBM 402: The Real-World Journey to Value and Product-Centricity

The Beautiful Mess • 595 implied HN points • 19 Jan 26
đź•ą Technology Org Design Funding Models Metrics Platform Engineering Agile practices Product Strategy
  1. Change typically begins with a focus on delivery predictability and reducing work-in-progress, where throughput is treated as the main measure of value.
  2. Introducing goals or OKRs shifts attention toward outcomes, but real outcome orientation only sticks when teams, architecture, funding, and ways of working are redesigned so objectives guide work as testable hypotheses.
  3. The healthiest state is when value models underpin org design, goals, funding, and architecture so technology is inseparable from the business, but there is no final destination—models keep evolving and organizations can regress.

No, I Mean It - AI Maximalists in the Media Should Really, Actually Take the Shitting-in-the-Yard Challenge

Freddie deBoer • 7642 implied HN points • 16 Jun 25
đź•ą Technology Skepticism Media influence
  1. AI hype often overlooks past technology that didn't live up to expectations. Just like with the Human Genome Project, people thought AI would massively change our lives, but things are more complicated.
  2. There's a difference between being scared of AI and simply being skeptical of its impact. Many people automatically assume AI will change everything, but it's important to listen to those who think the effects might be smaller.
  3. Media often ignores voices that question the hype around AI. Instead of only showcasing the promises of AI, there's a need to give more attention to skeptics and their views.

On AI Infrastructure in Biology

The Century of Biology • 1416 implied HN points • 23 Nov 25
đź•ą Technology AI Computing Healthcare Data science Biotech
  1. The biotech industry is seeing a shift towards using AI technologies. This is creating new opportunities for businesses that provide AI tools and infrastructure rather than just focusing on drug development.
  2. AI can potentially replace traditional experiments in biology, speeding up research and reducing costs. This allows scientists to explore many more ideas and possibilities without being limited by the physical experimentation process.
  3. Investing in AI infrastructure for biotech could lead to significant advancements and financial returns. If companies successfully scale their AI solutions, they could capture a big slice of the growing biotech market.

When To Kill A Project

Jacob’s Tech Tavern • 1749 implied HN points • 20 Nov 25
đź’Ľ Business Business strategy Market research Project management Startups Entrepreneurship
  1. Know when to stop a project that's not working. Sometimes it's better to cut your losses and move on rather than keep putting effort into something that won't succeed.
  2. Always do market research before launching an idea. Talking to potential users can help you understand their needs and avoid mistakes.
  3. Even successful projects can have an end date. Recognizing when something has outlived its usefulness allows you to focus on your next opportunity.

All you can do is play the game

benn.substack • 1687 implied HN points • 14 Nov 25
đź•ą Technology Data Startups Innovation Software AI
  1. Not knowing can mean different things. It can show disinterest, annoyance, or a humble uncertainty in conversations.
  2. Technology and AI are unpredictable, and the next big breakthrough can happen by chance, often in unexpected ways.
  3. To succeed in tech, it’s important to take action and build things, rather than just thinking about ideas. Typing and doing lead to real progress.