The hottest Substack posts right now

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The Zizians and the Rationalist death cults

Read Max • 12066 implied HN points • 31 Jan 25
📖 Philosophy Rationalism Self-Improvement Ethics Psychology Cults
  1. Rationalism can lead to cult-like groups, like the Zizians, which have been tied to violence and criminal activities. These groups often arise from complex social dynamics within the Rationalist community.
  2. The Rationalist Movement emphasizes personal development and reasoning, but this can make its members susceptible to extreme beliefs and social manipulation. As a result, some might fall into harmful ideologies.
  3. Many people involved in the Rationalist community seek deep connections and self-improvement, but this often comes with pressure to conform and can push members toward risky behaviors or affiliations with dangerous groups.

Issue #119

Infra Weekly Newsletter • 9 implied HN points • 17 Mar 26
🕹 Technology Enterprise DevOps Cloud Security Infrastructure AI
  1. NemoClaw provides a secure runtime for running OpenClaw with features like local/private execution, hard egress controls, filesystem confinement, operator-controlled inference routing, and auditable policy.
  2. The offering is targeted at enterprise and regulated use cases where runtime-level policy and sandboxing matter, while OpenAI and Anthropic still lead on developer ergonomics, hosted integrations, and faster SaaS agent development.
  3. OpenShell’s architecture runs a gateway container (with an embedded k3s control plane) that manages a separate sandbox container per agent, so a simple local dev setup looks like one gateway plus one sandbox and will likely map to pods on a Kubernetes cluster in the future.

Data Science Weekly - Issue 563

Data Science Weekly Newsletter • 139 implied HN points • 05 Sep 24
🕹 Technology Data Visualization Data Engineering Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence Data science
  1. AI prompt engineering is becoming more important, and experts share helpful tips on how to improve your skill in this area.
  2. Researchers in AI should focus on making an impact through their work by creating open-source resources and better benchmarks.
  3. Data quality is a common concern in many organizations, yet many leaders struggle to prioritize it properly and invest in solutions.

How Duolingo reignited user growth

Lenny's Newsletter • 9571 implied HN points • 28 Feb 23
💼 Business Leadership Marketing Growth Product Tech
  1. Duolingo achieved 4.5x user growth over four years through innovative strategies like leaderboards and push notifications.
  2. Their focus on improving retention over new user acquisition led to significant improvements in engagement metrics.
  3. Using data and models, like Zynga and MyFitnessPal did, helped Duolingo identify North Star metrics and drive growth effectively.

The Price-Fixing Economy

BIG by Matt Stoller • 48129 implied HN points • 06 Oct 23
💼 Business Monopoly power Inflation Fairness
  1. Inflation could possibly be driven by consolidation and data sharing in industries like Amazon and meat price-fixing cases.
  2. Price-fixing can involve colluding to raise prices or lower wages, not just about increasing prices for consumers.
  3. People not only dislike high prices but also feel cheated by unfair pricing practices, like hidden fees and tips, impacting their perception of the economy.
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Scraping the Sky

Altered States of Monetary Consciousness • 906 implied HN points • 09 Dec 25
💰 Finance Global Economy Wealth Inequality Economic Systems Corporate Finance Financial Markets Labor Economics
  1. People at the top of finance live in a metaphorical 'skyscraper' and become distant from the everyday work and immediate impacts that ground-level people experience.
  2. Apex positions amplify tiny actions into massive consequences, so small decisions by elites can yield huge profits while the many workers who enable those outcomes get little reward.
  3. All high-level economic activity rests on an 'underarchy' of ecology, primary labour and care, and when elites lose touch with that foundation they risk making big plans that ignore real human and environmental needs.

What Eight Years Of Being Stuck Taught Me About Career Paths

Diary of an Engineering Manager • 259 implied HN points • 22 Aug 24
💼 Business Skills Training Work-life balance Career development Job Market Organizational Behavior
  1. Career growth can be messy and non-linear, much like cooked spaghetti. Just because you're not moving up quickly doesn't mean you're failing.
  2. Promotions often come with extra responsibilities and sacrifices. It's important to reflect on whether you're ready for those changes before chasing a title.
  3. Your career will have phases, with ups and downs. It's okay to experience stagnation; it's part of building resilience for the long run.

The 3-lever framework

Tiny Empires • 36 implied HN points • 27 Feb 26
💼 Business Growth Marketing Entrepreneurship Distribution Retention Pricing
  1. Price: Make each customer worth more by raising base prices, adding premium tiers, or switching to recurring billing, since small increases often multiply revenue without huge drops in conversions.
  2. Distribution: Pick one channel and work it for months so effort compounds — focus on SEO, a niche newsletter, or direct outreach to get the right people seeing your offer.
  3. Retention: Reduce churn because keeping customers longer changes the economics dramatically — deliver early wins, ask why people leave, and remind customers regularly of the value.

35 Thoughts About AGI and 1 About GPT-5

Am I Stronger Yet? • 3855 implied HN points • 14 Aug 25
🕹 Technology Data science Human-computer interaction Software Development Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence
  1. Current AI can't really match human intelligence. Even though it can do some complex tasks, there are still many things it struggles with, like understanding context or learning continuously.
  2. Humans can learn new skills from just a few examples, while AI often needs a lot of data to learn. This difference is why humans pick up things like driving so much faster than AI systems.
  3. As AI technology advances, it may start playing a bigger role in complex tasks. This could change how we work and interact with machines, possibly making us more like spectators in our own jobs.

Tokenized Trading Finally Comes

Points And Figures • 426 implied HN points • 19 Jan 26
💰 Finance Markets Trading Securities Exchanges Regulation Digital Assets
  1. Tokenized stocks are becoming real and come in three forms — native, wrapped, and synthetic — which can enable 24/7 trading and programmable features that may not exactly match traditional shareholder rights.
  2. Tokenization reduces friction and costs by speeding settlement, enabling easy fractional ownership, simpler lending/shorting, and broader global access, which should make markets more liquid and capital more efficient.
  3. Tokenization will shift market structure and risks: it can change who has the trading edge, create arbitrage between token and regular markets, embed AML/KYC and other rules into tokens, and introduce legal and governance uncertainties.

Weaponized Inventory: How the U.S.–China Tech War Broke the Supply Chain

Gad’s Newsletter • 38 implied HN points • 09 Mar 26
🕹 Technology Trade policy Robotics AI hardware Semiconductors Supply Chain Procurement Manufacturing
  1. Sudden changes in export rules are triggering massive over-orders for AI chips that overwhelm testing, licensing, and shipping systems, so companies must add regulatory scenario planning to their demand forecasts.
  2. Most rare-earth refining and midstream processing are concentrated and slow to replicate, creating hidden Tier‑N chokepoints that require deep BOM traceability and years of investment to resolve.
  3. Complex products like humanoid robots hinge on a few hard-to-replace precision parts and long supplier‑qualification timelines, forcing a costly shift from just-in-time sourcing to resilience-focused, multi-source supply networks.

The Anarchist and the Hockey Stick

Experimental History • 14669 implied HN points • 03 Dec 24
📖 Philosophy Critical Thinking Epistemology Scientific Method
  1. Science doesn't follow a strict method; different ideas can lead to breakthroughs. This means that sometimes crazy or unconventional ideas can be just as valid as the more accepted ones.
  2. Not all scientific research that follows traditional rules leads to useful discoveries. In fact, some important breakthroughs came from researchers who ignored the 'rules' or took risks.
  3. It's important to question what we think we know about science. The process of discovery often involves challenging old beliefs and being open to new, even silly-sounding theories.

Containerized Missile Systems Without Cranes

Tapa’s Substack • 4 HN points • 05 Oct 24
🕹 Technology Innovation Defense Aerospace Engineering Logistics
  1. Containerized missile systems aim to fit missiles into shipping containers for easy transport. This could help with quick deployment and keeping them hidden.
  2. Most missiles are too tall for standard shipping containers, requiring them to be laid down horizontally. This makes launching them more complicated.
  3. A new idea suggests using a small jump jet to lift and angle the missile for firing, making it faster and potentially cheaper than using a crane system.

On Evaluating Cognitive Capabilities in Machines (and Other "Alien" Intelligences)

AI: A Guide for Thinking Humans • 462 implied HN points • 14 Jan 26
🕹 Technology Interpretability Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence Cognitive Science Benchmarks
  1. Benchmarks can be misleading: high scores don’t prove real-world understanding because models can rely on training leaks, shortcuts, or narrow task-specific tricks.
  2. Evaluation should borrow rigorous methods from developmental and animal cognition: avoid anthropomorphic assumptions, run control and adversarial experiments, and test robustness with novel variations to see if abilities truly generalize.
  3. Go beyond accuracy to study mechanisms and failures: distinguish competence from performance, analyze error types, and publish negative or replication results to understand what models really do.

Four Things: What Do These People Know That We Don't?

State of the Future • 29 implied HN points • 27 Feb 26
🕹 Technology Workforce Security AI Compute Hardware Software Startups
  1. AI builders expect rapid, widespread disruption of white‑collar work, so societies will need to adapt fast to avoid big economic and employment shocks.
  2. The next big gains will come from orchestration, not just bigger chips or models — combining diverse hardware and specialised components will be a key competitive edge.
  3. Models and models' outputs are now attackable and competitive assets, so security and new architectures (many small agents checking each other) are becoming essential to reduce errors and theft.

Elon Musk’s terrifying vision for AI

Marcus on AI • 10908 implied HN points • 16 Feb 25
🕹 Technology Machine Learning Tech Ethics Big Tech Artificial Intelligence Data Privacy
  1. Elon Musk's AI, Grok, is seen as a powerful tool for propaganda. It can influence people's thoughts and attitudes without them even realizing it.
  2. The technology behind Grok often produces unreliable results, raising concerns about its effectiveness in important areas like government and education.
  3. There is a worry that Musk's use of biased and unreliable AI could have serious consequences for society, as it might spread misinformation widely.

The Shape of Artificial Intelligence

The Algorithmic Bridge • 806 implied HN points • 22 Dec 25
🕹 Technology AI Ethics AI safety Technology Policy Artificial Intelligence Societal Impact Machine Learning
  1. AI abilities are spiky and alien, with huge strengths in narrow domains and surprising failures on simple, commonsense tasks. This jagged shape means AI won't neatly fill a human-shaped general intelligence anytime soon.
  2. Human intelligence grew slowly through biological evolution while AI is created by mathematical optimization and market pressures, so AIs develop different strengths and can expand much faster in specific directions. This difference produces distinct "Umwelten" and makes AI growth uneven and hard to predict.
  3. The useful approach is practical coexistence: learn the geometry of AI, use it to augment tasks where its spikes help, keep humans in the loop where its valleys remain, and stop assuming full replacement is the default outcome. This mindset favors designing systems that combine human and AI strengths rather than chasing a single notion of AGI.

Grok 3 Beta in Shambles

Marcus on AI • 10750 implied HN points • 19 Feb 25
🕹 Technology Computing Data science Software Development Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning
  1. The new Grok 3 AI isn't living up to its hype. It initially answers some questions correctly but quickly starts making mistakes.
  2. When tested, Grok 3 struggles with basic facts and leaves out important details, like missing cities in geographical queries.
  3. Even with huge investments in AI, many problems remain unsolved, suggesting that scaling alone isn't the answer to improving AI performance.

Meaningmaking at work.

The Uncertainty Mindset (soon to become tbd) • 259 implied HN points • 21 Aug 24
🕹 Technology AI Development Software Design Human-Machine Interaction Product Management
  1. AI tools often fail because they can't understand the deeper meaning behind our decisions. They confuse what humans can intuitively interpret.
  2. Meaningmaking is crucial in many business processes. Humans make subjective decisions all the time that machines simply can't replicate.
  3. To create better AI products, we need to separate meaningmaking tasks from other work. This helps us design tools that support human decision-making instead of trying to replace it.

On Crypto Crashes and Fake Money

The Future, Now and Then • 211 implied HN points • 06 Feb 26
🔮 Crypto Fraud Speculation Banking Regulation Markets Macroeconomics
  1. The reported $2 trillion crypto 'loss' mostly reflects falling market prices, not actual dollars moving somewhere else, because many crypto valuations were speculative rather than real wealth.
  2. Speculative tokens masquerading as assets can be used as collateral and tied into the real financial system, so when prices fall they can expose scams and create contagion across lenders and counterparties.
  3. This crash may partly reflect rich backers diverting capital (for example into AI), which reduces buyers-of-last-resort; prolonged low prices could reveal systemic cracks unless big players choose to prop the market back up.

Netflix is done zigging and is ready to zag

Simon Owens's Media Newsletter • 299 implied HN points • 21 Jan 26
💼 Business Subscriptions Media Streaming Advertising Publishing Social media
  1. Netflix is moving away from its strict "zig where others zag" stance and is now embracing traditional models like theatrical releases and potentially ad-based monetization to grow beyond subscriptions.
  2. Major media outlets are integrating prediction markets and betting-style odds into coverage, which risks turning news consumption into gambling and creating ethical and public-harm concerns.
  3. The industry is experimenting with varied distribution and revenue strategies — from BBC making shows for YouTube and creators landing streamer deals to newsletters building ad networks — as publishers try to stabilize and find new growth paths.

Are Brands Coming For The Group Chat?

Total Rec • 2236 implied HN points • 27 Apr 24
💼 Business Consumer behavior Ethics E-commerce Entrepreneurship Marketing
  1. Substack chats provide a space for genuine conversations and personalized recommendations, free from traditional algorithms and commercial pressures.
  2. The influx of brands into these organic spaces raises concerns about maintaining authenticity while allowing brands to engage profitably.
  3. Exploring the idea of creating online spaces that prioritize values like community, collaboration, and enrichment over the pursuit of vast wealth and success.

How You Can Eliminate Your Competition

VERY GOOD PRODUCTIZED GUIDES • 159 implied HN points • 02 Sep 24
💼 Business Competition Branding Entrepreneurship Marketing Startups
  1. You don't have to be the first in the market. Being different is more important. Focus on filling gaps in what others offer instead.
  2. Understand what your customers truly want. They often seek value and connection, not just the service itself. Learn their needs to attract more clients.
  3. Instead of only cutting costs, focus on providing great value to your customers. Sometimes spending more can actually improve your service and satisfy customers better.

Vibe Coding and the Maker Movement

Technically • 94 implied HN points • 26 Feb 26
🕹 Technology Open Source Product Infrastructure Community AI Software
  1. Vibe coding skipped the slow, playful "scenius" phase of earlier maker cultures and went straight into production, so people can build fast but often lack the practical judgment that comes from long, messy practice.
  2. Think of vibe coding as consuming a surplus of machine intelligence: spent well it produces taste, attention, reputation, or gift-like social capital, but spent badly it’s just addictive, disposable output.
  3. Long-term value tends to accumulate in the model and infrastructure layers unless creators intentionally capture the byproduct signal as datasets, documentation, or curated taste, and framing the work as consumption can help avoid burnout.

The Bear Cave #304

The Bear Cave • 746 implied HN points • 14 Dec 25
💰 Finance Hedge Funds Activist Reports Corporate Governance Resignations Equity markets
  1. Short-seller and activist reports hit multiple public companies, accusing them of weak or misleading business models and triggering sharp stock declines.
  2. A wave of high-profile executive departures and retirements reshaped leadership at firms large and small, sometimes moving markets and raising governance questions.
  3. Market participants are rethinking risk and liquidity after recent volatility, with quant funds adjusting models and some hedge funds limiting redemptions amid illiquid assets.

Deliberative Alignment, And The Spec

Astral Codex Ten • 11149 implied HN points • 12 Feb 25
🕹 Technology Computer Science Human-computer interaction AI Ethics Machine Learning Tech governance
  1. Deliberative alignment is a new method for teaching AI to think about moral choices before making decisions. It creates better AI by having it reflect on its values and learn from its own reasoning.
  2. The model specification is important because it defines the values that AI should follow. As AI becomes more influential in society, having a clear set of values will become crucial for safety and ethics.
  3. The chain of command for AI may include different possible priorities, such as government authority, company interests, or even moral laws. How this is set will impact how AI behaves and who it ultimately serves.

BOMBSHELL: Potential Criminal Activity Revealed in the Kroger-Albertsons Merger

BIG by Matt Stoller • 34149 implied HN points • 21 Feb 24
💼 Business Monopoly Regulation Mergers Antitrust
  1. The Kroger-Albertsons merger faces challenges due to potential criminal activity discovered, leading to antitrust suits and trials to block the deal.
  2. The merger could worsen the grocery market situation with fewer stores, higher prices, and data implications for suppliers, consumers, and workers.
  3. Evidence found of Kroger and Albertsons colluding in wage suppression by avoiding hiring each other's workers, raising concerns and prompting legal action.

Mise en place for agentic coding

Dev Interrupted • 98 implied HN points • 19 Feb 26
🕹 Technology Artificial Intelligence Developer Tools Task management Product Design DevOps Software Development
  1. Spend time on mise en place before coding so agents know exactly what you want; clear preparation (briefing, spec, task breakdown) makes implementation much faster and reduces debugging.
  2. Practice context fluency by encoding domain knowledge, value judgments, and constraints so agents can make aligned micro-decisions without guessing.
  3. Keep the toolchain simple and remove extra layers so your thinking maps directly to execution; simpler interfaces let agents deliver the right architecture quickly.

Newsletters we read to stay smarter than the competition

CommandBlogue • 139 implied HN points • 04 Sep 24
💼 Business Growth Startups Innovation Marketing Entrepreneurship
  1. Staying updated with newsletters is super important for personal and professional growth. They help you learn quickly and efficiently in a fast-changing world.
  2. Some recommended newsletters focus on tech, product growth, and honest startup experiences. They provide unique insights and practical advice that can really help new teams and startups.
  3. Reading newsletters can keep you motivated and optimistic about the tech industry. It’s a great way to stay informed and inspired by successful stories and strategies.

Niccolò Machiavelli, Adam Smith, and the crisis of modern science

uTobian • 4952 implied HN points • 21 Jan 24
📖 Philosophy Ethics Medicine Science History Politics
  1. In modern times, freedom is often associated with unrestrained passion, but the idea of freedom through personal restraint from ancient times is considered a better path to happiness and fulfillment.
  2. The writings of Niccolò Machiavelli marked a shift in the concept of freedom towards acknowledging human selfishness and focusing on political security through class conflict.
  3. The current crisis in science and medicine is prompting a reevaluation of the assumption that scientists and doctors are inherently virtuous, suggesting the need for reforms based on the idea that they may be motivated by greed and power.

How To Actually Make Money Freelance Writing as Beginner in 2024

Kristina God's Online Writing Club • 919 implied HN points • 29 Jun 24
💼 Business Writing Freelancing Entrepreneurship Content creation Marketing
  1. You can make good money as a freelance writer, even if you're just starting out. Many companies want real human writers because they bring creativity that AI can't.
  2. It's important to clearly define what services you offer and how you can help potential clients. This helps you stand out in a crowded market.
  3. Guest posting can still be a great way to showcase your writing and attract clients, so don't underestimate its value in building your portfolio.

Dear Conservatives: Shape the AI Future Before It's Shaped for You

The Dossier • 121 implied HN points • 13 Feb 26
🕹 Technology Tech Policy Industry Artificial Intelligence Ethics Investment Innovation Society Regulation
  1. Conservatives should stop treating AI as an enemy and actively engage as entrepreneurs, investors, technologists, and customers to help shape its direction.
  2. If conservatives don’t participate, AI systems will be designed by a narrow tech elite and their philosophical assumptions will get baked into training data, safety rules, and product norms.
  3. The window to influence AI is closing because power and infrastructure are consolidating and regulation will be slow, so act now to insert conservative values into mainstream systems rather than waiting or building isolated alternatives.

Subtypes and status-dependent data: pure relational approach

Minimal Modeling • 304 implied HN points • 29 Jan 26
🕹 Technology Databases Software Engineering Data Modeling SQL
  1. Lock a subtype/status column to a single value with a CHECK so subtype tables can only hold rows for that exact status, and reference the main table with a composite foreign key (id, status) to prevent contradictory data.
  2. Give the main table a unique (id, status) pair and make subtype tables include a defaulted, immutable status plus their own keys so you can model both single- and multi-row status-specific information without NULLs.
  3. This is a pure relational, NULL-free way to encode subtypes/status-dependent data using only standard constraints (CHECK, PK, FK), moving integrity into the schema and making the design extensible even if it isn’t commonly taught.

8 plots that explain the state of open models

Democratizing Automation • 451 implied HN points • 07 Jan 26
🕹 Technology Open Source AI adoption AI Industry Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence
  1. Chinese open models—especially Qwen—now dominate downloads, finetunes, and general adoption across the ecosystem, often outpacing many other providers combined.
  2. New entrants and recent Western releases show only limited adoption so far, with older Western models like Llama still widely downloaded while GPT-OSS shows early promise but hasn’t shifted overall usage.
  3. The clearest competitive opportunity is at large model scales, where DeepSeek and a few others outperform Qwen’s big models, but Chinese models still lead on benchmarks with only a few competitors getting close.

Good if make prior after data instead of before

DYNOMIGHT INTERNET NEWSLETTER • 796 implied HN points • 18 Dec 25
📖 Philosophy Rationality Logic Inference Decision Theory Epistemology
  1. When the true hypothesis space is large or continuous, compressing it into a single coarse prior hides important differences and can produce misleading posterior probabilities.
  2. It often helps to look at the data first to see which distinctions matter, then define finer categories and ask how likely you would have judged those categories before seeing the evidence.
  3. In practice the simplest practical fix is to refine your hypothesis categories so the data likelihood is roughly constant within each category, because grouping poorly can under- or overestimate the probability of different outcomes.

A $30M plan to take back social media from billionaires

Taylor Lorenz's Newsletter • 12301 implied HN points • 13 Jan 25
🕹 Technology Decentralization Social media Digital Infrastructure
  1. A new campaign called FreeOurFeeds aims to take social media back from billionaires. They want to make social media a public good for everyone.
  2. The project plans to raise $30 million to build a new social media system that gives users more control and allows for better community interactions.
  3. The goal is to create a decentralized social media environment where users can express themselves freely without corporate or political pressures.

Data Science Weekly - Issue 562

Data Science Weekly Newsletter • 179 implied HN points • 29 Aug 24
🕹 Technology Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning Statistics Data Engineering Data science
  1. Distributed systems are changing a lot. This affects how we operate and program these systems, making them more secure and easier to manage.
  2. Statistics are really important in everyday life, even if we don't see it. Talks this year aim to inspire students to understand and appreciate statistics better.
  3. Understanding how AI models work internally is a growing field. Many AI systems are complex, and researchers want to learn how they make decisions and produce outputs.