The hottest Substack posts right now

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Living Evil: Covid, Counter-Strike And An Unnecessary Rebranding

Richard Lewis • 1886 implied HN points • 28 Apr 23
đź•ą Technology Gaming Branding Management
  1. Evil Geniuses faced challenges during the Covid-19 pandemic with management disregarding safety protocols and putting staff at risk.
  2. The Counter-Strike team's decline was highlighted by poor management decisions and player dissatisfaction.
  3. An unnecessary rebranding at Evil Geniuses led to public ridicule and internal disapproval, showcasing a disconnect between management and staff.

Principles of Economics Made Clear (Part 3)

Photon-Lines Substack • 278 implied HN points • 20 Nov 25
đź’° Finance Financial Markets Economic Growth Economics Investment Monetary Policy
  1. Information often isn't shared equally among people, which can lead to problems like moral hazards, where someone takes more risks because they are not fully responsible for the outcome, and adverse selection, where buyers end up with worse options because they can't tell the good from the bad.
  2. The economy's total production and income is measured by GDP, but while it's a useful tool to see how well a nation is doing, it doesn't capture things like happiness or well-being, which are also important.
  3. Inflation occurs when too much money is printed without a corresponding increase in goods, making each dollar less valuable, and this can create real hardships, like eroding savings and distorting economic decisions.

Publisher + Subscribers ~ Observer Pattern

System Design Classroom • 419 implied HN points • 04 May 24
đź•ą Technology Interfaces Programming System Design Design Patterns Software
  1. The Observer Pattern creates a one-to-many relationship. This means when one object's state changes, all of the connected objects are notified.
  2. Components can be loosely coupled, allowing them to work together without needing to know much about each other. This makes it easy to add or change observers.
  3. Because observers can be added or removed without modifying the main subject, the system stays flexible. This helps avoid complications in your design.

What's up Python? Unpacking in Comprehensions, Android Wheels, and uv is a big boy now...

Bite code! • 856 implied HN points • 01 Aug 25
đź•ą Technology Software Web Development Programming Tools
  1. PEP 798 aims to introduce unpacking in comprehensions, making it easier to combine elements from different iterables in Python.
  2. cibuildwheel has added support for building Python packages on Android, making it more versatile for app development.
  3. The uv tool now installs Python versions directly into the system PATH and registers them with the Windows Registry, making it a strong alternative for managing Python installations.
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Help me save the world, but don't tell Marcos: a train data Secret Santa

12challenges • 171 implied HN points • 17 Dec 25
đź•ą Technology Web Tools Open Source Crowdsourcing Transportation Data Community
  1. MARCOS is a simple crowdsourced system and web tool that maps which train carriage door corresponds to which station exit so you know exactly where to stand.
  2. If the data is made free and global it could save commuters small amounts of time every day and make stations easier to navigate for parents, elderly people, and busy travelers.
  3. The project is currently empty and needs help — people can star the GitHub, add stations via pull requests, and share it widely, but the effort is meant to be a Secret Santa surprise for Marcos.

Cloud Development Environments Tame Complexity By Reducing State

Software Design: Tidy First? • 729 implied HN points • 14 Aug 25
đź•ą Technology Systems Programming Cloud Development Software
  1. Using cloud development environments can help reduce the complexity of coding by providing a stable setup that everyone can rely on. This means fewer interruptions and more time for actual coding.
  2. When development environments are the same for everyone, it simplifies tracking issues and fixing problems, making it easier to return to a known good state if something goes wrong.
  3. Developers might take more creative risks and try new projects since they won't be as worried about wasting time fixing setup issues. This could lead to new, valuable software that wouldn't have been created otherwise.

How To Build And Profit From A Community

Day One • 559 implied HN points • 06 Apr 24
đź’Ľ Business Content creation Community Building Monetization Engagement
  1. Attract customers/clients before creating a product/service - build an audience first based on what interests them
  2. Community-driven model involves letting the community guide content creation and product development
  3. Engage with others in your niche, teach as you learn, and listen to community problems to build a successful community

High-performance engineering managers

Elevate • 1113 implied HN points • 09 Jan 24
đź’Ľ Business Leadership Management Employee engagement Training Data Analytics
  1. Effective managers have key traits that significantly impact employee performance, happiness, and retention, as proven by Google's Project Oxygen.
  2. Soft skills like coaching, communication, and support are more valued than technical expertise by employees, emphasizing the importance of emotional intelligence in management.
  3. Using rigorous people analytics, organizations can identify and develop high-impact management behaviors specific to their unique culture, leading to improved leadership and employee satisfaction.

Update: The Housing Bubble and Mortgage Debt as a Percent of GDP

CalculatedRisk Newsletter • 114 implied HN points • 05 Jan 26
đź’° Finance Real Estate Credit Markets Macroeconomy Financial Stability Household Debt Mortgages Housing
  1. The housing bubble was visible as a sharp rise in mortgage debt relative to GDP, but current mortgage debt as a share of GDP does not show the same alarming pattern.
  2. Lending standards are much stronger now, and most recent mortgage originations come from borrowers with reasonably good credit.
  3. Most homeowners have significant equity and affordable, low-rate mortgages, so a large wave of distressed sales and cascading price declines is unlikely.

The feature backlog has gone *poof*

next big thing • 32 implied HN points • 08 Feb 26
đź•ą Technology Automation Startups SaaS Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning Software Engineering Developer Tools
  1. AI coding agents have recently crossed a threshold and are letting developers and multi-agent setups write and ship a lot more product, so many teams are seeing their feature backlogs disappear.
  2. Companies are at different adoption stages, and engineering teams need to become fluent with agentic tools or risk falling behind; startups that use these tools can amplify their speed and focus.
  3. Public SaaS and companies aiming to IPO must show they leverage agentic engineering to drive faster feature delivery, revenue growth, and better margins, because easier software development risks commodifying existing offerings and hurting valuations.

Import AI 370: 213 AI safety challenges; everything becomes a game; Tesla's big cluster

Import AI • 439 implied HN points • 29 Apr 24
đź•ą Technology AI Systems Research Security Data
  1. Chinese researchers introduced MMT-Bench, a benchmark for assessing visual reasoning in language models with diverse tasks and scenarios.
  2. Researchers developed a system to turn 2D photos into 3D gameworlds, showing AI's capability to transform real-world imagery into interactive experiences.
  3. A consortium of researchers addressed 213 AI safety challenges across 18 areas, emphasizing the urgent need for solutions to ensure the reliability and safety of language models.

Talent is the key in an AI Age.

The Future Does Not Fit In The Containers Of The Past • 80 implied HN points • 11 Jan 26
đź’Ľ Business Workforce Development Talent Management Human Resources Leadership Strategy AI adoption Employee engagement
  1. Talent is the primary sustainable advantage: skilled, motivated people create and preserve innovation, service, and brand experiences. AI and other tools only multiply value when they are in the hands of well-trained talent.
  2. Firms must invest heavily in training, reskilling, and rewarding people alongside their AI spending, because technology and data alone won't create differentiation. Leaders and managers should be measured and compensated on how well they attract, develop, and retain talent.
  3. To attract, retain, and help people thrive, focus on pay, recognition, and autonomy; purpose, values, and connection; and freedom, identity, and growth. Employees also act as advocates and their satisfaction should be tracked with tenure, turnover, surveys, and other people metrics.

Homeownership “Wealth” Is A Fallacy

QTR’s Fringe Finance • 35 implied HN points • 13 Feb 26
đź’° Finance Real Estate Monetary Policy Capital Markets Mortgage Finance Public Policy Housing Market
  1. Housing is primarily a consumption good you live in, not a reliable financial investment, because ongoing costs like maintenance, taxes, insurance, and transaction fees erode any supposed appreciation gains.
  2. Policy proposals like large MBS purchases, allowing 401(k) withdrawals for down payments, mortgage portability, or ultra-long loans are economically misguided and tend to require more debt or money printing, distorting capital markets and favoring existing homeowners.
  3. Tapping home equity or inflating home prices doesn’t create net wealth—selling to realize gains is offset by higher purchase prices, fees, and loan liabilities—so policies that prop up housing prices end up shifting costs onto younger buyers and non-homeowners.

MĂĽnchhausen's TriLLMa

Contemplations on the Tree of Woe • 904 implied HN points • 11 Jul 25
đź“– Philosophy Metaphysics Cognitive Science AI Ethics Logic Epistemology
  1. The MĂĽnchhausen Trilemma shows that we struggle to justify knowledge without falling into circular reasoning, infinite regress, or arbitrary assumptions. Understanding these limitations helps us think more clearly about what we know.
  2. Foundherentism combines foundational beliefs that are irrefutable with a coherent belief system. This approach can help us understand how both human and AI knowledge might overlap.
  3. Advanced AI methods reveal that its internal structures may reflect human-like understanding. This means that AI isn't just mimicking human outputs but is following similar processes in understanding the world.

Cognitive scientist Gary Marcus says AI must be regulated. He has a plan.

Marcus on AI • 3003 implied HN points • 27 Nov 24
đź•ą Technology AI Ethics Cognitive Science AGI Policy Regulation
  1. AI needs rules and regulations to keep it safe. It is important to have a plan to guide this process.
  2. There is an ongoing debate about how different regions, like the EU and US, approach AI policy. These discussions are crucial for the future of AI.
  3. Experts like Gary Marcus share insights about the challenges and possibilities of AI technology. Listening to their views helps understand AI better.

Ethena: Fundamentally Flawed?

DeFi Education • 819 implied HN points • 21 Feb 24
đź”® Crypto Stablecoins Trading Strategies Risk management Decentralized Finance Ethereum
  1. Ethena aims to provide attractive yields through a unique trading strategy that combines staking ETH and selling futures contracts. This could help users earn money while managing risk.
  2. There are concerns about Ethena's design, including the fact that it relies on staked ETH, which carries more risks. If things go wrong, users might face significant losses.
  3. While Ethena might seem like a good option now, it's important for investors to be cautious and understand the risks involved, as past attempts in this area have often failed.

What Causes Stagflation?

QTR’s Fringe Finance • 19 implied HN points • 24 Feb 26
đź’° Finance Monetary Policy Inflation Money Supply Central Banking Macroeconomics Economic Growth
  1. Increasing the money supply creates an “exchange of nothing for something” that shifts resources away from producers, which raises prices while weakening real economic growth — this combination is stagflation.
  2. Unexpected boosts in money growth can temporarily cut unemployment and raise output, but once people expect higher inflation they change their behavior and the growth gains vanish, leaving only higher inflation.
  3. The severity and visibility of stagflation depends on private savings: falling savings make weaker growth and higher unemployment clear, while rising savings can mask weak growth even as prices climb.

Chips Today vs. Chips Tomorrow

More Than Moore • 163 implied HN points • 18 Dec 25
đź•ą Technology Semiconductors Networking Hardware design AI
  1. Breaking chips into modular pieces and using chiplets makes development faster, splits technical risk, and opens new markets like SuperNICs by letting companies combine custom dies with standard pieces.
  2. Standard interfaces and an ecosystem of pre-verified building blocks speed adoption and lower engineering burden, while still leaving room for custom accelerators and differentiation.
  3. The AI boom brings huge investment and urgency, but expensive, complex chip development means the industry is focused on improving performance-per-watt and cutting time‑to‑market through collaboration and tooling.

Too much or not enough of Ricardo?

Global Inequality and More 3.0 • 1102 implied HN points • 13 Jun 25
đź’° Finance Inequality Globalization Economic Theory Political Economy
  1. David Ricardo's economic ideas are still influential, but they often ignore important social classes and conflicts. It's crucial to consider how class affects the economy.
  2. The effects of globalization are often viewed just through a Western lens, which can overlook the benefits it has brought to many people in other parts of the world. This creates a skewed understanding of economic progress.
  3. Critiquing historical economic figures like Ricardo should include recognizing their contributions to understanding social dynamics, not just focusing on their abstract theories.

Inflation, affordability, and the AI backlash

Alex's Personal Blog • 98 implied HN points • 13 Jan 26
đź•ą Technology Tech Policy Data Centers Cloud Computing Artificial Intelligence Big Tech
  1. Apple picking Google to power its AI features concentrates distribution and AI-provider power, making it harder for smaller rivals to compete and raising antitrust concerns.
  2. Politicians are blaming data-center energy use for rising utility costs, and Microsoft is promising to reduce consumer impacts by funding infrastructure, paying full local taxes, and training local workers.
  3. Anthropic’s Claude Cowork moves AI from developer tools toward a personal, persistent assistant, but it’s very compute-heavy and currently limited to expensive plans until more capacity is brought online.

To Hell With Good Intentions, Silicon Valley Edition

The Convivial Society • 2805 implied HN points • 11 Dec 24
đź•ą Technology Tech Critique AI Ethics Innovation Cultural influence Society
  1. Good intentions in technology can sometimes lead to unintended harm. It's important for developers to consider how their innovations affect people's lives.
  2. We should listen to the needs of the communities we want to help, instead of imposing our own ideas of what's best for them. Understanding their perspectives is key to making a real difference.
  3. Technologies should empower people and enhance their abilities rather than create new forms of dependency. We need to focus on how tech can genuinely improve lives.

How To Get Started In Crypto (And A Reference For The Rest Of Us)

DeFi Education • 1258 implied HN points • 20 Dec 23
đź”® Crypto Investing Blockchain Security Education DeFi
  1. DeFi is a growing field that could become much bigger than traditional banking by using efficient software instead of slow, costly processes. Now is a good time to get involved because the technology works and it has government support.
  2. It's important to understand security and best practices in DeFi since there are many scams. Learning the basics can help you manage your funds safely and avoid losing money.
  3. Getting into crypto can lead to new career opportunities. You can gain valuable skills and knowledge that are helpful for roles in this fast-growing industry.

DARK ÆON – Transhumanism and the War Against Humanity

SINGULARITY WEEKLY • 1847 implied HN points • 01 Jul 23
đź•ą Technology Artificial Intelligence Robots Transhumanism Genetic Engineering
  1. Humanity is facing threats from digital intelligence and automation.
  2. The concept of transhumanism merges scientism, apocalyptic Christianity, and satanic hubris.
  3. There is a significant choice between humanity and a potential posthuman future.
  4. The decisions made today will impact the fate of our species.

Ignore inductive biases at your own peril

Mindful Modeler • 399 implied HN points • 07 May 24
đź•ą Technology Machine Learning
  1. Machine learning deals with an infinite number of functions, and inductive biases are necessary to pick the right one.
  2. Inductive biases guide machine learning algorithms on where to search in the hypothesis space, impacting model choices like feature engineering and architecture.
  3. Ignoring inductive biases can lead to misunderstanding nuances in models and failing to grasp important model assumptions.

Macro and Microphenomenology

Superb Owl • 3113 implied HN points • 23 Nov 24
đź“– Philosophy Meditation Consciousness Phenomenology Cognitive Science Psychology
  1. Psychology is getting more advanced by creating new ways to study the mind. This includes looking at both everyday mental experiences and the basic building blocks of consciousness.
  2. Microphenomenology focuses on tiny details of experience, like how we feel pain or perceive sensations. It helps us understand consciousness in a very precise way.
  3. Macrophenomenology explores larger states of consciousness, often influenced by extreme experiences, like those caused by psychedelics or intense emotions. It looks at how these experiences shape our overall mental landscape.

Four Things Friday

State of the Future • 19 implied HN points • 13 Feb 26
đź•ą Technology Privacy AI Hardware Chips Cloud Infrastructure Startups Regulation
  1. AI agents are rapidly automating work that happens on screens, and small but steady reliability improvements can quickly make them good enough to replace many tasks.
  2. New chip startups are raising big rounds to solve the memory bottleneck by doing computation-in-memory or using photonics, because faster, cheaper inference hardware is critical for agent-scale workloads.
  3. Europe is moving toward onshore AI compute and governance with large GPU deployments and consortium models, and privacy-enhancing technologies plus auditing will be essential to keep agent access to sensitive data secure and compliant.

Objections to Indirect Realism

Fake Noûs • 129 implied HN points • 27 Dec 25
đź“– Philosophy Ontology Perception Metaphysics Epistemology Skepticism Mind
  1. Positing sense data creates a serious location problem: they can’t plausibly be in your head, at the external object, wherever they appear, or in a separate “phenomenal space” without contradictions or conflicts with physics.
  2. Percepts often appear indeterminate (e.g. vague colors or unreadable distant text), yet nothing can truly have indeterminate properties, so we can’t be directly aware of mind-dependent objects that exactly match these indeterminate appearances.
  3. The better view is that perception directly presents ordinary physical objects and properties, while our perceptual states sometimes represent those objects imprecisely rather than revealing separate sense-data entities.

471: Relative Valuation, Perplexity AI, RIP Artifact, Hertz Sells Teslas, Marc Andreessen, DARPA Plane, Uranium, LEDs, and Jake Gyllenhaal

Liberty’s Highlights • 1041 implied HN points • 17 Jan 24
đź•ą Technology Electric Vehicles Aerospace AI Applications Renewable Energy AI
  1. Opportunity cost is often invisible but significant, so consider it in decision-making.
  2. Relative valuation in investing can be misleading, so always dig deeper.
  3. Mixing children of different ages in schools could offer benefits in learning and social development.

MBAs and the death of credentialism

Hot Takes • 1041 implied HN points • 17 Jan 24
đź’Ľ Business Experience Knowledge Networks Education Employment
  1. In the internet age, real-world experience like running a business is more valuable than just academic theory.
  2. In creative fields like marketing, MBAs are becoming less relevant due to a lack of real experience and understanding.
  3. With the democratization of knowledge online, the necessity of a fancy MBA degree is diminishing, and real-world contributions hold more weight.

Why Most Online Advertising Benchmarks Are BS (And What To Do Instead)

Nail It and Scale It • 119 implied HN points • 22 Jul 24
đź’Ľ Business Marketing Growth Strategies E-commerce Data Analysis Advertising
  1. Many online advertising benchmarks are unreliable because they don't account for differences in pricing and offers. This means you might be comparing apples to oranges, leading to wrong conclusions.
  2. To get better benchmarks, focus on two key metrics: Cost-Per-Click (CPC) and Conversion Rate. These give you a clearer picture of how your ads are performing compared to others.
  3. Joining groups or talking to industry experts can help you find more accurate conversion rates for your products. Sharing data with peers is a good way to understand what's normal in your field.

“We Are Not as Wealthy as We Thought We Were”: Part 6

Erdmann Housing Tracker • 126 implied HN points • 02 Jan 26
đź’° Finance Real Estate Mortgages Urban Economics Wealth Public Policy Inequality Housing
  1. Rising home prices are mostly coming from rising rents, so higher price/rent ratios often reflect persistent rent inflation rather than just speculative price swings. Because officials treated the problem as a bubble and tightened demand after 2008, they made rent-driven scarcity worse.
  2. Most of the price growth is coming from land rents caused by a shortage of new urban housing, amplified by stricter mortgage access and local land-use restrictions. This scarcity has hit lower-tier neighborhoods hardest, raising housing costs for poorer families.
  3. Viewing expensive housing as mainly a luxury or positional good led to bad policy choices like restricting credit instead of addressing supply and access. Policy should focus on how mortgage access and supply constraints harm households forced to move, not just on high-end buyers or headline wealth numbers.

What if virtue came naturally?

The Stoic Journal • 60 implied HN points • 22 Jan 26
đź“– Philosophy Practical philosophy Ancient Philosophy Moral Psychology Stoicism Virtue ethics Ethics
  1. People often admire those who seem naturally good and worry that their own goodness looks forced.
  2. Others only see the result, not the inner struggle, so hard-won virtue looks the same as effortless virtue to them.
  3. The real achievement is continuing to do the work anyway, even without recognition. Persistence and the will to keep trying are themselves a kind of gift.

Reflecting on 2025 + Reader Survey | #318

Boundless by Paul Millerd • 115 implied HN points • 30 Dec 25
đź’Ľ Business Content creation Community Building Monetization E-commerce Publishing Entrepreneurship
  1. Prioritized family and creative projects over chasing business growth; spending lots of time with a young child was the year's highlight and brought real joy.
  2. Betting on a premium hardcover and direct-to-reader sales paid off—about 325 copies sold and the launch covered much of the upfront cost, making future sales mostly cash flow positive; expanding store bundles and collectibles looks promising.
  3. The business kept operating but felt like treading water with lower income year-over-year, so the plan is to simplify, experiment with formats and the community, and take a mini-sabbatical to regain focus and momentum in 2026.

Meme-company

benn.substack • 997 implied HN points • 27 Jun 25
đź•ą Technology Startups AI Software Marketing Influencers
  1. The role of software engineers is changing as AI improves, shifting from coding to managing and overseeing AI tasks. This means that skills like project management and having good taste are becoming more important.
  2. Companies can succeed through clever marketing and creating buzz rather than just building the best product. Sometimes, getting awareness before having a good product is the smart move in tech.
  3. In today's world, being a celebrity or influencer can drive success in technology, similar to the art world. People care about the creators more than the specific products, so having a strong personal brand can be very valuable.

Don’t trust the vibes

Ada Yeo • 1631 implied HN points • 01 Nov 23
đź“– Philosophy Truth-seeking
  1. Distrust memes that make you feel morally superior or good about yourself.
  2. Reason from first principles instead of relying on convention or intuition.
  3. Adopt a scout mindset by seeking truth and being open to discarding beliefs that don't work.