interests
| Tldr | Article & Author |
|---|---|
| You need to write in order to think well. | Age of the Essayby Paul Graham |
| 80% of data analysis is spent on cleaning. Tidy datasets are easier to manipulate, model and visualise. | Tidy Databy Hadley Wickham |
| Good philosophy proceeds with modest, careful and clear steps. | Brief Guide to Writing the Philosophy Paperby Simon Rippon |
| In the real world, threat models are much simpler. You're either dealing with Mossad or not-Mossad. | This World of Oursby James Mickens |
| Dividing assets fairly is hard. The real world isn't perfectly rational. But, we should still give rational methods a try. | Your Half's Bigger Than My Half!by Ian Stewart |
| We are who we are. But the negative space in a portrait is also part of that portrait. | What if you could do it all over?by Joshua Rothman |
| Be careful what job you take, because your job will change you. | Career Adviceby Moxie Marlinspike |
| Ed-tech products are hard to grow. Monetization at scale is an unsolved problem. | Why Ed-tech Startups Don't Scaleby Gian Segato |
| Good starting point if you're looking for startup advice. Focus on making something users love. | Startup Playbookby Sam Altman |
productivity
| Tldr | Article & Author |
|---|---|
| Use spaced repetition systems like Anki to make memory a choice rather than chance. | Augmenting Long-term Memoryby Michael Nielsen |
| Structure your day rigorously, use your calendar extensively, and focus on optimizing your process rather than obsessing over outcomes. | Productivity, Scheduling, Reading Habits, Work, and Moreby Marc Andreessen |
How to prioritize your life better?
| Prioritizing Betterby Lynette Bye |
| Approach research by prioritizing tasks that reduce uncertainty at the fastest rate, rather than by difficulty or completion time. | Research as a Stochastic Design Processby Jacob Steinhardt |
| Break problems into smaller parts, use bounds, sanity-check your answer, use Google as needed. | Fermi Estimatesby Luke Muehlhauser |
videos
| Tldr | Video & Author |
|---|---|
| Writing papers is a primary mechanism for doing research. Write before doing the research. Because it forces you to be clear, focused, and crystallises what you don't understand. | How to Write a Great Research Paperby Simon Peyton Jones |
Building a thrust vectored model rocket:
| How To Build a Thrust Vectored Model Rocketby Joe Barnard |
| PowerPoint actually has a lot of features and covers a lot of edge cases. | Powerpoint Programmingby Tom Wildenhain |
| If you're interested in deep reinforcement learning, this is a good starting point. | Spinning Up in Deep RLby OpenAI |
| If you're interested in the science of cooking, Kenji's book is a good place to start. This video is a good sneak peek of what he talks about in the book. | The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Scienceby J. Kenji López-Alt |
websites
| Tldr | Website |
|---|---|
| Nonprofit researching and promoting effective altruism | 80,000 Hours |
| Research helps direct donations to the most impactful charities | GiveWell |
| 48 exercises that demonstrate attacks on real-world crypto | Cryptopals Crypto Challenges |
| Insightful case studies from a UX consultancy | builtformars |
| Double-entry accounting from text files | beancount |
research
| Tldr | Website |
|---|---|
| How is consent defined in each US state? | Consent Laws |
quotes
- Kenji López-AltCulture
Food is more than just a collection of ingredients, in the same way that architecture is more than just a collection of bricks, and books are more than just a collection of words. Food has cultural significance, and I think it’s important to understand the cultural context of a particular dish before you start monkeying around with it. This allows you to more fully understand why you’re doing something and why certain changes might make sense.
" - George PólyaHOW TO SOLVE IT
When Archimedes found the area of the surface of the sphere, he did not know any formerly solved problem having the same unknown. But he knew various formerly solved problems having a similar unknown. There are curved surfaces whose area is easier to obtain than that for the sphere and which were well known in Archimedes' time, as the lateral surfaces of right circular cylinders, of right circular cones, and of the frustrums of such cones. We may be certain that Archimedes considered carefully these simpler cases. In fact, in his solution, he uses as approximation to the sphere a composite solid consisting of two cones and several frustums of cones.
" - Satoru IwataUnderstand your customers
Let's say you own a restaurant and you hear a customer say that the food is "too much". When a person says it's "too much", what makes them see things that way? At the root of the problem, it isn't about there being too much food. It's about the food being unappealing. If you had tried to cut the portion size because of that it wouldn't have solved the problem.
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