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2024 reading list
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2024_reading.md

Things I might read in 2024.

Now extended into 2025.

  • Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Richard Howard (translator) - The Little Prince
  • (Translation by) Sam Hamill - Yellow River: Three Hundred Poems From the Chinese
  • Sayaka Murata, Ginny Tapley Takemori (translator) - Convenience Store Woman (via)
  • Jorge Luis Borges - Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (in Labyrinths)/ printed (via)
  • Franz Kafka - The Metamorphosis (via)
  • William Olaf Stapledon - Star Maker/ audio, go to 12m35s to skip past the introduction spoilers
  • The Heart of Innovation: A Field Guide for Navigating to Authentic Demand/ audio (via)
  • Peter D. Kaufman - Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition
  • Lia A. DiBello - Expertise in Business: Evolving with a Changing World (in The Oxford Handbook of Expertise) (via)
  • Joël Glenn Brenner - The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars
  • Elad Gil - High Growth Handbook/ audio
  • W. Edwards Deming - The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education/ audio
  • W. Edwards Deming - The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education/ the PDF or ebook
  • Henrik Karlsson - Escaping Flatland/ including the posts I SingleFile'd
  • the relevant-looking posts on benkuhn.net/posts
  • Commoncog Case Library Beta
  • Keith J. Cunningham - The Road Less Stupid: Advice from the Chairman of the Board/ audio
  • Keith J. Cunningham - The 4-Day MBA/ video
  • Cedric Chin's summary of 7 Powers
  • Akio Morita, Edwin M. Reingold, Mitsuko Shimomura - Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony
  • Nomad Investment Partnership Letters or redacted (via)
  • How to Lose Money in Derivatives: Examples From Hedge Funds and Bank Trading Departments
  • Brian Hayes - Infrastructure: A Guide to the Industrial Landscape
  • Accelerated Expertise (via)/ printed, "read Chapters 9-13 and skim everything else"
  • David J. Gerber - The Inventor's Dilemma (via Oxide and Friends)
  • Alex Komoroske - The Compendium / after I convert the Firebase export in code/websites/compendium-cards-data/db.json to a single HTML page
  • Rich Cohen - The Fish That Ate The Whale (via)
  • Bob Caspe - Entrepreneurial Action/ printed, skim for anything I don't know

Interactive fiction

unplanned notable things read

unplanned and abandoned

  • Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga - The Courage to Be Disliked/ audio
  • Matt Dinniman - Dungeon Crawler Carl/ audio
  • Charles Eisenstein - The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible/ audio
  • Geoff Smart - Who: The A Method for Hiring/ audio
  • Genki Kawamura - If Cats Disappeared from the World/ audio
  • Paul Stamets - Fantastic Fungi: How Mushrooms Can Heal, Shift Consciousness, and Save the Planet/ audio
  • Jefferson Fisher - The Next Conversation/ audio
@ivan

ivan commented Jun 22, 2026

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Not really. Software development includes a lot of soft skills, architectural decisions, processes, interpersonal things, working relationships with colleagues, things bare AI cannot (yet) cover. For personal projects - I either do a learning project with no AI or a fun quick project with AI. For work - it's just another tool.

https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1ubvauy/ai_is_making_me_want_to_quit_everything_related/?depth=99

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ivan commented Jun 22, 2026

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It's not even close. The CEMU version is objectively the best way to play the game. Over any Switch emulator or the Switch 2.
All the mods (google BCML and check out gamebanana's CEMU BOTW page), graphic packs, reshade presets, the motion control support with any gamepad incl. Steam Deck, higher performance even at 4k... The ONE thing the Switch emulated version has going for it, a texture mod, is also entirely usable on PC with an unpacked game (the only caveat being some shrines may crash on load, so it's better to keep a vanilla dump for shrines if they do).

Otherwise, CEMU is so much better in every way. Switch also has mods, but they are far fewer and require more steps to set up and use BCML for.

https://old.reddit.com/r/cemu/comments/1ljqlrb/is_cemu_still_the_best_for_breath_of_the_wild/

@ivan

ivan commented Jun 24, 2026 •
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If It's Worth Your Time To Lie, It's Worth My Time To Correct It

https://x.com/danwilliamsphil/status/2069712003464048777

@ivan

ivan commented Jul 3, 2026

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My background is in embedded systems, specifically routers, in which bugs and unexpected operations happen from time to time, causing problems. In this environment, storage space is at a premium (most routers do not have hard drives, and only a limited amount of RAM and non-volatile flash memory), and devices are often deployed at remote sites with no operator at the console. Embedded devices are expected to function properly without human intervention, and crashes or other malfunctions are rare compared to interactive applications.

In this environment, when an error occurs, it is a good idea to record as much information as possible, because asking the operator to turn on extra event logging and then try to re-create the failure is only going to make the customer more angry ("my network has already broken once today, you want me to intentionally break it again?"). That one crash is the only chance you have to learn about the cause.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zooko/foolscap/refs/heads/master/doc/logging.xhtml

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ivan commented Jul 7, 2026

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There's a huge case of survivorship bias when trying to recall historical analogues, because in every instance where margins collapsed and competition made the industry a commodity business, the big proprietary names are no longer with us. Here's a selection of examples, though:

1. Memory chip margins collapsed so much in the 80s that Intel exited the memory chip business entirely. At the time, they were known much more as a memory chip company than a microprocessor company.

2. Margins for high-end workstations collapsed in the face of cheaper IBM PC clones and an explosion of MS Windows software. This led directly to the deaths of SGI, Sun, Symbolics, Lucid, LMI, etc.

3. Proprietary UNIX variants like HP-UX, IRIX, AIX, and SCO Unix have basically completely died out, replaced by lower-cost proprietary OSes like Windows and MacOS, or by open-source descendants of Linux and BSD.

4. Many commercial database vendors like Oracle, dBase, Sybase, FoxPro, and Microsoft (SQL Server and Access) found themselves very much under margin pressure from PostGres, MySQL, and SQLite. Oracle survived thanks to their massive installed base and legal department, and Microsoft survived because they could cross-subsidize from their OS and Office monopolies, but dBase, Sybase, and FoxPro are no longer with us.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48809877

@ivan

ivan commented Jul 9, 2026

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LLMs drive the unit cost of cognition to zero. Therefore, you will exhaust yourself near-instantly trying to drive differentiated value out of cognitive work. Non-arbitrable labor is one safe haven: bending steel, drilling wells, running cables, flying drones, etc. Physical agency gets you a premium the clankers can’t (yet?) trespass upon. That’s why guys building data centers are making bank & job-hopping while the SAs administering the computational guts of them are struggling. A second vector is reputational: either by authority (you’re a regulator) or by taste (you’re a rare/reknown specialist) you make quality attestations about cheaply-produced cognitive artifacts. The first vector is a big community; the second is not. Get out of being in a knife fight with the clankers on their own turf, they’ll gut you.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48839984

@ivan

ivan commented Jul 12, 2026

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the triumphal afterglow of a successful slop project

https://catpranks.tv/posts/andrew-kelley-did-nothing-wrong/

@ivan

ivan commented Jul 13, 2026

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I have never interacted with a more annoying entity, human or otherwise, than this thing. I hate it more than I have ever hated any human being. I hate that I am constantly, frantically typing away “chatting” with this fucking thing and that’s how I make my living now. I hate that if I choose not to talk to this obnoxious piece of shit that I will fall behind the rest of the people at my job because the baseline is now “chatting” with, wrangling, waiting for this smug, twee digital sex pest who I would never, ever desire to speak to in real life if it were a person. I hate when it says my name. I hate when it pretends to speak like an ensouled human instead of an arc welder with the incidental capacity for English. I hate the cynical, faux-precocious new elite that sits behind it and has shoved it into our lives. I only believe it will eliminate my job because I’ll have finally had enough and switched to digging for clams in the mud.

https://x.com/pneumic/status/2074662768175681857

@ivan

ivan commented Jul 19, 2026

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Why Use JetBrains Runtime?

  • Embedded browser: JetBrains Runtime includes the Java Chromium Embedded Framework (JCEF), which enables you to embed a Chromium-based browsers in your JVM-based application. To use it, download a build with JCEF.
  • Enhanced class re-definition with the DCEVM technology that makes it easier to reload changed code without restarting JVM; this feature needs to be explicitly enabled with -XX:+AllowEnhancedClassRedefinition.
  • Better FPS performance for graphics-intensive applications.
  • Improved font rendering, keyboard input (such as shortcuts and multinational keyboards), HiDPI and accessibility support.
  • Robust desktop experience: GUI-related fixes often reach JetBrains Runtime much earlier than the corresponding version of OpenJDK.
  • Additional capabilities that are made available to applications through JBR API services such as, for example, the ability to wrap a native graphics texture into java.awt.Image.

https://github.com/JetBrains/JetBrainsRuntime

@ivan

ivan commented Jul 21, 2026

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UFS Explorer, www.ufsexplorer.com. Goto tool for many pros, you could regard it the current golden standard. [Win]{FAT|NTFS|UFS|HFS|HFS+|APFS|EXT|BTFRS|XFS}

R-Studio, www.r-tt.com. Used by many pros for logical data recovery. Moderately difficult to use. [Mac/Win/Lin]{FAT|NTFS|UFS|HFS|HFS+|APFS|EXT}

DMDE, www.dmde.com. Another favorite for some pros. If you're new to this, this tool can be quite overwhelming. Be warned that this tool can write to patient drive. [Mac/Win/Lin]{FAT|NTFS|HFS|HFS+|APFS|EXT|REFS|BTRFS}

GetDataBack, www.runtime.org. For some issues and file systems the goto tool for quite a few data recovery pros. Moderately difficult to use. [Win]{FAT|NTFS|HFS+|APFS|EXT}

FileScavenger, www.quetek.com. Not mentioned very often but definitely worth it IMO. Quite simple to use in standard situations. [Win]{FAT|NTFS|UFS|HFS|HFS+|APFS|EXT|BTFRS|XFS}

https://old.reddit.com/r/datarecovery/comments/s567lj/whats_the_difference_between_quality_data/

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ivan commented Jul 21, 2026

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If you are truly exceptional at something, a hard truth you will face is that you can't expect the same standard of others. By definition, you are an outlier, and thus you live on an island.

Many of us struggle with this because:

  • (a) we wish to be optimists of our fellow man
  • (b) it is lonely being on an island, or
  • (c) we seek to be humble about our powers.

But honesty is the best policy in this case. Humility that is not truthful is more like a chain than a virtue. And you can still be optimistic about others. But not by pretending they can emulate you or touch the same bar. Rather, you can be optimistic that if you build the right bridge, they can and will cross to join you where you are.

And an even better policy? To realize that others around you are on their islands too, exceptional from you in their own ways, and ways that you may not fully realize yet. Perhaps there is a bridge or two you may cross also.

I am a very optimistic person when it comes to people's ability to grow, change and develop mastery in their field, if they really invest themselves into it. Almost to a fault :) Most of my writing and the way I choose to lead is based on that belief.

But my optimism comes with a deep appreciation for how hard it is to be truly exceptional. To become an outlier in terms of excellence. In addition to natural talent, good fortune and intent, it requires oodles of mental work and fortitude. And even if you are the rare person to reach the mountaintop, you realize you're... on an island.

It is why I believe bridge-building is an incredible skill to nurture too. In fact, perhaps we should think of this as part of what it takes to be a truly exceptional expert or leader - to bring others along too.

https://x.com/vixsheikh/status/2079647598915543416

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ivan commented Jul 21, 2026

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Caleb Hammer is sort of a throwback, in the same vein as characters like Dr. Phil. And like Dr. Phil, he invites his audience to gawk at these people who've been specially selected to stir up self-righteous anger and inspire torrents of abuse. It's despicable.

https://x.com/StolenDans/status/2079658091591991416

@ivan

ivan commented Jul 27, 2026

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Yes, pleaaaaase. Apple’s modems just do not have the same performance as Qualcomm’s cellular chips. While Apple’s use less power and download/upload speeds are comparable, Apple’s chips frequently drop and regain connection while Qualcomm has been rock solid. This obviously differs a bit based on the area, but everyone in my area that has apple chips, no matter the carrier, frequently deals with random drops while people right next to them on the same carrier with Qualcomm chips don’t deal with this issue at all. At least to me, it feels almost same as the intel vs Qualcomm chips back in the day, and this same area had massive issues with anybody who had intel chips

https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/1v7ipi5/us_iphone_18_pro_models_could_ship_with_same/?depth=99

@ivan

ivan commented Jul 30, 2026

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You did a hermeneutical injustice. You did an epistemic trespassing. You did a testimonial injustice. You did a weak apology. You did no growth. This makes it abundantly clear you don’t even understand the epistemic nature of the multiplicity of your offenses.

https://x.com/morallawwithin/status/2007521559557402917

@ivan

ivan commented Aug 2, 2026

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• We've always tried to do things well at Stripe. I've come to see that attempting to do them beautifully is often a helpful way to break out of standard practices and to do something with greater novelty and in a way that might have other benefits besides. (Also, excellent people want to do great work because it is intrinsically satisfying. Explicitly allowing aesthetic considerations to carry weight avoids having to justify every assessment with some kind of torturous empiricism.)

https://x.com/patrickc/status/2083931939673878592

@ivan

ivan commented Aug 14, 2026

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The craving for material goods (power) is not so much due to the direct pleasures of wealth, as none can be seated on more than one chair or eat himself more than sated. Rather, the value of a fortune to life consists in the rich opportunities for anchoring and distraction offered to the owner.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/45/The_Last_Messiah

@ivan

ivan commented Aug 20, 2026

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Just a few days ago they turned on an experiment the forces claude code to use bash over standard tools in auto mode.

From the system prompt directly, new as of August 18th:

Do your work through the Bash tool wherever it can accomplish the job: read files with cat, head, or sed -n, search with grep and find, and make file changes with sed, heredocs, or short scripts, rather than using the dedicated Read, Edit, or Write tools. Fall back to a dedicated tool only when Bash genuinely cannot do the job.

I was wondering why Claude Code started ignoring my LSP tools and such a couple days ago, and this is why. Prompting around it (even with CLAUDE.md) results in low adherence. This can be turned off by setting a special environment variable (setting CLAUDE_CODE_THRIFTY_SONIC to 0), but this is just a bad idea all around.

I'm sure they'll argue they are trying to make it use less context tokens to do things, but if this is the best they could think of, ....

This is of course, also not documented anywhere, as is typical for anthropic, you just have to guess whether you are going crazy or if they changed stuff seriously on you under the covers.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49373083

@ivan

ivan commented Sep 1, 2026

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maybe in the end you can only build exactly the god that you deserve

https://x.com/catehall/status/2094648308086305199

@ivan

ivan commented Sep 7, 2026

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When you use an LLM to author a post, you may think you are generating plausible writing, but you aren’t: to anyone who has seen even a modicum of LLM-generated content (a rapidly expanding demographic!), the LLM tells are impossible to ignore. Bluntly, your intellectual fly is open: lots of people notice — but no one is pointing it out. And the problem isn’t merely embarrassment: when you — person whose perspective I want to hear! — are obviously using an LLM to write posts for you, I don’t know what’s real and what is in fact generated fanfic. You definitely don’t sound like you, so…​ is the actual content real? I mean, maybe? But also maybe not. Regardless, I stop reading — and so do lots of others.

https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2025/12/05/your-intellectual-fly-is-open/

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