The best of the web, according to me
The web is a big place, but these are the best things on it (that I know of).
Most links here will, at a minimum, make you think.
Technical and technology
- A Word is Worth a Thousand Vectors
- Fascinating and approachable introduction to an important algorithm in Natural Language Processing called word2vec
- The technology behind preview photos
- Interesting example of elegant problem solving under tight constraints
- The Pixel Factory: WebGL, GPUs and Math(Box)
- Good visual explanations of computer rendering
- Lessons Learned in Software Development
- Succinct advice that’s not always apparent
- Covariance and Contravariance
- The best explanation I’ve found yet, but still may take a few reads to understand
- Testing without mocking in Scala
- The best practical guide on how to write effective unit tests without mocks
- Effective Learning Strategies for Programmers
- This is also a good programmer-oriented summary of the “growth mindset”
- On Being A Senior [Software] Engineer
- Good guidelines on how to mature as a software engineer
More technical and technology
- Living Without Atomic Clocks in Cockroach DB
- Shows how to solve a hard problem under constraint
- Three things that every medical writer should know about statistics
- Important for reading many scientific papers
- The Little Printf
- Story of stages of a programming career and keeping sight of what matters
- What is the appeal of dynamically typed languages?
- Good points to help me see the upshot
- #DisruptTechInterviews using psych methods, maybe! (with tweets)
- Fact-based suggestions to improve software engineer interviews
- Principal Component Analysis explained visually
- Well done
- Agile, Lean, Patterns: Software has diseconomies of scale - not economies of scale
- Model for understanding software complexity
- It’s a trap! Systems traps in software development
- Useful models for understanding situations in software development
- Type Classes in Scala
- Best explanation of type classes I’ve found
View broadening
- Damn Right Amazon Runs a Fucking Deficit and So Should America
- Stylistically engaging and not something I’d thought of
- Why People Are Irrational about Politics
- Understand political viewpoint origins systematically
- Fuck Nuance
- Persuasive argument that simplified models and arguments are better
- Adtech and tech and social issues - What Happens Next Will Amaze You
- Hyperbolic at times, but explores some of the deeper issues with online advertising
- Antiwork – a radical shift in how we view “jobs”
- Examining whether you ought to be focused on your work
- The Case Against Credentialism
- Explores the phenomenon of credentialed professions
- The CIE and XYZ and xyY color spaces
- Somewhat dense, but makes you think about what color is
- Enough With This Basic Income Bullshit
- A good hard look at basic income
More view broadening
- What I Learned From Dating Women Who Have Been Raped
- Improved my perspective on how to treat rape victims
- Join the Engineering Leisure Class
- A possible alternate lifestyle
- The new mind control
- Serious problems emerging from current technologies
- Shaka, When the Walls Fell
- Thoughts about language based on a Star Trek episode
- The Rest Is Advertising
- Sponsored content is everywhere
- Toxic workers
- Research on how much bad hires hurt vs. how much great hires help
- Why Big Oil Should Kill Itself
- Big oil’s strategic mistakes
- Fifty psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid: a list of inaccurate, misleading, misused, ambiguous, and logically confused words and phrases
- Don’t abuse language, it makes it useless
- Relearning How to Talk in the Age of Smartphone Addiction
- Some interesting ideas on people using phones
- A Theory of Humor
- I was slow to be persuaded, but this is the best answer to “what is humor?” I’ve found
- Why It's OK to Block Ads
- A practical way of looking at online advertising
Understanding life
- Class (American)
- One of the most enlightening pieces I’ve ever read. A clear look at social classes
- Skullfuck You Very Much: Cultural Authority and the Dispossessed
- On social class and credibility, insightful yet entertaining
- Why do we work so hard?
- Serious look at why people of many privileged classes spend their time working
- The 3-ladder system of social class in the U.S.
- Breaks down and explains the American social hierarchy
- Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers
- A serious look at serious problems
- Willpower/cognition pool - Your app makes me fat
- A useful and plausible model for understanding your own behavior
- Normalization of deviance in software: how broken practices become standard
- Explains why many processes end up broken
- The Reductive Seduction of Other People’s Problems
- Limitations of foreign aid and voluntourism
- Do the Thing, and Other Sage Advices (with images, tweets)
- Fun style. Convince yourself to take the right risks
- Placebo effects are weak: regression to the mean is the main reason ineffective treatments appear to work
- Solidified the insight that many measured effects are essentially regression to the mean
- Stop Buying Real Estate (in SF)
- Nice, interesting vertical slice of economics
- If money doesn't make you happy, then you probably aren't spending it right
- Scientifically backed ways to spend money to maximize happiness
- A Nihilist’s Guide to Meaning
- Despite the title, some interesting ways of finding meaning
More understanding life
- The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit
- Why bullshit works, especially in academics
- Dick Smith is the Greatest Private Equity Heist of All Time
- Interesting walk-through on how to steal money from another company
- Influence – The Psychology of Persuasion
- Short summary of elements used in persuasion
Useful
- The Tricky (And Necessary) Business Of Being A Male Advocate For Gender Equality
- Practical advice on a topic that’s easy to do wrong
- Lessons from a surprisingly successful blog
- Very practical advice
- Clean Up Your Mess - A Guide to Visual Design for Everyone
- Practical and easy to follow
- GTD in 15 minutes
- Starting point for developing a personal organization system
- What I'd tell myself about startups if I could go back 5 years
- Short distilled advice, not only for startups
- Mental Models I Find Repeatedly Useful
- Fantastic list of reusable ways to understand the world
More useful
- The Simple Rules That Could Transform How You Launch Your Product
- Excellent guide on this topic
- Hacking strength: Gaining muscle with least resistance
- Efficient approach to exercising
- Least resistance weight loss
- Efficient approach to weight loss
- 16 types of useful predictions
- Practical ways to calibrate and improve your ability to predict
- Dabrowskis Theory and Existential Depression in Gifted Children and Adults
- A good look at existential depression