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Ink & Switch's manifesto for software that works offline, syncs when connected, and keeps your data on your devices. CRDTs, P2P, and the future of collaboration.

“This paper changed how I think about software architecture. The cloud-first default is a choice, not a necessity. Local-first gives users real ownership without sacrificing collaboration.”

Henrik Karlsson on how the people you surround yourself with define the ceiling of your thinking - and how to be intentional about your information diet.

“The most important thing I read this month. Made me audit who I follow and what I read. The section on 'information neighbors' is a concept I keep coming back to.”

Samuel Hughes makes the case that concrete can be beautiful - challenging the assumption that concrete equals brutalism. Cast stone mixed with cement can resemble natural stone at a fraction of the cost.

“Changed my mind completely. I always associated concrete with ugly buildings, but Hughes shows that's a design choice, not a material constraint. The historical examples of beautiful concrete buildings are stunning.”

Steve Klabnik on why programming languages can only afford a fixed amount of 'weirdness' - and why the most successful ones spend that budget carefully.

“Explains so much about language adoption. Rust spent its strangeness budget on ownership. Go spent it on goroutines. The languages that try to be weird everywhere struggle to get adopted.”

Virginia Postrel on why the history of textiles is the history of technology itself - from the spindle to the spinning jenny to synthetic fibers. Based on her book 'The Fabric of Civilization.'

“Virginia is one of WiP's star writers and a genuinely original thinker. This piece reframes the industrial revolution through textiles - the original high-tech industry. You'll never look at your clothes the same way.”

Scott Alexander's sprawling, essential essay on coordination failures — why systems that nobody wants emerge anyway, and what that implies for everything from capitalism to AI alignment.

“The essay I find myself referencing more than any other. Moloch as a concept for 'the thing that makes systems defect even when everyone inside them would prefer they didn't' is extraordinarily useful.”

Tim Urban's accessible exploration of the question of why we haven't found extraterrestrial life — covering all major hypotheses from the Great Filter to the Zoo hypothesis.

“The best introduction to the Fermi Paradox that exists. If you only read one thing about astrobiology this year, make it this.”

Patrick McKenzie's comprehensive guide to salary negotiation — covering why you should always negotiate, how to anchor, what to say when asked your current salary, and how to think about the whole process.

“Most people leave tens of thousands on the table over a career by not knowing this stuff. Patrick is the best technical writer on career topics for engineers — practical, specific, and genuinely useful.”

Emily Bender and colleagues on stochastic parrots — why LLMs aren't 'understanding' anything and why that gap matters deeply.

“A necessary counterweight to anthropomorphizing LLMs. The arguments in here are going to matter more and more as these systems become infrastructure.”

Anthropic research on training helpful and harmless AI

“One of the most practical approaches to alignment that is actually deployed in production”

Ryan Singer (ex-Basecamp) on what product management actually is - not feature requests or roadmaps, but shaping work so it can be built in a bounded time.

“If your PM is just prioritizing a backlog, they're doing it wrong. Ryan's 'shaping' concept is the most useful PM framework I've encountered.”

Jason Cohen on finding your ICP

“Wish I had read this before our first 100 sales calls. Save yourself time.”

Cedric Chin's careful examination of where deliberate practice research holds up and where it doesn't — an important corrective to the popularized version of Ericsson's work.

“Ericsson's own work is being systematically misread. If you've read Outliers or Peak and think you understand deliberate practice, read this first.”

Farnam Street's comprehensive overview of mental models from across disciplines — the latticework approach to thinking that Charlie Munger made famous.

“A good entry point into the Munger approach to reasoning. The actual value is in following the links — FS has expanded each model into much deeper posts.”