Blogs I enjoy very much
Sat Feb 10 2024Introduction
Ben Kuhn's blog has a blogroll and I thought it was an idea good enough to steal. (I guess it's a more grown-up version of the blogrolls we used to have back when every single one of us had a blogspot.com).
And I'm also apeing his call to action: if there's a blog you like, or think I'd like, please send an email to me: I really love reading!
People whose writing I admire
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Ben Kuhn: I first found his blog on HN with the post how to make your video calls almost as good as face-to-face. My favourites:
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Robert Heaton: devilishly clever, very offbeat, dreadfully funny. I first found his blog on HN, on the post preventing impossible game levels with cryptography. I really liked this post because it goes deep (you learn a lot) while staying interesting and funny throughout. Robert has this unique conceit of using a "frame story" to talk about dry technical concepts, which I really enjoy. My favourites:
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Bartoz Ciechanowski: he writes really beautiful deep dives of interesting physics/CS concepts. His visualisations are absolutely top-class: professional and beautiful. You could compile them into a textbook, honestly. This is definitely something I need to ape. (see Light and Shadows). I really like the way he explains complicated concepts from first principles: in Cameras and Lenses, for instance, he starts with a photosensor, then a pinhole camera, then lenses and finally cameras. I must confess that I have not read them fully because they are long and difficult but I will surely return to them again and again.
Some of my favourites (apart from the ones already linked):
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Dyno Might: good, clear explanations of things very much in my ballpark (statistics/economics/game theory/). I don't know who he is but I wouldn't be surprised if he did PPE.
Some of my favourites:
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Arthur Allshire: haven't read him enough, but I liked the following posts:
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Henry Robinson: consistently excellent explanations of distributed systems. I stumbled upon him when reading for MIT's distributed systems course. I really like his CAP FAQ: I had written one myself before realising that he'd done it better 8 years before. The man is basically twelve, thirteen years ahead of me. I also liked his very simple explanation of how you can have consensus in real life in the face of the FLP theorem (spoiler alert: you give up validity in the trifecta of termination, agreement, and validity) This is explained in his excellent A brief tour of FLP Impossibility.
- He also has a "study list" entitled Distributed systems theory for the distributed systems engineer and I fully intend to work through this list once I'm done with 6.824.
Some other posts I enjoyed:
- FLP and CAP aren't the same thing
- His series on consensus protocols: 2PC, 3PC, and Paxos
Well-known people on the internet
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Slate Star Codex: this one needs no introduction, I think.
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Gwern: ditto.
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Shamus Young: writes wonderfully about video games and explains video game development/programming very well. Was one of the first writers I ever read.
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Patrick McKenzie, or patio11. Very famous for his success in building and running successful SaaSes: see Running a Software Business on 5 hours a Week. But my favourite posts are actually his posts about living and working in Japan: Doing Business in Japan, (I particularly liked his anecdote about the local bank he used). I also really liked Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You where---after reading the article---I almost wanted to have my credit hstory stolen so I could avail myself of the advice in the article and tear the CRAs a new one. He's also great at explaining interesting things:
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Bret Deveraux: writes a very famous history blog. I really liked his Logistics series and the farming series.
People I know IRL
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Joy Wang: We're neighbours(ish) and we were batchmates in Oxford. Her piece Complex systems without a leader was absolutely brilliant (what do Overwatch teams, neurons, and blockchain have in common?) And I've always wondered why Singaporean shows have terrible writing
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Chin Kee Yong: We've known each other for over a decade now. Back in secondary school we collaborated on several different projects (read: I just bounced ideas off him and he did all the work). I've always admired him for his clear, punchy, and funny writing---it hits all the right notes without wasting your time. and truly creative mind. I really liked this original screenplay he wrote. CKY is also a world-class worldbuilder. He designed an entire alchemical fantasy setting) when we were like, what, 16? and has written several companion works. He's currently working on an incredibly ambitious interactive fiction (IF) game based on that setting. that's already been praised by Emily Short (queen of IF), but has also built loads of other games like a chess tower defence game.
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Wicked Fighting: His faculty with words is unparalleled, and even when I don't agree with him I still find his writing witty and cutting and a joy to read. He has the genius talent of coming up with absolutely savage zingers. My favourite posts: one where he shits on PSC scholars (I loved this one for the zinger "policy-based evidence making"), another one where he shits on Five Guys, yet another where he shits on Singapore's mandatory conscription. I also loved this beautiful and inspiring post on legal activism, and I'll quote the last paragraph here:
One more thing about the public record – cases will be read. All lawyers trace the ancestry of their knowledge to those who came before. And constitutional lawyers especially, will learn from the mistakes of the old, and craft a better case. A new song to move even the shrivelled hearts of old men and women.