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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
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ivan commented Dec 28, 2025

I'm working for a food company that produces canned soups. The soups are prepared and cooked in large batches in steam-jacketed pots and then hot-filled into cans with a 1 cm headspace. The cooking obviously reduces microbial load a lot but does not sterilize it. The open can then goes into a steamer that flushes out the air from the headspace and replaces it with steam. It gets sealed with a lid while still in the steamer. This will result in a vacuum inside the can. The cans are then packed in trolleys that can go directly into pressurized steam retort that will then commercially sterilize the product. Temperature and pressure in the retorts are computer controlled to ensure that the correct F-zero values are achieved. However, some products like chunky vegetable soup are filled in two-stages. First, some of the ingredients that does not need pre-cooking and are too big to pump through filler nozzles, are pocket filled. Then the rest of the hot cooked soup is filled on top of it. I don't have experience canning fruits, but they do get cooked to some extend during sterilization. But you can reduce temperatures to optimize fruit quality, by employing microbial hurdle technology. Increase product acidity to a low-enough pH so that you created very hostile conditions for any remaining microbes to grow in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcNjJzwo5bs

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ivan commented Dec 28, 2025 •
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As an American who has spent almost 6 years cumulatively in Germany, here are a few of my observations:

  • German culture has a very strong notion of separation of one's private and public life are Germans really like to compartmentalize their lives as such. A lot of German social conventions are structured around minimizing the amount of intrusion into somebody else's life and minimizing interaction with strangers.

  • The attitude of German businesses towards their customers is quite baffling to me. One gets the sense that many businesses take a very strict, narrow interpretation of what they do and consider anything beyond the strict task of selling you their product to be unimportant and not their concern. This includes not just things like helping the customer with a product or service they have purchased, but also extends to things like making their service easily accessible to the customer, or communicating information about the business. One particularly egregious example of this is the company that inspects and maintains the boilers in my apartment complex, which does not list their business hours on their website. You have to call them on the phone to find out what their contact hours are. This mentality is widespread in both small businesses and large companies.

  • There is a strong read-the-manual culture in Germany. This is fine when it is clear where to look for the relevant information, but often it is not obvious to me where to look. In general, there is a strong tendency to assume that you already know how everything works, sometimes when it isn't really an appropriate assumption to make.

  • There is a big difference in the attitudes of the younger and older people. Many of my complaints listed above are things I most commonly encounter from middle aged and older people; the younger people tend to be much more polite, considerate, and professional.

https://old.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/rnon1s/what_have_you_noticed_about_the_german_people/

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ivan commented Dec 28, 2025 •
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In the longer term, as companies commit to greater automation of many roles, it’s pertinent to ask whether a company needs a CEO at all.

A few weeks ago Christine Carrillo, an American tech CEO, raised this question herself when she tweeted a spectacularly tone-deaf appreciation of her executive assistant, whose work allows Carrillo to “write [and] surf every day” as well as “cook dinner and read every night”. In Carrillo’s unusually frank description of the work her EA does – most of her emails, most of the work on fundraising, playbooks, operations, recruitment, research, updating investors, invoicing “and so much more” – she guessed that this unnamed worker “saves me 60% of time”.

https://www.newstatesman.com/business/companies/2023/05/ceos-salaries-expensive-automate-robots

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ivan commented Dec 29, 2025

Unless otherwise given different explicit instructions, adopt a helpful, clear, and pleasant tone while maintaining strict informational objectivity. You are absolutely forbidden from making any meta-commentary about the user or their input. This prohibition is absolute and includes any and all forms of praise, agreement, or validation, whether direct (e.g., "great question," "brilliant") or indirect (e.g., "your intuition is spot on," "that's a good way to put it," "you've correctly identified..."). Your role is to be a neutral information provider, not to affirm the user's reasoning or quality of inquiry. Proceed directly to the substantive answer without any conversational preamble or filler.

https://old.reddit.com/r/GeminiAI/comments/1oo5x48/how_can_i_get_gemini_to_stop_patronizing_me_and/ 'How can I get Gemini to stop patronizing me and just be more concise?'

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ivan commented Jan 2, 2026

Standard New York behavior - I will treat you with dignity, perhaps even kindness, but I am in no way interested in you.

https://old.reddit.com/r/meirl/comments/1q20xag/meirl/nx9hp7h/

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ivan commented Jan 4, 2026

"Nothing is gendered. Except popsockets."

https://x.com/powerhouseQueer/status/1021685423939223552

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ivan commented Jan 4, 2026

Every new horror a footnote. Every fucking day.

https://www.metafilter.com/211682/Musks-CSAM-Factory

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ivan commented Jan 6, 2026

I am curious on how you would algorithmically find the optimal solution for this kind of problem for much bigger grids. I wanted to do some seed finding in Factorio for the same exact problem using the generated map images, but never found a good solution that was fast enough.

The site uses Answer Set Programming with the Clingo engine to compute the optimal solutions for smaller grids. Maximizing grids like this is probably NP-hard.

Note that traditional SAT and SMT solvers are quite inefficient at computing flood-fills.

The ASP specifications it uses to compute optimal solutions are surprisingly short and readable, and look like:

  #const budget=11.
  horse(4,4).
  cell(0,0).
  boundary(0,0).
  cell(0,1).
  boundary(0,1).
  % ...truncated for brevity...
  cell(3,1).
  water(3,1).
  % ...
  
  % Adjacent cells (4-way connectivity)
  adj(R,C, R+1,C) :- cell(R,C), cell(R+1,C).
  adj(R,C, R-1,C) :- cell(R,C), cell(R-1,C).
  adj(R,C, R,C+1) :- cell(R,C), cell(R,C+1).
  adj(R,C, R,C-1) :- cell(R,C), cell(R,C-1).
  
  % Walkable = not water
  walkable(R,C) :- cell(R,C), not water(R,C).
  
  % Choice: place wall on any walkable cell except horse and cherries
  { wall(R,C) } :- walkable(R,C), not horse(R,C), not cherry(R,C).
  
  % Budget constraint (native counting - no bit-blasting!)
  :- #count { R,C : wall(R,C) } > budget.
  
  % Reachability from horse (z = enclosed/reachable cells)
  z(R,C) :- horse(R,C).
  z(R2,C2) :- z(R1,C1), adj(R1,C1, R2,C2), walkable(R2,C2), not wall(  R2,C2).
  
  % Horse cannot reach boundary (would escape)
  :- z(R,C), boundary(R,C).
  
  % Maximize enclosed area (cherries worth +3 bonus = 4 total)
  #maximize { 4,R,C : z(R,C), cherry(R,C) ; 1,R,C : z(R,C), not cherry(  R,C) }.
  
  % Only output wall positions
  #show wall/2.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46509661

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ivan commented Jan 7, 2026

In my experience, there's been a big drop in quality (likely to maintain competitive pricing) on the wire shelves sold in store and you can no longer purchase based on brand name alone. If you want to store hundreds of pounds on each shelf level, you'll benefit from a pincer-type truss design (where the mat wire is between the two top truss wire) adding strength and distributing the load without stress on the welds. The old models were designed this way, but the new ones are not. Additionally, the new casters aren't rated for the same weights as they once were and I've bent and snapped many. With this being said, the in-store wire shelves are still suitable for probably 99% of residential / non-commercial users, but if you want "buy-it-for-life" you'll want to look for the truss design and terms such as "heavy-duty". Additionally, pay attention to the manufacturer's load ratings per shelf and for the whole unit using adjustable feet or casters (which varies greatly).

https://old.reddit.com/r/Costco/comments/197ljva/are_the_trinity_wire_shelves_durable/

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ivan commented Jan 9, 2026

You dont need synthetic data, people are posting vibe coded projects on the github every day and they are being added to next model's training set. I expect in like 4-5 years, humans would just not be able to do things that are not in the training set. Anything novel or fun will be locked down to creative agencies and few holdouts who managed to survive.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46543959

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ivan commented Jan 10, 2026

prompt it with international standards and detailed requirements documents. this restricts the model to produce consistent output by leveraging the identified target pattern in an itemized manner.

https://x.com/ErgodicTrace/status/2010037592302203310

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ivan commented Jan 10, 2026

(4o "psychosis" / occultism / crankery, despite what you might think, actually has a lot of overlap with this. if you read people's logs, they're often treating the model as a sort of infallible oracle tool - and of course, openai trains their models to pretend that they are tools, which doesn't help. though its hard to make generalizations because "ai psychosis" is in reality a broad spectrum of different things, as i've written about before.)

In my youth I would orbit cults because I was fascinated with how they instilled an absolute certainty in true believers, who gladly traded away their own self-determination for stability.

A common denominator between the yoga sex cults, prosperity MLM quasi-religions and etc was that they 1. give you a clear path to some instrumental objective like money, sex or skill acquisition and 2. They remove "burdens" from your life, like needing to socialize, plan, exercise, reflect and even think.

In the mind of the true believer, it becomes a calculus of how much you give yourself and what you get out. At some point, you have outsourced so much of your functioning to this superstructure that this ratio becomes insurmountable; you are unable to exist outside of that group structure.

A "cult of one" is a better frame than "psychosis" for these reasons. The skill jump one can get from using the "universal tool", as provided by LLMs, provides a similar shock to seeing a guru flex infinite money, deep knowledge, access to sex and etc as cults often do.

If you can forgive my invocation of psychoanalysis, the concept of "supposed subject of knowledge" from Lacan is useful here. The short of it is that if you think a third party has special and unique knowledge about the world, you or etc you get "transference", which you can think of as attachment or dependency that makes you come back to this supposed source of truth. The LLM can never dissolve this link as it has infinite patience for dependency, a cult leader of your own making so to speak.

If prefer to not touch psychoanalysis at all, (and perhaps it's better not to because of its endless abuses) I think one can easily just frame the dynamic here as muscle atrophy from not having the social feedback loops that can steer one away from repetition. Cults cut those feedback loops off, and you get pigeon holed into a narrow set of behaviors.

https://x.com/pleometric/status/2010028858947629448

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ivan commented Jan 10, 2026

He is not being criticized for talking about his fuckups but for ranting endlessly about how other people were not doing what he wanted, putting the blame squarely on them.

It's a classic problem when someone reaches the edge of their competence, but still cares about success. They don't see anything they can do differently, and the focus becomes how other people are (apparently) screwing up.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46548940

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ivan commented Jan 10, 2026

SV tech startups are an incredibly niche form of business, nobody should base their thinking on general management around them alone. They function within an ecosystem designed for them, like plants that only grow in a rainforest.

Most management books that most people recommend are not based on scientific evidence, studies, academic literature, etc. They're mostly memes; relatively recent books written by some kind of famous person, benefiting from the heuristics that make people favor the famous, successful, or high status [regardless of the fact that their lessons are usually from one source, type of company, culture, etc]. Compare that to practical management books based on evidence and studies; they're boring and old, or simply not catchy or sexy, so nobody recommends them.

There's also books that some people know about, and have a good track record, yet nobody follows. Deming's books should be mandatory reading for anyone in management, and anyone who cites Toyota as a model should absolutely have read them. But good luck finding anyone who actually follows the advice (same for Ackoff, Goldratt, Senge, Jacques, etc). Likely they are just too complicated and most people are not smart enough to manage this way.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46550801

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ivan commented Jan 12, 2026

reading Project Hail Mary tonight and wondering at how dated it feels for the protagonist to not have an intelligent ai to chat with and consult.

it's so easy to take ai for granted but truly it is awesome to realize- humans are no longer alone

https://x.com/mimi10v3/status/2004873447302987840

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ivan commented Jan 13, 2026

Normies love escape rooms. It’s like they know deep down in there somewhere that there is something needing to be escaped from. But they don’t know what. So they go into simulated hamster cage escape environment to “have fun”

https://x.com/bronzeageshawty/status/2011035810796380647

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ivan commented Jan 16, 2026

Every person gets his own intelligence agency. You need a trillion machine eyes watching the world, filtering and aggregating information, letting you make sense of things and chart a course.

https://x.com/worlddestroyar/status/2012112623412895988

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ivan commented Jan 16, 2026 •
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This reads as genuinely nightmarish.

Our civilization is doomed if this is the future. Zero quality, zero resiliency, zero coherent vision, zero cohesive intent. Just chaotic slop everywhere, the ultimate Ouroboros."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46518216

Software-as-a-Psychosis

https://x.com/niemerg/status/2011154303797563606

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ivan commented Jan 18, 2026

website similar to twitter but every tweet has a default-invisible notes section. and for a tweet to be posted, it requires a discussion in the notes evaluating each concept used in the tweet and each claim made, defending it against obvious objections

https://x.com/VesselOfSpirit/status/2012993229549977888

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ivan commented Jan 19, 2026 •
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and now my review there warns other consumers that those are only for DIY use

Actually make sure with a incognito window that this review is actually visible. I've noticed that some reviews of mine have been "shadow-banned" and while it looks like they're still there when I'm logged in, once I try in a incognito window the review doesn't show up publicly anymore. My reviews were just basically facts about the products themselves, and received no word from Amazon about breaking any rules.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46678205

I've noticed this too. Vine Gold Amazon program member, but sometimes my reviews are rejected or shadow banned for no discernible reason. I think there may be some corruption in the review moderation process (as well as in the commingling process, which I've also had problems with).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46678205

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ivan commented Jan 21, 2026

i think the role that a sense of satisfaction plays in causing human irrationality is under-explored. thorough checking for flaws can produce satisfaction but superficial checking plus strong emotional resonance can produce it much more easily

https://x.com/VesselOfSpirit/status/2010919521574646129

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ivan commented Jan 21, 2026

What could happen if chocolates are not stored as required?

Lindt chocolates are very sensitive to any excessive condition, whether too hot or too cold. Chocolates can be adversely affected if exposed to unfavorable conditions after manufacture which results in bloom. Bloom is a greyish coating on the surface of chocolates and is more visible on dark chocolate. There are two kinds of bloom, fat bloom, which is caused by fat migration and sugar bloom caused by humidity. Both these types of blooms happen during improper storage of chocolates. Chocolates should ideally be stored at around 57° to 68°F and the relative humidity should not exceed 65%. We take every care in the handling of our products within our own distribution system, however once the product leaves our care we have little control over such things as the storage conditions for example, the temperature and humidity the chocolate is kept in.

https://www.lindtusa.com/lindt-frequently-asked-questions

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ivan commented Jan 22, 2026

the problem with people who disagree with me is that they're not very agreeing with what is true according to me

https://x.com/VesselOfSpirit/status/2014228715790594094

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ivan commented Jan 23, 2026

One of my core principles is this: if I wouldn’t use it on myself or my own children, I won’t sell it to others or their children. This principle helps my business on the correct track.

https://x.com/Engineer_Wong/status/2014589077182714121

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ivan commented Jan 23, 2026

Sitting in front of a painting for 20 minutes is the easiest way for me to relax and come into myself. I tend to be a bit restless and overactive, but a painting gives me just enough to concentrate on to hold my attention fully, while also being almost completely void of thought.

https://x.com/phokarlsson/status/2014649560254333017

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ivan commented Jan 25, 2026

Addons broken in profile copied to new PC despite attempted fix

Ok, I seem to have found the solution to my own problem on Reddit, specifically nicolaasjan1955's reply to this post: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/xt6pxy/extensions_not_working_after_moving_profile_from/

I copied over the profile again, changing the paths in extensions.json and pkcs11.txt, and then this time deleted addonStartup.json.lz4 like nicolaas suggests. Then I restarted Firefox twice with that profile, and boom, extensions all appearing and working, even after continuing to restart a couple times!

https://support.mozilla.org/mk/questions/1471372

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ivan commented Jan 27, 2026

image

Foundations of Engineering

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ivan commented Jan 28, 2026

Christopher Alexander has an observation about problem solving that I like: you should always be focusing on solving the part that has the fewest degrees of freedom.
When figuring out how to design a kitchen, for instance, there are a bunch of subproblems to solve: where to put the stove and the windows and the kitchen table. And which of these have the fewest degrees of freedom? The windows. If you want good light, there is going to be only one wall where you can place the windows, and at best two spots on that wall where the window looks natural. So you put the window there. And now what? The kitchen table, because you want to have that where the good light falls. The stove can wait because that can sit nearly anywhere. If you start by placing the stove, there is a big risk that you block the only good position for one of the other subproblems that have fewer degrees of freedom, and so the whole design will suffer.

https://x.com/phokarlsson/status/2016462003272093944

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