Steven Ritchie 🧋

Going to attempt this 100-opinion thread on digital products. Already stressed about trying to hit 100.

@clerk Down right now? Can't access dashboard and attempting to auth on our platform that uses clerk is getting a 429.

what are the popular/useful QA agents out there right now?

There's been a resurgence in writing about taste and how important it will be in the age of AI (in terms of research taste, product taste, code, etc). I'm trying to make sense of it. The way I'm understanding things, people are using taste as shorthand for both pattern-matching & judgement vs personal aesthetics. It would be helpful to split the two up so you can better understand how to train and improve the right taste for you. One focused on aesthetics and is personal; it’s about what resonates with you. In this instance, there is arguably no bad taste (that’s applying a judgement of someone else’s choices with your own lens). The second is about distinguishing “good from bad” when attempting to meet a goal. This is arguably more objective and judgement based, since it’s something the industry generally coalesces around and there's usually some prior data. For the personal angle, it’s seeing what resonates. it's far more about aesthetics. Subrina Heyink had some great posts about this on Substack. Derek (@dieworkwear) does as well on PutThisOn. The short answer is trying lots of things and seeing what resonates. It's a lot of exploration and self-awareness into knowing what works for you and why. Maybe the only "bad" taste in this scenario is mindlessly following norms without considering why. But this is more like undeveloped taste. Your goal in this style of taste is just personal satisfaction. For the goal based one, it’s understanding what works and what doesn’t. The taste that comes in for something like research is an intuition for what will lead to potentially interesting outcomes. To get there you need to have a strong understanding of the landscape and what came before you. Bad taste here is clearer because it's essentially just bad decision-making. Your goal here is finding something that actually works. This could obviously overlap with personal satisfaction (it filters the available options). The best product people tend to have a strong sense of both personal aesthetics as well as pattern matching, allowing them to combine both what they find personally resonant with what works for products. The more I write about it the more I think they overlap. - you need a strong understanding of what came before you (taste has a lot of cultural context) - when multiple options can work there is a still a need for judgement In both scenarios exposure to lots of ideas/examples is key. So ultimately I think if you want to improve your taste you need to consider both. PS I'm just trying to figure this out so I could be overthinking this entire thing.

@ifvictr @aadilpickle Huge, thanks for sharing.

@aadilpickle for those too lazy to triple-tap to toggle grayscale:

Got a new iPhone yesterday I have a special setup to make it as minimally addicting as possible and also as annoying as possible for my friends to contact me enjoy! aadillpickle.com/blog/iphone-se…

Another excellent essay from @zebriez and @joincolossus

@wolfejosh Interesting -- definitely would have thought it's the inverse. I wonder if the "where" has more short term impact but over 20y it nets out.

1/ Its not WHERE you study, its WHAT you study.

Been loving claude code so much I almost upgraded to Max. Instead I spent too long staring at the terminal waiting for credits to reset and coding by hand. Felt weird, like I had one arm tied behind my back.

@amandanat Thought maybe this only included puns/portmanteaus at first.

I have a bunch more recommendations in SparkToro’s annual gift guide. My co-authors include: - the inventor of the commercial sous vide - a bartending legend - a James Beard-award winning writer

I’m a culinary school grad and former test kitchen cook. I put way too much thought into what I buy, and I only recommend what I truly love. Some of my gift recs include… The Fluicer: Sideways pivot design uses more leverage, less effort. Folds flat and stows away nicely.

Are there any good e-ink devices for reading long form PDFs? My go to has been getting them printed and bound and I like that, despite it making me feel like I’m in the Stone Age. But it’s a slow cycle of printing and picking it up. Looking for ideas. Maybe @remarkablepaper?

@chandhana01 should check out Metaphors We Live By. Not specific to this idea but would be interesting to see how metaphors compared to reality differ in each language

how much of people's thoughts are influenced by the language they primarily think in/grew up thinking in? especially since the articualtion of ideas in said language reveals what its speakers consider important enough to name

What’s the best site/newsletter for keeping up with interesting papers on @arxiv ?

@cloudenlight Excited to learn what you're working on + up to now!

If you're interested in more, consider subscribing to my Substack! eszterc.substack.com

How much of investing is about the founder instead of the idea? A Y Combinator panel of VCs discussed what they look for in biotech companies. It wasn't the most researched, novel, or technical ideas that stood out. It was always the founder with this one trait: truth-seeking.

Srs question: has anyone actually produced meaningfully better/more work thanks to any sort of AI-notetaking-synthesis tool? Feels like everybody sharpening their saw and nobody is cutting. Specific examples would be great.

@paularambles always looking for excuses and reminders to switch to wfc. this is one of them.

there’s wfh and then there’s wfc

Here's the second essay where I cover the problem and some big factors in more detail. staticloop.co/understanding-…

I've been researching infertility for the last few weeks trying to understand what opportunities might exist to help those looking to make the journey a bit easier! I'm writing about what I learn, starting with the problem itself.

When researching infertility I was confusing fertility & infertility. It's a common mistake with big implications. Fertility is about the ability to conceive, while infertility is the struggle to do so after a year or more.

@Galileo_AI Just discovered and can't wait to give it a shot. Pls help me suck at design less.

The moment is here! Galileo AI is opening up sign-ups for our private beta. If you want immediate access and to start generating designs for free, reply to this thread to skip the line. Be more like Alex and use Galileo AI to crush your deadlines. 👇