Top all-time · #2094
Byrne Hobart
Personal blog · diff.substack.comeconomicsbusinessstartups
Byrne Hobart writes The Diff, a personal blog at diff.substack.com about economics, business and startups. Since 2020, 36 different Hacker News readers have linked it 99 times, most often “The Diff”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (7) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Byrne Hobart's The Diff, a Substack on finance and tech, as a source of thoughtful analysis and insightful newsletter writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 7 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Inflections in finance and tech.
Most-linked posts?
- The Diff6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2020-02-09
- Palantir: On Business, Cults, and Politics3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-08-26
- Working in Public and the Economics of Free2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-08-07
- Amazon: A New Kind of Antitrust Risk2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-08-22
- The Future of Remote Work Is Not That Remote2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-05-15
- Big Tech at the End of History2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-09-18
- Stripe and Solid-State Economics2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-05-07
- Newsletters and New Media Economics2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-08-14
- Surviving a Combinatorial Explosion2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-04-23
- To Understand Jio, You Need to Understand Reliance2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-07-31
What Hacker News says?
- https://diff.substack.com/ thoughtful analysis of finance and tech - https://www.kalzumeus.com/archive/ a couple things on here I would say you actually need to read if you want to write code for a living - https://lethain.com/ great insights on engineering management patterns and antipatterns
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted To Understand Jio, You Need to Understand Reliance as a story · 209 points
HN discussionByrne Hobart, who writes about tech but also finance: https://diff.substack.com/
Comment linking /
on “Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other”Submitted Understanding Coinbase as a story · 200 points
HN discussion> Given Linux, FreeBSD and Darwin all already supported it, I wonder to what extent NetBSD/OpenBSD's decision was motivated by formal POSIX conformance versus improving compatibility with Linux/FreeBSD/Apple. It is hard to say, but I think the later was likely just as important as the former, and given the importance of the later, they might still have added it even if it had never formally made it into POSIX. One o…
Comment linking /p/working-in-public-and-the-economics
on “Non-Posix File Systems”Submitted Why are toys such a bad business? as a story · 180 points
HN discussionNot sure about their underratedness, but I find the following newsletters interesting and insightful: Two Truths and a Take by Alex Danco (tech, VC, and broader topics): https://danco.substack.com/ The Uncertainty Mindset by Vaughn Tan: https://uncertaintymindset.substack.com/ The Diff by Byrne Hobart (finance, tech): https://diff.substack.com/ Kneeling Bus by Drew Austin (urbanism, tech): https://kneelingbus.substa…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What are the underrated newsletters you like reading?”Submitted Apple can own I/O to own the universe as a story · 115 points
HN discussionThis locks toy companies into a challenging bet. Every year, they have to a) predict trends, b) invent them, and c) commit capital to them. All without knowing how the rest of the year will turn out. Since toy trends exist, but don’t last for very long, they have to invent new products every year—but the technological state of the art doesn’t advance very fast. It has all the volatility of tech, without the progress…
Comment linking /p/dropbox-information-asymmetry-and
on “Why are toys such a bad business?”Submitted Amazon: A New Kind of Antitrust Risk as a story · 111 points
HN discussionI wrote a Discord bot for this: https://fletcher.fun/amulet , it filters all messages for amulets and tells you the sha and rarity if you find one. Example one we found: https://diff.substack.com/p/an-airline-ipo-in-this-economy Common amulet (75b8af8579d81ba3bac788bb118fa78888717eb55c5faf778ea756750c02837d)
Comment linking /p/an-airline-ipo-in-this-economy
on “Amulet – a short poem with a lucky SHA-256 hash”Submitted In defense of hiring based on side projects as a story · 49 points
HN discussionWhich is why I find it better to get business analysis from people who've made it their job and not overly excited tech journalists: https://diff.substack.com/p/to-understand-jio-you-need-to-un...
Comment linking /p/to-understand-jio-you-need-to-understand
on “What is Jio, and why are tech’s biggest players suddenly obsessed with it?”Submitted Hardware-as-a-Service as a story · 40 points
HN discussionSubmitted Your Life Is (Almost) a Call Option as a story · 38 points
HN discussionSubmitted Big Tech Sees Like a State as a story · 33 points
HN discussionSubmitted Bubbles and Megaprojects Parallelize Innovation as a story · 31 points
HN discussionSubmitted Incumbents, Not Startups, Are Regulatory Arbitrageurs as a story · 16 points
HN discussionSubmitted Sharing and Owning Standards as a story · 14 points
HN discussionSubmitted Stripe and Solid-State Economics as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted Hiring Based on Side Projects: Unfair, but Good for the World as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted China: A Normal Country? as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why Did One Internet Subculture Spot Covid-19 So Early? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Palantir: On Business, Cults, and Politics as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Palantir: On Business, Cults, and Politics as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Discourses on Big Tech as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Shifting the Curve: Why Climate Matters More as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Cloudflare's Intelligent Design as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Decoupling, Digital Currency, and the Consumer of Last Resort as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Understanding Coinbase as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
