Top all-time · #995
The Diff
Personal blog · thediff.coeconomicsbusinessstartups
The Diff is a personal blog at thediff.co about economics, business and startups. Since 2021, 66 different Hacker News readers have linked it 169 times, most often “Refactoring Restaurants”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-31, and you can follow it by feed.
Inflections in Finance and Tech
Most-linked posts?
- /6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2022-10-02
- Refactoring Restaurants3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-04-29
- The Factorio Mindset3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-07-30
- How Should Higher Education Be Financed?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-12-18
- Understanding Jane Street3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-08-01
- Turning Non-Tradables into Tradables3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-08-29
- How Companies Think About Layoffs2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-12-19
- Money, Credit, Trust, and FTX2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-11-14
- The promise and paradox of decentralization2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-11-05
- How Many Trillion-Dollar Companies Should There Be?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-01-02
What Hacker News says?
Times change. People adapt. Happened before, will happen again. Some adapt willingly, some hesitatingly. Current AI wave is a corporate funded experiment desperate to find something compelling beyond controlled demos to economically recoup the deepening hole in their balance sheet. The novelty has begun to wear off, the innovation has started to stagnate and the money running out. The only money making innovation le…
Comment linking /archive/a-theory-of-grift/
on “Sora: Creating video from text”Submitted Understanding Jane Street as a story · 671 points
HN discussionIf you don't own the customer relationship, you don't own the profit. See App store, FB. NVidia is delivering commodity hardware to the hyperscalers, and would eventually get commodity margins (when hyperscalers make their models work on their own hardware). Amazing article on relevant economics of squeezing vendors - actually about antitrust ad-models but: The answer is that [advertising based] companies are an ide…
Comment linking /archive/ad-supported-platforms-are-a-unique-antitrust-problem
on “Nvidia agrees to acquire Hugging Face for $13B”Submitted The Factorio Mindset as a story · 464 points
HN discussionApparently Plaid has 40% penetration of US bank account holders[1], and of course their entire business is storing the username and passwords for all those accounts so they can screen scrape. I struggle to think of a more attractive target than that! [1] https://www.thediff.co/p/plaid-data-layer-to-payments-layer
Comment linking /p/plaid-data-layer-to-payments-layer
on “Hackers claim to have breached Okta systems”Submitted The promise and paradox of decentralization as a story · 138 points
HN discussionI guess you are completely oblivious to how HFT's work and their actual position in the markets. I am a bit biased considering that I work in the industry but actually working in the industry gave me the inner workings of it and how actually they help to close / tighten the bid - ask spread for various securities. I would highly recommend you to read this book ( https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691211…
Comment linking /p/jane-street
on “Serving Netflix Video Traffic at 800Gb/s and Beyond [pdf]”Submitted A Theory of Grift as a story · 111 points
HN discussionNot commenting specifically on LI ranking, but Byrne Hobart wrote a terrific rebuttal of the main premise of this book https://www.thediff.co/archive/bullshit-jobs-is-a-terrible-c...
Comment linking /archive/bullshit-jobs-is-a-terrible-curiosity-killing-concept/
on “LinkedIn is now using everyone's content to train their AI tool”Submitted Big Tech Sees Like a State (2020) as a story · 88 points
HN discussionhttps://www.thediff.co/ like Stratechery meets Money Stuff
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What software/tech blogs/magazines should I be reading in 2024?”Submitted “Bullshit jobs” is a terrible, curiosity-killing concept as a story · 79 points
HN discussionIn "The Promise and Paradox of Decentralization" [0] I found this quote to be very appealing wrt decentralization: > "[A]ny decentralized order requires a centralized substrate, and the more decentralized the approach is the more important it is that you can count on the underlying system." This somewhat counterintuitive notion is often overlooked. In order to facilitate a healthy decentralization effort you need a…
Comment linking /p/the-promise-and-paradox-of-decentralization
on “Avoiding Internet Centralization”Submitted AWS for Industry, but Better: The Railroad Investment Case as a story · 72 points
HN discussionAnything from the IETF is going to be educational for the relevant tech topic: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ I like Peter Zeihan's list for geopolitics: https://zeihan.com/newsletter/ The Diff is good for a broad swathe of tech/finance topics: https://www.thediff.co/ I enjoy Bits About Money, from Patio11: https://bam.kalzumeus.com/ (though the essays usually make their way to HN).
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Which mailing lists would you recommend to subscribe to?”Submitted The 30-Year Mortgage Is an Intrinsically Toxic Product (2019) as a story · 64 points
HN discussionThe NYT's main competitors aren't other newspapers. Their competitors are Substack, Candy Crush, and Netflix. As Byrne Hobart points out, > "in their latest quarter almost 30% of their new digital subscriptions were for games, cooking, and Wirecutter, rather than news." And a bit more cheekily: > "When there's a negative New York Times article about a startup, one of the not-uncommon Tech Twitter jokes is that this…
Comment linking /p/the-nyt-dead-trees-and-disruption
on “On Wordle, the NYT, and Antitrust”Submitted When IBM Was the Center of Gravity (2021) as a story · 62 points
HN discussion30-year fixed rate mortgages should not exist. They only exist in the US and Denmark: https://www.thediff.co/p/the-30-year-mortgage-is-an-intrinsi... And they only exist because of A LOT of government intervention. If interest rates don't continue to only go down - I imagine you'll see them disappear in the US and Denmark. US & EU banks mostly make their mortgage profits from constantly refinancing at ever lower rat…
Comment linking /p/the-30-year-mortgage-is-an-intrinsically-toxic-product-200c901746a?triedSigningIn=true
on “New Home Prices Are Starting to Drop”Submitted Building for power users as a story · 30 points
HN discussionThe Diff by Bryne Hobart https://www.thediff.co/ is a finance one I enjoyed in the past
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What tech newsletters are you currently subscribing?”Submitted What Happened to All the Diamonds in the Rough? as a story · 28 points
HN discussionThe Diff [0] and Capital Gains [1][2] by Byrne Hobert are excellent. If you're interested in in-depth analysis of current events in finance, tech and other related musings. Capital Gains is more focused on ideas in finance and how to think about them. [0] https://www.thediff.co/ [1] (With referral code) https://capitalgains.thediff.co/subscribe?ref=zlPGzwicD7 [2] (Without referral code) https://capitalgains.thediff.…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Which substacks do you read as soon as it hits your inbox?”Submitted Refactoring Restaurants as a story · 25 points
HN discussion>I must admit I am still having a hard time following you. You're not the first. A "sister" project I started in 2020 is hardware focused, and later on, I determined that a lightweight suite for internet would complement the offline stack: https://ei2030.github.io/FemtoTX/#about One could say it's a "solution in search of a problem", but game development also is an incubator: https://www.thediff.co/archive/a-solutio…
Comment linking /archive/a-solution-in-search-of-a-problem/
on “I'm building a parallel internet, and it's called The Thinnernet”Submitted Facial Recognition as a Pareto Technology as a story · 17 points
HN discussionIf you're into finance and tech, you should subscribe to his newsletter: https://www.thediff.co/ Even the free version has good content.
Comment linking /
on “Writing: Good Career Move, Terrible Career”Submitted Inside The Decline of Stack Exchange as a story · 14 points
HN discussionHe's now the author of a very successful newsletter: https://www.thediff.co/
Comment linking /
on “Writing: Good Career Move, Terrible Career”Submitted FTX, RIP as a story · 12 points
HN discussion
