Learning & books
100 tools recommended in Hacker News comment threads, most-mentioned first.
- Careless People2 threads
A memoir by former Facebook executive Sarah Wynn-Williams about the company's leadership.
- 2 threads
- 1960: The Year The Singularity Was Cancelled ↗1 thread
A 2019 Slate Star Codex essay by Scott Alexander on von Foerster's hyperbolic population model.
- A Perfect Vacuum1 thread
Stanisław Lem's collection of reviews of nonexistent books.
- ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English ↗1 thread
A controlled English standard originally developed for aerospace maintenance documentation.
- Accelerando1 thread
A Charles Stross novel about accelerating technological change and autonomous AI agents.
- Ashton Manual1 thread
A guide by Heather Ashton describing slow benzodiazepine tapering schedules, often via diazepam substitution.
- Atomic Physics for Everyone1 thread
An introduction to atomic physics, quantum mechanics and precision spectroscopy with no college prerequisites.
- 1 thread
- Basic Concepts of Quantum Mechanics ↗1 thread
An introductory book by L. V. Tarasov using dialogues between the author and personas.
- Big O Speedrun ↗1 thread
A website tracking successive improvements to algorithmic complexity bounds, including integer multiplication.
- Bridge of Waves1 thread
A book by W.A. Mathieu about what music is and how listening changes the world.
- Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch)1 thread
Sebastian Raschka's book walking through implementing a GPT-style LLM in PyTorch.
- CS231n1 thread
Stanford's course on convolutional neural networks for visual recognition, associated with Andrej Karpathy.
- 1 thread
- Confessions of an Economic Hit Man1 thread
A memoir by John Perkins about his work as an economic consultant advancing US interests abroad.
- Daemon1 thread
A 2006 techno-thriller novel by Daniel Suarez about an autonomous software agent.
- Dan Callaway1 thread
A vocal coach who publishes singing lessons on YouTube.
- Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins1 thread
A book by Garry Kasparov on his matches against computers and on human-machine collaboration.
- Denthor's demoscene tutorials ↗1 thread
Classic 1990s tutorial series on demoscene graphics programming hosted on scene.org.
- Dune1 thread
Frank Herbert's science fiction novel whose backstory includes the Butlerian Jihad against thinking machines.
- E Unibus Pluram1 thread
An essay by David Foster Wallace on television and its influence on American fiction.
- Enshittification1 thread
Cory Doctorow's book on how tech platforms degrade over time.
- Exploring Musical Spaces1 thread
A book synthesising mathematical approaches to music theory.
- 1 thread
- Flatland1 thread
Edwin Abbott's novella about beings in a two-dimensional world unaware of a third dimension.
- Fooled by Randomness1 thread
A book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb about the role of luck and randomness in success.
- Gabriel Zucman1 thread
An economist known for research on wealth inequality and tax avoidance.
- Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations1 thread
David Lewin's foundational text on transformational music theory.
- Gravitas: Communicate with Confidence, Influence, and Authority1 thread
A book by Caroline Goyder on communicating with confidence and authority.
- Hatching Twitter1 thread
A book by Nick Bilton on the early history of Twitter.
- How I Became Stupid ↗1 thread
A novel by Martin Page about a man who deliberately tries to become less intelligent to be happier.
- How to Win Friends and Influence People1 thread
Dale Carnegie's classic book on interpersonal skills.
- Ignition!1 thread
John D. Clark's informal history of liquid rocket propellant development.
- Incorruptible1 thread
A book by Eric Ries on corporate structures and governance designed to keep companies true to their mission.
- Is Parallel Programming Hard, And, If So, What Can You Do About It? ↗1 thread
Paul McKenney's book on parallel programming drawn from Linux kernel experience.
- Jeff Rolka1 thread
A singing teacher offering vocal instruction.
- 1 thread
- Make: Electronics1 thread
Charles Platt's project-based introduction to electronics.
- 1 thread
- 1 thread
- Mindscape ↗1 thread
A podcast hosted by physicist Sean Carroll featuring conversations on science and philosophy.
- 1 thread
- 1 thread
- 1 thread
- Never Split the Difference1 thread
A book by former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss on negotiation tactics.
- Nick Zentner1 thread
A geology educator who makes video lectures on Pacific Northwest geology.
- Notes from Underground1 thread
An 1864 novella by Fyodor Dostoevsky narrated by a bitter, isolated man.
- Open Circuits: The Inner Beauty of Electronic Components1 thread
A photographic book showing cross-sections of electronic components.
- PJ Library1 thread
A program mailing free Jewish-themed children's books to families with kids aged 0 to 8.
- Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture1 thread
Martin Fowler's book cataloguing enterprise application design patterns.
- Performance Analysis and Tuning on Modern CPUs ↗1 thread
A book by Denis Bakhvalov on CPU performance analysis and tuning.
- Picturing Quantum Processes ↗1 thread
A book by Bob Coecke and Aleks Kissinger presenting quantum theory through diagrammatic reasoning.
- 1 thread
- Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value1 thread
A book by William Poundstone on the psychology of how people perceive value and prices.
- QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter1 thread
Richard Feynman's popular lectures on quantum electrodynamics.
- Quantum Field Theory for the Gifted Amateur ↗1 thread
A textbook introducing quantum field theory to readers with some mathematical background.
- Quantum Mechanics for Engineers ↗1 thread
A free online quantum mechanics text by Leon van Dommelen aimed at engineers.
- 1 thread
- 1 thread
- Richard E. Borcherds YouTube channel ↗1 thread
A YouTube channel of math lectures by Fields medalist Richard Borcherds covering number theory, category theory and more.
- Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models ↗1 thread
A 2020 OpenAI paper relating language model performance to compute, data and parameter count.
- Should You Reverse Any Advice You Hear? ↗1 thread
A Slate Star Codex essay by Scott Alexander on how advice tends to reach the people who need it least.
- Skin in the Game1 thread
A book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb about risk-sharing and accountability.
- 1 thread
- Steve Jobs in Exile1 thread
A book about Steve Jobs' years running NeXT.
- Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview ↗1 thread
A 1995 interview of Steve Jobs by Cringely, released as a film in 2012.
- 1 thread
- Superintelligence1 thread
Nick Bostrom's book on the risks of advanced artificial intelligence.
- Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard ↗1 thread
A book by Chip and Dan Heath about how people and organisations change behaviour.
- Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons1 thread
A phonics-based book of lessons for parents teaching young children to read.
- 1 thread
- The Age of Surveillance Capitalism1 thread
A 2018 book by Shoshana Zuboff on how tech companies monetise behavioural data.
- The Art of Electronics ↗1 thread
Horowitz and Hill's comprehensive electronics textbook and reference, with a companion lab book.
- The Birth of Tragedy1 thread
Nietzsche's early work on art, tragedy and music building on Schopenhauer.
- The Death of Ivan Ilyich1 thread
An 1886 novella by Leo Tolstoy about a judge confronting his death.
- 1 thread
- 1 thread
- The Hardest Working Font in Manhattan ↗1 thread
A long-form essay by the same author about the Gorton engraving typeface.
- The Jakarta Method1 thread
A book by Vincent Bevins on US-backed anti-communist violence in Indonesia and elsewhere.
- The Music Lab ↗1 thread
A Yale research site with online music perception quizzes, including a relative pitch test.
- The Mythical Man-Month1 thread
Fred Brooks' classic book of essays on software project management.
- The Red Queen1 thread
Matt Ridley's book on evolution and sexual selection, built around the Red Queen hypothesis.
- The Reverse Centaur's Guide To Life After AI1 thread
A non-fiction book by Cory Doctorow about life after AI.
- The Road Not Taken ↗1 thread
Harry Turtledove short story about aliens who missed an easy scientific discovery.
- The Tyranny of Merit1 thread
A book by Michael Sandel critiquing meritocracy and its role in political polarization.
- The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction1 thread
An essay by Walter Benjamin on how mechanical reproduction affects the aura and value of art.
- Troubleshooting Analog Circuits1 thread
Bob Pease's book on diagnosing problems in analog circuits.
- Twilight of the Idols1 thread
A book by Friedrich Nietzsche critiquing morality and Western philosophy.
- Wikipedia1 thread
A free collaborative online encyclopedia.
- 1 thread
- arXiv1 thread
An open-access preprint server for scientific papers.
- 1 thread
- Agency0 threads
A 2020 science fiction novel by William Gibson featuring the AI assistant Eunice.
- 0 threads
- Geometric algebra0 threads
A mathematical framework unifying vectors, rotations and higher-dimensional quantities.
- Katalog der deutschsprachigen illustrierten Handschriften des Mittelalters ↗0 threads
A scholarly database cataloguing illustrated German-language medieval manuscripts, run by the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.
- Life 3.00 threads
A book by Max Tegmark about the future of artificial intelligence and its impact on society.
- 0 threads
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance0 threads
Robert Pirsig's philosophical novel that touches on grading and quality.