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The Diff
diff.substack.com · Group blog · on HN since 2020
Byrne Hobart writes a newsletter analyzing finance, technology companies, and business strategy.
What HN saysHN commenters recommend it in lists of newsletters, describing it as thoughtful analysis of finance and tech.
36HN people shared it
7linked it in comments
91stories submitted
1.2Kstory points
5 years agolast shared
2020people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Hello There6 people · 3 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 2Palantir: On Business, Cults, and Politics3 people · 10 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 3To Understand Jio, You Need to Understand Reliance2 people · 209 points · first shared 2020 · 48 comments on HN
- 4Understanding Coinbase2 people · 203 points · first shared 2021 · 150 comments on HN
- 5Amazon: A New Kind of Antitrust Risk2 people · 113 points · first shared 2020 · 39 comments on HN
- 6Hiring Based on Side Projects: Unfair, but Good for the World2 people · 10 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 7Stripe and Solid-State Economics2 people · 9 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 8The Future of Remote Work Is Not That Remote2 people · 5 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 9Surviving a Combinatorial Explosion2 people · 4 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 10Surfing the Right S-Curve2 people · 4 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 11Newsletters and New Media Economics2 people · 3 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 12Homesteading Mental Models2 people · 3 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 13The Gamer/Arbitrageur to Generalist Pipeline2 people · 3 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 14Big Tech at the End of History2 people · 3 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 15Working in Public and the Economics of Free2 people · 2 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
mfp11 · 2021-05-27
- 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
dostoevsky · 2020-02-09
Not 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.substack.com/
exolymph · 2020-10-09
Byrne Hobart, who writes about tech but also finance: https://diff.substack.com/
sillysaurusx · 2020-07-11
This 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.
Insightful post. This succinctly explains why most toys are movie-related. It's the easiest trend to predict.
EDIT: This article keeps getting better and better. I had no idea Skyrim was almost set in Game of Thrones. https://www.tor.com/2011/09/16/how-skyrim-was-almost-set-in-westeros/ It left me wanting more.
The author is apparently Byrne Hobart, and they've written a variety of things: https://diff.substack.com/people/112633-byrne-hobart Looks like I'll be spending too much time reading them.
They also write a post ... double checks ... every day?! For a week straight, sometimes? Wow.
Sadly, most of their work appears to be locked behind a $20/mo paywall. It all looks very interesting though: https://diff.substack.com/p/dropbox-information-asymmetry-and
l1n · 2021-04-28
I 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)
L_Rahman · 2020-08-06
Which 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-understand
wahern · 2020-09-09
> 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 of the benefits of standardization is, "here is a definitive list of things that need to be added". With rare exception (e.g. async I/O), there's no hand-wringing regarding whether a POSIX interface should be added. Search for the keyword "POSIX" among the OpenBSD 5.1 (circa 2012) changes at https://www.openbsd.org/plus51.html Now search for Linux. For whatever reason stpcpy isn't listed (a tweak is listed in plus52.html), but you'll see where the emphasis lay.
Linux POSIX conformance is incredibly good, particularly at the libc level notwithstanding lack of formal certification[1], so invariably it's tough to say, absent direct confirmation, what was on people's minds. But at least on the OpenBSD mailing-lists, more often than not the explicit reason is POSIX compliance. And I get the same impression from reading NetBSD changelogs. FreeBSD is unique because they've been far more proactive with not only adding POSIX interfaces, but also adding their own extensions. And historically they were a bigger player and in many ways the heir to the "BSD" mantle; certainly…