How the heck does he have time to post all that amazing stuff, AND be coding open-source, AND have some kind of day job?
My god, I wish I were that productive.
I will add a +1 to your recommendation as well, his blog has been my favourite way to keep up with the AI landscape over the last 18 months. Just the right level of detail and technical depth for me
I can write fast because I've been writing online for so long. Most short posts take about ten minutes, longer form stuff usually takes one or two hours.
I also deliberately lower my standards for blogging - I often skip conclusions, and I'll publish a piece when I'm still not happy with it (provided I've satisfied myself with the fact checking side of things - I won't dash something out if I'm not certain it's true, at least to the best of my ability.)
I'm hoping to improve my overall balance a lot for 2025. Deliberately ending my at least one post a day blogging streak is part of that: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jan/2/ending-a-year-long-post...
There are for sure ways to increase your own personal productivity on its own, but the extra kick is usually from in-house cooks, cleaners, shoppers, schedulers, stylists, PAs, etc.
These people may or may not be spouses, family, friends and so on.
(This is a general response, I do not know Simon Willison or any of his work or life.)
We do have a couple of hours of cleaning help once a week but other than that my partner and I split the chores.
My brother is an "influencer" in the legit sense that he makes all his money from having a following (mostly through brand partnerships). He only gets help for very specific tasks on a project-by-project basis and even then he doesn't do that very often. He loves working alone and the freedom that comes from that.
Julia Evans - https://jvns.ca/
Fabien Sanglard - https://fabiensanglard.net/
Rachel - http://rachelbythebay.com/w/
Bruce Eckel - https://bruceeckel.substack.com/ (old blog @ https://www.bruceeckel.com/)
Blobs in Games - https://simblob.blogspot.com/
Astrid dot tech - https://astrid.tech/
Brendan Gregg - https://www.brendangregg.com/blog/
Stargirl Flowers - https://blog.thea.codes/
I find the concept(s) and tech interesting, but crypto news is so full of drama and horrible people / acts it's hard to enjoy for me.
Most coins/chains/platforms have some sort of newsletters. You can find most of this stuff by looking up the ticker on coingecko or similar.
There are dedicated “crypto news” platforms (e.g. coindesk)
If your news is full of drama and horrible people… thats on you tbh. The algorithms are primed for that sort of content, but curation is up to you.
I say that because reading about crypto doesn't depress me at all.
* Noah Smith: fhttps://www.noahpinion.blog
* Since he's retired from his NYT column after 25 years, Krugman: https://paulkrugman.substack.com
For personal finance / business:
I publish one post a week with all the recently uploaded talks from nearly all software engineering conferences to save my readers time from endlessly scrolling through messy YT subscriptions and to reduce FOMO.
On top of that, each week, I pick a few talks that I think are a must-watch and write a short narrative to give some context.
- Jacob Kaplan-Moss (https://jacobian.org/) [Engineering leadership, OSS]
- Anton Zhiyanov (https://antonz.org/) [SQL, Go, Python]
- Julia Evans (https://jvns.ca/) [SQL, Linux, Python, Go, Web]
- Brandur Leach (https://brandur.org/) [Postgres, Go, Ruby, Web]
- Brandon Rhodes (https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/) [Python, Astronomy, Linux]
- Nathanial J Smith (https://vorpus.org/blog/) [Python, Async, Linguistics]
I also write occasionally at https://rednafi.com.
New posts are rare - just once or twice a year - but every single article is a gem.
https://stephango.com Steph Ango, CEO of Obsidian, writes about the simplicity and usefulness of plain-test, plain but powerful ideas. @kepano at HN.
https://marksblogg.com Mark Litwintschik on GeoSpatial, Satellites, Machine Learning. @marklit at HN.
https://simonwillison.net and of course, Simon Willison’s daily blog with high-quality content. @simonw at HN.
Takes all kinds of lifestyle and tech topics and nerds out about them thoroughly. If you've ever wanted to see mundane things overanalyzed and backed with solid facts, I recommend.
I don't necessarily agree with all their views, but I've always enjoyed an article and it's rarely if ever confidently wrong.
And I always learn from the very deep signal processing fun on Absorptions: https://www.windytan.com
0. https://www.simplermachines.com/why-doesnt-everyone-do-xp/
It helped me get up to speed with gen AI as a graduate school professor and now his posts are the most useful ones I sent to others to help them get oriented.
I found Adam Mastroianni's blog through a HN post titled "How to debog Yourself". Unlike another pop-sci articles, this one had actual depth and enjoyed reading it.
Since then, I've read and digested most of his posts and comments. He usually writes about human behavior, not really offering the solutions, but the reasons.
He is the one author I've screenshot-ed most in 2024. I'd recommend starting with this post:
https://www.experimental-history.com/p/you-cant-reach-the-br...
In that case it's not really a blog but I will go with WEB CURIOS by Matt Muir
Sometimes, someone’s writings hit just right. This is one of them. A man building is home, investing in the people around him and telling tales. Yet it’s so good!
There are alot of fresh suggestions in this thread, I will be checking them all out.
Thanks guys.
Arnoud Engelfriet's blog about Dutch IT law (in Dutch).
Another oldie-but-greaty is Metafilter: https://www.metafilter.com/
Finally, I'll recommended a blog/webcomic that often seems to be written for HN fans, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/
It's not focused on tech, but occasionally touches on policy issues that are tech-adjacent. It's a refreshing, often insightful, and usually very funny take on current events. The author is a former writer for the HBO show "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver".
streetofwalls
But here is my list:
Https://daringfireball.net
among a few
