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The Diff

Byrne Hobart

The Diff is a newsletter exploring the technologies, companies, and trends that are making the future high-variance. Posts range from in-depth company profiles, applied financial theory, strategy breakdowns and macroeconomics.

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  • 29 episodes
  • weekly
  • Avg 13 min
  • English
Counted on this page — what you have heard stays on this device, so it is not something the list can be paged by.
  • Yesterday · 13 min

    Doing Business in the Dark Forest

    This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week. (00:00) - Doing Business in the Dark Forest (06:30) - Stock-Based Compensation (07:53) - Infra (08:58) - Balance Sheets (10:46) - An Ownership Society (12:15) - The Sonic Boom of Trust

    • Transcript
    • Chapters
  • October 12 · 12 min

    The Super-Rich as Financial Sin-Eaters

    This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week. (00:00) - The Super-Rich as Financial Sin-Eaters (06:45) - Adversarial Adoption (07:52) - Rates (08:39) - Scale (09:53) - Talking Your Book (10:43) - Revenue

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    • Chapters
  • October 5 · 9 min

    Life with Nonzero Interest Rates

    This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week. (00:00) - Life with Nonzero Interest Rates (05:18) - Stimulus (05:55) - Ads (06:38) - Gambling (07:31) - Acqui-hires (08:46) - IPOs

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    • Chapters
  • September 28 · 10 min

    How Far in the Future Should You Be Trying to Live?

    This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week. (00:00) - How Far in the Future Should You Be Trying to Live? (04:42) - Spillover Effects (05:36) - Frictional Costs (06:22) - Airgaps (08:04) - Poaching and Context (09:05) - Open Weight

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  • September 21 · 43 min

    Forward Deployed

    This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week. (00:00) - Forward Deployed (37:12) - Felonybench (38:59) - Frontier Capabilities (40:10) - SEO (41:06) - Company Demographic Pyramids (42:17) - Fighting for Inference

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  • September 14 · 14 min

    The Economics and Politics of Pacing the Frontier

    This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week. (00:00) - The Economics and Politics of Pacing the Frontier (06:37) - Reflexive Funding (07:57) - Insider Trades (08:56) - Reference Implementation (10:40) - Margins (12:47) - Law Enforcement

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  • September 8 · 13 min

    Staying Calibrated

    This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week. (00:00) - Staying Calibrated (07:16) - Transparency (08:35) - Disclosure (09:20) - Credit Ratings (10:58) - AI Jobs (12:15) - Branding Inference

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  • August 31 · 10 min

    The Surprisingly Weak IPO-Housing Effect

    This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week. (00:00) - The Surprisingly Weak IPO-Housing Effect (06:28) - Bottlenecks (07:32) - More Bottlenecks (08:22) - Disjoint Models (09:06) - Aligning Incentives (09:40) - Momentum

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  • August 24 · 13 min

    Ad-Supported Platforms are a Unique Antitrust Problem

    This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week. (00:00) - Ad-Supported Platforms are a Unique Antitrust Problem (08:38) - Brittle Buyers (09:17) - Rates (10:32) - Substitution Effects (11:12) - Demand (11:50) - Trades

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  • August 17 · 12 min

    Financial Entrepreneurship in the Indexing Era

    This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week. (00:00) - Financial Entrepreneurship in the Indexing Era (07:24) - Easy As (08:27) - Missing Estimates (09:18) - Oil (09:58) - Off-Balance Sheet (11:07) - Turnover

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  • August 10 · 15 min

    FP&A as the Telemetry and Counterespionage

    This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week. (00:00) - FP&A as the Telemetry and Counterespionage (09:21) - 0.5x AI (11:46) - Media Incentives (12:31) - Infrastructure (13:23) - Perks (14:02) - Externalities

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  • August 3 · 12 min

    Who Hedges Where?

    This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week. (00:00) - Who Hedges Where? (06:49) - Ads for Bots (07:43) - Authenticity (08:35) - The AI Race (09:32) - Priority Disputes (10:48) - Mission

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  • July 27 · 18 min

    What We Periodically Relearn About Rent Control

    This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week. (00:00) - What We Periodically Relearn About Rent Control (12:54) - Backstops (14:42) - Complements and Substitutes (15:36) - Personality Hire (16:29) - Commoditization (17:04) - IPOs

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  • July 20 · 10 min

    The Lots-of-Low-Satiety-Calories Business Isn't What it Used to Be

    This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week. (00:00) - Has AI Art Been Tried? (04:38) - Pricing (05:17) - Rewrites (06:46) - Distribution (07:35) - Trading Your PA (08:44) - Managed Markets

    • Transcript
    • Chapters
  • July 13 · 10 min

    The Bad Apple Problem

    This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week. (00:00) - Has AI Art Been Tried? (04:38) - Pricing (05:17) - Rewrites (06:46) - Distribution (07:35) - Trading Your PA (08:44) - Managed Markets

    • Transcript
    • Chapters
  • July 6 · 14 min

    Cultural Stasis? Or Just Rising Budgets, a Limited Supply of Good Movie Release Dates, and the Kelly Criterion?

    This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week. (00:00) - Cultural Stasis? Or Just Rising Budgets, a Limited Supply of Good Movie Release Dates, and the Kelly Criterion? (09:20) - MTurk, RIP (10:42) - The Economist Cover Indicator (12:15) - AI Cycles (13:13) - Narratives (14:13) - Intrusions

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  • June 29 · 12 min

    The Mythical Agent-Minute

    This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week. (00:00) - The Mythical Agent-Minute (07:08) - AI, Globalization, and Comparative Advantage in Lobbying (08:16) - Media M&A (09:41) - Retaliatory Tariffs (10:15) - Capex (10:52) - Pivots

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  • June 22 · 14 min

    Blind Extrapolation as a Powerful Force in Finance

    This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week. (00:00) - Blind Extrapolation as a Powerful Force in Finance (07:50) - Midjourney Medical (11:10) - Chips (12:02) - Financial Engineering (12:39) - Rigged Games (13:30) - Reality is the Complement

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  • June 15 · 17 min

    What Does it Mean to Have a Trillion Dollars?

    This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week. (00:00) - What Does it Mean to Have a Trillion Dollars? (09:47) - Anthropic (11:04) - Mean and Variance (12:17) - Fragmentation (13:37) - Guidance (15:58) - Slightly-Heterodox Center-X

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  • June 8 · 11 min

    It's Maturity Transformation All The Way Down

    This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week. (00:00) - It's Maturity Transformation All The Way Down (06:17) - Weather (07:19) - Adverse Selection (08:33) - Compute, and P/S Ratios (09:46) - Software PE (10:48) - Automation and Utilization

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Showing 1–20 of 29 episodes