what are the popular/useful QA agents out there right now?

There's been a resurgence in writing about taste and how important it will be in the age of AI (in terms of research taste, product taste, code, etc). I'm trying to make sense of it. The way I'm understanding things, people are using taste as shorthand for both pattern-matching & judgement vs personal aesthetics. It would be helpful to split the two up so you can better understand how to train and improve the right taste for you. One focused on aesthetics and is personal; it’s about what resonates with you. In this instance, there is arguably no bad taste (that’s applying a judgement of someone else’s choices with your own lens). The second is about distinguishing “good from bad” when attempting to meet a goal. This is arguably more objective and judgement based, since it’s something the industry generally coalesces around and there's usually some prior data. For the personal angle, it’s seeing what resonates. it's far more about aesthetics. Subrina Heyink had some great posts about this on Substack. Derek (@dieworkwear) does as well on PutThisOn. The short answer is trying lots of things and seeing what resonates. It's a lot of exploration and self-awareness into knowing what works for you and why. Maybe the only "bad" taste in this scenario is mindlessly following norms without considering why. But this is more like undeveloped taste. Your goal in this style of taste is just personal satisfaction. For the goal based one, it’s understanding what works and what doesn’t. The taste that comes in for something like research is an intuition for what will lead to potentially interesting outcomes. To get there you need to have a strong understanding of the landscape and what came before you. Bad taste here is clearer because it's essentially just bad decision-making. Your goal here is finding something that actually works. This could obviously overlap with personal satisfaction (it filters the available options). The best product people tend to have a strong sense of both personal aesthetics as well as pattern matching, allowing them to combine both what they find personally resonant with what works for products. The more I write about it the more I think they overlap. - you need a strong understanding of what came before you (taste has a lot of cultural context) - when multiple options can work there is a still a need for judgement In both scenarios exposure to lots of ideas/examples is key. So ultimately I think if you want to improve your taste you need to consider both. PS I'm just trying to figure this out so I could be overthinking this entire thing.

Another excellent essay from @zebriez and @joincolossus

Been loving claude code so much I almost upgraded to Max. Instead I spent too long staring at the terminal waiting for credits to reset and coding by hand. Felt weird, like I had one arm tied behind my back.

Are there any good e-ink devices for reading long form PDFs? My go to has been getting them printed and bound and I like that, despite it making me feel like I’m in the Stone Age. But it’s a slow cycle of printing and picking it up. Looking for ideas. Maybe @remarkablepaper?

What’s the best site/newsletter for keeping up with interesting papers on @arxiv ?

Srs question: has anyone actually produced meaningfully better/more work thanks to any sort of AI-notetaking-synthesis tool? Feels like everybody sharpening their saw and nobody is cutting. Specific examples would be great.