Hacker News: sn9

New comment by sn9 in "Through Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Patrick Stewart taught us the measure of a man"

sn9 — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 22:33:06 +0000

I'm sure Stewart would suggest that you should watch more theater.

Then you'll see how much different choices made by the actor can transform a script.

New comment by sn9 in "I didn't know I was lacking in Vitamin D until I collapsed at work"

sn9 — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 22:07:15 +0000

High latitude + dark skin + cloudy weather + wearing clothing that covers a majority of the skin.

New comment by sn9 in "AI isn't replacing SREs, it's deskilling them"

sn9 — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 21:22:48 +0000

This has been my concern since the moment it became clear how capable LLMs had become and were likely to become.

I feel like I've been going insane as people have ignored this for short-term gains.

New comment by sn9 in "What shall I teach my son?"

sn9 — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 19:43:10 +0000

In free countries, being a good citizen also means criticizing your government when you see it making mistakes.

Dissent can be patriotic.

New comment by sn9 in "Ask HN: Why aren't Americans rising up against tipping?"

sn9 — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 18:34:48 +0000

This only makes sense after raising the minimum wage unless you just want to fuck over the poor.

New comment by sn9 in "How Protein Took over the World"

sn9 — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 18:31:57 +0000

Legumes are dirt cheap and packed to the gills with fiber.

New comment by sn9 in "The internet discovers TLA+. Now what?"

sn9 — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 02:31:39 +0000

I'd binge Hillel Wayne's stuff.

https://www.hillelwayne.com/tags/formal-methods/

New comment by sn9 in "Advice to a Beginning Graduate Student (2001)"

sn9 — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 22:34:23 +0000

Are you only ever writing text?

I find that digital solutions can never compare to the freehand drawing of diagrams, symbolic manipulation for solving math, etc.

New comment by sn9 in "Rust is tier-1 language at Microsoft"

sn9 — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 19:50:25 +0000

Have you considered doing this in OCaml?

You'd get most of the benefits of Go and Rust.

New comment by sn9 in "Abdominal fat predicts heart disease risk better than BMI"

sn9 — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 18:42:35 +0000

If you use the waist measurement to compute your waist to height ratio and it's above 0.5, then you know you almost certainly have too much, and losing weight is the next action.

This was all explained in the link I shared.

New comment by sn9 in "Abdominal fat predicts heart disease risk better than BMI"

sn9 — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 13:22:52 +0000

Yes, obviously.

But it's a cheap and effective one.

If you've lost 5 inches from your waist as measured from your bellybutton, it's unlikely you've lost zero visceral body fat.

New comment by sn9 in "Rhombus 1.1 is now available"

sn9 — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 02:11:40 +0000

A Lisp with an HM type system and good error messages might be ideal for LLMs (if you don't want dependent types).

New comment by sn9 in "Linear algebra done right"

sn9 — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 01:37:13 +0000

Axler is usually recommended as a great second book for linear algebra (unless you're extremely comfortable with proofs).

For a first exposure, these days it's hard to do better than Math Academy [0]. It'll diagnose all your weak points (including what prereqs you might not have) and handle all the scheduling using spaced repetition and knowledge about how the topics relate to each other.

All you have to do is keep showing up and do the work for 30+ minutes per day.

[0] https://www.mathacademy.com/courses/linear-algebra

New comment by sn9 in "Abdominal fat predicts heart disease risk better than BMI"

sn9 — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 23:40:24 +0000

It only fails to classify people with excess body fat who are in the healthy weight range.

It's really good at catching people who are obese who are overweight.

New comment by sn9 in "Abdominal fat predicts heart disease risk better than BMI"

sn9 — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 23:37:34 +0000

A waist measurement is the cheapest and simplest way other than just looking.

You want to make sure you measure under similar conditions, like in the morning after relieving yourself (for example).

If it's too high, losing a ~0.5-1 lbs per week while strength and endurance training with progressive overload will get it down sustainably.

https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog/visceral-fat-waist-vs-w...

New comment by sn9 in "Abdominal fat predicts heart disease risk better than BMI"

sn9 — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 23:34:07 +0000

"Overfat" just refers to having too much fat.

"Overweight" can mean the same thing for weight, but it also refers to those with a BMI specifically between 25 and 30, and those with BMIs greater than 30 are classified as "obese".

New comment by sn9 in "Abdominal fat predicts heart disease risk better than BMI"

sn9 — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 23:30:29 +0000

But it's actually not just being "overfat".

It's specifically a high level of visceral body fat.

Genetics determines which parts of the body gain fat first as you gain fat overall, and some people have the unfortunate genetics to gain it first viscerally and some people have the fortune to gain it there last (and everything in between).

This means that you can have different people with the same body fat percentage but drastically different disease risks.

But yes this was also known already.

That's why it's been recommended to take a waist measurement alongside BMI to get a much more informative screening tool. Waist-to-height ratios are another alternative.

New comment by sn9 in "AI by Hand"

sn9 — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 00:47:35 +0000

There's also The Little Learner: https://www.thelittlelearner.com/

New comment by sn9 in "5th Heat Dome Expands Across Europe: 40°C+ Target Western and Central Europe"

sn9 — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 23:14:14 +0000

Oh okay so you don't understand the difference between a solution that would take decades and a solution that would work instantly to save hundreds of thousands of lives, and you think people recommending the thing that would save lives immediately are somehow uninterested in long term solutions as well.

New comment by sn9 in "5th Heat Dome Expands Across Europe: 40°C+ Target Western and Central Europe"

sn9 — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 22:12:13 +0000

I think you misunderstood me lol.

I'm saying we can easily do both.

The only obstacle is morons.