Hacker News: vonnik

New comment by vonnik in "Private equity turned vulnerable elderly people into human ATMs"

vonnik — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:30:33 +0000

I worked for a while selling fractional nurses into for-profit nursing/retirement homes at the end of Covid, got to interview some industry experts, who told me that these for-profit homes are the 21st century equivalent of 19th century insane asylums. If you or your loved ones have to enter one, seek at all costs a home that is not for profit (Catholic orders run some, Jewish organizations others, the VA also offers these homes to vets). Every single one will uphold higher values than the for-profit entities sucking resources from people who are no longer in a position to advocate for themselves.

New comment by vonnik in "Privilege is bad grammar"

vonnik — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 18:55:37 +0000

This is so yawn. Do young professionals starting out have to impress their bosses? Yes. Do bosses have to impress them? Usually not. Who cares? Power dynamics exist, it’s easy to play the grammar game, so just do it and stop pretending it’s some form of oppression.

New comment by vonnik in "MRI scans show exercise can make the brain look younger"

vonnik — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 01:14:09 +0000

See Dr Wendy Suzuki’s work:

https://www.wendysuzuki.com/exercise-research

New comment by vonnik in "The price of fame? Mortality risk among famous singers"

vonnik — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 15:15:03 +0000

Becoming Led Zeppelin is a great documentary which chronicles the band’s rise. It has some great quotes from Plant about the milieu that fathers around a famous band, supplying drugs and sex. The substances lead to abuse, addiction and sometimes overdoses. LZ’s drummer Bonham choked in his own vomit during sleep after taking 40 shots. Page became addicted to several substances. Many famous singers if they survive are recovering from some form of addiction. Bowie, for example. There’s a culture they enter with fame and travel that is hard to escape.

New comment by vonnik in "Working quickly is more important than it seems (2015)"

vonnik — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:06:28 +0000

The easiest way to do something is the first time.

New comment by vonnik in "The English language doesn't exist – it's just French that's badly pronounced"

vonnik — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 17:36:11 +0000

The author is right to critique Cerquiglini. The French legacy is largely lexical. The syntax and the old, short words of English are Germanic. Its several influences drove the relatively large lexicon we have, and probably adapted English to be a globally adaptive language, borrowing words readily.

New comment by vonnik in "Meet the real screen addicts: the elderly"

vonnik — Sat, 25 Oct 2025 14:49:44 +0000

This is true. But it’s also hard to hold against many of them. Because they are often isolated, slow or immobile, and in cognitive decline. I saw this happen to my grandmother in an assisted living home.

New comment by vonnik in "Why formalize mathematics – more than catching errors"

vonnik — Sat, 25 Oct 2025 03:13:26 +0000

i don't know why this was down-voted... i'm genuinely interested in the answers. feel free to dm me.

New comment by vonnik in "Why formalize mathematics – more than catching errors"

vonnik — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 22:44:38 +0000

What kind of math do you do, and what would “generating proofs” look like do you think?

New comment by vonnik in "Computer science courses that don't exist, but should (2015)"

vonnik — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 14:55:03 +0000

Yes, Alan Kay is very ill.

New comment by vonnik in "Why formalize mathematics – more than catching errors"

vonnik — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 14:51:46 +0000

Out of curiosity, does anyone know the mathematicians actively leaning into AI + Lean?

New China Export Controls for Rare Earths in Chips

vonnik — Thu, 09 Oct 2025 08:54:40 +0000

Article URL: https://twitter.com/tphuang/status/1976123793148899757

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45525174

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by vonnik in "A Clausewitzian lens on modern urban warfare"

vonnik — Thu, 09 Oct 2025 00:40:20 +0000

It sounds like we agree on the larger strategic point.

The PRC seems to be doing a good job building out its energy infra, fwiw. And it shares a massive land border with an ally and energy producer.

New comment by vonnik in "A Clausewitzian lens on modern urban warfare"

vonnik — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 15:43:50 +0000

I found this to be a remarkably uninsightful work. He somehow negates the inherent drama of war with the milquetoast prose and myopia of an academic. Much of what he says is in fact false, presumably because he is far from the action and relies on Clausewitz as a crutch for thought.

The key nodes to control have to do with supply chain, energy and information; ie depots, road and rail, bridges, factories, substations and data centers or satellites.

Ukraine has severely weakened Russia by attacking those points, as Russia has Ukraine.

Beijing could well defeat Taiwan (and the US by proxy) by controlling its sea lanes, cutting its cables, and jamming its radio spectrum.

New comment by vonnik in "An illustrated introduction to linear algebra"

vonnik — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 19:37:34 +0000

I really like this, and I think one way to make it even more clear would be to use other variable letters to represent breads and milks, because their x’s and y’s somehow morph into the x’s and y’s that represent carbs and protein in the graph.

New comment by vonnik in "Laptops create systems. Phones feed algorithms. The asymmetry determines power"

vonnik — Sun, 05 Oct 2025 14:58:27 +0000

more broadly, laptops and desktops have also degenerated as tools for thought, largely because they have been turned into vehicles of consumption. every screen has become the infinite push algorithm.

https://vonnik.substack.com/p/how-to-take-your-brain-back

i think it's underrated, too, how much the pairing of phone-camera to produce media amplifies the possibility of consumption via the same device.

New comment by vonnik in "Failing to Understand the Exponential, Again"

vonnik — Sun, 28 Sep 2025 20:18:16 +0000

To the people who claim that we’re running out of data, I would just say: the world is largely undigitized. The Internet digitized a bunch of words but not even a tiny fraction of all that humans express every day. Same goes for sound in general. CCTV captures a lot of images, far more than social media, but it is poorly processed and also just a fraction of the photons bouncing off objects on earth. The data part of this equation has room to grow.

New comment by vonnik in "Why We Spiral"

vonnik — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 00:37:04 +0000

I highly recommend The Intelligence Trap by David Robson, especially the section about our emotional compass. He cites some great research by Damasio and Feldman-Barrett. There's also a great book called The Nature of the Beast that shares evidence of altered neurobiological states (emotions) in other species -- useful to understand ourselves when we're playing on tilt.

New comment by vonnik in "How People Use ChatGPT [pdf]"

vonnik — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 04:05:47 +0000

As google has shown, consumer/business market is not either/or.

New comment by vonnik in "Where to find ideas"

vonnik — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 15:26:49 +0000

Agree with so much of this!

Would just add that the best sales people have usually been folks with deep domain expertise, partially because they tend to have a pre-existing social network of potential users due to their work.