Hacker News: vonnik

New comment by vonnik in "Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time"

vonnik — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 13:33:44 +0000

To be clear this trend starts really early, at least in grade school. I have a second grader and most of his friends have had iPads for years, play video games for hours per day at home. Those kids don’t like to read, and/or are reading slow. Their parents wonder why, and blame the school. You have to make books the most exciting thing in the house for most of the day. And you have to model the behavior of reading; ie read aloud to your kid, and make sure they see you reading for your own pleasure. Go to used-book stores and libraries and keep plenty of books in the house at or near the kids level that they have chosen. Learn to like Dogmab and be ok reading it 1000 times to them before they hit first grade. That’s the only way. Most parents are taking the easy way out with screens, due to deeper issues in the world, like having demanding jobs, dual income households, living far from extended family and not wanting to do the hard work of fighting the societal defaults. But that why most kids don’t want to read, and why we see these stats about teens.

New comment by vonnik in "What I Learned About AI Trust from Reconciling over 100B Transactions"

vonnik — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 13:35:54 +0000

“Three teams. Same underlying data. Three different stories.”

New comment by vonnik in "Man-Computer Symbiosis J. C. R. Licklider (1960)"

vonnik — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 13:19:03 +0000

fully support the idea of an emerging technobiont, but i keep asking myself what advantage humans will confer to petro-electric life forms?

the only way forward is for us to genetically edit ourselves into beings that can understand more of what ai knows, if the symbiosis is to be mutualistic, rather than commensal or parasitic.

New comment by vonnik in "Testing the WWI concrete ships and WWII concrete barges"

vonnik — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 15:24:50 +0000

One of these capsized off the beach at Capitola and now serves as a de facto bird sanctuary.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/05/29/ss-palo-alto-reaches-...

Before it capsized and sank, it served as a dance hall at the end of a pier.

New comment by vonnik in "Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis"

vonnik — Thu, 28 May 2026 03:00:39 +0000

Most CEOs don't understand the actual things their front-line workers do. and many of them have allowed themselves to be surrounded by yes-men. the richer and more powerful they are, the more likely this is. "yes man" is a role where AIs significantly outperform. when you combine front-line blindness with the culture of toxic yes, you get CEOs who think that AIs can both do the work and manage themselves or the residual people. This will turn out to be false.

New comment by vonnik in "The death of the brick and mortar toy store"

vonnik — Fri, 22 May 2026 04:36:26 +0000

This strategy has worked well for both Shakespeare and Co. in Paris and Shakespeare and Sons in Berlin. Books + Bakery + Coffee. Both of course are set in living pedestrian cities. https://www.shakespeareandsons.com

New comment by vonnik in "Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations"

vonnik — Thu, 21 May 2026 21:38:23 +0000

If the poster cannot do the work of writing, they should not expect others to do the work of reading. People read based on trust and respond to invest in relationships. LLM verbiage breaks both dynamics.

New comment by vonnik in "Geography is four-dimensional"

vonnik — Fri, 15 May 2026 15:52:11 +0000

I feel like the headline relies on a misnomer. Sivers is talking about culture. Most culture occupies a geography, even if it’s a changing one; the culture shrinks, expands or drifts over the land. The land itself shifts and changes under the culture. Both affect each other. But what Sivers is talking about is groups of people changing, and someone returning with a snap shot of what used to be. This is a common experience among returning emigrés, and their time capsule abroad is sometimes referred to as cultural fossilization. They removed themselves of the living dynamic body of a culture, and have become unknowingly conservative toward it in their expectations. This has also been noted by authors like Thomas Wolfe (There’s no going home.), and consolidated to a Greek word, nostalgia, which also means the pain of homecoming.

New comment by vonnik in "Den stora Älgvandringen – The great moose migration (live)"

vonnik — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 17:22:26 +0000

The interesting thing about “Algvandringen” is that you can hear “Elk wandering” in it, showing the evolutionary similarities of two Germanic languages.

New comment by vonnik in "It's cool to care (2025)"

vonnik — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:43:52 +0000

As Alex's story illustrates, really caring about something and acting on that can be a great way to find community.

New comment by vonnik in "The "Passive Income" trap ate a generation of entrepreneurs"

vonnik — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 21:59:39 +0000

“You can’t cheat an honest man.”

While that isn’t always true, honesty is a great defense against being enlisted in scams that promise easy money.

New comment by vonnik in "If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true"

vonnik — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:14:04 +0000

This smells like LLM.

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.