Hacker News: fallinghawks

New comment by fallinghawks in "Gateside by TSA Precheck"

fallinghawks — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 19:34:02 +0000

And you have to renew every 5 years, which runs around $60-80.

New comment by fallinghawks in "Gateside by TSA Precheck"

fallinghawks — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 02:51:41 +0000

As long as you have TSA precheck or a known traveler number, which costs money.

New comment by fallinghawks in "“It works better in the app”"

fallinghawks — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 16:50:59 +0000

In the last couple months if you go to their site in a mobile browser (e.g. from search results), after a short scroll down they have this popup demanding you install their app and it completely takes over the screen. I take it as a reminder never to install their app.

New comment by fallinghawks in "Pressed Penny Machine Map"

fallinghawks — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 03:03:15 +0000

Epoxy and a neodymium disk magnet and Bob's your uncle

New comment by fallinghawks in "TreasuryDirect: Prepare for ID.me – Your New Way to Log In"

fallinghawks — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 19:14:28 +0000

Yes, I had one of those cards. It made you feel like you were accessing government secrets. In 2007.

New comment by fallinghawks in "You can't buy 20 pieces of aluminum tube online"

fallinghawks — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 14:45:31 +0000

This is mystifying to me. I had a membership in a maker shop and took a welding course. I had a project in mind and bought 6 pieces of stainless tubing online. They came in standard lengths but iirc they would cut them for an additional charge. If there was a minimum order it was lower than 6, prices were right there on the page, there was none of the friction the writer is talking about, and this was 16 years ago.

New comment by fallinghawks in "Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy"

fallinghawks — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 16:12:19 +0000

Heck, we're living Idiocracy right now.

New comment by fallinghawks in "There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]"

fallinghawks — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 18:30:36 +0000

It shouldn't be astonishing. The bombs dropped in Japan did create nuclear shadows of human beings when their bodies were annihilated. When Bradbury wrote it (1950), that was very, very fresh.

New comment by fallinghawks in "Less Coffee, Better Sleep"

fallinghawks — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 15:18:11 +0000

I've had exactly the same coffee drinking habit for decades: about 22-23 oz first thing before breakfast and that's it. Once in a very rare while (on the scale of a few times a year) I'll have a masala chai or matcha in the evening. My sleep pattern has changed despite this consistency and I believe it's more due to age rather than coffee consumption.

New comment by fallinghawks in "Kenji/Serious Eats – 30-Min Pressure Cooker Pho Ga"

fallinghawks — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 04:51:14 +0000

These come in a 6 pack at Costco (not black garlic though; Costco's comes with hot oil). They're surprisingly tasty for instant.

New comment by fallinghawks in "Kenji/Serious Eats – 30-Min Pressure Cooker Pho Ga"

fallinghawks — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 19:54:56 +0000

Particularly tonkotsu, which basically has fat emulsified into it. My understanding is that ramen was originally a workman's meal -- inexpensive and calorie rich food for laborers.

New comment by fallinghawks in "Kenji/Serious Eats – 30-Min Pressure Cooker Pho Ga"

fallinghawks — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 19:50:02 +0000

Kenji Lopez Alt is a well known chef who writes a lot about the science behind making food (which might contribute to it being HN-worthy). Though I understand where you're coming from, his ethnicity (Caucasian and Japanese; the Lopez comes from his wife) is irrelevant in the light of the fact that he is a professional chef.

Pho bo (beef pho) typically takes at least 8 hours and is better simmered overnight, so cutting it down to 30 minutes and still having a good result is very useful.

New comment by fallinghawks in "Ask HN: Crooked Timber showed showed me a virus captcha, What now?"

fallinghawks — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 17:10:36 +0000

I ran into the same thing on a cooking blog (which I had visited many times before) a few weeks back. I was pretty mystified but like you, spidey sense kept me from running the code. It's insidious because it looks like it's coming from Captcha. I do have uBO Lite running on Chrome. Tried the website in Firefox and also got the same manual run thing.

I wasn't sure what to do about it. Obviously I was unable to notify the blog owner. I came back to the website about a week later and it didn't come up again.

New comment by fallinghawks in "Worse on Purpose – How Corporate Greed Killed Product Quality"

fallinghawks — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:05:39 +0000

About 4-5 years ago I bought a Bosch 500 dishwasher. Loved it. Excellent performance. The top silverware rack could be adjusted to fit slightly larger items. There was a very basic clock display to tell you how long the cycle would take. And of course you could delay start by whatever number of hours.

Well, last year I moved, and as it happens, the dishwasher failed and I leapt on the chance to replace it with another Bosch 500. The salesman showed me a new addition to the model (an alleged potscrubber) but didn't tell me what they had taken away.

I should have looked more closely. I assumed I was getting largely the same dishwasher. After purchase I discovered that all those things I listed in the first paragraph were gone. Rack is no longer adjustable. The clock has been replaced with a trio of LEDs indicating >2 hours, 1-2 hrs, and <1 hour. And you cannot delay start at all from the control panel. You have to download their app of course, get a sign in of course, and then you can delay start from the app.

It's absolutely trashy of Bosch to take features away while raising the price several hundred dollars.

New comment by fallinghawks in "100 Greatest Bird Names of All Time"

fallinghawks — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 19:39:57 +0000

At least they had the Dickcissel.

New comment by fallinghawks in "Successful Psilocybin Treatment of Alzheimer"

fallinghawks — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 15:00:46 +0000

And it's a single case which could simply be an anomaly. You'd need a serious controlled study to get any meaningful info about the effectiveness.

Very curious exactly who made the decision/gave permission to take granny on a shroom trip.

New comment by fallinghawks in "HantaWatch Real time hantavirus outbreak tracker"

fallinghawks — Fri, 08 May 2026 14:44:15 +0000

In most cases, infected droppings are the primary source. But my understanding is that there does exist a strain that transmits between humans, and the cruise ship situation has just been confirmed to be that type.

The good news is that hantavirus has been around and known for a long time.

New comment by fallinghawks in "Scammer used an AI-generated MAGA girl to grift men"

fallinghawks — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 04:17:37 +0000

I'm not sure why you'd say sexual orientation is a choice; it's not, any more than race. Religion is a choice. Politics are a choice. The operative word of "earnestly-held belief" is "held" -- you can let them go if you want. There have been a few MAGAs changing their minds. I have a friend who was a Democrat until he went MAGA. If you suggest those must have not been "earnestly held" beliefs, I'll have to remind you about true Scotsmen.

New comment by fallinghawks in "Scammer used an AI-generated MAGA girl to grift men"

fallinghawks — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 16:33:36 +0000

A political position is not a weakness, it's a choice.

New comment by fallinghawks in "Naming rights to street auctioned in San Francisco"

fallinghawks — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 15:10:48 +0000

I suspect many towns have "A Street" which has always given me a giggle. In the Bay Area, Hayward has a sign for A Street Downtown. Downtown is on the 2nd line but could be misparsed as desired.