Hacker News: jrnichols

New comment by jrnichols in "Digg is gone again"

jrnichols — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 00:56:49 +0000

yet somehow after all these years... Fark is still the same. It has managed to avoid the onslaught of bots. At least to some extent.

I'm amazed it's still around. Metafilter too, although it seems to have a LOT fewer comments nowadays.

New comment by jrnichols in "Restoring a Sun SPARCstation IPX part 1: PSU and NVRAM (2020)"

jrnichols — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 17:38:03 +0000

This was a lot of fun to see, especially part 3 where it boots up. Us older guys (me, anyway) still find joy in seeing these old machines we learned our skills on being restored like this.

Thanks for posting this one. good find.

New comment by jrnichols in "Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion"

jrnichols — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 02:49:20 +0000

I'm over 50 now and feel like this as well. Haven't used Claude yet but used Codex a bunch, and it's been SO MUCH fun going over all the old perl & shell scripting stuff that I used to do years ago before I got into healthcare time and morphed to a hobby sysadmin.

Staying up and re-learning what I used to love long ago has given me a new found passion as well. Even if I do vibe code some scripts, at least I have the background now to go through them and make sure they make sense. They're things I'm using in my own homelab and not something that I'm trying to spin up a Github repo for. I'm not shipping anything. I'm refreshing my old skills and trying to bring some of them up to date. An unfortunate reality is that my healthcare career is going to be limited due to multiple injuries along the way, and I need to try to be as current as I can in case something happens. My safety net is limited.

New comment by jrnichols in "Waymo blocking ambulance during deadly Austin shooting"

jrnichols — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 02:02:14 +0000

As another paramedic that has worked in Texas, they are absolutely correct.

What we lack in EMS is the same qualified immunity that law enforcement continues to have.

New comment by jrnichols in "Little Free Library"

jrnichols — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 01:58:04 +0000

We have probably 30 of these within 10 miles and it's great. Perfect excuse to go for a walk, get a book, read it, and then return it to one of the others.

New comment by jrnichols in "A new California law says all operating systems need to have age verification"

jrnichols — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 05:11:22 +0000

They know this, and they know the technology just isn't there. But that's their goal - to make gun ownership as difficult and expensive as possible.

I think they've learned from the anti-gun lobbyists and are now pushing to end anonymity on the internet the same way.

New comment by jrnichols in "Cloudflare acquires Astro"

jrnichols — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 17:29:43 +0000

Same, and I was starting to feel kind of strange doing anything in html/php in 2026 but then I looked at everything else and realized I'd have to start from scratch again. Plain ol' HTML has worked great.

New comment by jrnichols in "Apple to focus on 'quality and underlying performance' with iOS 27 next year"

jrnichols — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 03:17:44 +0000

Same here. While Liquid Glass might be a bit distracting, I don't remember the last time I had an app crash. It's been quite a while.

26.1 fixed a lot of the buggy/laggy feeling too.

New comment by jrnichols in "Mozilla launching “Thundermail” email service to take on Gmail, Microsoft 365"

jrnichols — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 21:30:59 +0000

Not only do I use it for my non-primary email accounts, but I use it for NNTP too. :)

New comment by jrnichols in "Mozilla launching “Thundermail” email service to take on Gmail, Microsoft 365"

jrnichols — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 21:26:48 +0000

I am the same, self-hosting for many years and while I have the occasional question about it, it's easily corrected. I now have a short .com domain I use because my .fyi one was even more confusing to people, and simply didn't work with some systems I needed to use.

A bigger problem in my opinion is just how heavily people have associated "Google" with "the internet" and "Gmail" with all email in existence. They don't even think about outlook.com or even hotmail anymore. All email is Gmail to many people.

New comment by jrnichols in "I won't connect my dishwasher to your cloud"

jrnichols — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 21:29:59 +0000

We have HomeConnect on our new Thermador appliances. I actually went ahead and installed the iOS app and brought everything into Homebridge. (thinking about switching to Home Assistant, though...)

One of the big reasons that I did it is so I'd know when consumables needed to be replaced. The big hope was it would give me a warning when the fridge water filter was full and make buying the exact part easier.

It has failed to do this one thing. But I can get recipes from within the app. I still have no idea what water filter I need and have to try to find the model number.

If you're going to build a cloud setup for appliances, at least make it useful for the end user, eh?

edit: we actually considered a GE washer/dryer for the smart features until I sat down and realized that I was trying to over complicate laundry. We went with a Speed Queen model instead. My dryer now has two knobs and a button to start it.

New comment by jrnichols in "Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood"

jrnichols — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 21:17:41 +0000

I see a fair amount of that here in Sacramento. People having block parties, chairs out in the driveways, etc. One of the newer neighborhoods in the area seems like it was designed with this in mine as well. '

It's been a lot of fun. We know our neighbors, people are frequently out walking, talking to each other, and so on.

New comment by jrnichols in "Spammers are better at SPF, DKIM, and DMARC than everyone else"

jrnichols — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 21:08:25 +0000

This is awesome. Thanks! Sensible, easy to use, easy to understand the results.

I've been trying the google one, for example, and it doesn't even work. "request timed out." Fishy, because yours works great.

much appreciated!

New comment by jrnichols in "The San Francisco stadium that fog killed"

jrnichols — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 03:24:48 +0000

narrated by Morgan Freeman, probably.

New comment by jrnichols in "How shut-down Bay Area tech companies ditch their fancy gear"

jrnichols — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 03:03:09 +0000

for a while back in the early 2000s it felt like Weirdstuff Warehouse was getting pallets of surplus gear from failed dot-coms. along with the office chairs/etc.

New comment by jrnichols in "Yemeni Coffee Shops in Texas"

jrnichols — Sun, 05 Jan 2025 03:10:56 +0000

Add increased labor costs and your profit margin for late night coffee drops significantly. Add a safety factor, and it becomes a more cost effective option to reduce hours.

We've been seeing that here in my Northern California city for the past few years.

New comment by jrnichols in "Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths"

jrnichols — Fri, 13 Dec 2024 04:18:48 +0000

I've been a paramedic for a long time and I completely agree with this. Years ago I may have been against something like MAID, but once I got into healthcare and especially this job, I now fully support it. It's something that I would hope is there for myself when I need it.

If it's not, unfortunately, I've seen what people will do anyway. Allowing people to die with dignity and on their own terms is something that I believe in.

New comment by jrnichols in "Ask HN: What are your most regretted tech purchases?"

jrnichols — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 20:28:54 +0000

I did look into something like that, and someone did accomplish it with a similar model.

https://1projectaweek.com/blog/2022/2/8/converting-a-carro-h...

I also realized that the skill necessary to accomplish this was way above my comfort level. I did see a product called the Bond Bridge Pro that has good reviews. The FCC ID for the fans isn't listed in their database yet but it may still work. I haven't had the time to dig further into it.

XBMC was a lot of fun back in the old days. As I got older, I definitely got lazier with stuff like that, went to an Apple TV, and was happy there. :)

New comment by jrnichols in "The story of Rogue"

jrnichols — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 20:23:22 +0000

Rogue reminds me of the Zork series. A simple text interface with your own imagination. The best GUI ever.

New comment by jrnichols in "Tsunami Warning for Northern California"

jrnichols — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 20:08:10 +0000

I loved the days when people could/would set up webcams like this. Just to see outside and share it with others. They're getting so much harder to find.

This is quite relaxing, I agree. Here's a couple from Pacifica, CA for you.

https://www.pacificaview.net/livecam/