Hacker News: throwaway20148

New comment by throwaway20148 in "A Brief History of Fish Sauce"

throwaway20148 — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 01:23:59 +0000

In the early 2000s, post-dotcom-crash I worked at small consultancy for the airlines industry that had a software wing. I think I made $11/hour slinging PHP code. They had sequestered the engineers, (half a dozen of us, all young) in the back of a large print shop (the consultancy specialized in manuals) and we had our own kitchen back there, so we sometimes cooked together.

One of my coworkers was married to a Laotian woman and as such married into a large Laotian community. One day we went to the Asian supermarket and we bought all the stuff to make green papaya salad and larb. He brought three specific things from home for this: a weird aluminum cauldron, a bamboo basket to put on it (to make sticky rice) and a repurposed instant coffee bottle full of the strangest looking sludge. It looked kind of like peering into a chewing tobacco spit bottle. This was a bottle of homemade padaek[1] and he said it was like liquid gold in the community he lived in. It was foul as hell to smell but we did a taste test of the papaya salad before and after mixing it in and sure enough it was so much better with the padaek. It was an eye opening experience and since then I've always had a fish sauce bottle in my fridge. I even use a little of it in things like spaghetti sauce.

Anyway if you have a chance to get your hands on a little homemade padaek, definitely do it. Would kill for some, myself. Also, share new foods with friends if they are open to it. I am very fond of that memory. I had never been exposed to those dishes before and even that small experience broadened my world in a simple, but meaningful way.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padaek

New comment by throwaway20148 in "What happened to Tandy computers"

throwaway20148 — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 23:00:41 +0000

I use to play F-19 on my HX that had an upgrade board. I also loved a horse racing game on that thing but I can't remember what it was called.

New comment by throwaway20148 in "What happened to Tandy computers"

throwaway20148 — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 22:21:05 +0000

Little piece of Tandy errata: They had their own subway line in downtown Fort Worth[1]. It was there before they built their headquarters, The Tandy Center, but they kept it running and it terminated in a parking lot that also had a little farmers market that my family used to sell watermelons at when I was a kid in the early 90s. If we sold all of the melons early we would take the train into the Tandy Center for the fun of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandy_Center_Subway

New comment by throwaway20148 in "US passes emergency waiver over fuel pipeline cyber-attack"

throwaway20148 — Mon, 10 May 2021 02:28:12 +0000

Bath Iron Works is hiring people on the spot right now. They are probably going to hire 3k people in the next year. I imagine this is happening at other shipyards around the country. Expect those ship numbers to be revised upwards.

New comment by throwaway20148 in "Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts"

throwaway20148 — Sun, 14 Mar 2021 07:18:44 +0000

Can you explain what you mean by germ control? Covid is primarily transmitted by sustained exposure to aerosols. Much of the disinfecting we are now doing now is essentially performative.

New comment by throwaway20148 in "Standard Ruby 1.0"

throwaway20148 — Sun, 07 Mar 2021 07:42:19 +0000

> 3 spaces indentation

What?

New comment by throwaway20148 in "Google Issues Quality Warning for Millions of Google Photos Users"

throwaway20148 — Sun, 28 Feb 2021 10:33:19 +0000

There was a social component to reader that was very similar in ways to how people share news on Facebook. It was one of googles only solid social graphs. That they wasted that was a real misstep.

New comment by throwaway20148 in "The World’s Aging Dams"

throwaway20148 — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 12:20:09 +0000

The US has over 80,000 dams of one type or another.

Why T-Shirts Promoting the Capitol Riot Are Still Available Online

throwaway20148 — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 12:06:54 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/business/qanon-maga-merchandise-amazon-etsy-shopify.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25832626

Points: 1

# Comments: 2

New comment by throwaway20148 in "Gary Taubes: 'Obesity isn’t a calorie problem, it’s a hormone problem'"

throwaway20148 — Mon, 18 Jan 2021 09:01:02 +0000

Bodybuilding is rife with PED usage, which is itself a form of hormone manipulation.

New comment by throwaway20148 in "When Amazon Switched from Sun to Linux"

throwaway20148 — Sat, 09 Jan 2021 15:15:36 +0000

That’s what the CIA would have you believe.

New comment by throwaway20148 in "Elevated rates of autism in transgender and gender-diverse individuals"

throwaway20148 — Sun, 16 Aug 2020 12:14:15 +0000

I grew up in the 90s in rural Texas and never owned western attire and was just fine. Your friend is overstating the role of clothing in his experience I suspect.

New comment by throwaway20148 in "Georgia School Reopening Photo Even Worse Than It Appears"

throwaway20148 — Thu, 06 Aug 2020 17:47:28 +0000

> continual contact

Like a school room with 15 kids spaced 4 feet apart for 45 minutes?

New comment by throwaway20148 in "The Problem with Solano County's Rail Plan"

throwaway20148 — Wed, 22 Jul 2020 13:46:07 +0000

Yep won’t some please think of the children.

New comment by throwaway20148 in "GitHub was down"

throwaway20148 — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 08:02:47 +0000

Really, were still doing this?

New comment by throwaway20148 in "U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation"

throwaway20148 — Fri, 10 Jul 2020 06:18:29 +0000

While the agriculture may feel dystopic, there really wasn’t ever much west of the cross timbers to begin with.

The dividing line you describe is the area between the 98th and 100th meridian.

New comment by throwaway20148 in "U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation"

throwaway20148 — Fri, 10 Jul 2020 05:53:24 +0000

The land around the Ouchita Mountains is not shitty at all. In fact it’s gorgeous.

New comment by throwaway20148 in "New Stuff"

throwaway20148 — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 01:57:52 +0000

Also worth noting that male bears will eat cubs which is how I interpreted it.

New comment by throwaway20148 in "iPhone 6S getting iOS 14 is like the Galaxy S6 getting Android 11"

throwaway20148 — Wed, 24 Jun 2020 16:27:04 +0000

I had a 6S Plus until earlier this year when the port went on the fritz and car play started acting erratically. That was pretty much my sole reason for upgrading.

Performance wasn’t great for a while but after the whole battery kerfuffle last year I took it into the store to get the battery replaced for $30 and it felt like a brand new phone after that.

New comment by throwaway20148 in "'Into The Wild' bus removed from Alaska wilderness"

throwaway20148 — Sat, 20 Jun 2020 06:54:34 +0000

That uninhabited place is stewarded by someone else. It and the people that travel to it are the responsibility of that steward. This often happens to be park rangers or logging companies or whatever. Even if we have been granted the privilege to roam on these lands we do not have a right to go act as we see fit on them. There are always rules.

There is a lot of land that you can buy very dirt cheap and go live as you see fit on it without having to answer to anyone - minus some property taxes. There you can try to bushcraft to your hearts content.