Hacker News: BashiBazouk

New comment by BashiBazouk in "US President says he will ban the term 'artificial intelligence'"

BashiBazouk — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 22:13:32 +0000

I prefer the SI with cute swimsuit models.

New comment by BashiBazouk in "Prisoner loses challenge to an Australian state’s ban on inmates eating Vegemite"

BashiBazouk — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 15:48:07 +0000

Yup, I was in a youth hostel while backpacking down the east coast of Australia and decided to try it. I found if you spread a cracker with a thick layer of butter then a molecular thin layer of vegemite it came quite close to process cheese. Though that was the first and last time I tried the stuff...

New comment by BashiBazouk in "The past, present, and future share a show floor at Pinball Expo 2026"

BashiBazouk — Sat, 24 Oct 2026 15:34:58 +0000

I think they have taken all the old ones out but during the height of the coin op video game era the Santa Cruz Boardwalk had a great pinball collection. Some dating back to the 30's and 40's. My favorite was a baseball themed one from that early era. Simple with really good action...

New comment by BashiBazouk in "Meta strikes deal with Zuckerberg to protect him from California wealth tax"

BashiBazouk — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 16:00:55 +0000

Heh, skimmed a little too fast, but it's interesting that the progressive/Bernie Sanders crowd skip over the control issue when pushing the wealth tax. I think it was Sergey Brin that mentioned control as well when he moved to the Nevada side of Tahoe.

New comment by BashiBazouk in "Meta strikes deal with Zuckerberg to protect him from California wealth tax"

BashiBazouk — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 14:14:36 +0000

Is the opposition to the wealth tax about the money or the control of the company? If Zuck sells shares to pay the tax, what percentage does his controlling shares drop. I wonder if these special shares are specifically non voting rather than to save him money?

New comment by BashiBazouk in "Maybe There Was an Egg Cartel After All"

BashiBazouk — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 16:58:06 +0000

I was mainly reacting to that line which seemed to me a throw away that was never returned too implying: and if normal egg prices are high just think about those more expensive brown eggs. Which is too bad, noticing the higher end eggs not moving much in price might help the general argument of the article...

New comment by BashiBazouk in "Maybe There Was an Egg Cartel After All"

BashiBazouk — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 15:12:05 +0000

"and not even for the lovingly cared-for, cage-free variety"

Which oddly did not increase in price much. I was in a discussion once on a forum and brought up that eggs around me (PNW) were still in the $6 for 18 when everyone else was complaining about $10 for a dozen. Next time I bought eggs, the ones I buy were the same price as always but the normal white eggs were in fact $10 a dozen...

New comment by BashiBazouk in "California farmers are struggling to sell grapes as demand for wine drops"

BashiBazouk — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 17:11:06 +0000

Actually that is one of the big criticisms of French wine, blends are regulated by the AOC system where as California is more free to experiment. but any gross generalization of American wine is probably wrong. Plenty of wineries blend, plenty don't. Doesn't take much looking to find wineries that make wine from only grapes they grow...

New comment by BashiBazouk in "California farmers are struggling to sell grapes as demand for wine drops"

BashiBazouk — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 16:45:48 +0000

Having grown up in California, we thought the same for European wines. Why bother when they are no better than the local swill. Though I'm not sure how true your conjecture is as my family was in Amsterdam a few years ago and eating at a fancy french restaurant got talking to the sommelier and mentioned we now lived in Oregon which turned in to a conversation about Pinot Noirs of the Willamette valley. He knew all about them...

But more to the point, all the top french Champagne producers have large holdings and production in and around Napa. They probably care...

New comment by BashiBazouk in "The Board Game of the Alpha Nerds (2014)"

BashiBazouk — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 22:04:43 +0000

Wusses. We played Machiavelli, which was basically Diplomacy with plague and famine phases...

New comment by BashiBazouk in "QBittorrent breaks out of sandbox to commit crimes"

BashiBazouk — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 18:19:13 +0000

What if you gave an agent access to bittorrent and your media library, put it behind a shoddy sandbox, then gave it prompts like: I'm bored, I want to watch a movie but I've seen everything in my media library, what would you suggest?

New comment by BashiBazouk in "9000 RPM is faster than your screen refreshes"

BashiBazouk — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 17:27:35 +0000

I did a stint back in the day at the IBM Cottle road site sputtering hard disks. All the tools had roughing pumps that would bring the tool to near vacuum before the turbo pumps would kick in as anything even remotely close to atmosphere would just rip the blades apart. Then the older huge tool, the Ulvac had a cryo-pump which was just a big chamber that would cool a sponge to 20 kelvin and molecules would just come in contact and slow down...

New comment by BashiBazouk in "Tell HN: Old Reddit Now Requires Login"

BashiBazouk — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 20:09:00 +0000

Thanks for that. I lurk lemmy every once in a while but found it really hasn't hit a critical mass yet, but man, it's amazing how a good interface improves the situation. At the very least it's a good methadone for my suddenly cold turkey reddit addiction...

Is this unique to lemmy.world or does the "old" trick work on other servers?

New comment by BashiBazouk in "5k Restaurant Menus, Years 1880-1920"

BashiBazouk — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 17:37:40 +0000

The other interesting one is celery. I read an article a bit ago about how salted celery stalks were popular around the early 1900's with all kinds of heirloom varieties being served. Quite a few of the menus I have clicked on have celery listed as an appetizer...

New comment by BashiBazouk in "5k menus from the New York Public Library’s Buttolph Collection (1880-1920)"

BashiBazouk — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 15:41:36 +0000

Really cool. I have A Treasury of Great Recipes by Mary and Vincent Price and it is similar. It has recipes from all the restaurants that they went to all over the world but every section has a menu from one of the restaurants that gave a recipe for that section, which is the real charm of the book. Interesting to see how little has changed except the prices...

New comment by BashiBazouk in "Can you see three trees?"

BashiBazouk — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 15:10:31 +0000

Yes. I live in a "forest community" in the outskirts of Portland, OR. But I got a chuckle thinking what do you define as a "tree"? I have three Douglas firs that are big enough that if you cut them down you could build a small house out of the lumber from each one or a medium sized one from all three. I have a similar number of big leaf maples that are not as tall but have huge canopies. Then a whole bunch that are more "urban" sized trees, magnolias, dog woods, Japanese maples. Tons of tree "plants" that are working their way up but I would not consider trees yet. Then the shrubs that are pretending to be trees, camellias, rhododendrons, et. All on a half acre. Then there are the thousands on the hill side across a small valley...

New comment by BashiBazouk in "Iran requires insurance on ships using Strait of Hormuz, fees likely to follow"

BashiBazouk — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 01:07:38 +0000

Why would they not just build a pipeline from Kuwait to Oman or even UAE to the other side of Oman? If the Keystone pipeline is profitable, so would this I would think. Seems like a temporary problem or a fine line for Iran to charge fees low enough the effort would not be worth it...

New comment by BashiBazouk in "Sonny Rollins, jazz saxophonist, has died"

BashiBazouk — Wed, 27 May 2026 03:48:47 +0000

Just came from my kid's school district jazz fest. One of the band instructors mentioned Sonny Rollins had passed and he was the last jazz legend alive that appeared in the A Great Day in Harlem photo : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Great_Day_in_Harlem Maybe what they were referring to...

New comment by BashiBazouk in "'We mould trees to grow into the shape of chairs'"

BashiBazouk — Mon, 18 May 2026 18:27:08 +0000

They are really cool. I went to see these trees as a teenager when they were in Scotts Valley. From the images, they have grown a bit in the decades since...

New comment by BashiBazouk in "Santa Cruz restaurant changes logo after flurry of negative reviews for AI art"

BashiBazouk — Sat, 02 May 2026 17:24:11 +0000

As someone who grew up in the pre-computer graphic arts, in Santa Cruz ironically enough, it was not paste but hot wax. Though in the early days of computers in graphic arts, all the graphic artists were just happy to not have to deal with photo typesetters anymore...