<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: basilgohar</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=basilgohar</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Wed, 08 Apr 2026 18:33:42 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=basilgohar" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by basilgohar in "Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>And then the government gets official, explicit, intimate knowledge of everything we do online. With our express permission now.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 18 Mar 2026 04:00:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47421472</link><dc:creator>basilgohar</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47421472</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47421472</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by basilgohar in "Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act: Dangerous backdoor surveillance risks remain"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Nothing good is going to be solved by expanding law enforcement's power, reach, or lightening any existing restrictions. We are not suffering from crimes due to lack of law enforcement's legal scope. It's quite the opposite.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 16 Mar 2026 12:10:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47397894</link><dc:creator>basilgohar</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47397894</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47397894</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by basilgohar in "I ported Linux to the PS5 and turned it into a Steam Machine"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I totally understand. But I think these artificial restrictions inspire that rebellious spirit in hackers to circumvent and see what's possible.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 08 Mar 2026 13:37:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47297229</link><dc:creator>basilgohar</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47297229</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47297229</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by basilgohar in "I ported Linux to the PS5 and turned it into a Steam Machine"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This has always been the hacker spirit. Make things designed to do one thing do another thing. If it's against the hardware maker's intentions or just completely outside their expectation, even better!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 08 Mar 2026 13:23:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47297136</link><dc:creator>basilgohar</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47297136</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47297136</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by basilgohar in "IDF killed Gaza aid workers at point blank range in 2025 massacre: Report"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You're right. It wasn't under occupation, it was worse. It was an open-air prison and concentration camp.<p><a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/06/14/gaza-israels-open-air-prison-15" rel="nofollow">https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/06/14/gaza-israels-open-air-pr...</a><p><a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/05/20/norman-finkelstein-gaza-iran-israel-jerusalem-embassy/" rel="nofollow">https://theintercept.com/2018/05/20/norman-finkelstein-gaza-...</a><p>If you're hung-up about the word occupation, then use the word under seige. Gaza was under seige the entire time you claim it was under no occupation. Israel completely controlled what went in and went out, operated a naval blockade over Gaza, and performed military operations known as "mowing the lawn" (population reduction measures) as well as shooting peaceful protestors. They literally counted calories of nutrition going to keep them barely above a starvation diet.<p>Nothing else you said in your reply is relevant. Israel has been occupying Gaza <i>or worse</i> the entire time. Typical Zionist deflection.<p>Ironically, your framing is the failure and your Zionism is showing. Don't defend genocide. Just don't do it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 25 Feb 2026 06:10:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47147943</link><dc:creator>basilgohar</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47147943</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47147943</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by basilgohar in "IDF killed Gaza aid workers at point blank range in 2025 massacre: Report"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That's because it's not a war. It's a genocide. An occupied people have the right to resist their occupation. Occupiers do not have the right to prolong their occupation of said peoples. Israel is on the wrong side in all cases from its inception.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 25 Feb 2026 01:21:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47146074</link><dc:creator>basilgohar</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47146074</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47146074</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by basilgohar in "IDF killed Gaza aid workers at point blank range in 2025 massacre: Report"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Don't make things up. Palestinians cannot settle their own land. The Israelis are the only ones settling, i.e., colonizing.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 25 Feb 2026 01:17:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47146031</link><dc:creator>basilgohar</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47146031</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47146031</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by basilgohar in "IDF killed Gaza aid workers at point blank range in 2025 massacre: Report"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Europe is extremely important to Israel. Their legitimacy stems from seeing themselves as European. Their loss of support from Europe is very bad in the long term.<p>Yes, US is supporting them to. They are losing from both sides, though. They may have part of the remaining generation in power and that's it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 24 Feb 2026 23:39:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47145147</link><dc:creator>basilgohar</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47145147</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47145147</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by basilgohar in "IDF killed Gaza aid workers at point blank range in 2025 massacre: Report"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Israel is an oppressive, genocidal, apartheid illegally occupying force. You can't compare the two sides.<p>Palestinians have been under this assault by Israel and Zionists in general for nearly a century. Defending anything Israel does at this point is indefensible. Their context has ALWAYS been wrong and they've been caught lying so many times it's more accurate to believe exactly the opposite of anything the IDF says.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 24 Feb 2026 23:36:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47145109</link><dc:creator>basilgohar</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47145109</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47145109</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by basilgohar in "OpenAI resets spending expectations, from $1.4T to $600B"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Maybe we'll get cheap HBM DIMMs in a year or two due to this oversupply. We gotta think positive!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 24 Feb 2026 21:36:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47143471</link><dc:creator>basilgohar</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47143471</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47143471</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by basilgohar in "U.S. Cannot Legally Impose Tariffs Using Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'd say the past few months have also been disastrous. I don't think there's been one lasting good thing with Trump at the helm.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 22 Feb 2026 07:21:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47109013</link><dc:creator>basilgohar</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47109013</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47109013</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by basilgohar in "What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's not funny. It's a dag-gone jobs program. ICE, TSA, and more throw away billions to effect little but a heavy burden on the population. These organizations, FBI and other law enforcement included, invent crises and problems so as to secure even more funding.<p>Maybe the individual investigator in the story is excepted considering it seems he took it seriously, perhaps, but yes, a lot of money is intentionally thrown into these organizations for security theater, jobs programs, and padding the pockets of political friends and cronies.<p>What we should be worried about is how many legitimate threats fly under the radar because time and again these organizations have been proven to be highly ineffective at actually preventing what their charters mandate, but they can appear to be very visibly effective by incarcerating thousands of innocent people.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 21 Feb 2026 17:53:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47103010</link><dc:creator>basilgohar</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47103010</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47103010</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by basilgohar in "The Nekonomicon – Nekochan.net Archive, Updated"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'm glad you explained what it actually is. I clicked just out of curiosity that it must be something different than what it sounded like, being in Hacker News. I'm glad I found out it was related to old Silicon Graphics hardware. :-) I have a fond memory of those beasts of machines.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 21 Feb 2026 17:28:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47102783</link><dc:creator>basilgohar</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47102783</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47102783</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by basilgohar in "Tell HN: Ralph Giles has died (Xiph.org| Rust@Mozilla | Ghostscript)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I am greatly saddened at this news. Ralph, or rillian as I mainly knew him through the Xiph-related IRC channels, was a stalwart "nice guy", always a kind word, a moderating beacon of gentle support and help, and just someone whose presence seemed to make any place a better place. He will be greatly missed.<p>Seeing the other folks from Xiph commenting here, I can tell that my take on him was not unique. We lost one of the good guys, for sure.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 13 Feb 2026 18:47:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47006196</link><dc:creator>basilgohar</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47006196</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47006196</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by basilgohar in "GPT‑5.3‑Codex‑Spark"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Can you share any examples of these one-shot prompts? I've not gotten to the point where I can get those kind of results yet.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 12 Feb 2026 19:04:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46993430</link><dc:creator>basilgohar</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46993430</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46993430</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by basilgohar in "TikTok settles just before social media addiction trial to begin"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>All media, newspapers, and social media networks do this. I'm not sure why you're raising this specifically in response to the fact I was stating TikTok was uniquely able to bring awareness to the issue of the genocide in Palestine.<p>Many people were completely unfamiliar with the plight of the Palestinians over the past 100 years and TikTok (and, to a much less degree, other platforms) brought the issue to their attention. Israel is no longer untouchable and many have recognized them for what they are now - the last remaining Western imperialist settler colony. This was not the case merely 4 years ago. The transformation is stark and real.<p>What can people do with that knowledge? That's up to them.<p>I don't really get the rest of your comment, unfortunately.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 28 Jan 2026 01:40:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46789931</link><dc:creator>basilgohar</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46789931</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46789931</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by basilgohar in "TikTok settles just before social media addiction trial to begin"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The elephant in the room of all of this is that TikTok was <i>the</i> social media platform that allowed for the genocide taking place in Palestine by Israel to reach audiences directly. All other major social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) heavily censored this information or outright deplatformed and canceled accounts of prominent dissemination of information about the war crimes being committed by Israelis.<p>TikTok, outside of the US and Zionist-controlled sphere of influence, remained the one place for this information to be available widely far beyond what was possible on other platforms.<p>All the other platforms have the same concepts of algorithms and targeting and bubbles. TikTok was uniquely <i>not</i> under Western control, and thus, needed to be pressured to conform.<p>The significant shift in young people's opinions about Israel in recent years is heavily attributed to the unfiltered information about their ongoing genocide against the Palestinians that they could uniquely see on TikTok and must not be understated, especially in light of all the major shifts in news, media, and social media over the past few years as they grapple with the fallout of losing the narrative.<p>I don't deny that social media as a whole has many harms and negatives, but there's no action like this being taken against Meta, Google, or Twitter despite the exact same harms present, sometimes even more so, on their platforms. They're already in the same overall group that supports the narrative and have done so by self-censoring their platforms accordingly. TikTok didn't play ball and got trampled.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:20:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46789224</link><dc:creator>basilgohar</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46789224</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46789224</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by basilgohar in "AI code and software craft"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I feel like one of the things that's not said enough, and which I think is conflating the effectiveness of AI in the eyes of actual software engineers, is that, for the most part, most code produced IS lousy. The craft of programming has been watered down so much in favor of results, and so much code is disposable or write-and-use once, that quality just became less relevant.<p>I remember when I first started out programming 20 years ago, there was <i>time</i> to craft good quality code. Then there were more and more pushes to get more code out faster, and no one really cared about the quality. Bugs became part of the cost of doing business. I think GenAI for code fits well in the more recent paradigm, and comparing it with hand-crafted code of yore is a bit disingenuous, as appealing as it may be, because most code hasn't been that good for a long time.<p>I am sad to admit it, but AI is just fitting in where poor coding practices have already existed, and flourishing in that local maxima.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 27 Jan 2026 01:38:44 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46774404</link><dc:creator>basilgohar</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46774404</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46774404</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by basilgohar in "How AI destroys institutions"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I agree and disagree with parts of what you said.<p>AI may have caused a distinct trajectory of the problem, but the old system was already broken and collapsing. If the building falls over or collapses in place doesn't change that the building was already at its end.<p>I think the fact that AI is allowed to go as far as it has is part of the same issue, namely, our profit-at-all-costs methodology of late-stage capitalism. This has lead to the accelerated destruction of <i>many</i> institutions. AI is just one of those tools that lets us sink more and more resources into the grifting faster.<p>(Edit: Fixing typos.)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 21 Jan 2026 14:48:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46706446</link><dc:creator>basilgohar</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46706446</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46706446</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by basilgohar in "Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The US starts more wars until its eventual complete collapse. See The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. We're operating out of a playbook for imperial destruction word for word.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 20 Jan 2026 15:35:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46692886</link><dc:creator>basilgohar</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46692886</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46692886</guid></item></channel></rss>