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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 7th, 2023

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  • It’s horrible she was denied when there was a liver already available.

    Any full cadaver liver that could have gone to this woman didn’t get thrown into the garbage — it went to someone else who would have died without it.

    As for the living donor liver her boyfriend offered, even though he was a match her level of liver failure likely meant that the partial liver her boyfriend could have donated wouldn’t have been successful. Living donors still need a liver for themselves, and we each only have one full liver — so the best they could have done is given her half a liver. Her condition was too poor for this to have a likely positive outcome, which was why this was also denied.

    It sucks, but there aren’t enough donor livers for everyone who needs one. The cadaver liver she was denied however would have gone on to save the life of someone else you’re not hearing about in the press — someone else who may have died without it.

    If the unfairness of it all upsets you that much, then make sure you’ve signed your organ donor card, and make sure your family members know and understand your desire to be an organ donor. And encourage the people you know to do the same. This is only a problem because there aren’t enough donor livers for everyone — when you have n livers, at best you can save n lives — and thus having a larger number of donor livers allows for more lives to be saved, with fewer qualifications.




  • Yes. But what if the world was 1/3rd Linux, 1/3rd windows, 1/3rd OSX?

    The 1/3 running macOS (they haven’t called in OS X in many years now) wouldn’t have to worry, because Apple provides kernel event access for security tools running in user space. The CrowdStrike Falcon Sensor driver on macOS runs as a System Extension, and runs 100% in user space (“Ring 3” in Intel parlance) only — so if it misbehaves, the kernel can just shut it down and continue on its merry way.

    The problem with Windows (and to a certain extend Linux) is that Falcon Sensor needs to run in kernel mode (Ring 0) on those OS’s, and if it fucks up you lose all guarantees that the kernel and all of the apps running on the system haven’t been fucked with, hence the need for a full system crash/shutdown. The driver can (and did) put these systems in an indeterministic state. But that can’t happen on modern macOS with modern System Extensions.



  • They are, but you still need baseload. Solar and wind are great — when it’s daytime and/or the wind is blowing. Coal (and natural gas, hydro, and nuclear) can provide more scalable power on demand. These fill in the gaps for times when solar and wind production are lower.

    But China isn’t likely to convert existing coal plants to natural gas. If they wanted to do that they could do it already — they have an LNG pipeline from Siberia. But instead of replacing existing coal power plants, China keeps approving new ones — it was reported last year they were approving two new coal fired plants per week. So even if they increased their LNG imports (they’re looking to open a second pipeline with Russia on the western side of the country), those coal plants aren’t going anywhere — with the rate they’re building new power plants, they’re not likely to be “upgrading” any coal plants to LNG anytime soon — they’ll just build additional LNG plants (and likely further coal plants) alongside those existing coal plants instead.


  • Along came Creative Labs with their AWE32, a synthesizer card that used wavetable synthesis instead of FM.

    Creative Labs did wavetable synthesis well before the AWE32 — they released the Wave Blaster daughter board for the Sound Blaster 16, two full years before the AWE32 was released.

    (FWIW, I’m not familiar with any motherboards that had FM synthesis built-in in the mid 90’s. By this time, computers were getting fast enough to be able to do software-driven wavetable synthesis, so motherboards just came with a DAC).

    Where the Sound Blaster really shined was that the early models were effectively three cards in one — an Adlib card, a CMS card, and a DAC/ADC card (with models a year or two later also acting as CD-ROM interface cards). Everyone forgets about CMS because Adlib was more popular at the time, but it was capable of stereo FM synthesis, whereas the Adlib was only ever mono.

    (As publisher of The Sound Blaster Digest way back then, I had all of these cards and more. For a few years, Creative sent me virtually everything they made for review. AMA).


  • This is how the LNG argument typically goes: if we build up LNG capacity, we can ship it to China who can use it to replace coal burning power plants which emit significantly more CO2 than LNG fired plants do.

    That sounds nice — but do we have any_ commitments from China that this would actually happen? Or is it more likely that they’ll just build more LNG capacity on top of their existing coal capacity?

    To me, the latter seems more likely than the former.








  • It’s mostly improved chemistries and manufacturing processes. What we call “lithium ion batteries” aren’t the same today as they were even just in the 2010s. We have newer chemistries (lithium cobalt oxide, lithium manganese oxide, lithium iron phosphate, lithium manganese cobalt, lithium nickel cobalt aluminium oxide, etc.), newer solid state battery technologies, better cell packaging, and overall better manufacturing processes.

    Will these cells still have 100% capacity after 15 years? Likely not — but even if they’re only at 80 - 90% of their original capacity that’s still quite a lot of driving capacity for most EVs.

    Here is one non-peer reviewed study on Tesla battery deterioration, which shows that at the ~10 year mark, battery capacity loss is at around 17%. However, it’s worth noting that cars that hit the 8 through 10 year marks were more likely using older battery chemistry and construction techniques; newer cars at the 7 year mark only showed a roughly 7% battery capacity loss.

    Time will tell, but the situation is significantly less bleak than naysayers (and the oil industry) want you to believe.


  • The batteries on modern EVs doesn’t wear anywhere near the rate that people think they do. A properly cared for battery (which doesn’t require much care other than keeping it charged properly) will easily last 15+ years — and likely beyond the lifetime of the car they were installed into. Manufacturers already offer 8+ year battery warranties on new EVs, because they know they can easily beat that (barring a manufacturing defect of some kind).

    (In Japan, Nissan has been taking cells out of old Leafs that have at least 80% remaining capacity and are making them into home power packs. The Nissan Leaf was one of the first EVs and used an older battery chemistry — and even there, the batteries are typically outliving the cars they were originally installed into).

    It’s a little difficult to say with certainty what the lifetime of an EV battery is going to be like right now, as EVs with modern chemistries aren’t yet 15 years old (they’re more like 5 to 7 years old at most). Anecdotally, those I know with EVs in that age range typically have less than 1% capacity loss (and ODB-II reader can typically check this for you, so it’s not difficult to determine).

    Now of course it’s possible that someone has abused the hell out of their vehicle in ways that reduce the battery life (like routinely driving it to completely pull-over-to-the-side-of-the-road empty before recharging) — but as mentioned above an ODB-II reader will quickly show what the battery capacity is like. Hopefully used car sellers would check this themselves and provide it to buyers — but if not, ODB-II readers on Amazon aren’t terribly expensive to buy to check for oneself.

    Battery wear concerns are going to be more for “classic” EV collectors in 30+ years time, and won’t be for your typical EV driver.


  • The levers available to the Federal Government in this area are few; the Provinces hold most of the cards when it comes to housing, and it disgusts me that all too many of my fellow Canadians have so little clue as to how the system works that they blame the Federal Government (and/or “Trudope”), while letting their Provincial leaders (the majority of which are Conservatives) off the hook.

    Just today we’re seeing the Premiere of Alberta attempting to halt some of the Federal Governments deals with the municipalities to enhance housing supplies — purely because if they let the Feds provide assistance they won’t have a cudgel to hold against them anymore. It’s you don’t do enough to help and we won’t let you!

    The only policy solution to the current housing woes is more housing supply. And that’s ultimately in the hands of the Provinces.


  • Truly “poor people” (to use your words) typically don’t buy a lot of new cars in the first place. People on the lower end of the income scale are the main drivers of the used vehicle market.

    Incentivizing EV purchases and infrastructure ultimately helps everyone. It will bring efficiencies to the supply chain, and will drive investment into resources that should help drive prices down. At the same time, within the next 5 years or so you should see growth in the used EV market, which as more stock becomes available and used EVs become more normalized should make them more economical to purchase (as they’re already more economical to run and maintain).

    More new EVs now means more used EVs down the road, which will allow people to get into a better car for less money.


  • That stat borders on being somewhat dishonest.

    The three most populous Provinces in Canada (Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia) each have over 90% green power generation, either via hydroelectricity or via nuclear power. Manitoba likewise produces 97% of its electricity from hydroelectric sources.

    Those four Provinces have a population of roughly 31 million people. Canada has a total population of just over 39 million — meaning “most provinces actually” only accounts for 20% of Canadians. 80% of Canadians get their electricity from 85+% green sources. By total capacity, nearly 70% of all electrical generation in Canada is from green sources, and thus “electric heat” for the vast majority of Canadians is not from coal and natural gas.