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SpecialistK

566 karma · joined June 9, 2023

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SpecialistK··on Distinct cellular and genetic differences in colorectal cancer in young patients
> GI doctors and their teams do this all day long.

I've had an extended conversation about this with an ER nurse friend, in which I reminded her that although the staff go through the gamut all day every day and it's normal for them, the patient (hopefully) does not and whatever procedure(s) are new and scary.

Add in the fact that (sexualized) abuse and med students using anesthetized patients for training without explicit consent is more common in the medical field than any of us would like, and people having concerns strong enough to avoid treatment sounds pretty reasonable to me.

"we see this all the time" may settle a few concerns, but it makes others (such as the power imbalance) worse.

SpecialistK··on Plex laid off the whole player team
I went with Plex AV few years ago for two major reasons:

* a native Xbox app (I believe Jellyfin may now have one)

* non-techie acceptance (Plex seemed more polished at the time, will need to reassess now)

Either way, I'll be warning my spouse that things may be changing soon.

SpecialistK··on Sally Rooney can no longer sell books in UK due to Palestine Action support
The gap in my understanding is, why this particular group? There are endless groups and movements in favour of the Palestinian cause that haven't been marked by the UK's overbearing security state, so why not just lend her support to one of those instead?
SpecialistK··on Elon Musk Says Quebec, Alberta and Saskatchewan Should Separate from Canada
All of that is likely 100% true. But it's also completely irrelevant to this topic, which is that he is a Canadian citizen speaking on Canadian politics (badly.)

Canada has no rules on multiple citizenship, including as an elected representative. Carney did the right thing and renounced his other citizenships when becoming PM, but it has been contentious with other politicians such as former opposition leader Andrew Scheer (US) and Conrad Black (who founded the company which owns the newspaper this story was published in - he renounced Canadian citizenship to accept a British peerage.) I would welcome an Australian-style ban on multiple citizens holding office.

But revoking citizenship or silencing someone despite their efforts clearly being harmful to the nation is something that Canada has rejected even to our own detriment.

SpecialistK··on LineageOS 24
I'm definitely open to trading some security/privacy features in favour of some QoL features Lineage had last time I used it - moving the clock back to the right (where persistent notifications belong) and power button for flashlight. It's a shame this has to be a "or" but as I use a burner phone when crossing borders anyway...
SpecialistK··on YouTuber Says Cops Visited Him After He Built a Flock-Style Camera to Track Cops
I've long thought (but not deeply enough to find a hole in it) that constitutional violations need to carry severe criminal penalties. Not just a "don't do that", a payout from the tax coffers, or dismissal of evidence but hard jail time.
SpecialistK··on YouTuber Says Cops Visited Him After He Built a Flock-Style Camera to Track Cops
> Risk is part of the job. If they don’t like it, they are free to pursue a different career.

And that risk is heavily overblown. Cop isn't even in the top 10 most dangerous jobs: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/the-hot-button/and-the-...

SpecialistK··on God of War on PSP, recompiled to WebAssembly and running in the browser
From launch until 2007, the PSP was capped at 222MHz. After firmware 3.50, the full 333MHz was unlocked. The GoW games were released after this, so I assume they used the full 333MHz.
SpecialistK··on Elon Musk Says Quebec, Alberta and Saskatchewan Should Separate from Canada
I may be able to comment if your link worked. But I assume it's a reference to Section 44 of the Australian Constitution?

I agree with that policy. Should I ever run for office, I would actively renounce my other citizenship(s). It wouldn't apply to Musk though, because his escapades are not as an elected official.

SpecialistK··on Elon Musk Says Quebec, Alberta and Saskatchewan Should Separate from Canada
I would rather not open up the discussion of two-tiered citizenship again, even if it protects people whose opinions I find very distasteful or harmful. We had that debate in 2015 for people accused of things arguably worse than this.
SpecialistK··on Elon Musk Says Quebec, Alberta and Saskatchewan Should Separate from Canada
Rightly or wrongly, it's legally as much his country as it is yours (if you're a Canadian citizen) or mine.
SpecialistK··on Elon Musk Says Quebec, Alberta and Saskatchewan Should Separate from Canada
Is it "meddling with other countries" if he's a citizen of that country?

However I am of the belief that if someone doesn't live in a country and has no intention to, they should recuse themselves from that country's politics. I have citizenship of a country I don't live in and have never voted there, although I am eligible to.

SpecialistK··on Couple was swatted 55 times in 2 years over a post about Norm Macdonald
Milwaukee is in Canada?
SpecialistK··on T. Rex Had a Body Temperature of 97°F
Common sense also suggests using the SI units that ~95% of the planet uses, but here we are.
SpecialistK··on T. Rex Had a Body Temperature of 97°F
It's just how some Americans justify this particular measurement system.

As you said: it's what you're used to. I know 100F is a very warm day, but if someone said it was 50F I wouldn't intrinsically know how warm or cold that is. My brain works in Celsius, so someone saying its 20C I understand instantly.

Similarly length in US football fields - I don't know what that is, but it's second nature to someone who did grow up using them as a measurement.

SpecialistK··on Haiku R1/beta6 has been released
I do always find that alternative OSes on PPC Macs are an exercise in going "It worked! Neat." and then going back to the Mac OS. 2026 software on 1999 hardware is always something I appreciate, but it's the Mac's unique "pairing" (lock-in) which gives it value compared to any commodity PC which will run Linux or BSD or Haiku or TempleOS better, and does not run the Mac OS as well.

My LLM experiments have become more ambitious as the tech has improved. Porting a decompiled SNES game to the Dreamcast is the latest (80% complete) victory.

SpecialistK··on Kids These Days
I'm pretty sure the point of the graphic was literally "look, people said the same thing a generation ago about the generation before!"

In fact, the sentences around the graphic reinforce this reading:

> in the 80s, people were complaining that things had gone to hell. Here’s a popular list (the facts are totally fabricated, by the way) distributed at the time

> None of this means that the worriers are mistaken or that we are in the grip of a moral panic (though I might make this argument in another post). But it does suggest that the popularity of despair can’t be taken as good evidence that this despair is warranted.

SpecialistK··on Haiku R1/beta6 has been released
Cool! I watch Action Retro sometimes, but prefer the more relaxed style of TDNC.
SpecialistK··on Haiku R1/beta6 has been released
What I'd love to see (but likely lack the skill to, even with Claude Opus) is PowerPC. Haiku would look great on an iMac G4.
SpecialistK··on Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days
Even Japanese attitudes towards IP are not that clear cut. One of the reasons the MiniDisc format was so popular in Japan vs the rest of the world was that physical media in Japan is expensive, so there are stores which rent out CDs. Those CDs would often be copied to MD (or later to PCs.)
SpecialistK··on Run OpenBSD on DigitalOcean for $4/month
They were very helpful when one of the AMD firmware patches in 7.3 caused my VPS to not boot. They even offered to apply a manual fix until patch -015 was available which fixed it.
SpecialistK··on NetBSD GSoC 2026 Improving RAIDframe
I've said it before and I've said it again - I think it's best for everyone if mainstream Linux and FreeBSD chase the best performance and latest features, while NetBSD aims (and specializes) at providing a stable, modern, reliable OS for these legacy platforms.
SpecialistK··on Where did all the public bathrooms go?
No, it's mostly severe drug addiction and mental illness.
SpecialistK··on Where did all the public bathrooms go?
People have no choice but to smear feces on the wall and leave needles on the floor of public restrooms, or urinate inside a moving bus because housing is too expensive?

Housing and wealth inequality is an undeniable issue. So is anti-social behaviour. You can be poor and even homeless without throwing self-respect out of the window. People are either responsible for their actions, in which case criminal and civil charges are on the cards, or they are not (due to mental illness and/or substance abuse) and need to be institutionalized.

SpecialistK··on I'm Sick of Reading AI-Written Posts
I'm also sick of reading AI-written posts. But I'm also also sick of seeing this same blog post reiterated every other day with slightly different wording.

AI slop articles and replies are bad; everyone who isn't a SEO grifter knows this. Why does it need to be repeated ad nauseam?

SpecialistK··on Netgate Released PfSense Community Edition Version 2.9.0
It's like OPNsense, with added sleaziness!
SpecialistK··on Kobo can run apps now
You can do a lot of the same things with a jailbroken Kindle and KindleForge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4ZliC82RtA

SpecialistK··on A 25-year-old video patent just expired, ending a legal headache for Linux
The stock Saturn needed a VCD expansion card to play them, but some of the Japanese-only models like the Hitachi HiSaturn had it built in.
SpecialistK··on France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls
I'm not sure if that's the whole story, because I speak from a Canadian perspective where telecom ownership is quite protectionist. And these spoofed numbers are almost always local. I guess bad-faith US telcos could allow spoofing Canadian NANP numbers...
SpecialistK··on France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls
Ah, my mistake. I don't think telemarketer cold calls are popular where I am: when I do receive one claiming to be a phone company with a new phone offer, I expect it to be a scam rather than a "good-faith" attempt to win legitimate business.
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