• 11 Posts
  • 385 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: September 26th, 2023

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  • What Google password?

    I don’t intend to browse RMS-style, but I have zero need of a Google account, nor of the major search engines directly.

    I just add layers between myself and that particular company. I still can get their data, but without the creep factor.

    Mostly.

    It’s an imperfect solution, but I’m more comfortable with access by proxy than direct access.



    1. Suffer through working life
    2. Retire, downsize, go see the world without having to convince a gf/partner

    Nothing wrong with disliking dating, it’s a screwy social ritual intended to use a short series of interactions to determine if this is a person you could trust and genuinely like enough to share everything - including tough mornings - and compromise with for the next fifty years.

    Works for some folks. Doesn’t work for others. I’m happily married, took a couple false starts and youthful indiscretions to get here - as well as the magic of the internet and some long discussions about relationships/commitment/poly/nonstandard stuff.

    Works for us, maybe not for most.









  • I benefit from an orphan drug, and the R&D was most definitely subsidised by the public purse.

    My insurance pays a few grand a month for it.

    The mfg coupon covers most of the rest, minus a copay.

    This is the second iteration of the original drug. The first hasn’t meaningfully fallen in price and only the original company can manufacture and distribute the generic even under the name of competitors.

    There was no breakthrough in the second iteration, and the logic to solve the “problem” they solved was straightforward. So now I pay more, for an anecdotally less effective version that addresses a risk irrelevant to me but present in the original.

    There is yet a third iteration on the way.

    Shock revelations:

    • pharma companies are greedy and will double dip against both government subsidies and patients/insurance at every opportunity.
    • XX Pharma didn’t pay for the original R&D, my gov did.
    • if one replaces Na with a/several similar elements, one still ends up with a salt, often resulting in a drug variant that “doesn’t affect blood pressure” and offers no other real benefits, nor risks.
    • Clinical trials for said alternative salt are broadly leas expensive than for the original. That does not result in lower prices.

    Nationalise pharma research, if not the manufacturers.

    Also, generics are often manufactured in countries with, shall we say, fewer controls and regulations. Know who makes those pills and where. If you can’t stomach the FDA reports on that manufacturer, find a pharmacy who will sell you something else…





  • At one time, Reddit (or at least the core server) was open source. Statistically, it’s relatively likely that someone, somewhere forked and is maintaining that code for their own purposes to this day, but I’m not actively aware of any examples.

    If someone has been maintaining a fork, I’d love to see the old comment database imported into it and made available, though I don’t know offhand what license either the code or the comments were released under.

    A FOSS Reddit, without the chaos that took over America during the presidential administration installed in 2016, and branching from there, would be an interesting point of diversion to say the least.

    Edit: quickie DDG search found me one fork archived in 2023 and a further form updated a year or so ago. That’s recent enough the damn thing just might build with a little work.

    2023 fork of open source reddit

    ~2024 fork

    I’m sure there are others…


  • Generally? Well within the executive power / administrative law of any given state as noted by BlueFalcon below.

    Practically? I’d expect it to be quite a struggle. For licensed professions in general (doctors, real estate, insurance, hairdressers, etc.) most or all states ask a question to the effect of “Has your license for profession ever been suspended or revoked in any other state?”. It may or may not be an automatic disqualifier, but even if not it’s an uphill battle.

    It prevents the real estate agent who stole someone’s earnest money from upping stakes to the next state and getting licensed, but since the standards for suspending/revoking licenses vary widely by state I lean towards believing that perhaps it should be a factor, and perhaps the state board of profession should meet to review the application, but previous disciplinary action in some other state is in no way an absolute statement about someone’s fitness to practice in their chosen field.