• 0 Posts
  • 7 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: August 7th, 2023

help-circle
  • 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.


  • 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.



  • There is always more that can be done, but the effects of the carbon tax go well beyond it being a “tax on life”.

    Take for example Algoma Steel in Sault Ste. Marie Ontario. They’ve been undergoing a major transformation from using constantly-burning coal to an Electric Arc Furnace — and they specifically call out carbon tax savings as one of the projects drivers.

    That’s but one story of industry putting the investments into greener technologies to save from having to pay the carbon levy. I wish the media spent more time talking about such projects, because the levy is working.

    You know what I love most about the levy? It’s effectively optional. I can’t opt out of making an income (not being born rich and not wanting to live under a vow of poverty), but I can opt out of generating carbon. We’ve been having the carbon discussion for 30 years now (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change came out in 1992!), and at least some of us were paying attention and made a plan to decarbonize our lifestyles during the last three decades. And for everyone who has, the Carbon Levy might as well not really exist. If you don’t burn, you don’t pay. Simple as that.