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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • Wikileaks was never really a beacon of free speech its always been more of a platform where people can leak information about goverments and other powerful individuals or organizations doing bunch of shady or downright evil stuff behind our back. These often offer rare glimpse behind the scenes allowing us to be little less blind when voting during whather elections comes next.

    When WikiLeaks first came about it’s original goal was aimed at leaking information about authoritarian governments, primarily China and some countries in the Middle East. It was pretty big news at the time because assange had wrangled together a team of some pretty high profile Journalist and privacy tech people.

    However, most of those people were never really involved in the organization, and were mainly utilized as a marketing scheme. The rest slowly left the organization as works in their fields within WikiLeaks stagnated, or left over security and leadership concerns.

    Imo Assange has always been a duplicitous attention seeker. However, if that were illegal, pretty much everyone involved in media would be thrown in a cell. I think his biggest failures that should tarnish his public image is his handling of the leaks. Him rushing to release information against the advise of his security experts, information that hadn’t been properly vetted to protect the whistle blowers from prosecution.

    Multiple people have had their lives ruined because he didn’t take the time and effort to protect his sources. And not because they didn’t have the ability to, or lacked the proper protocols, but because Julian didn’t care so long as his name got air time.











  • Lol, If was in it for the money I wouldn’t be working at a children’s hospital run by one of the poorest states in America.

    My concern isn’t even particularly with the the creator, she’s an artist. My problem is when people try to pass it off as a medical device that can help disabled people.

    An even larger problem is when hobbyist start making medical devices for children. There are inherent problems they do not understand, because they lack education in the field. Children are so adaptive that if you don’t provide them with a device that actually provides sufficient utility they will adapt to not wearing a prosthetic at all, severely limiting their future mobility/functionality.



  • Another useless prosthetic designed by 3d printing enthusiasts…

    I work in orthotics and prosthetics, and the majority of the articles written about the “next gen” prosthetics are just marketing materials trying to wrangle up VC funding.

    Nothing about this makes sense. First of all, no one intuitively knows how to usefully operate a “third thumb”, so the learning curve on this is going to impede its adoption. We already have a hard time getting upper limb patients to use their prosthetics, and that’s when we’re purposely mimicking something they already know.

    Secondly, the utility of thumbs in general is that they are opposable. With the placement of their “thumb” the only digit you can utilize with it is your other thumb… Which means adding a thumb negates the advantage of thumbs in the first place.

    Finally, and most the important aspect to any prosthetics is utility. If this is meant to help people missing their other arm…how do they get the prosthetic on in the first place? And when you do manage to get someone to help you put this on, we’re supposed to use our big toe as the action controller? Okay, so that means you can utilize this thing while walking?

    Why on gods green earth did they not use myoelectrics? We’ve had them since the 70’s, why is this “cutting edge” prosthetic going backwards in technology?

    Oh wait, I can tell you… Because it was designed by a 3d printing lab with no experience in actual prosthetics. 3d printers are successfully being used in prosthetics, but only when the person utilizing them has a background in prosthetics or biomedical engineering. Ends up it’s a lot easier to have a prosthetist learn about 3d printing than it is to teach a 3d printing enthusiast about a field of study that requires education in physiology, anatomy, material science, and fabrication…


  • It matters on a geopolitical scale when it comes to logistics and weapons procurement. South Korea has an enormous production capability when it comes to military industries. They currently have the largest output capacity for tanks, and we’re talking about modern technologically advanced tanks, not cold war era relics.

    They’ve also been ramping up their supply chains to focus on things like artillery shell production and naval vessel production. However, they currently have a law that prevents them from supplying weapons to nations actively engaged in a war. But, that law has a clause that allows them to ignore the mandate if North Korea is involved in the conflict.

    Legally roping North Korea into the conflict could solve a lot of supply problems for the west. If that doesn’t work, the next option would be to sway public opinion enough in South Korea that they change the prior legislation.


  • A whistleblower is the type of person to refuse such an NDA, regardless of buy-off price. They would understand that if Boeing is willing to pay them 10 million or whatever, that the information they have, should they release it, prevent over 10 million dollars worth of damages to the public.

    Maybe, but 10 million dollars is nothing to Boeing, and an awful lot for even an ethically driven person. Especially if they’ve been laid off and are in active lawsuits against a multi billion dollar corporation.

    They can afford to stall as long as legally allowed, and the legal system is built to levy the scale in their favor. It’s basically impossible for a person in this type of suit to have a normal life, and the corporations know that and try to exploit it as much as they can.

    I just don’t see someone like that committing suicide in a hotel parking lot out of state the day (two days?) before they are supposed to testify. That would go against everything they were doing up until that point.

    Suicide isn’t timely, nor is it a logic based decision. Unfortunately it’s fairly common for people to kill themselves at times people (especially their loved ones) would not initially expect.





  • Not a whole bunch you can do without some kind of polearm or range weapon. At most you can try stabbing him back if you happen to have a knife, but you’ll probably both bleed out. More than likely some of those 18 people who were attacked were likely hurt trying to help.

    Idk if a liveleaks equivalent still exists, but back in the day you could see the results of unarmed people trying to disarm someone with a knife. It’s usually not pretty even if it’s a couple people working together.

    I think the poles that allow you to pin someone down are prob going to be more common place in places like the UK or Australia .


  • I’ve never personally heard the dark forest scenario as requiring ftl tech,

    FTL is the only thing that makes it applicable to game theory. If there is no import to respond instantly, then there is no imperative to respond.

    The query is dependent on the hypothetical that the instant someone spots you in the dark Forrest they have an option of removing you from the game unless you remove them first.

    making that a requirement seems to make the entire premise moot as it requires throwing a pretty fundamental part of physics out to even contemplate.

    So does going to war with an alien race, or even finding another sentient race? How are you supposing these aliens are finding every sentient race in the galaxy if they can’t push a search signal faster than an electron? It would take thousands of years for a signal to travel to the closest potential suitable planet, let alone every suitable planet.

    The theory itself requires a suspense in disbelief, as do any that pertain to encounters of the third kind. I would say that the limitations in physics that prevent the possibility of FTL are of the same order and magnitude that prevent us from contacting aliens.