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Or perhaps uploading faulty firmware to centrifuge controllers?

This is just a danger in the medical profession, but especially for first responder or trauma focused parts.

My BIL is a pretty highly credentialed RN. He was seriously considering quitting a few years ago and was asking me about software dev or IT as a career path. I didn't ask for any stories as that would be disrespectful & insensitive, but he was working in the NICU (intensive care unit for infants) and had transferred in from the ICU.

Medicine is clearly his calling, but even as an outsider I can understand how emotionally draining it would be to have to struggle (and sometimes lose) to save children's lives and then go home to your young family. It's tough to see death and suffering daily, and this is a big struggle for these parts of the medical field.

My BIL ended up transferring to a specialist organ transplant unit. He continues to apply his trauma experience, but doesn't need to see quite as much trauma and death on a daily basis.

Suicide & self-harm/addiction issues are higher, and it's not uncommon at all for people to need to leave the field after a traumatic event. If you aren't in the field or don't know anyone who is, it's easy to gloss over how soul-wrenchingly difficult it is to deal with having to be calm and professional to help people going through trauma. Some of the stuff these folks need to deal with is truly horrific, and it's no wonder that PTSD is fairly common.

Also not surprising that EMS has a bit of a fratty/military culture. The job demands high periods of physical exertion and exposure to stressful and traumatic experiences. I'm glad there are people who do this work, but I very much understand why it is difficult.


I think this is often where the black humor tend to come into play. But black humor and political correctness are like oil and water, so I imagine it creates an extremely uncomfortable work environment for some people on both sides. Somebody who's PC is probably going to find everybody else beastial, and somebody who's not is probably going to be terrified of the PC types going to HR, social media, or whatever else. This nuance immediately came to mind when this article described the EMTs as fratty, which is probably exactly how this might seem to an outsider who doesn't understand how people can cope with being around extremely depressing scenarios constantly.

I have family in medicine and there were just endless stories that would have had social media in a frenzy if anybody ever shared them. At some point you have to laugh or cry, and one is way more sustainable than the other.


Personally, I think this is one reason The Pitt has been so popular.

It shows the grindstone that is never-ending work + being disrespected by a chunk of the public for doing a good thing + dealing with insurance/financials + personal trauma.

The way that EMTs/PMs and ED staff find a way to make that pressure cooker sustainable shouldn't need any excuses for not being PC. It simply is making an impossible thing possible. Normal folks have the luxury of not dealing with that.


I think it's interesting that you gave the Pitt as an example because I feel like in that show they put so much effort into maintaining and even explaining the importance of a lot of PC ideas. But maybe that's your point? The characters make mistakes, they can be crass, they can say the wrong thing, but it's not a character flaw and writing them off, instead it's a conversation with the goal of doing a good job and working better with people while also leaving space to express stress.

This is where the volunteer EMT system of my rural hometown is superior to city EMTs.

Effectively people are on call. A radio is passed around amongst the volunteers and it's pretty open (most of my family have been EMTs at one point, and for decades).

Because it's rural, there's not a whole lot of cases needing EMTs, but they do occur. And because there's a rotating schedule and it's not anyone's full time job, it's really easy to say "not to day" or "I need a month".

I don't know how you can translate this into professional EMTs for a city. The best I got is hiring more EMTs and offering more flexible and lenient time off.


As with many jobs, more people should probably be doing it, less. Everyone's an EMT, everyone's a cashier, everyone flips burgers, everyone teaches, everyone keeps the servers running - at least, for a little while.

Also solves a lot of problems with (long-term) unemployment.


It also helps a bit with a lot of other issues with labor. I'm taking a break from using a backhoe to finish installing my cistern, and running that equipment for a couple of days has been fun and easy. Since the rental co is coming to pick up the machine soon I am okay pushing my body a little bit to get the work done.

I think after a couple of weeks I'd probably get pretty good at it, but between the pay and the repetition that work would be pretty annoying and if I had to do this much work every day plus overtime I think it might put the hurt on me. But once a month, that's interesting. It's just really hard to find folks who don't want all my waking hours once I agree to do a little bit of work for them.


> bit of a fratty/military culture

Wow dismissive... it is true but seems like some outsider doesn't understand the experience and what it takes to hang with them.

I have trouble dealing with EMTs and firefighters. They come off as officious and pushy. They are there to do a thing and duty calls them, and I usually represent a waste of time and effort for them. Yet, they saved my building when someone set fire to it 6.5 years ago. Yes, two weeks into the pandemic lockdown, I was nearly displaced by a huge fire. Officious and pushy tough guys/gals made sure I still had a place to live, and they even kept my electricity on.

Last Tuesday I visited the Police Museum, and I owe another visit to the Hall of Flame firefighting museum. I'm really trying to cultivate a respect for first responders, because they are in my family and in my community.

What first responders really face every day is hostile war-zones in an urban jungle. They go into places where people hate ICE, where assholes are filming and recording and Facebooking them; they go into places where people would rather start fires and put lead into bodies than take them out. They deal with victims who are combative and families who are uncooperative. They deal with uncertainty and chaos and every possible obstacle in their way. Literally, because I was riding a Waymo two weeks ago when it was the only vehicle on a 6-lane stroad to pull over and stop for lights & sirens screaming past! (It also pulled the same stunt for a school bus with flashing lights.)

If you've seen/read The Hunger Games through its conclusion, you may get the journey of Prim after her mother, and how the cruelty of life claimed her as a victim in the end, after all that Katniss had tried to do. Primrose Everdeen is the quintessential paramedic whose mind, family and very life is ruined by her compassionate, merciful vocation.


Sorry to say but that part about the waymo being the only car pulling over is the embodiment of "f*ck you, I got mine". I could never live in a society like that. Germany has many issues (or at least, its adversaries like to portray it as such), but the moment traffic stops on the Autobahn, cars split into forming a corridor immediately. And yes, the fact German society is, broadly speaking, very considerate of others, makes it a better place to live there, overall, despite lower income.

Neither can I live in a society like this, but currently it is more difficult to die than live, thanks to f*cking EMTs and hospitals...

Seriously though, there seem to be many considerate people out in traffic, and oftentimes I am the rudest one on the road, for whatever reason. I do not drive, but I find that queueing up and boarding the bus all the time, that people are generally real polite one-on-one, but also extraordinarily inconsiderate to the collective, insofar as flouting rules and breaching etiquette in crazy ways all the time. And the same goes for my neighbors around here, who seem to go out of their way to irritate others, and oftentimes I snap.

Perhaps it is an artifact or side-effect of DEI, multiculturalism, melting-pot mentality, in the big city, that really there is no common culture or common manners to any of us, and mostly people are out for their own interests. It is extremely common in American cities for road-rage escalations to violence and death. Surely the news outlets cannot even report the accidents and fatalities from people simply losing their temper whilst operating motor vehicles. And we're back to the EMT grind.

I believe that a lot of people accused of xenophobia, or hating immigrants, are actually frustrated by a loss of culture, or a dilution, and the inexorable pressure to cope with increasing diversity of cultures around us, which is simply inhuman and unworkable, IMHO. You can't solve it by mass-deporting or any human strategy. But people who share heritage and share common values are more likely to get along daily, than a crucible of ethnicities, tribes, and subcultures, that are all asserting their supremacy or dominance over one another.


I mean, they released an oblivion remaster last year and it appears they are planning on a fallout 3 remaster, so probably retreading that ground as much as they can.


But there have been trillions invested in infra for AI. Surely those investors are going to need to see a return at some point?


apparently those trillions were necessary just to keep the boat staying afloat.


This is only tangentially on-topic, but the opening anecdote about the floor collapse immediately reminded me of the Erfurt latrine disaster. If you aren't already familiar, count yourself as one of today's lucky 10k people:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erfurt_latrine_disaster


Very Dwarf Fortressy, except DF doesn't have latrine pits, so you usually have to drop them in magma instead.


This is referencing https://xkcd.com/1053/


4chan users might want that, but even for the types of people willing to operate a site like that they don't want to be liable for the amount of CSAM, piracy, and other legally objectionable material that would end up on a fully unmoderated site.


Deciding what is spam and blocking it is moderation or "censorship".

If 4chan didnt have spam filters, the users would be begging for it almost immediately because the website would become unusable.


We might be talking past each other a bit. I agree that without any sort of spam filter a comment site would become unusable.

What I was trying to point out is that there are a lot of users of these 'edgy' sites that would like to post content that the site owners don't want them posting. So the site owner censors and removes CSAM and piracy so that the site isn't immediately in a legal black hole. The site owners remove content that at least some of the users would want be a use they find it morally or legally objectionable. Spam is kinda orthogonal to that point, since neither the site owner or the users want to see it.


What you said about spam is exactly what I'm trying to point out.

There are forms of moderation that we often dont even think of as moderation or 'censorship' because its removing content that "nobody" wants to see. One may argue that the spammers are users of the site who are being censored.

Also, this is a side note, but I'd assume that the overwhelming majority of even 4chan users are in favour of CSAM being banned from the site, even if there are some users who want to see it (i could be wrong about that, it's not like i even have anecdotes to back that up)


CSAM and piracy aren't the worst of examples on a site like 4chan. People... like clinically insane people just keeps scriptbombing someone's private addresses and bomb threats and other schizophrenic copypastas(not regular ones like Blackbird speed checks or "Glasses are versatile", but more like cognitohazards) as well as there will be viagra/cialis/poker/prostitution/roblox spams. I think those in that order should be the primary concern for keeping BBS running because those chase normal people away.

For the two categories mentioned above that are plainly illegal, I think, ironically, you can probably just keep AI classifiers running and wait for calls from NCMEC or DMCA emails, exploiting safe harbor clauses and/or by pointing at reasonable measures you've taken. If you have a large post volumes and short public log retention(private logs will probably have to be kept), that would help keeping the pressure low for those.


I'm really surprised that nowhere in the article does the author mention putting an oscilloscope on either the power rails or the clock signal. Normally when I'm troubleshooting broken devices those are the first things I check.

A multimeter can make it look like a chip is receiving the correct voltages, but there can be all sorts of noise and fluctuations that will cause really strange and inconsistent issues. You don't need a super fancy scope, even a 100mHz cheap handheld is more than good enough for checking power rails.

Also, for anyone who has to troubleshoot or fix boards, those smd resistor and capacitor kits are absolutely invaluable to have on the bench. After a decent scope, meter, and soldering station I would say that should be the next purchase for setting up an electronics lab. Nothing more annoying than trying to debug an issue and having to wait for the right value cap to be shipped. Especially since capacitors specifically often seem to have some trial and error to finding the right value for something like a decoupling cap. Fully modeling the noise generated on a supply rail often isn't completely possible, at least in my experience.


Agreed on both counts.

20 MHz is well within the range of any random scope, and you should have at least one "any random scope" on your desk if you're doing electronics seriously enough to reach the "diagnosing QA fail boards" stage. So probe the damn thing - and see if the crystal ever reaches a stable operating frequency once the board is powered. That would tell a lot.

And yes, the "holy book of SMD passives" is a must too. They cost you what, $40 each? And can save you days of waiting for the "right" passives to arrive when you need to test a circuit change. You don't need to have every size - footprints are negotiable when you're hand-soldering - but you should have at least one Book of Many Resistors and one Book of Many Capacitors.


Generally you shouldn't put a probe on crystals because the capacitive loading changes your circuit. I've had mixed success but especially if you think that's the issue, it's an iffy debug step. Some micros support a clock output mode that you can use, though. Another method is to form a basic loop antenna with the ground clip and hover near it.

But you'd need a few more than 100 millihertz for that lol


>Normally when I'm troubleshooting broken device

This is not a broken device. It didnt break. This is a batch of new devices that never worked to begin with straight from CM, and is being tested in standardized controlled rig all other freshly manufactured devices pass with no problem.


They will also "accidentally" re-add the insurance fees. I had a storage unit for about a year while sorting through my brother's estate, and without fail every 3 months the insurance fee would get added back on. I was so glad when I was able to cancel that lease, it was maddening to have to keep calling about the same issue.


My son's college did the same thing. Every term, the billing for tuition and fees would include (a very expensive) fee for heath insurance. I would have to declare again that he was covered on my plan as a dependent and he didn't need the school's plan.

I'm convinced they do this because the kids using student loans aren't paying attention.


Oh god, as if marketplace wasn't already enough of a toxic cesspool. I miss Craigslist more and more every year, unfortunately FB marketplace seems to be where everyone in my area has congregated.


> I miss Craigslist more and more

I do not. Craigslist was completely anonymous. Marketplace a lot less so. This makes a massive difference.

> marketplace seems to be where everyone in my area has congregated.

I think that is not just limited to your area.


In Switzerland there is tutti, in Austria there is willhaben, Germany has Kleinanzeigen (afaik that's owned by eBay)

Same for events, plenty of local or more spread sites for events in each of these counties.

So glad my general area didn't fall into the Facebook trap.


The historian Brett Devreaux did a good summary article earlier this year:

https://acoup.blog/2026/01/30/collections-the-late-bronze-ag...


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