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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • A small blurb from The Guardian on why Andres Freund went looking in the first place.

    So how was it spotted? A single Microsoft developer was annoyed that a system was running slowly. That’s it. The developer, Andres Freund, was trying to uncover why a system running a beta version of Debian, a Linux distribution, was lagging when making encrypted connections. That lag was all of half a second, for logins. That’s it: before, it took Freund 0.3s to login, and after, it took 0.8s. That annoyance was enough to cause him to break out the metaphorical spanner and pull his system apart to find the cause of the problem.





  • The HeLa line had its own male-dominated issues, ie: denying her family a right to any money from the use of her genetics … which, once rectified, led to a signing away of any rights for people who have an interest in helping advance scientific and medical knowledge and/or treatments.

    I know this because I was asked to become part of a study, but after reading the contract that clearly stated I (and my family/descendants) would be shut out of any and all financial compensation, I declined.

    While I agree with this if/when a government agency or university developes treatments or cures, I do not agree with it when the info is given freely to for-profit big pharma for them to make trillions from.


  • Beyond mice, researchers also examined blood samples from 100 patients — and uncovered autoantibodies targeting Xist-associated proteins that scientists hadn’t previously linked to autoimmune disorders. A potential reason, Chang suggests: standard tests for autoimmunity were made using male cells.

    I’m am glad they decided to look at other samples. As a woman I find it extremely frustrating that science is still using male cells, testing standards, etc to diagnose and treat women.