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Rachel Bryk, an active developer for the Dolphin Emulator[*] project, passed away on the 23rd of April at the age of 23.
While this is hardly the kind of news that would shake the tech world and be featured on major news site, I think the SoylentNews community can fully appreciate her work and commemorate that tragic loss with the team and the retro gaming and TAS community at large.
Most of her work was focused on making the Dolphin more suited to make tool assisted speedruns.
A full announcement and commemorative post can be found on the official Dolphin project blog.
Dolphin is an emulator for two recent Nintendo video game consoles: the GameCube and the Wii. It allows PC gamers to enjoy games for these two consoles in full HD (1080p) with several enhancements: compatibility with all PC controllers, turbo speed, networked multiplayer, and even more!
(Score: 5, Informative) by Magic Oddball on Monday April 27 2015, @07:33AM
It took me a while to find information (only partly due to the spelling), but for others wondering what happened, evidently Rachel Bryk committed suicide, assumedly in connection to being trans [ign.com].
Oddly, that IGN link was the only place I could find that stated that outright — one subreddit noted it was a suicide (and one comment mentioned her seeming depressed), seemingly everywhere else was using the polite phrasing "passed away."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Ox0000 on Monday April 27 2015, @09:24AM
OT
seemingly everywhere else was using the polite phrasing "passed away."
As a society, we can't deal very well any more with things that are just part of life. Dying is one of them, so we created a euphemism "to pass away". Committing suicide is another one where we call it "a desperate act of a brave individual" (if we like the person) or "a cowardly act of a vile individual trying to avoid accountability" (if we didn't).
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Monday April 27 2015, @10:26AM
I'm not sure it is a matter of being able to deal with suicide. I think it's the lacking ability to keep our nose out of other peoples business (I'm including myself in this kind of sensationalism, although I like to think of me being concerned about general shortcomings in our society). A suicide usually has a lot of complex aspects, backgrounds etc. To understand, what's behind a single suicide is probably several days full-time effort if you want to have at least a rudimentary understanding, and probably involves invading the privacy of a lot of living people who treasure their own privacy. Therefore I'd like to avoid speculating if discrimination was part of the motivation for this particular suicide. If statistics show a higher suicide rate for [transgender],[female sw developers],[sw developers] or any other group Rachel belonged to, this might be a valid data point to investigate.
For transgender in general , I think people should live their life however they want to. If an operation is planned, I advocate thorough counselling since the op is afaik irreversible, and I consider it plausible that some people might falsely consider themselves transgender because they feel estranged from their own body for some other reason. It would be a tragedy to go to operation to later find out the gender was not the problem in the first place.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 3, Informative) by Magic Oddball on Monday April 27 2015, @09:40AM
A tip for anyone that is at the edge, now or in the future:
If you don't think you can sit on your hands long enough to get help, take oldschool Benadryl. It will knock you into a dreamless sleep at a dose far below toxic levels (try taking the recommended dose plus one, then a second if needed), and when you wake up you'll also be numb for anywhere from an hour to the rest of the day. If needed, you can take another in a certain number of hours (I think it's 6) and keep doing that day after day while needed.
That 'trick' can also be used pre-emptively right after something traumatic happens if you start ASAP, preferably before the shock has finished wearing off. You won't need it remotely as long, and from my one experience using it this way, it somehow makes you more able to veer away from thinking about the incident if something leads you in that direction.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday April 27 2015, @10:24AM
Clearly you are trying to help, and I'm not a pharmacist so I'm in no position to comment on the safety or otherwise of your advice. Maybe your post will save lives. I'd like to think so.
However I can't help but think that suggesting vulnerable people who are likely to be on all kinds of other meds exceed the recommended dose of a pharmaceutical product is potentially... shall we say... contraversial. To be doing so under a pseudanonymous login on the interwebs, where any blame-seeking asspillar with a web connection and a no-win-no-fee lawyer could probably identify you, is either very brave or very stupid.
I'm going to go with "brave" and say "well done sir." Nevertheless, perhaps some kind of disclaimer at the bottom of your post would have been in order..?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday April 27 2015, @05:30PM
You just about described my entire College experience as I had to take allergy medicine most of the time. ;-)
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"