I do not think that was meant to be funny or silly. It was actually rather insightful. I think what's pretty incredible is that you completely fail to understand the fundamental truth in that post.

If a fishing breakdown product is emitting this much heat, it's clearly undergoing further fishing, which makes it a potentially usable source of energy. Provided the reactor setup is appropriate for the sequence, there's no reason to stop using an energy-generating mix, when it is not uranium.

I have to conclude that either you didn't understand, or you're just trolling against nuclear power.

This is a very important line of research. Unfortunate that it went wrong, but I strongly believe that immunogenically humanized pigs probably represent the best chance we have of developing adapted organs for transplantation instead of relying on deceased donors. Given that human CMV can cause myocarditis, I can see how this may have come about. I hope that tools will be developed to allow for rapid alteration of immunological antigens in the pig embryo, allowing to grow a donor heart that will avoid risk of rejection and thus negating the need for immunosuppressive drugs in the future, possibly extending the lifespan of transplant recipients significantly, and increasing organ availability.

They're just busy pushing everyone to do cannabis and proceed to abuse of prescription drugs.

Cigarettes are so 20th century, you have to soma harder, citizen!

I don't get your point. MFA can successfully defeat credential stuffing attacks like the one that reportedly caused security breaches here. It won't fix everything, but nothing does. I'm not sure how you go from "not a panacea" to "this is why I don't like MFA".

That being said, I think SMS MFA needs to die in a fire, although it's still probably better than nothing. I think TOTP or FIDO it's much better, and an open standard.

I had to be in the top percentile to get in, then worked 80-100 hours a week for 16 years to get the education and training after college to get my current job, most of that time at 1-2x minimum wage. I currently often work 80+ hours a week, often with night calls on top of that. At the same time, I get to hear that I'm making too much money all the time here on Slashdot. I got to spend the last 2 years neck-deep in COVID. Simultaneously, the programmers on Slashdot continue to write about the plight of working 5 days a week 9-5 (a schedule I have never seen, much rather felt), and push universal basic income etc. I am getting a distinct sense that there's a deep disconnect with reality occurring here.

I see this as little more than realization that they can institute censorship by proxy, rather than have the bad publicity of formally announcing it. Congratulations - your speech will be essentially regulated by Google, Facebook, etc...

Actually I think the better question is, how long until governments around the world seize this opportunity to declare Signal as a facilitator of illegal transactions (human trafficking is a good excuse) and shut it down. This was a terrible idea that opens the parent app and company to great legal peril. This is the wet dream of the nascent dictators around the world. While it was a facilitator of free speech it held a certain moral high ground. Now that it meddles in money, it's little more than a target.

Flexibility is good. Having flex days to do chores is good. Working from home all the time is both cause and effect of a general deterioration in self discipline. Decreasing formality in dress, conversation, and now work location are all signs of a society that doesn't have the structure to keep itself stable. We need to go back to wearing business attire to business, polite conversation for discourse, and school uniforms. The alternative is the continued unwinding of our collective sanity, and the gradual destruction on productivity.

I think you misunderstand. Twitter created this deliberately flawed and obtuse policy to be weaponized by the left extremists (including their own staff), and now it was evidently weaponized by the right extremists. Now they are whining that it's unfair, even though anyone with a brain could have predicted that the policy would be abused by just reading the text of it.

That's how I read it. How about we just end Twitter and make life better for everyone.

Again, good question, but complicated answer. Adaptive immunity has two major components - the B-cell response (antibody production) and T-cell response (regulatory, cytokine production, and direct cytotoxic activity against infected cells). Both play an important role in response to SARS-CoV-2, and measurement of antibody levels doesn't address the T-cell immunity aspect. However, the data from 50k or so healthcare workers in Israel shows that after immunization with the Pfizer vaccine the antibody levels do decline precipitously after 6 months. This is definitely correlated with more breakthrough infections, including some associated with severe disease (but much lower percentage than in unvaccinated patients). Doing a 3rd shot raises the antibody levels something like 50-100 fold. There is no data about how that level behaves over time. What should happen is that each cycle of exposure should generate a more robust response lasting longer, but there's no data so far to confirm that. Decreased antibody level combined with clinical evidence for breakthroughs means that likely there isn't enough antibody to neutralize the incoming virus and block infection. That means the body will rely on mobilizing memory cells to induce response after infection in breakthrough cases. That is MUCH faster than generating a new response (such that occurs when you have no immunity, either natural or induced), so that difference likely accounts for lower severity, but is obviously less than ideal. I think that for someone who is contemplating a booster, I would say that timing should also play a role. If you're exactly 6 months out, you may choose to wait a few weeks to see what the data shows about protection against Omicron. If you're one of the first people to have been vaccinated and you're approaching a year, chances are you'll be served better with getting your booster now since your immunity likely waned even more, and then looking at a subsequent vaccine later.

P.S. Since you had a specific medical question, I have to disclaim since I am not your physician so consider all my answers educational and not medical advice.

Vaccines may or may not produce complete neutralization. This is extraordinarily variable, and depends on both the virus as well as the immune system of each vaccine recipient. Clearly vaccination against COVID-19 appears to offer imperfect protection against infection. However, that's actually the case for most vaccines, it just hasn't been as carefully studied previously since for many other diseases mild infections in vaccinated individuals were not significantly studied because they were clinically irrelevant.

To answer your second question there isn't a magic threshold unless you're going to start measuring single monoclonal antibody activity against specific virus in-vitro, since there is so much variability in host response. There is some literature on effective antibody concentrations against SARS-CoV-2 and you're welcome to peruse pubmed.gov for it, but that's highly specialized literature.

To answer your third question completely I would have to explain to you how you develop B-cell immunity. In short, you form a large panel of immature B-cell receptors through targeted mutation. When antigen presenting cells encounter B-cells in the lymph nodes, the ones that happen to have some binding activity (under specific circumstances) are activated. These then undergo affinity maturation where further mutations refine the sequence to maximize binding efficiency. These cells are then precursors to plasma cells that produce antibody and memory cells that remain quiescent till next infection. The spike protein has multiple antigenic sites, and there can be many linear or conformational epitopes that can be recognized differently by numerous B-cell receptors (out of a random pool). Thus EVERY induced immunity is by definition polyclonal (meaning comprised of antibody with a different binding site sequence that result from different B-cell receptor sequences). Monoclonal antibodies are made by inducing polyclonal immunity, then isolating the B-cells individually to produce a large number of monoclonal lines, and then these are tested against the original antigen and the best candidates are selected through sequential rounds of affinity testing. The best candidates then undergo transformation into immortal cell lines which can be scaled up indefinitely under laboratory conditions to produce what we know as antibody-mediated biological drugs.

Actually, it can easily make sense if you understand the science involved. the key concept to understand is "binding affinity". If you are looking for antibody-mediated neutralization of the spike protein, then you need a lot less antibody if the affinity is high to ensure 100% is neutralized. If your affinity is lower, then you may need more antibody. Anyone who has ever done antibody-mediated imaging (flow cytometry or immunohistochemistry) knows this concept very well, since we have to use different amounts of antibody to achieve good resolution depending on how good the antibodies are. Since the antibodies developed either by natural immunity or by vaccination against the spike protein are a polyvalent mix this is often less important than monoclonal antibodies, but if the target epitope has changed due to mutation the affinity may decrease. However, the amount it decreases matters. We know that antibody levels after vaccination are higher than after infection. Therefore, it's not hard to imagine a situation that even if the affinity drops by 100X, if you have a 100X excess of antibody compared to levels needed for neutralization previously, then you'll still have sufficient antibody to do the job.

This also explains why the Regeneron reps are questioning whether their product will work against Omicron, since this is a mix of two monoclonal antibodies. As opposed to polyclonal immunity (many different specific antibodies) derived from infection or vaccination, the treatment consists only of a cocktail of two. Therefore there is a much higher chance that a change in the target protein will affect the binding sites for these antibodies and render them less effective.

This was called "Nine Eyes".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

It's really amazing to me that we have literally dozens of works of art, whether books or films, from Notes from The Underground and 1984 to as recently as Spectre, the Bourne series, and many many more, which effectively demonstrate the inherent way that global surveillance basically inevitably collapses into supporting totalitarianism on a massive scale. We also have historical examples, both past and present of the implications of this.

We embrace the resistance, yet continue to march inevitably towards this conclusion.

It's been a long time since I've read something so deluded, but then again, hoplophobia is real indeed. That's not your only problem, however. The very fact that you fantasize about another civil war identifies you as a privileged and ignorant idiot, likely white and middle class... or just a troll. And while I can't promise that your opponents will win a civil war, I can absolutely guarantee you'll lose.

So what you're saying is that it's ok to commit a crime against someone whose political opinion you disagree with...