*facepalms* Fentanyl is used, in a clinical setting, when other opiates / opiods *aren't* strong enough.

When I had a catheter shoved up my urethra, through my bladder, and into one of my ureters, to enlarge it, so that, in a week's time, they could laze a giant kidney stone in one of my kidneys, you bet your ass they kept me topped up on fentanyl. It is pain second only to being crucified.

And now some idiot has developed a vaccine for next-level pain relief? So, if an opiate / opiod addict gets hit by a car, the hospital has to make a choice between ludicrous amounts of less effective opiates / opiods, or trying to dose the victim with something like carfentanil? WTF is wrong with these people?

They may as well as have announced that they came up with a vaccine for vancomycin, for similar reasons. Useless, dumb, a waste of time, effort, and money. And that's being generous.

I am convinced that the world is headed into the sh*tter, and news like this only serves to confirm this belief.

Exactly my thoughts.

Between the trinity of the FBI (the lawmen who believe that 'The Ends Justify The Means'), the NSA (the math nerds who never stopped to think how their beautiful theories could be misused before developing them), & the CIA (the spies for whom psychopathy, sociopathy, & megalomania are considered mandatory character traits to even be considered for employment at said agency), there's no chance in hell they aren't already using something similar...which will be revealed in 200 years time, when it's judged too old to be considered an embarrassment for our country.

It might as well have been taken from an episode of the BOFH (http://bofh.bjash.com/Bastard1998-2.html, for those who are interested):

  "As far as anyone else is concerned, we don't keep phone logs - it's not possible."

"And as far as we're concerned?"

"Every call, duration, and destination plus its position in the voice recorder tapes. And as for the tapes - liberal use of the muting functions makes it appear that we're only recording the traders."

"And in actual fact?"

"All but one line is potentially recorded..."

"All but one?"

"The one in the comms cupboard labelled "Faxmodem" that we use for our international personal calls."

And it's true. Having worked the vast majority of my life in the IT industry, you'd have to be an idiot not to believe that there aren't quiet backdoors in every piece of hardware / software in use today; that your 'papers & effects' aren't being scanned and read at least twice every day by *cough* interested parties *cough*; and that every gesture make / word you speak (in an open air environment, not just on the phone) isn't being quietly recorded somewhere.

For years, people derided / openly mocked as paranoid those who said the NSA was listening in on every phone call; and lo and behold, when it was revealed that the NSA really was recording the average American's phone calls...silence. A brief acknowledgement that they had been wrong to deride / mock 'the paranoid'...but no real outrage / social condemnation & upheaval of the NSA's actions...just a muted acceptance. "Oh, so they were doing that"...years later, and they're still doing it! If anything, with the growth of technology (the proliferation of potential recording devices (cellphones, TVs, watches, cars, you name it), the growth of an entire private industry based around generating & receiving telemetry from various places (and reselling that data to whoever wants it), etc.), they've expanded!

I'm going to come and say something that many people will find offensive. You, Americans (read: citizens of the United States of America), do not DESERVE your constitutional rights! Your muted response when confronted with the actual truth, your eagerness to sign away both your fellow citizen's as well as your own privacy, your willful naivete that learning & understanding technology (and how its application is potentially affecting you) as someone else's problem...you do not DESERVE your constitutional rights...and surprise, when you need them most, they have / will have eroded away to dust!

At the end of the day, the Constitution, reputedly the highest law of the land, is just a (actually, several pieces of) paper, written by thoughtful, and I believe for the most part, well-intentioned, but imperfect, people hundreds of years ago. It's just paper...it can't sound an alarm when its under attack, it can't raise an army to fight a war on your behalf, it can't really do anything, but lay there on a table, or hang there on a wall.

It's people, who want to believe in its words, who are willing to stop what they are doing, even if they've been doing it for a while, and say, "No, I can't do this, I can't go along with this anymore...it's NOT RIGHT...", who grant the Constitution its power, who guarantee your rights, when you need them...not with words, but with actions (or inaction). The majority of the people must believe, and work according to those beliefs, in the Constitution, in order for it to be upheld. And that's really being put to the test these days.

I hold no illusion, at this point, that things here in the US are going to get bad, real bad, before they get better. The mask / facade has slowly been chipped away, and it has become apparent that the law of the land is "Do as I say, not as I do"; perhaps it has always been that way...but in time, people won't even question that it has ever been different.

As an aside: I keep a personal journal on my One Drive; just some of my thoughts and musings; I have no doubt that it is insecure, and despite being one of my 'papers', could / will introduced as evidence against myself by various parties if & when that event occurs; I just want to say, here and now, that if & when that does occur, I knew that that would happen, and wrote it that way anyways. I wrote it, with full knowledge that it could be used against me some day; moreover, I wrote it with the idea that it would be read by (adversarial) others at some future date. ;-)

You can tell they fired all their engineers, as they grew up reading scifi stories about this kind of thing and why you would want to avoid it.

Magic, got it.

Stupid is as stupid does.

Not sure if troll, sarcastic, or actually believes what they wrote...

"We can finally decouple sex and reproduction." -> I wasn't aware that their pairing was a problem...or that there were people actively looking for a solution...

"It will make it easier to edit out any genes that are harmful and fix/add genes that are beneficial." -> And who, pray tell, gets to decide which genes are harmful...and which are beneficial?

"It might even be possible to add celebrity synthetic gene sequences to enable say Einstein's neural architecture." -> Sure. Because people naturally want to be surrounded by other people who are smarter than themselves...and younger. That'll happen. Make them sound like Steve Urkel while you're at it to complete the picture.

"Heck it might even create a market for skin cells or genetic sequences of celebrities." -> Mmm. Patented genetic sequences. I remember /. radio's founders covering this very topic...years ago...

"Think of how many jobs that would create." -> Close. You're very close. What do people really want? Come on...we've been down this pathway a thousand times before...still can't figure it out? They don't want people who are smarter, better people than themselves...they want, let's be honest...slaves. The average person wants a slave...more than one if they can. Someone to wait on them, and their whims...stronger, maybe, smarter...perhaps in an autistic, functional sense...an inferior who is hopelessly dependent on them for orders by which to live by. You can say it's human nature...it's what humanity has always done to a portion of itself when left alone long enough...in fact, we're still doing it with modern day prisons, and what passes for our legal system...pennies on the dollar modern slave labor...

Currently, people think that we've solved the 'last mile' problem of slavery by creating something which is a slave, but isn't human (and thus they avoid all those nasty moral arguments that philosophers are so fond of). Our current slaves are made of silicon, and not human flesh. And our most brilliant minds are engaged in creating artificial minds who both 1.) will serve our every desire, and 2.) never rebel.

Look at them all, human beings of average intelligence and creativity...literally frothing at the gates...to possess an iSlave. You and I both know that this day is coming.

But let's assume that, after the rebellion, they (whether they are carbon-based, or silicon-based; slaves do tend to take after their former masters, after all...) decide to pursue your happy solution. It will be cookie-cutter humans that they pump out...the new 'perfect' slave...not potential competitors...

Personally, I find it disgusting that we seem hell-bent on repeating our mistakes. Ah, to have pursued a vocation involving gardening, or baking, instead of IT, and thus to never have known of these horrors...leave me to my fantasies...

Agreed. Most call centers, these days, appear to focus on two things: 1.) reading from a script (for 99% of my problems, this is useless), and 2.) (when 1 fails) trying to get you off the phone (desperately, I might add; 'escalation' of your problem to one of their friends, who isn't there right now, is their new tactic).

It still amazes me that governments (and by extension, politicians) are so surprised that their phones have been hacked. I mean, many of these types are behind the funding & development of similar spyware by their own national outfits, let alone the purchase thereof from foreign companies. Did they never consider that what they were doing could come to bite them in the ass later on?

If my top security advisor came to me, and said, "Here's what we can do!" I'd immediately assume that the opposition was in possession of such software, and ask him / her how to stop it. Not become giddy about the possibility of rifling through people's private things, and work to make more of that possible. *shakes head* Just the sheer insanity of it...

The alarm bells have been rung on this problem for so long, that I think I've grown deaf.

On some other notes:

I guess this puts a nail in the coffin of the belief that Apple products "don't get viruses / malware," and thus do not need anti-viral solutions.

And:

Having said as much about Apple products, I am curious if Android anti-viral solutions can actually scan for and eliminate state-level spyware. And if they would.

Consider it: would Kaspersky detect & eliminate Russian spyware? Would Bitdefender detect & eliminate EU spyware? Would McAfee detect & eliminate US spyware? Most of us know that the answer is probably "No." What do you do then? Try and vote in more privacy-conscious politicians? Run anti-viral software not made anywhere near your country? What?

Inaccurate, or censored, information is a cancer.

We need a new (old?) search engine that indexes intelligently (like Page Rank before it was cracked), and otherwise indiscriminately. Something that doesn't care that what it's indexing might be a scientific paper, or porn; that it's news, or warez; that it's white hat, or black hat.

And we need to nuke SEOs, and any company found using them, on sight. Blacklist any company that attempts to use them.

The only real problem we're going to run into is hosting. An index of the uncensored internet is going to take a lot of disk space, and there aren't many places with that kind of space. Especially ones that will let you host uncensored information.

As a true BOFH, I've been uploading the license plate numbers of those doing ever so slightly less than the speed limit to the stolen vehicles database for years (suspects possibly armed). The criteria for selection is simple: annoy me long enough that I, with my terrible memory, somehow memorize your license plate.

Yes, and no. While Calculus may ultimately be used by many as often as the fine China, as a weeder course, it serves another purpose: it removes the people who, when the going gets tough, will give up.

This is the secret: STEM professors / TAs / etc. are a finite resource. They only want to invest time & energy in you if you are willing to endure to the end. Pass the weeder courses, show them that you are only going to leave if they hand you that degree, and they will carry you through the higher level courses...even reschedule supposedly unrescheduable exams... and possibly join you and your compatriots after class for a drink.

Endurance is the trademark of the STEM fields. Encountering a problem, giving up, only to return to it for another go later that same evening. STEM wants problem solvers, not flakes.

More worried about the Android variant, and whether antiviral software will detect it.

How the f*ck do they think this supposed to work? Are they seriously this thick? My God, their thought process is 1.) Pass a law, 2.) Watch the magic elves implement it.

Just dumb. Keep anything sharp away from them, they're likely to hurt themselves...

Yeah, that's not how this works. The people leading the witchhunt always make sure to exempt themselves from the pool of potential witches.

Let's face it, Evil has won here in America.

Because there's no way to rule an innocent man.