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Comment Re: Invisibility cloak (Score 2) 12

Yeah, it's gonna be literally impossible to see you walking around in that thing emitting visible light in all directions.

If the visible light emitted is exactly the same intensity, color, and pattern as the background behing you, yes, you'd be very nearly invisible.

Only from one direction, though (unless the background is nearly featureless).

Comment Re: uh no (Score 1) 143

So... Russia isn't actually gaining anything meaningful. In fact, they've twice had to revise their stupid maps because they didn't get anywhere near the territory gains they claimed to.

Every city they've claimed to capture in the last four years has been nothing more than a pile of rubble. A useless pile of rubble that you literally spent tens of thousands of cold Russian bodies to get. And you know why you think it's worth it? Because Russians are so fucking incompetent that, in fact, they are worth less than a fucking pile of rubble. So congratulations, you technically have a net gain, though it's still pretty meaningless. But every worthless rubble is important, because that's just how fucking poor and stupid you are.

You know why the loss of these datacenters is so problematic? Because the people you'd need to build more have either fled the country, or they've been traded for a pile of rubble.

I've been saying for years now that you have nothing to gain by staying in Ukraine, but you do have everything to lose. You're already losing it, but like a bad gambler, you're losing even more just to try to chase your losses. You can't regain your losses. Digging the hole deeper doesn't help you get out of it. I shouldn't even need to say that, but you're Russian, so it must be said, and even then you still won't fully understand.

Really the only reason you guys even continue is because you, as a culture, are willing to sacrifice every piece on the board to ensure your tsar lives for another ten seconds. You guys haven't changed a bit since your first tsar sucked off the golden horde.

Comment Re: Boo Hoo... (Score 1) 119

It's interesting you mention Iran given they're the ones keeping Hamas and Hezbollah in power, and they in-turn are repeatedly the aggressors that put Lebanon and Gaza at war with Israel, which you guys then blame squarely on Israel, for reasons that I can only conclude relate to antisemitism given no other explanation makes any rational sense, and -- let's face it -- some of you are openly doing that. Arab Muslims who live in Israel certainly aren't using the same rhetoric you do, nor is literally the entire population that lives openly gay in the middle east. But, of course, they're the "good" Israelis, it's just the Jewish ones you don't like. Sound about right?

https://youtube.com/watch?v=-Y...

Comment Re:Unauthorized? (Score -1, Troll) 60

He's talking about the literal definition of authorized, dingleberry. Plain as day, but you can't help being a douchebag, adding your condescending two cents that nobody asked for in a vain effort to sound smart. In fact, you're such a raging moron that there's literally nothing you can possibly do to hide it, so for everybody's sake, please don't do that again.

Comment Re:This is a good use case for AI, BUT... (Score 1) 64

This assumes they are expert-enough that will recognize if their AI of choice is giving a false-positive rate that makes their work harder, not easier.

Protein folding isn't about true or false positives. You're not talking about a chatbot. There are millions upon millions of ways of combining aminos. Determining how they're going to fold, under what conditions they'll fold one way or the other, and what can happen later to cause them to fold differently yet again, is pretty hard. Harder than picking fly shit from pepper while wearing boxing gloves. Models are tools, they don't care about anything, let alone your ideology. You verify the result the same way you would without them: Experimentally. Encode, transcript, observe. If you're not doing this, then you're literally doing nothing at all.

Comment Re: Do it in space (Score 1) 64

I never claimed to be an expert. The worst risk I personally know of is the virus transferring part of its genome into the bacteria and producing some kind of toxic protein. This naturally happens already though, see shiga toxin. TL;DR it's believed that about 400 years ago a portion of phage DNA ended up embedded into an e. coli bacteria, which it began utilizing to rip open animal plasma membranes (lysing) to make it easier to feed. In humans these are enterotoxigenic bacteria, which are drinkypoo's favorite kind of bacteria because of their main symptom, though shiga toxin producing bacteria are some of the most deadly.

Comment Re: Fascinating phages (Score 1) 64

how they co-evolve with the bacteria they infect. If anything I would be concerned about spreading bacteria that become extensively resistant to antibiotics and phages.

I reckon you answered your own concern before you even made it known. This is a cat and mouse game that has been going on for billions of years. With a B. If bacteria could do that, I think we'd have seen it already.

Antibiotics are pretty static. Something else (namely some mold strain) that also co-evolves with bacteria made one, along with many other antibiotic substances that we can't use because they're toxic to us. And those too are always changing to keep the contest going. But we're not really doing anything to change ours. We do a little, but much, much slower. Resistance is inevitable.

Custom tailoring bacterialophage, or even chemistry like mold does, to the particular infection is what we'll inevitably have to do at some point. When, if not now?

Comment Re: Do it in space (Score 5, Interesting) 64

You're talking about not only penetrating the cell wall (where that's even relevant), plasma membrane, etc, but you're also talking about having the wrong set of tools once you've figured that out. Bacteria are prokaryotic, which means an entirely different mechanism is required for splicing in nucleotides (whether RNA or DNA) and other mechanisms like transcription work differently, etc.

Moreover, where this would see common use is really an emergency situation. SpaceX has the shortest logistical chain to get a payload to orbit of anybody in the world by a landslide, yet you're still looking at least a few days out, assuming the weather cooperates. Really not ideal for patient care. And then the more sci-fi bits you're asking about need an even bigger payload.

It's unfounded fears like this that have literally set entire continents back decades on research. Look at Europe: When GM crops were first introduced, they got out their pitchforks and torches and moved fast to ban it. It's because of this that they're literally way behind the rest of the world in biotech. Even China makes them look like a podunk redneck village. Did I mention, by the way, that the scientific consensus on GMO being safe is actually stronger than the consensus on climate change? And they even have American progressives, who look at Europe as this ideal model of everything, shouting "Look! They banned it in Europe! Clearly we need to ban it here!" even though Europe is finally starting to second guess its decisions. The US has made similar mistakes on drug research, namely putting shit on schedule 1 when it doesn't belong there, but fortunately that list is short (should be gone entirely IMO)

I'm not an expert on this at all, nor have I ever claimed it, rather, unlike most of slashdot, I strongly believe in taking the time to learn the subject matter at least a little bit before boarding the technology lynch mob. Don't be like Europe or the American DEA: Think first, then act.

Comment Re:Phage? Are they crazee?!? (Score 1) 64

I liked STV but the writers' technical advisors did such a horrid job on that show. I think perhaps the worst was when they threatened to decompile the doctor, or that episode with the macroscopic virus with wings. Phage is just shorthand for bacteriophage. Good use of a plot device, but they really could have done better when they tech the tech.

Comment Re:Startup Claims (insert vaporware here) (Score 3, Interesting) 64

What they're doing is a much more targeted version of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Proteomics has been advancing quite a bit over the last few decades, especially here in the US where it's being heavily commercialized, and large data models have already shown to be a highly effective tool for it.

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