Tape has one advantage, it's typically air gaped and not even in the tape drive. They are also quite small and lightweight and easy to send offsite.

Disks are typically hot and networked continuously. Any vulnerability in the disk system and it could go down with the ransomware too. Yes there are systems that can air gap the disks. Disks can be sent offsite but if it's a raid system to compensate for the reliability it takes far more weight and space and the entire raid system has to be moved off site. Again there are solutions to this but again it comes at a cost.

Tapes not great but it's ability to air gap and go offsite to secure storage easily and cheaply shouldn't be underestimated. Tape also tends to come in nice turn key systems that are quite expensive but have tremendous reliability. A lot of people forget to think about the what happens if the building burns down and how you recover from it.

Social consequences for speech are essential to free speech. If you say shit the local "community" doesn't like you are probably going to experience some unpleasant social consequences. This has existed for all of human history.

Arguing you don't have free speech if you can have social (ie not government) consequences is a complete misunderstanding on the very concept of what free speech is.

And it's useful to point at that at least in the blood "issues" this was believed to be caused by the use of the adenovirus in the vaccine for those vaccines implicated. The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is pretty much the only one that doesn't use the adenovirus for their delivery system so most of the rest of the vaccines have the potential for a blood issue which isn't caused by the vaccine but the adeno-virus shell they are using to carry the payload. The adenovirus can cause the same blood "issues".

I'm willing to bet they find something similar with the super rare heart inflammation as well. It won't be the vaccine it will be some other component or combination.

It always amazes me when people comment on stuff they have no experience or real knowledge beyond what they saw on the internet and act like this is authoritative and they are now an expert but don't even understand the basics of the basics in the field. And I know you won't read this or understand it.

Boiling it down there is one primary difference between the normal approval and an emergency approval on vaccine. That is the phase III clinical trial is not complete but all evidence from all prior trials (Phase I and II) and ongoing Phase III points to safety. If you had a concept of the level of work that goes into proving safety and efficiency up to this point in the FDA approval process and you might understand why the risk is minuscule.

By the time you've gotten to the phase III trial the efficiency and safety are already mostly proven. The Phase III (because it's typically a very large trial group, sometimes with 20-50K participants) will generally shake out all the weird side effects and most of the drug interactions and it will reveal the long term effects because phase III trials generally take 2 years with an additional possible 3 years of long term monitoring after the Phase III if the drug/vaccine is approved if required by the FDA.

With emergency approval the drug/vaccine is already in the phase III trial, typically more than half way through, this means there is safety and efficiency data on the trial participants for up to a year after dosing the vaccine. Most of the Covid19 Vaccines had HUGE Phase III trial groups, IIRC the BioNTech vaccine had much more than 20k participants. Large trials like this are the gold standard for proving safety. It's incredibly rare for a side effect or long term complication to not be discovered in the Phase III. By the time you are a year in to the Phase III you generally know the result. The bulk of the remaining work is simply doing the FDA paperwork and peer review and statistical analysis that provides the hard numbers for all the reports.

The saddest bit is that human beings are absolutely lousy at weighing risks against other risks, particularly modern medical risks. The chance of a vaccine complication or issue developing post vaccine is a millionth times the risk of not getting vaccinated and eventually getting Covid19 that ends up causing permanent damage to your body. I suggest you google the phrase "long covid" and read some of the stories. Each variant to Covid19 is increasing the viruses infectivity and danger, including being far more dangerous for people younger than 50.

I'd rather risk a complication from the totally proven mRNA vaccines than risk needing a lung transplant in 10 years or having tinnitus so severe you kill yourself. The long term effects of having Covid19 are barely known at this point and you'd trade that unknown risk for the minuscule risk of a proven vaccine. That's sad.

yea yea Matrix quote. Only problem of course is the body can't survive on protein alone. Our bodies run on Fat, or un-ideally on carbs.

If all you eat is protein you will get hungrier and hungrier because your body isn't getting the fat it needs to create the energy it runs on. It's a bad way to lose fat deposits as your body consumes the body fat to supply what's missing but after awhile your body will start digesting your own muscles to reduce caloric demand, long before your fat deposits are gone and the hunger will get far worse than if you'd just quit eating entirely because the protein load makes it harder for the body to do whats necessary to survive starvation.

Any food source that doesn't supply either fat or carbs is eventually going to lead to starvation.

BioNTech is a German company numbnuts.

https://biontech.de/

So they can freeze to death in northern states or like southern states simply throw them in jail?

California has unique weather that is more hospitable to being homeless along with a relatively generous population that makes it possible to survive.

And also a unique problem that other states have in the past bought bus tickets for their homeless to send them to California.

Your reply also indicates you fail to realize that the bulk of the homeless are unemployable mentally ill (as much as 80% in some areas) and most of the rest are addicts. Simply moving somewhere else where housing is cheaper wouldn't do them any good because they can't hold down a job.

To understand one of this issues of homelessness I suggest you read the following story: https://dpbh.nv.gov/uploadedFi...

The rail gun wasn't faster shooting. The rails had to be replaced every few shots (last I heard they'd gotten it up to about 10 shots before the rails were warped beyond use).

There were significant issues with the tech, though I'd like to see them continue to work on it, the reality is that the warfare being developed by Russia and China would have negated any benefits from the railgun.

BioNTech was created to develop an mRNA vaccine for cancer. When Covid19 landed they made a strategic decision to use mRNA tech to help end the pandemic even though it meant a timeline impact for their cancer efforts.

The two scientists behind the mRNA effort deserve praise and probably a Nobel for their efforts as they shortened the pandemic by about a year with their developments saving countless lives and may develop a cancer vaccine down the road.

You'd be more likely to get a dose of cocaine than Covid.

The weakness in bitcoin is two factors.

1. The Ledger is completely public, every coin can be traced from creation to current wallet.

2. To use the money for a purchase or extract it from bitcoin to a usable currency you have to go through the traditional financial system that is designed to identify you and includes severe penalties for attempting to hide your identity or otherwise conceal source. This includes tax issues that will net prison time in most western countries.

The ransomware people in this case dumped their money through 70 wallets before it landed in the one the FBI seized. This included through tumblers. In addition this year the FBI arrested a guy that runs a bitcoin tumbler and charged him with money laundering and a bunch of other financial crimes. He'll likely end up in jail for a decade. I expect any reputable tumbler will be gone by years end.

And just wait for what happens if an adversary or terrorist uses bitcoin for someone. You'll see the full force of the US government and likely the rest of the first world deployed against it.

Touch DNA tests costs no more than a regular DNA test. The ability to test touch DNA came from improvements in PCR. These improvements don't really cost any more, they are just more efficient. DNA testing costs continue to slide, the sequencing of the Human genome and the subsequent sequencing of numerous other species has made significant cost and time reductions in testing. In addition all this work has improved the tools and ability to test smaller and smaller samples.

They can literally lift your skin cells from someone you touched and type your DNA. You wanna kill someone today you better do it in a space suit or they will get your DNA.

Apparently not.

In anger about paying 1.75% to credit card companies they adopted a "currency" that charges 8% to move money anywhere.

And for the pedantic crypto supporters that will attempt to point out that you don't have to pay 8% I say you don't have to as long as you don't care if your transaction takes a month to process. And for that 8% you can expect the transaction to complete in about 2-3 days.

Cryptocurrencies are a way to divert money from stupid poor people to rich people with deep pockets.

This was the original plan when one child was conceived. A quartering of the original population (or more) that would drive the wealth of 8 families into a single child.

The problem with one-child came when after having opened their economy 20 years later salaries and wealth began to grow significantly. Now even more wealth will be concentrated, in fact, it's likely they will drive so much wealth into a smaller number of people that they will lose significant production capacity and risk the collapse of their economy and currency. This will also threaten their stability what with 1000's of different ethnic groups.

Consider this. The number of people in their 40's is double the number in their 30's and double again the number in their 20's and doubled again for the teens. They also face the very real complication that most of their younger people of child bearing age (particularly 20 and younger) don't want large families and a significant number don't even want children. This is compounded by the lack of any real childcare options for the middle class and the legacy that any women having children can kiss her career goodbye whether she wants to or not (which is even still an issue in the US and rest of the west, it's a very difficult issue to solve).

Ending the one child policy including it's forced sterilizations and other tactics is only one leg of the demographic problem China faces. The rapid release of the one child policy to two children a few years ago and three today is a final recognition by the party elite that this problem they've been ignoring for 20 years is actually much more severe than they realized and that this demographic issue could cause a significant disruption.

There is a ton of research going into all kinds of batteries. Even (what I would consider) exotic batteries like Nickel-Iron that have to be kept at extremely high temps. There are a LOT of different chemical batteries that are out there.

Lithium has a HUGE research lead due to it's widespread use. But all battery types are having lots of money poured into R&D. IMO it's most probable that Lithium will win simply by staying ahead of the others. Most people simply don't realize how much Lithium batteries have advanced over the last two decades. Hell even the last 5 years has seen energy density and cost both fall significantly while battery weight remained constant.

This is the problem all the other techs face. Say as an example sulfur batteries reach comparable charge cycles and density as lithium in the next 5 years. But Lithium research isn't standing still during this time, and it advances both energy density and cost 20% each. Suddenly the now competitive sulfur battery from 2020 isn't competitive anymore.

That is the environment we're in, all these "competitive" batteries they are trying to get working are standing still trying to solve key problems while the incumbent is moving forward.