Yes. As I noted, the research is very young on this. We don't know yet how the cell knows which RNA to convert back into DNA. We don't know yet what protections are in place to prevent the undesired introduction of foreign RNA into the human genome. There will undoubtedly be some mechanism that handles both of these. There will also undoubtedly be some scenarios when these fail. From the study itself, we know that the theta polymerase is more active in cancerous cells than non-cancerous cells. We don't yet know if that is a cause or an effect, but it is possible that there is a connection between the failure of the safety mechanism and the incidence of cancer.

Along these lines, there is some compelling evidence for the lateral transfer of DNA between species in higher organisms, something that until recently was thought impossible.

https://www.quantamagazine.org...

We simply don't know a lot of the details about how these things work. So, showing a little humility about our assumptions goes a long way. For example. Linus's assertion that RNA introduced into the human body can never be turned into DNA that is incorporated into the nucleus of a human cell is an assumption that cannot be backed up by any scientific study of which I am aware. And, given what we now know about the topic, and a familiarity with the history of research into DNA, it is likely that when we do study this closely, the answer to the question will end being one of how often it happens (likely fairly rare, but perhaps more common as we age) versus it never happening at all.

While I completely agree that such a discussion has no place on a mailing list about the Linux kernel, and while it is true that up until this week the standard assumption has been that human bodies do not turn RNA into DNA, it is ironic that just yesterday Phys.org published an article regarding ground-breaking research showing that the human theta polymerase is designed to do exactly that.

https://phys.org/news/2021-06-...

This is very early days and much more research needs to be done before we have any idea how it all works. But it is a good reminder for all of us that what we know about RNA and DNA is dwarfed by what we don't know.

I will be happy to take the time to lay it out for you, but only if you are actually interested in listening. Are you?

When this story first came out I didn't pay it any attention, because it came from Rudy Giuliani, which is one of the scumbuckets of the universe and everything he touches is either tainted or an outright fabrication.

But then parts of the story started being independently verified. So, it piqued my interest.

And then more of the story was independently verified.

And then even more.

Eventually it doesn't matter if Rudy Giuliani was involved, because I am only interested in the truth, and just because the truth happens to line up with what Rudy Giuliani, or Trump, or the right-wing media considers there interests doesn't make it any less the truth.

This is what I hear you saying:

1. When a point is made about how the information from the hard drive points to improper behavior on the part of Biden and his family, you say, "But none of that has been verified."

2. When a point is made about how specific information has been verified, you say, "But none of that proves they did anything bad."

And we go around in circles with you flipping from one argument to the other.

That is why no progress can be made until we agree, once and for all, about what has been verified. That way, point 1 is removed from the discussion, and we can focus solely on point two about whether any of the information proves they did anything bad.

Based on the number of people with access to the full data of the hard drive, I would expect that at some point it will be leaked online and everyone can do their own DKIM analysis. Perhaps we should table the discussion until then.

OK, so if I understand you correctly, if the entire metadata of the emails were released online so you could verify the DKIM information of each one than you would consider that sufficient verification to merit considering their content?

Before we can talk about what the emails say, we need to decide if they are accurate. If they are not accurate, it doesn't matter what they say.

Again, from above, please answer this question:

What evidence would be convincing to you that they are accurate?

Once we have established what you would find convincing evidence that they are accurate, then we can determine if that evidence already exists, or, if it doesn't, what would need to be done to acquire that evidence.

After that is established, then we can have a fruitful discussion about what can be learned from the emails.

OK. Let's start from the beginning.

1. Do you believe that the contents of these emails are accurate? By that I mean, do you believe that the text of the emails represents what was actually sent between these email addresses at the time?

2. If you do not believe they are, or if you believe some of them are and some of them aren't, what evidence would be convincing to you that they are accurate?

From the article:

"Graham previously told the DCNF that emails sent from Gmail, such as Pozharski’s message to Hunter Biden, can be “absolutely verified beyond a shadow of a doubt” by testing its contents against the unique DKIM signature found in its metadata."

They showed a picture of one email. But all the emails sent from the Gmail account can be DKIM verified.

In the picture they showed, the email addresses were blocked out. But if you want to know what they are it isn't that hard to find out. For example, look at this one:

https://www.scribd.com/documen...

My quest has always been to find out the truth. In this particular case, I think that has been established beyond a reasonable doubt. There will likely be people who aren't interested in the truth or facts, but rather in deciding what they want the truth to be and then trying to bend the facts to their narrative. For those people, there will never be enough evidence to establish the truth of what they don't want to believe.

As you are probably aware, the emails have now been DKIM verified. As I have written elsewhere in these comments, this is the gold standard of verification. I cannot think of any form of email verification that could be better than that. It means that the text of the email is exactly as sent when it passed through the server, and that nobody has altered or forged any aspect of them.

So, now that we know without a doubt that the emails are legitimate, we can move on to talking about what they mean and the corruption they expose. ;)

https://dailycaller.com/2020/1...

That does make sense, although I think the most likely reason why it wasn't covered in the initial reporting is that few people know what DKIM signatures are, so the reporters and editors involved likely didn't know they could use them to verify the authenticity of the emails.

Regardless, as has been pointed out in other comments, the DKIM signatures have just been independently verified, so it is now a mute point.

https://dailycaller.com/2020/1...

As I noted above, more people have verified these emails than the Times story.

Both should have been published.

They have been verified to a higher standard than many other stories which have been extensively covered by the media. Specifically, multiple people involved in the email chains have verified that they are authentic and that they represent a true account of Hunter Biden's business interests. There are many important political scandals that have been broken by reporters with less solid evidence than that. To me, this is an example of a "fairly high standard".

From the Greenwald article:

"That a media outlet should even consider refraining from reporting on materials they know to be authentic and in the public interest because of questions about their provenance is the opposite of how journalism has been practiced. In the days before the 2016 election, for instance, the New York Times received by mail one year of Donald Trump's tax returns and -- despite having no idea who sent it to them or how that person obtained it: was is stolen or hacked by a foreign power? -- the Times reported on its contents.

"When asked by NPR why they would report on documents when they do not know the source let alone the source's motives in providing them, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner David Barstow compellingly explained what had always been the core principle of journalism: namely, a journalist only cares about two questions -- (1) are documents authentic and (2) are they in the public interest? -- but does not care about what motives a source has in providing the documents or how they were obtained when deciding whether to reporting them."

You should also see my other comments in various threads about DKIM metadata verification. That is what I would consider the gold standard. We don't have that yet, which is why I only claimed this was a fairly high standard.

That is true. The point of my post is that it would be very easy to verify the validity of the emails with the metadata. So, those who have it (FBI, computer repair store owner, Guiliani, the New York Post) should just release it and settle the issue.

From Greenwald's article:

"There are sources in the email chains who have verified that the published emails are accurate. The archive contains private photos and videos of Hunter whose authenticity is not in doubt. A former business partner of Hunter has stated, unequivocally and on the record, that not only are the emails authentic but they describe events accurately, including proposed participation by the former Vice President in at least one deal Hunter and Jim Biden were pursuing in China. And, most importantly of all, neither Hunter Biden nor the Biden campaign has even suggested, let alone claimed, that a single email or text is fake."

Whatever else can be said about any party in this story, the contents of the emails themselves have been verified to a fairly high standard as can be seen above.

If the sending server implements DKIM there will be a DKIM signature in the header file, irrespective of if the receiving server does so. The DKIM signature will validate the entire body of the email, including any text below the reply line, which means that in an email chain it will validate the text that was sent from the other server as well. As can be seen from the PDF file of one of the emails, one of the participants is using Gmail, which had already implemented DKIM in 2014.

https://www.scribd.com/documen...