rladd

The big problem with the Oxford ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine that I haven't seen discussed much is that it doesn't seem to work very well.

Viral gRNA was detected in nose swabs from all animals and no difference in viral load in nose swabs was found on any days between vaccinated and control animals

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.13.093195v1

For a less technical write-up: https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2020/05/16/did...

This works on "tastes" at the lowest level definition of "taste", in other words tongue sensations. But what we think of as "taste" is actually a combination of this and of smell or aroma.

Smell is much more complex and relies on detection of the shape of the particles by the olfactory receptors (see: http://cst.ufl.edu/taste-vs-flavor-whats-the-difference.html).

It could be possible to simulate different aromas with a fairly small number of scent molecules, and there has been some work in that direction (see: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227512326_Aroma_sim...), but no successful commercial product has ever been launched (that I'm aware of) based on this technologly.

So while interesting, this 'taste synthesizer' and anything like it is not going to enable anyone to taste anything that really tastes like a food.

The Fed isn’t actually buying any stocks. And neither are companies diluting anybody to sell anything to the Fed.

What the Fed is buying is bonds. Which are non-dilutive.

I understand the sentiment, but let’s try to get the facts right

This is claimed in the linked Wikipedia article to prevent phishing but how could it?

If the phishing site presents a ui that looks like the real site, the user could be tricked into entering his real username/password which the attacker could then use to log into the real site.

Or am I missing something?

For example?

What's really odd about the linked article is that it's supposed to be a summary of this paper:

https://download.nap.edu/cart/download.cgi?record_id=25776

The actual paper consistently says that homemade masks really DO work, at least to some extent.

It definitely works but the flavor is different (not in a good way, just different) and it’s super high sodium.

To be more exact, (in that study) the total percentage of patients who were initially put on the ventilator who survived for at least a year was 30%.

Of the approximately 50% of patients who were on a ventilator and survived long enough to be released from the hospital, 60% of those survived for at least a year.

Putting it in those terms is far too charitable. It would cost LESS than the price of ONE B2 bomber (which was $2.1B... in 1997 dollars).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit

I like https://covid19info.live the best so far.

Unfortunately it doesn't show per 100K or # tested (which I would love to find, but haven't seen anywhere). The former should be quite easy to do, the latter appears to not be as easy to get good data for.

Also: made by one hacker!

The linked page doesn't show the process clearly. Not sure about the target market, but it could be very helpful to show each step visually:

1) Print out QR codes for every table

2) Customer scans QR code

3) etc.

(or if that's not how it works, I didn't understand it either!)

I think it wasn't ACE inhibitors but sartans (telmisartan losartan, etc.) that were being discussed as possible prophylaxes, potentially via inhaler.

True only for things that can be scaled.

I don’t know what’s in this shrimp tissue culture medium but mammalian cell medium typically requires fetal calf serum.

You can’t arbitrarily scale production of that.

Disappointed that there was no reply to this from the developer. Apparently he either doesn't care about these issues or finds them too difficult to correct!

I was hit by this charge too, when doing some test purchases.

Support said "use test mode for that", but test mode is NOT adequate to fully test a live production system. The keys are different, the card numbers are different... it should work the same but may not.

With this policy change, there's no way to test a live production system without paying Stripe all the money it would have gotten if the charge were real.

And that's just a minor case. What happens if a huge fraudulent charge is made and we undo it before shipping product? We potentially get hit with huge fees, for no particular reason: Stripe doesn't have to pay those fees to the processor if there's a refund (Stripe cofounder, please correct me if I'm wrong).

That being the case, this is pure gouging and nothing else.

And gouging because others gouge is not a good reason or excuse. Be better, don't stoop to their level.

I think almost entirely in images, usually moving and relating to each other in 3D space.

There are words mixed in, but when they come up they are usually just single words or a phrases which are attributes of something I'm thinking of, or an action I should take.

Sometimes I think more in words, but that's usually when something is really unclear to me or if I am obsessing over something.

I think that years of training myself not to obsess over things probably reduced my internal monologue almost to the point that it would be good to have a bit more of it sometimes.

Its the commercialization of this:

A Periodic Diet that Mimics Fasting Promotes Multi-System Regeneration, Enhanced Cognitive Performance, and Healthspan

https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(15)...

You can do it yourself without any kind of kit, if you count calories. I've done it 7 times so far. Due for another one soon.

Yes, but a thought experiment is not a theory.

Is that a theory or more of a very weak hypothesis?

Am I missing something or wouldn't this be much (much) more efficient to do in SQL with a single parameterized query?

I have a $12 Ikea clock that looks rather like a Swiss train clock (not exactly of course) and which keeps nearly perfect time and runs for over a year on one battery.

It is miles better than the $5 Ikea clock, but I see no reason to pay more since the $12 one looks good and runs perfectly well.

Choke-full sounds appropriate in this case (since it's about people choking on their words, more or less), but the usual phrase is chock-full, meaning "packed full".

Not if you use a box like Roku, etc.

I think the conclusion is probably right, but the experiment seems problematic.

If I was told that a chauffeur was waiting for me to tell them where to take me, I might feel a little obligated to keep them busy rather than just waiting around for me. So I might take more rides than I would have otherwise, out of some sense of politeness.

A better experiment might be to give people an unlimited Lyft or Uber account for a week. It might also help to tell them that a randomly selected driver will be paid for any time they are not taking rides, so they don't feel like they will be helping someone out if they take more rides.

I think that there would still be an increase in rides, but maybe not quite as large an increase.

My guess is that they'd get much more (more than 10x) uptake at $1.99 than they will at $12.99.

And they need volume to make it work. So this pricing seems like a big mistake to me.

Because the sun is not the center of the universe in any sense other than that everything can always be considered the "center".

You left out d) how long will it last?

Fusion reactions produce lots of neutrons, and neutrons weaken metal, in many cases within a few hours.

It may be that a "successful" fusion reactor is still a failure because it can run for only a few hours, days, or weeks before it has to be scrapped and completely rebuilt.

My mother got a perfect 800 score on the GRE English test many years ago when she wanted to go back to graduate school after her children were grown up enough (highschool/college age).

She told me that the way she got her perfect score was by realizing when the questions were wrong and thinking of what answer the test creators believed to be correct.

She had to outguess the test creators and answer the questions wrong -- in the "right" way.

This seems like a similar situation.

Not a battery. It's a fuel cell that's "burning" aluminum by oxidizing it.

Once the reaction is complete, you end up with basically aluminum ore that has to be re-refined, at great energy cost.

My guess is that this is highly inefficient and will not turn out to be very useful.

Hmm... how about adding displays on the pillars connected to cameras that fill in the view (adjusted to whatever the driver's head position is at any time)?