aemreunal

I'm curios in what state the US' manufacturing (chips, displays or otherwise) capabilities would be had Apple invested that USD $250-odd billion (as alleged on that "secret deal" article) in the US rather than in China. I'm skeptical it would've ever reached the low cost (but high-quality) of labor they get in China but maybe they would offset that with something else?

You can easily find sources with a simple Google search. I searched for "myocarditis risk of covid vs covid vaccine" and the second organic result is from Nature [1] and states:

> Previous research co-authored by Balicer found that in this age group, becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2 made a person 18 times more likely to develop myocarditis — a much more significant risk than is observed following vaccination.

Sources are in the article. You can easily find sources for COVID, please try searching it yourself first.

[1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02740-y

Indeed. These sorts of discussions always reminds me of Penn & Teller's 'Bullshit!' episode on vaccines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhk7-5eBCrs

My completely uninformed, wild guess: the manufacturing plants capable of creating those are creating other wires that are more in demand / profitable for them, rather than these cheap ones.

> You allow the dialog to take place and make up your own mind.

I'm not sure this applies to medicine or vaccines. I don't think any of us are in the position of "making up our own mind" about what works in medicine and what doesn't, which is why we have double-blind clinical studies. We can't even explain why/how placebo works.

Also, recently, FBI "hacked" in to Exchange servers that were vulnerable (with court authorization) to patch them [1], so it does happen. But I agree with your sentiment that it doesn't happen as often as it should.

The public perception seems to be that the US doesn't spend enough resources to harden its and its people's defenses than it does to surveil people.

[1]: https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/13/fbi-launches-operation-to-...

Same thing happened some number of years ago with Turkey and its ID database.

The Turkish IDs have a "national ID number" (assigned to each citizen, is for life and is unchangeable) and a serial number for the ID itself. You need the national ID number to do certain things, similar to SSNs in the US. Similar to SSNs in the US, it's an absolutely horrible form of identity verification/authorization.

> It's harmful to constantly hear sound, [...]

Hmm I'm not so sure about that; do you have any source for that? My intuition says that it's nigh impossible to find completely quiet places in daily life; there's always some noise, though it could be imperceptably quiet.

If constant sound is harmful, I'd imagine we'd all have lost our hearing by now. I reckon any harm woulc come from volume, not just simple presence.

Seems like it's 404ing now; here's a snapshot: https://archive.is/9m1gs

> Young children are not getting critical development years back.

This sentence alone is true, but it misses the fact that a) young children suffer from this disease too, b) these young children live with older people that are at more at risk, hence they can bring something back from their schools that may cost the lives of their parents (I don't think losing your parents when you're a kid is great for your development), and c) there's always the risk of more deadly variants emerging due to more transmission.

> [...] individuals should have a role in deciding what's right for them.

For matters that only concern them, yes. For matters of public health, where you can transmit something to others without their consent and potentially cause their death or long-term disability, no, you don't have that luxury. None of us do. Same reason why a single nation can't/shouldn't just pollute all the seas and cause tons of greenhouse gas emissions and kill the world for everyone. We may not like it but we [have to] live together and being in a society means looking out for each other.

You are free to not wear a mask or party by yourself, in your house, away from society.

I believe it was Ben Thompson who recently suggested that it's possible a platform like Facebook is fundamentally incompatible with human nature as well. Maybe, at least, incompatible with society as it exists today. I've been thinking a lot abut that.

Edit: Not a defense of Facebook. Regardless of what I said, I still don't think Facebook is trying to be a good company (morally and ethically) and I don't like them

Clearly because you can't make scrolling horrible without some JS in there.

Reminds me of Élan School [1] and how kids (under 18) can be abducted with the permission of their parents and put in confinement for dubious behavioral benefits, against their wishes – sometimes with the help of the judicial system.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89lan_School

The only one I can think of was Anthony Levandowski for stealing Waymo's trade secrets but he was pardoned a few months later.

...and love.

I once read that it was because the norms of that time were to appear more seriously. Smiling in photos is apparently a new(er) norm.

It's not just unpopular, it's also wrong: when you use drugs, you are almost entirely harming yourself (leaving aside funding all sorts of illegal activities, just focusing on the act itself). When you propagate CSAM material, you are causing psychological harm to the victims, plus can cause them to physically harm themselves or get harmed by others. So you are a criminal, harming a victim as well.

You can read about this directly from a victim via this NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-ra...

Here's what I think will happen if their "on-demand protection" service launches: Someone will eventually get killed, they will either shut down that service or completely, then the executive(s) won't face any charges.

Even Batman had the decency of asking private citizens to not engage in vigilantism.

I suspect a bit of causation-correlation mixup whenever this topic comes up. I have the feeling that the reason why they don't need much punitive measures is because they have so many social safety nets that erase the need to commit crimes in the first place or help people get back in to society after committing a crime. If anyone has any data about whether this is indeed the case or not, I'd love to read about it.

The [dangerous] implication behind saying "[...] Police Kill too many Innocent people" is that police have a right to kill criminals, which is not true. Whether or not you are innocent, police still don't have a right (and shouldn't) kill you, so I personally am rejecting your re-interpretation of the title.

Police are responsible for for apprehending the criminals and only are supposed to use deadly force in self-defense or in protecting other people.

I think the underlying effort with that sentiment is not to agree on what companies' responsibilities or "ethics" are, but rather to create enough guardrails (legislation, rules, public sentiment through the free press, etc.) for companies that they can't act immorally or unethically.

I think it's high time we stop assigning personalities to companies, expecting them to be "good people", and start legislating them to prevent them from harming people and the planet in the first place.

Disclaimer: no education in biotechnology or vaccines, just an observer who likes to nerd out on information and think about them.

My understanding is that mRNA vaccines need a protein to target (since mRNAs make cells produce proteins). What makes SARS-CoV-2 particularly suited for this vaccine type was their spike proteins. My understanding it that the spike proteins are very unique to that virus type, was enveloping the virus and the human biology doesn't have something similar to that, so it was an easy (!) target for this vaccine type.

At least one of those conditions above may not hold true for <insert virus name here>, which can make it difficult/unsuitable for mRNA vaccines to target.

Again, I may be wrong (please correct me and give me the correct information if so), but this is my understanding.

Wow that link has been super informative, thank you! I knew that the transmission risk was actually lower than commonly thought but wasn't aware that it was direction- and sexual act-dependent, nor that condoms were of great but still limited effect. Thanks!

Hah, an interesting question and certainly not stupid at all!

A quick Google search [1] suggests that a (standard?) solar panel absorbs ~2/3s of the light, so it probably reflects enough to make out the car on the road. But the question actually becomes valid and important once we discover solar panel material that can absorb even more light (think Vantablack-like absorption).

Very good question!

[1]: https://news.rpi.edu/luwakkey/2507, search for "absorbs 67.4 percent" on the page

Microsoft acted pretty sleazy (IMHO) on the Australian law situation but it's rich for Google to attack them since they caved first and paid. I'm all for taxing companies (tech or otherwise) in sensible ways but the Australian news law was far from sensible.

Not to mention AMP and whatnot.

I clear the screen a lot, but I use Cmd+K to clear the whole Terminal.app screen or Cmd+L to clear the last command (and its output) on Mac, rather than using the `clear` command. I use Bash, not sure if it works on other terminal emulators.

A cynical person would say "Through smartly-targeted ads for devices claiming to use less power than the ones you have" but I'm totally not one of those people.

> Both major Australian parties are far too captured by corporate interests [...]

Someone said "as if Rupert Murdoch himself wrote this law", which I think is quite apt.

That's totally true. What I was trying to say was that Facebook's interests became aligned with the open web's interests and their "triumph" (i.e. stopping this law) would've also benefitted the open web.

This makes me so angry, not just because of Australia's clear attack on open web and a completely inverted value flow illusion, but also because it made me agree with Facebook on an issue (when they initially showed opposition and called Australia's bluff). Though they also went back on that, which is just disappointing to me.

Australia needs to step out of their illusion and stop shoveling snow up an avalanche. The only way to benefit from the age of internet is to embrace its realities.

I'm also curious why this didn't work when Germany tried to do it but it works when Australia does...