Zoraptor

We have had very few cases which makes finding a link relatively easy, and for a couple the only link to an infected person was a bus trip both took (example case, press report). IIRC in that case they weren't even on the bus at the same time, but about ten minutes apart which is why it took more time to find.

HoonDing == oby. Though oby would have somehow contrived to find an AK variant with a stars&stripe paintjob.

Despite having very few cases overall we've had a few here where the only link is public transport (buses specifically). Far more from other causes like being family members or workmates, but those are also a lot easier to contain. China's vaccine is fine, at least for efficiency. The Brazil study is being- probably deliberately- misinterpreted, often by those who should know better*. The issue is similar to one there was a brief discussion about a few pages ago about what the efficacy of a vaccine means, practically, and the difference between SARS-CoV2 and Covid19. Most vaccines aren't of the smallpox type eradication sort. Despite everyone talking about 'immunity' as a shorthand that's not what they're talking about when it comes to how well the vaccine works. In part because that isn't really how the human immune system works. The- pretty much fake news- headlines about China's vaccine having a ~50% effectiveness are an example. It's 50% effective, if you include asymptomatic and very mild infections. Sounds kind of bad, however, it's 100% effective against severe covid19. You can still be infected by SARS-CoV2 post vaccination, but you won't get severe covid19 from it, and your chances of getting covid19 at all are reduced ~80%. It's reduced the chances of getting infected, and the effects of the infection. To illustrate the point, the highly effective Pfizer vaccine's efficacy drops precipitously if you do the analysis the same way that was done to the sinapharm one, ie include everyone reporting mild symptoms and those with positive PCR but no symptoms. Indeed, it actually has a worse efficiency than sinapharm in that case. It's irrelevant in both cases, because an infection that causes minimal harm might as well not exist. 'Covid19' defines a set of symptoms caused by the SC2 virus, severe enough to kill. If you don't/ didn't have the symptoms you don't have the disease, what you have is another coronavirus contributing to the mix of various viruses that causes the 'common cold'. *I made fun previous of the BBC for their utterly partisan coverage of Sputnik vs AZOxford compared to how the results turned out and they're now repeating the 50% effective claim acritically as well. Useless coverage is part of the reason we end up with antivaxxers, and by and large the coverage has been a masterclass in Western Exceptionalism instead- indeed, as mentioned yesterday, the Chinese vaccine being indemnified is used to build suspicion without mentioning the context that the western vaccines are indemnified in the same way too.

The Chinese vaccine isn't stolen, certainly not off a big name/ leading contender at least. It's an inactivated virus vaccine unlike the others. As a consequence of that it's not particularly effective- comparatively, it's still effective enough. It's entirely possible that he actually was misquoted or misquoting though, as it reads more like a list of ailments that could possibly have been related to the vaccine, rather than those that definitely were. A similar example would be the AZOxford trial being delayed when a guy got a rare nerve disease while on it. Some of the stuff in the article is definite sino bashing too, indemnity for the producer against being sued for side effects has been generally applied throughout the world, since it's accepted that they're rushed and not had the usual length/ depth of trial (eg, for Pfizer in the UK). The allegation was that Russia was behind the hacking. Funny timing, as some of the data hacked got released today. I'd be somewhat amused if it was SVR/ FSB/ Spetzvyaz; stereotypical anime waifu avatar behind which hides a stereotypical Russian KGB goon.

For me, got the number from BBC specifically, prior to the vote. House Majority Leader Steny (?) also said up to 20 expected to cross the floor. Not sure where Bruce got it from but he mentioned the same number too, last page.

Don't think there's any prospect of them getting the 2/3 majority needed for a removal now, they'd need 7 more people to cross the floor in the 100 member Senate than they got in the ~400 member House. Given that it's very likely to be deferred until later.

Impeachment passed, but with a lot less cross party support (10 Republicans) than speculated. Not exactly bipartisan and not a great sign for those wanting an out and out removal in the Senate.

Same guy, same vaccine. BioNTech research, but (mainly) Pfizer production, and distribution iirc. Presumably the Moderna vaccine could be similarly programmed too, as it's also a mRNA one.

Well yeah, ideally they should have talked about it earlier, I'm just saying why they didn't. Trump is famous and everyone knows- there's a formal public explanation- why he was banned. That's not the case for the vast majority of other bannings. (It's a lot more difficult to do vetting for the 'little people' and checking why they were banned. Indeed, people going elsewhere to whine about being banned on SM followed by finding out that that ban was perfectly justified is a bit of s stereotype for good reason. Obviously we both know there are legitimate complaints, but "actually, [one person in article] was banned for sending unsolicited dong pics to underage girls via PM, not what they claimed" will be an inevitable response to such articles, from SM companies) If you're in the US, rest of the world appears left wing. If you're in the rest of the world, US appears right wing. It comes up a lot obviously, but 'left wing' things like single payer healthcare are near universal in developed countries, outside the US, and the equivalent of most right wing parties outside the US are the Democrats, not the Republicans.

That's a "some researchers are worried, some think it's not a worry" situation. There's been a reinfection case with e484k, but there have been reinfections with other strains too, the human immune system isn't perfect in the first place. The concensus seems to be that it may reduce effectiveness a bit, but that's all. It's more the implication from it that there could be mutations that reduce immunity a lot that is the issue. That's the good thing about mRNA vaccines though, they're effectively reprogrammable. Stick a new spike protein sequence in to get new mRNA and a new vaccine in theoretically a few days (Pfizer guy said production could be switched within two weeks). A new vaccine at $40 per immunity, but then it being programmable is partly why it's so expensive.

Not exactly unexpected though. They've already got a lot of announced or implied products that they simply cannot make at the moment due to capacity issues, and it's too early for talk about Zen4 or RDNA3. Some of the other things they could have talked about like non X desktop Ryzen would be interesting for consumers, but pointless for AMD. They're already selling every 5600X produced, there's no point having a 5600 non X that costs the same to make but sells for less and won't increase sales. Similarly, not much point talking about 5000 series threadripper when they can sell the same chiplet for more as Epyc, and 3000 series already brutally murders Intel's offerings in HEDT. Bad timing for a keynote address, really. We've been a bit spoiled by AMD's meme presentations in the past couple of years, they can't have bar graphs using 3x 10m screens to show performance every time.

Nothing much Swan could have done more, and he was always meant to be an interim CEO. It certainly wasn't his MBA style background that gave Intel its recent troubles. Having said that, iirc while Krzanich had a technical/ engineering degree he went straight from that into management and never did 'proper' engineering.

While that may be somewhat of a facetious suggestion I at least literally couldn't. It would take me 50 years- yep, literally- to download even Parler's relatively puny 70 TB with my data cap. At least by that time 70 TB of storage for the data would be cheap hopefully, but the relevance would certainly be gone. There's been plenty of talk about it. But it's like anything, it will only get actual attention when it happens to someone 'important'. Kim and Kanye get burgled, big news. You or I get burgled, lucky if the police turn up.

The axe attack wasn't exactly big news though, 4th (?) news item of the day on the 6 o'clock news, behind such major events as a junkyard fire in Papakura. Far more traditional to use a tractor, gets way more attention too.

There are various english language versions eg. They aren't claiming absolute patient zero though, just that she's the Italian patient zero, and not the child they thought it was earlier. There's a compelling genetic link to the virus ultimately coming from bats from China- quite likely not from the market they originally thought though- and they'd have to find a similar link in Italy to suggest that they had the 'real' patient zero. Occam's Razor is that it was just circulating in and got out of China earlier than believed previous. Would not personally be surprised if it had been present in humans for years, or crossed species multiple times without being infectious enough to be noticed. Suggestion was that HIV (SIV) crossed the species barrier dozens of different times, for example.

Inevitable at some point, sure. Not really climate change related though, they just share a common factor- overpopulation. Plus our tendency to be stupid and not learn from mistakes, given we'd had SARS-CoV original as a dry run with almost certainly the same general origin.

OK, now let's see them do the same metadata analysis for Twitter and Facebook. Oh wait, can't, since they haven't been, lol, "hacked through legal means"- a phrase that doesn't exactly scream legitimacy. I'll admit, some of my stridency on this is because of how utterly useless FB was over Brenton Tarrant and how they still had video of the mosque shooting up months and months later- but they never faced any consequences beyond Jacinda Ardern and Emmanuel Macron waggling their fingers and looking concerned. Greenwald is about as left as you can get politically, and he's been persistently strident about freedom of information issues eg his work with wikileaks. You can hardly expect him to defend every prostitute or activist though, unsurprisingly it's only a big story when, well, it's a big story- and some random getting suspended ain't a big story. Meh, put people wanting SM nationalised into the same camp as those who want protesters met with a hail of bullets and mass trials for high treason- too emotionally challenged by events to think about what they're actually saying. Any sensible person wants internet access turned into a utility, and big tech broken up.

Would be a pretty pointless lie to make though. At least under normal circumstances. Of course the fundamental problem with Parler providing any such statement is that they cannot prove a negative- but then there's exactly the same amount of actual evidence so far that they were on Parler as that they weren't. The person making the assertion has to provide the evidence so ultimately it's up to 'you' as the royal you to show Parler was being used, not them to prove it wasn't. Which conveniently for one viewpoint or the other cannot happen now that Parler is in the digital shredder. Would anyone take a bet that none of the 13 publicly identified people were on Twitter/ FB though? We outright know for sure some were, and that's the contrast he's going for illustrating. The 'irony' is that no one can independently check whether Parler was being used for organising protests, violence or riots nor if the 13 arrested were on the platform because those making the accusations- Google, Apple, AWS- are also those blocking access to the evidence.

Full article from Glenn Greenwald re Parler and big tech etc, as per the tweet from yesterday. Pretty good read overall, though likely to fall on deaf ears from corporate apologists. He does confirm that 'no users of Parler were arrested' was referring to those initially arrested on the day, which is far more realistic than none full stop.

UK is currently actively ignoring instructions on vaccine administration though- to whit, deferring boosters. That's doubling the apparent vaccination rate, but at the cost of the vaccinations potentially not being effective. Israel is very much a special case- very high population density is an inherent advantage when you have to hold vaccine in a big centralised store, and it's in the midst of an election campaign which Bibi is desperate to win. They also have a lot of ready to use infrastructure and admin due to being highly militarised.

Given the limitations the vaccination programs were never going to be anything other than lousy. Distributing a vaccine that has to be stored at -70C is fundamentally difficult and there's huge competition to get limited doses even with that, and same with the more forgiving Moderna variant. There's no point ordering doses that can't be manufactured or delivered effectively, you'd be paying over the odds and getting them delivered when the order of magnitude cheaper and comparatively massively higher volume alternatives come on line.

It's somewhat speculative. That there will be a negative effect isn't seriously in dispute though, just how much it will be- and when it will kick in. You certainly cannot draw any conclusions from Twitter's stock price to either support or disprove Trump being banned having an effect, yet, I agree, but you can't really draw many conclusions from Twitter's stock prices full stop. It's too soon with the ban itself driving a lot of interest and engagement; and more importantly Twitter's stock price is fundamentally not connected to its economic reality at the moment, if it ever has been. It's gone up by 50% or whatever, while making a loss of 1.3Bn. The stock price is simply not connected to reality, it's operating on Confidence and free money pretty much entirely, and in that climate the only real speculation that can be made is what will prick the bubble and whether losing their most prominent user by some distance will be the needle that does it. Yes, Twitter makes most of its money advertising via companies on its platform, practically that's how all SM services, Google search, and the vast majority of 'free' services make their money. But people don't go there- or Facebook or Bing or Gmail- because they want to be served ads. They go there for other reasons, with the ads usually being an annoyance and the trick being to get ads to people who won't find them an annoyance but useful. In that respect Twitter's engagement level is fundamentally poor compared to other SM. As with all SM, users that don't engage with advertisers are still a net positive as well, so long as they remain users instead of functionally defunct accounts. If it cost anything much at all to maintain users SM would be purging them regularly, as it is Twitter is replete with bots and the like and it's- for example- close to impossible to get FB to actually delete an account, unless you're in Europe maybe. That's because even if you don't click on the ads you can be monetised in other ways, up to a point. But Twitter's problem is that everyone else major does that a lot better and more profitably than them. That doesn't matter so much when money is cheap, it matters a great deal when the strings tighten though.

Wouldn't have thought they'd be any threat to supply at all. Not enough volume, and quite possibly not even on a node AMD is using. The threats to AMD's volume would be something like Huawei being allowed back on, or something completely speculative like Intel shutting down its foundry business wholesale.

Speculative, but not wholly so, and outside reason, but also not wholly so. Trump did drive a huge amount of traffic, he gave Twitter an enormous amount of relevance, he was with very little doubt its single biggest drawcard. Even if people didn't like him they wanted to see what he'd say next and generally what he'd say would be on Twitter- that's gone now. Trump as President buffered the losses twitter was suffering to the likes of instagram/ tiktok/ whatsapp/ telegram/ fb etc because that was where he made the news and if you wanted to see it and interact with it you had to be on twitter. You can scarcely overestimate how much of twitter's traffic has been Trump related over the past 5 years, and even more so how much of its engagement- critical for ad revenue- has been driven by it. Some of that will stay even without him directly driving it, but let's be frank, Joe Biden isn't going to be a replacement in that respect. He just isn't that sort of guy, and for Twitter that's a big problem. Fundamentally, Twitter is not a great bet. As I said previous it doesn't have either breadth of service nor lock ins that other SM have and which drive their use. Its (active) user base is fine in terms of absolute numbers- it's artificially boosted, but then so is every SM- but even with Trump it had pretty bad overall engagement and that will now get even worse. It's been somewhat profitable in 2018-9, but nowhere near enough to make up for how unprofitable it had been beforehand. And it seems to be heading for a significant loss for financial 2020 again- small profit for Q3, but big loss- 1.4Bn- for the first six months of 2020. I'd agree that it's pretty much impossible to say what the true value of Twitter is in the current environment of quantitative easing and ~0% interest rates. When the money being invested starts being real again is when the actual reckoning, if any, will happen.

meh, not worth it.