The underlying math (read cryptographic implementation choices) and people backing Zcash are extremely suspect. These days everything gets all lumped under one crypto banner but from a first principles standpoint I find things like bitcoin and monero extremely sound. On the same basis I find, very unpopular opinion, say ETH, is just trash. Zcash is even worse in that it seems largely in intentional scam.
For those that may not be familiar, the relatively strong anonymity on Monero is via a cryptographic mechanism known as "ring signatures". Separate from cryptocurrency they are a useful cryptographic technique for many things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_signature
I haven't read much on monero / this algorithm, so I'm not sure if it's particularly meaningful, but wikipeda references that being the case for most of 2017-2018 and then the algorithm was changed.
The Wikipedia article is incorrect, Monero still uses ring signatures. Bulletproofs are used as efficient range proofs in RingCT to hide the amount in transactions.
Honestly, comments like this are why I stick with hacker news.
Thank you! There's a lot of difficult-to-google info locked up in comments like this, and I truly appreciate the effort spent replying to randos like me :)
There are many things to like about a Telsa as a conveyance. But if you buy one and you think it is anything more than a CaaS (car as a service) you are lying to yourself.
Two other considerations that completely rule out ever buying a Tesla for me are the astronomical insurance rates and the corollary which is that virtually any accident will be 10k+ and your insurance is likely to total the car so that they can profit off it at auction (while you get your 80c on the dollar out).
But I pay less insurance than I did on my CRV, and I have the new car total value replacement thingy on it. Can't quite remember what that was called, but you get the idea.
Nope, Gap is also offered when you're financing the car, it's meant to cover the gap between the value of your car and the loan total, since the moment you drive off the lot you're upside down, so if you crash 5 minutes later and the insurance only wants to cover the "value of the car", gap would cover the remaining loan balance.
I have no intention to repair my car. Didn’t repair my last 3. I changed my brakes back in high school, no plans to now.
I have been super happy with my Tesla service, both in price and quality. I don’t feel filthy like when I went to the Honda dealership and they tried to sell me a $500 coolant flush.
You also have very likely no intention of having an accident and needing repairs.
And while their service might be fine for you individually, right to repair is about all customers having the choice to go to a contractor of their liking when needed.
Appliances are starting to come with their own integrated 3G/4G modems these days. You don't need to give them access to anything; they already have it.
I don't see why this should come as a surprise. The government poisoned liquor during prohibition, injected plutonium into unwitting pregnant women, gave innocent people syphilis while giving them fake treatments to see how it killed them (and just for the heck of it because the victims were black), and on and on.
This is the problem with purveyors of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. They don't need logical consistency. They don't need to explain themselves, they don't even need a central point to their arguments. They aren't trying to prove anything, only to plant the seeds of fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
No, I'm calling you one because you've played six degrees of vaccine misinformation on an article about the US government using herbicide. You haven't made any defensible claims, you've just injected uncertainty for uncertainty's sake.
Maybe it is working, but being coerced to take a novel gene therapy from organizations with a long history of abuse is a horrific precedent that should offend everyone.
I assume you are referring to mRNA vaccines here. These are not in any way "gene therapy." Please quit spouting misinformation.
For reference:
> Gene therapy is a medical field which focuses on the genetic modification of cells to produce a therapeutic effect[1] or the treatment of disease by repairing or reconstructing defective genetic material.[2]
First: Injecting RNA into cells that currently have reverse-transcriptase proteins active? I'm afraid it will modify DNA. So in any cell currently infected with a retrovirus, and there will be a lot of those in any human, it will modify DNA.
Of course, no more (in fact significantly less) than the virus will. But mRNA vaccines, when used against a retrovirus, will modify DNA.
Second: it would be considered Gene therapy whether or not it modifies DNA.
Thirdly: all RNA activity will result in expression changes for other Genes. That might not modify the DNA directly, but most researchers now consider that part of the genetic material of the cell. Again, probably a lot less than a virus would.
Fourthly: all "negative" (meaning it cuts out "wrong" DNA rather than adding some) gene therapy treatments only inject RNA as well. It's not quite the same as an RNA-based vaccine.
The disinformation has been so effective it created zealots constantly defending the side of pharmaceuticals, government measures, systemic control of movement and ultimately even how to treat our own health. Always using reverse accusations, especially when proven wrong or suddenly disappear, refuse to continue the argumentation, or minimise the gravity of their falsehood.
The gravity of the falsehood is key to understanding.
We have seen an incredible growth of authoritarianism, from the near daily 'Simon says' mandate changes, lockdowns, increased surveillance, destruction of small business, 12 trillion dollars printed, and coerced administration of a novel gene therapy. You have no choice but to be right with all of that on your shoulders, that's a lot to weigh down a conscience if one is wrong.
We've had surveillance since forever, the destruction of small businesses also isn't new, printing far too much currency has been the new normal for decades, coerced authorities and groups using corruption to gain grounds have been investigated and often sentenced. If consciousness need to kick back into these realities, we got even more educational work to do then.
Let's complete the sentence of your quote and see who's playing word games:
"Currently, mRNA is considered a gene therapy product by the FDA. Unlike certain gene therapies that irreversibly alter cell DNA and could act as a source of side effects, mRNA-based medicines are designed to not irreversibly change cell DNA; however, side effects observed in gene therapy could negatively impact the perception of mRNA medicines despite the differences in mechanism."
Can you agree that your original response with half the quote might have been a bit dishonest? And if you don't think so, why not quoting the entire phrase?
> "Currently, mRNA is considered a gene therapy product by the FDA."
Are we reading the same thing? The misinformation and dishonest strawman argument came from the second poster. One might take other issues with kook_throwaway's comment, but what's wrong with that?
Because we weren't debating the safety of mRNA. That is unrelated to the discussion and I would be feeding the troll by moving the conversation from ethics to semantics and efficacy. I stated in my original comment that even if it's effective I still have ethical issues with coerced administration of it, gene therapy or not.
I'm sorry I offended you by being polite. I'm not going to let you drag me any further down this road. However, if you would like a very short course on how mRNA vaccines work, and why they're safe, I will be glad to offer you this.
You are free to refuse this offer. I have no power to coerce you either way, nor am I going to help you further turn this comments section into a shit show. However, if you accept, my expectation is that you do so in good faith.
At any rate, the pathetic bootlicking and prostration to authoritarianism, and mob bullying of anybody who would dare to ask any questions of such pure and innocent institutions is pretty sickening.
The difference is we actually know what is in the vaccines and how they are produced. They're also not produced by one single company, we've got pfizer, moderna and a number of others working independently over international borders.
Not only that there's not exactly much sense in having many people die of a preventable disease. That costs government both in reduced productivity and healthcare.
It also encourages harsher health regulations to prevent spreading which in turn costs more money to corps who have to implement them.
I got the vaccine so I personally don't believe that we're trying to kill and/or subjugate all of humanity right now. But this strikes me as odd:
>The difference is we actually know what is in the vaccines and how they are produced.
If you had designed the vaccine, produced all the inputs of the manufacturing process and the machines yourself, and then produced the vaccines which you then checked with machines to analyze the result and then analyzed it yourself, and then took that vial and injected it yourself with your own syringe and your own disinfectant, then you would "know" what you were injected with.
My point is not to distrust the vaccines, or that any one person can realistically do this.
"Trusting the science" and "trusting the vaccines" is in essence still trusting all other humans in that chain of events that led to the vaccine in your arm to have done their job properly, at least to the best of their abilities.
Some people are now ready to trust the government on this more than others.
I think there was a study once in mould or some other simple organism, I sadly can't find it. They found that even these simple lifeforms have the tendency to have outliers in behavior. When a high number, say 95%, of it goes towards a food source 5% will avoid it.
This survival mechanism might kill the 5% more often than not, but if the opposite happens, the food is bad and kills the 95%, there is a reservoir of living cells that can spread.
On a long enough timeline, as the article shows, trust will be broken. From an evolutionary perspective then it's good to have some outliers. The reasoning they use doesn't matter, survival is what matters.
You're right, never ever have a bunch of corporations and governments colluded to be dishonest with people for their own gain. Never happened in anything related to the Middle East, South America, India, the Gulf of Mexico, tobacco, climate change, asbestos, banking bailouts, subprime mortgages, or anything else. Now let's all go bash the first fascist we find daring to question our benevolent corporate-government overlords.
> You're right, never ever have a bunch of corporations and governments colluded to be dishonest with people for their own gain.
There would have to be an awfully lot of people keeping that super awful secret. Corporations are made up of people and it would only take one of them to talk. Things don't usually stay a secret when that many people know about it.
Also third party scientists are able to read, comprehend papers that are written, so it's pretty unlikely in this day and age of being able to read any paper you want.
I think you missed my point which was that having the virus spread isn't beneficial to governments, corporations or anyone wanting the status quo to remain the same.
Yes, you are right, cartels have existed, and still exist. But do you think France, China, Russia would just agree to everything a supposed US health cartel say?
And the researchers in public labs, do you think they would agree to this cartel? I mean, they are the one who sounded the alerts on: tobacco, neonicotinoids, sugar?
Maybe everyone in the world is on it. I find it unlikely myself, but its OK to believe it.
And you are not a fascist for refusing the vaccine :/
I think multiple governments have certainly colluded to cover things up and perpetuate lies many many times.
If you aren't concerned about undue influence of Russia or China on people within the US government, let alone the collusion between western nations such as five eyes countries, then I don't know what to say.
I'm not sure what you're talking about researchers in public labs or what you think exactly I'm alleging here. It's not anything about the validity of scientific theories and data gathered about covid and vaccines. I never said anything at all about vaccines until right now, in fact.
A lot of people are trying to interpret this. I read the complete paper. This is very far from any kind of conclusive result that says 5G presents serious risks to human health. However it does raise a couple of important considerations that warrant further study.
This study was done on cow brain tissue outside of a skull cavity and found that in certain specific circumstances the radio frequencies used by 5G can transmit energy to brain tissues and pathways that warrant further study. That's all this paper says and it's methodology appears to be pretty credible for the conclusion reached. In somewhat of a rarity these days, this appears to be "good science".
Anyone who has actually read even the first few pages of the so called "gold standard" study cited knows it was useless and inapplicable to any meaningful public health practice. But the narrative MUST NOT BE deviated from. I don't think we as a modern civilization will recover for a hundred years from the way in which institutions like nature have debased themselves with political pandering.
