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New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection

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Re: New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection

#101

Post by otto_ortega »

jpfed wrote: post #49
otto_ortega wrote: post #37

Why if instead of spending money researching the diseases that mosquitos could transmit to humans on the future we spend all that money into figuring out a way to exterminate all mosquitos from the surface of earth once and for all? As someone who lives on a tropical country and had have both Dengue and Chikungunya I can attest mosquitos are pure evil, and there are several researchs suggesting they serve no purpose…

You don't even need to wipe out all mosquitoes - just a few species (something like 6 out of 300) account for the vast majority of disease transmitted.

Agree with that, if the day comes I will like to see the Aedes Aegypti to be on top of the list, that little bastard needs to dissapear.

Re: New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection

#102

Post by danielmorozoff »

jpfed wrote: post #49
otto_ortega wrote: post #37

Why if instead of spending money researching the diseases that mosquitos could transmit to humans on the future we spend all that money into figuring out a way to exterminate all mosquitos from the surface of earth once and for all? As someone who lives on a tropical country and had have both Dengue and Chikungunya I can attest mosquitos are pure evil, and there are several researchs suggesting they serve no purpose…

You don't even need to wipe out all mosquitoes - just a few species (something like 6 out of 300) account for the vast majority of disease transmitted.

There is quite of bit of research activity going into making mosquitoes that act as vectors infertile, by introducing genes into populations: http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v34/n1/full/nbt.3439.html

Re: New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection

#103

Post by otto_ortega »

kafkaesq wrote: post #69
otto_ortega wrote: post #37

Why if instead of spending money researching the diseases that mosquitos could transmit to humans on the future we spend all that money into figuring out a way to exterminate all mosquitos from the surface of earth once and for all? As someone who lives on a tropical country and had have both Dengue and Chikungunya I can attest mosquitos are pure evil, and there are several researchs suggesting they serve no purpose…

Why if instead of spending money researching the diseases that mosquitos could transmit to humans on the future we spend all that money into figuring out a way to exterminate all mosquitos from the surface of earth once and for all? As if that were somehow... easier, or even more tractable? They're arguably (much) better optimized for long-term survival than we are, you know.

It doesn't have to be easier, if progress in science were dictated based on what's easier to do, there wouldn't be much progress (if any) at all.

It's a matter of what's better for our suvival as a specie.

Re: New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection

#104

Post by yarg »

This is very cool, It rather effectively simulates sexual reproduction in a virus.

Furthermore, the host could develop an immune response to one strain of a module, catch another strain and the other dormant modules once again become active.

One scary facet of the way that this works, if there exist module combinations that prove lethal to the hosts, there is a significantly reduced likelihood that the infection will burn itself out - the lethal version can exist spread out across the population randomly combining to strike down some poor innocent mosquito.

Disclaimer: I'm not a virologist, and there's a good chance I'm full of shit.

Re: New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection

#106

Post by AceJohnny2 »

This reminds me of the story between a cable-box developer and crackers. I'll need to find the exact story, but it goes something like this: The developer would send an over-the-air update, the crackers would crack it within days and provide that to their userbase. Usually the crackers would just nop out the few instructions that branched into DRM code or something.

At some point, the crackers noticed that the OTAs seemed to include "dead" code, that wasn't being called by anything. Just in case it was used by the live code, they left it in. It didn't prevent their cracks.

Then, a little bit down the line, an OTA update made use of all those pieces of dead code to simultaneously harden legitimate boxes against cracking, and brick hacked boxes. The developer had, in effect, distributed his countermeasures piecemeal in order to pass the crackers guards and be included in the cracked network, and in one delayed action assembled and activated the countermeasure.

Edit: Ah, here was the story from 2001 about the "Black Sunday Kill", and it was DirectTV: https://slashdot.org/story/01/01/25/1343218/directvs-secret-...

And it looks like this was the guy who did it: http://www.wired.com/2008/05/tarnovsky/?currentPage=all

I got a bunch of the details wrong (hey, it's been 15 years!) but that's the gist of it. The Slashdot story has the meat of it!

Re: New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection

#107

Post by AceJohnny2 »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #106

This reminds me of the story between a cable-box developer and crackers. I'll need to find the exact story, but it goes something like this: The developer would send an over-the-air update, the crackers would crack it within days and provide that to their userbase. Usually the crackers would just nop out the few instructions that branched into DRM code or something. At some point, the crackers noticed that the OTAs s…

Offtopic: man, those were the good days of Slashdot, two tech news+comments sites ago for me. I then gradually switched to Reddit, and now HN. I wonder what will be next.

Re: New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection

#108

Post by DigitalJack »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #106

This reminds me of the story between a cable-box developer and crackers. I'll need to find the exact story, but it goes something like this: The developer would send an over-the-air update, the crackers would crack it within days and provide that to their userbase. Usually the crackers would just nop out the few instructions that branched into DRM code or something. At some point, the crackers noticed that the OTAs s…

That's a very interesting line of thought.

I had a slightly different thought, along the lines of forward error correction and splitting up the coded message to make sure the loss of one or two pieces is tolerable.

Re: New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection

#109

Post by curried_haskell »

D-Coder wrote: post #98
bsenftner wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doubtful one person, but a board of directors choosing where to maintain, increase, or reduce investment does. And their legal fiduciary duty is to maximize profits. That is the system's design right there.

"their legal fiduciary duty is to maximize profits" actually is not true. Although it's of course a very common motive.

I would tone the statement down, but it's still true that the number one purpose of a for-profit business is to generate profit. All other activity, in general, is secondary to profit.

It's like saying a human doesn't need to eat. Sure, sometimes healthy people go without food to achieve a goal, and a few rare people sacrifice themselves for the common good. But these people are exceptions to the rule.

It might more profitable to find a cure, but often business is blinded by short term rather than the long game.

Re: New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection

#110

Post by Retric »

shoyer wrote: post #68
latj wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We generally arent trying to cure diseases. I mean, individual researchers want to find cures (e.g. the dedicated clinician who went to med school because her mother had breast cancer, the passionate hacker who eschewed private buses and free lunches at some startup to work at a research institute) Generally though, the pressure of the overall system is to make as much money as possible. If you cure someone's disease…

It is common mistaken belief that drug companies don't have an incentive to find cures. Cures are actually tremendously profitable. You can charge more money for a cure than drugs for a lifetime of symptom management, because cures result in better outcomes and significant cost savings for the entire healthcare system. The recent development of cures for Hepatitis C is a perfect case in point. Gilead is pulling in $1…

Even that fails in comparison to preventing disease. Drugs you give to heathy people for decades are a huge Win-Win. And even vaccines represent a vast and stable market.
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