New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection • Hacker News Board

Re: New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection

#131

Post by kafkaesq » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 6:32 PM UTC

otto_ortega wrote: post #103

kafkaesq wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was referring to the fact that no one even knows if it's possible to do this yet. Not whether it would be easy or hard (or ethical) to do so.

Re: New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection

#132

Post by karmajunkie » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 7:55 PM UTC

curried_haskell wrote: post #109

D-Coder wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

I'm not sure what there is to tone down. The statement is patently untrue.[1]

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-cor...

Re: New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection

#133

Post by triplesec » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 11:23 PM UTC

paavokoya wrote: post #122

spikels wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like whenever NPR reports on subjects I happen to know really really well I find myself disappointed. Makes me wonder about the rest of their reporting.

NPR is almost as bad as CNN and such, but it's marketed towards intellectuals through linguistics. I noticed whenever they speak on a topic I'm deeply familiar with, they use overly-complicated wordage to get the point across while missing important details. Almost like how "over-designed" websites usually have terrible backends.

Still beats most radio media or TV 'news' for attempting to be accurate!

Re: New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection

#134

Post by AceJohnny2 » Mon, Aug 29, 2016, 6:40 PM UTC

DigitalJack wrote: post #108

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.

You mean something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_Secret_Sharing or even RAID6's Reed-Solomon codes?

Re: New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection

#135

Post by 50CNT » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 1:52 AM UTC

curried_haskell wrote: post #109

D-Coder wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

You could argue just as well that the number two purpose of an organization is to generate profit. Profit is a necessity to achieve your primary goals. People need to eat, but you'd have to be a pretty uninspired person if your number one purpose is meeting your caloric expenditures.