I have one of the earlier mid range 4k Samsungs. About two years in they gave it an update that added a Lote of bloatware, some of their own TV streaming channels full of Samsung ads. And for a bit I had Adguard home on my router and Samsung endpoints where the biggest thing blocked by far, and it was the only Samsung device in he house.
Now I have the internet disabled on it and just use an Xbox for smart stuff, will probably get an Apple TV next time they upgrade it.
I use an Xbox aswell, since my TV has an open security hole that the manufacturer refuses to patch, and because it sends unspecified data and fetches updates over an unencrypted connection.
Mind you, the Xbox does just as much snooping, but at least the Xbox fetches updates over encrypted channels and doesn't let anyone on the same network have root access to the TV's linux installation.
True with the Xbox, bat at least imo MS is slitty more trustworthy with my data than Samsung. The tv was doing more network requests than the xbox and a few Apple devices combined.
I would presume so, though I don't have any numbers on me right now. Myocarditis was not the biggest risk from covid, lung damage/blood clots/strokes where iirc.
Only having 2 Pfizer/mRNA vaccines are'n enough to greatly reduce symptomatic covid infection. A booster (or previous covid infection) looks like it is needed.
Though this is only looking at the drop in vaccine efficacy with respect to symptomatic infections, two shots of an mRNA still might give decent protection against severe disease; don't know if there is a change with this.
>two shots of an mRNA still might give decent protection against severe disease; don't know if there is a change with this.
There's not. Severe disease is caused by your body attacking your own lungs because the virus did so much damage between initial infection and your body recognizing the problem. Vaccines, any vaccine, dramatically shortens the time between initial infection and immune response. Shorter duration == less damage to your body in that time.
The categorisation isn't fully biological though, it's far heavier in the cultural camp. And even when it is biological, it's mainly phenotypic, which isn't adequate for genetic research.
Yea as a biologists who's done some genetic research this isn't about wokeness (though I don't think that's necessarily bad anyway).
Race is a cultural term, not scientific. No one doing this research thinks there's no difference in genetic makeup between groups, it's that how we use and thinK about the word race doesn't line up with those groups and differences.
It's just not accurate for scientific publications, not just the cultural and historical baggage it has.
Like down anyone thing that white, black, or asian describe narrowly defined genetic groupings?
Yes, "race" for geneticists is an imprecise term and in that field there is a growing need for a better descriptor.
Now for cops, or social workers, or everyday speech, race may be just the perfect term - morphology is important to their work, and will remain important. But geneticists are concerned with more than morphology, or appearance.
I don't believe there is a linguistic threat here to everyday speech, or a threat to how we refer to each others appearance. But in genetics, race as a scientific term is in need of improvement - and that is what the article is acknowledging.
Does the color of an organism fall under the study of morphology?
I don't believe it does. Nor do I believe race is a good term for anyone to use, partially because its entirely subjective. A good example of this is that in the US, a person can be considered black if they have African (or otherwise considered black) ancestry anywhere in their genetic history, even if the rest of their ancestors would have been considered "white"
On top of this subjectivity we have the historical baggage and oppression, so it would be best to move away from race as currently used. We are all part of one race, the human race. We need to stop splitting ourselves into in/out groups because that only holds us back.
I agree we need a better term. Maybe 'cluster', as they are distinguishable in PCA plots.
One interesting aspect of these clusters is that the higher the resolution, the more clusters you can find, up to the point that neighboring towns can have slightly different distributions.
It's less that the galaxy is quite that's disturbing, as like you said it's possible EM based communication is only used for a relatively short amount t of time.
The fact that the universe seems to be totally natural, without any intelligent interference is more concerning. No megastructures or evidence that our solar system has been visited.
>The potentially worrying question is: have we passed the Great Filter?
As a biologist I'd love it if they found life (that was totally seperate from Earth life) somewhere else in the solar system, but if we do it's one less great filter.
Oh no, that’s even worse. If life is ubiquitous in the universe, it means we would expect intelligent technological life to be even more common than otherwise. The absence of such civilisations, despite weak filters at the “low end” of the Drake equation, implies an even more dangerous and inescapable filter in the high end of the equation where we are now, that wipes out later stage civilizations.
