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Comment It's all about more integration (Score 1) 26

by ellbee (#61443188) Attached to: Samsung Exynos Chip With AMD Graphics To Bring Ray-Tracing To Mobile

SoC integration will accelerate - firms that can't figure out how to productively use the billions of available transistors on a 2nm die will eventually lose. We will see more hybrid (multiple firm's IP) dies as computer total chip count keeps dropping. This will keep driving industry consolidation (i.e. AMD buying Xilinx).

Submission + - SPAM: German scientists identify possible cause of vaccine blood clots

Submitted by Hmmmmmm
Hmmmmmm writes: The authors of a new study claim their findings show that it is not the key component of the vaccines that cause the clotting, but a separate vector virus that is used to deliver them to the body. Both the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson jabs use a modified adenovirus, similar to the common cold virus, to deliver the spike protein of SarsCov2, the virus that causes Covid-19. The scientists claim the delivery mechanism means the spike protein is sent into the cell nucleus rather than the cellular fluid, where the virus usually generates proteins. In rare cases, they argue, parts of the spike protein can splice inside the nucleus, creating mutant versions which do not bind to the cell membrane where immunisation takes place, but are secreted into the body, where they can cause blood clots. “The adenovirus life cycle includes ... the entry of the adenoviral DNA into the nucleus, and subsequently gene transcription by the host transcription machinery,” the scientists claimed in a preprint of the study released this week. “And exactly here lies the problem: the viral piece of DNA is not optimised to be transcribed inside the nucleus.”

These claims are only one of a number of hypotheses currently being explored on why the jabs cause blood clots in some people.

A rival German study led by Prof Andreas Greinacher of Greifswald University Hospital claimed the clots were being caused by EDTA, a chemical used as a preservative in the AstraZeneca vaccine. In a two-step process, the vaccine can cause an overreaction by the immune system in some people which causes too many platelets to form in the blood, Prof Greinacher argues. EDTA can cause the cells in blood vessels to become “leaky”, causing platelets and proteins to flood through the body, triggering a massive immune reaction that can cause the blood clots.

A third German study released in preprint this week by scientists at Ulm University Medical Centre claims to have found unusually high levels of proteins in the AstraZeneca vaccine which it is theorized could be behind the clots. “The often-observed strong clinical reaction one or two days after vaccination is likely associated with the detected protein impurities,” the authors of the study wrote. The type of proteins involved “are known to affect innate and acquired immune responses and to intensify existing inflammatory reactions,” Prof Stefan Kochanek, the study leader, said. “They have also been linked to autoimmune reactions.”
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: VMware Warns of Critical Remote Code Execution Hole In vCenter

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: VMware is urging its vCenter users to update vCenter Server versions 6.5, 6.7, and 7.0 immediately, after a pair of vulnerabilities were reported privately to the company. The most pressing is CVE-2021-21985, which relates to a remote code execution vulnerability in a vSAN plugin enabled by default in vCenter that an attacker could use to run whatever they wished on the underlying host machine, provided they can access port 443. Even if users do not use vSAN, they are likely to be affected because the vSAN plugin is enabled by default. "This needs your immediate attention if you are using vCenter Server," VMware said in a blog post.

The second vulnerability, CVE-2021-21986, would allow an attacker to perform actions allowed by plugins without authentication. "The vSphere Client (HTML5) contains a vulnerability in a vSphere authentication mechanism for the Virtual SAN Health Check, Site Recovery, vSphere Lifecycle Manager, and VMware Cloud Director Availability plug-ins," VMware said. In terms of CVSSv3 scores, CVE-2021-21985 hit an 9.8, while CVE-2021-21986 was scored as 6.5.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Special Darwin Award: Smartphone kills man with a dinosaur! (theguardian.com) 1

Submitted by shanen
shanen writes: Not sure what the technology link is. Smartphones make people stupid? Dinosaurs are scientific, but this is ridiculous? It would be funny, but it's too gruesome. But I guess I'll go ahead an submit it in the Darwin Award category. Maybe a better title is man kills himself with dinosaur and smartphone? Death by paper mache?

Comment Re:Microsoft Bob (Score 2) 257

by ellbee (#61343596) Attached to: Bill Gates and Melinda Gates End Their Marriage After 27 Years

I have a friend who was getting divorced after the company he founded had IPOed. I asked how he felt about her getting half (they and the company were in California, a community property state). He replied, "Half of $800M is still a lot of money." AFAIK he's still happily married to the 2nd wife, 20 years later, and the first wife is happy, too.

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