Yikes Giz. (Jamie and Brian in particular) I know they're excellent comics, but you guys might want to take a break from reposting every other xkcd comic. In the past two months you've reprinted 42% of all Randall's comics. (11/26)

Define "occasional". Giz has been posting about 1/3rd of all xkcd comics recently. An average of about 1 per week, based on searching for the tag. Obviously I can't know for sure, but I'd suspect that's quite a bit higher than what Randall intended.

No, it just proves you don't understand the real drivers of global warming, or at least a sense of scale. The energy trapped by CO2 in the atmosphere (global warming) is many, many orders of magnitude higher than the excess energy that would be diverted to the planet by beamed power. Cutting CO2 emissions would lead…

No, we're not. Alasdair unfortunately misinterpreted a bit quote at the end of the article. The only relevant work they demonstrated was the ability to quickly and cheaply make vaccines against the same easily mutable targets we currently use time-consuming and expensive methods for.

No, it isn't. The target is the HA and NA proteins, just as it always has been. Alasdair pretty seriously screwed up in mentioning a "universal" vaccine, which this most definitely isn't. Even the source article from the New Scientist was clear on that point. The advantages are cost and ease of use, not increasing the…

You're pretty seriously misunderstanding the science here, Alasdair. This vaccine would suffer exactly the same difficulties as our current vaccines against the flu. If they only use mRNA HA and NA, then those are the only two proteins that will be synthesized, and the only two proteins the body will mount an immune…

Your second thought is correct. The only advantage of this system is that the mRNA could be cheaper and faster to produce. The virus would still be able to evolve away from it, though.

No. The mRNA for those genes is specific to flu viruses, and protection against the proteins they encode would only extend to similar flu viruses.

Another fantastic pick, Lauren. Just read through the archives, and it's bookmarked into the regular rotation.

"Unique strengths and vulnerabilities"? All pre-made robots operated by people chosen for their backstory? So it wasn't enough for Syfy to run wrestling programming with humans, now they have to have pre-scripted wrestling by robots as well? Pitiful.

Really? They couldn't have even included Watson and Crick? This list is overwhelmingly, even embarrassingly, dominated by white men studying math and/or physics.

Another day, another post by Sam raging against things he doesn't understand, loaded with factual errors he either can't recognize or willfully chooses to leave in place.

So it has its own hashtag and its own Tumblr already? And you're proposing there's any sort of reasonable chance its not someone's marketing ploy / attempt to go viral / art project?

Not too surprising, really. The geologists I know love to make dirty puns about their field with an unholy passion.

Neither of them have, though. Dynamic contrast was pointless the second it was invented, but actual contrast is still very relevant. Similarly, maybe at 18" any PPI greater than 400 is equivalent (although the article certainly doesn't prove that), but based on the comments below, assuming everyone holds their phone…

Would you like it broken down by Giz writer, or total percentages?

Then why even bring it up? The eye is more than capable of discerning real-world contrast ratios, so the analogy makes no sense.

The reason "contrast" ratios are useless is because companies are reporting dynamic contrast ratios, rather than real-world applications. As multiple guest author articles have pointed out. Until someone invents a dynamic pixel (or starts claiming sub-pixel resolutions) your argument is meaningless. Far more…

Well, 80 seconds of eggy diversion, and 30 seconds of ads for their channel. Not that the eggs weren't awesome, the ratio was just a little egg-regious.

Geek and Sundry should be safe. Both Ad Age and Deadline track weekly and all-time viewing, and Geek and Sundry places in the top 30 for both. At the 40% cut-off, anything above 40-50 should be safe.