"S glycoprotein signal peptide (extended leader sequence), which guides translocation of the nascent polypeptide chain into the endoplasmic reticulum" - part of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine. I don't ever want to hear anyone question fundamental science again. 1/2
The level of control and understanding we now have over our biology came from literally millions of person-years spent working on things that at the time were obscure and "useless". And now? We can leverage all this into a 95% efficient vaccine _at the first try_. 2/2

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More from @PowerDNS_Bert

24 Dec
Preparing a blog post on the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine & compared the live SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to the one in the mRNA vaccine. And indeed as described, it only differs by two amino-acids. The two Proline substitutions that make the vaccine work (KV -> PP, with the !!): 1/3 Image
If the vaccine would have contained the unmodified Spike protein, this would have "looked" different from the real one. The real one is mounted in the virus body, which gives it a certain shape. With these two changes, the vaccine protein "looks normal" to our immune system. 2/3
This proline substitution trick was discovered in *2017* based on studies on SARS-CoV-1 and MERS, two related viruses. These studies noted that this tiny change made the protein *50 times* more recognizable. Iow we'd be toast without this invention ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P… 3/3
Read 4 tweets
23 Dec
Shout out to @BioNTech_Group who found time to answer this small time blogger's question! @hildabast I have it in writing now, a 30 microgram dose of BNR162b2 actually contains 30 micrograms of mRNA. And in addition, there are the lipids, salts, sucrose and water.
This means that by my calculations, every shot of this vaccine contains around 2000 billion mRNA strands that encode the stabilised spike protein. At 0,53*10^-21 grams per RNA nucleotide, this represents ~25 petabyte of mRNA per injection. #cantwait
If this doesn't give you the shivers I don't know what will:
Read 7 tweets
15 Jul
So the fine writeup of SIGRed (CVE-2020-1350) includes a brief discussion of a neat technique to make a Microsoft browser perform DNS lookups to arbitrary nameservers, which can then also be infected. /cc @EyalItkin & @omriher 1/9 research.checkpoint.com/2020/resolving…
Normally, you can't really do DNS lookups using the DNS protocol from browsers. Sure, the browser will resolve names for you, but it chooses how to do that. You can't direct the query anywhere, or do non-standard lookups. This is pretty good. 2/9
But what if you really really want to talk to a nameserver, for example to attack it? Browsers do speak HTTP, and do so very well. Some browsers, notably from Microsoft, are even prepared to send HTTP queries to the DNS port (53). 3/9
Read 11 tweets
7 Apr
Governments are pondering if apps can help them perform contact tracing for COVID-19 infected people. The "why" of this is explained very well here: 1/16
Some countries just track the location of everyone all the time and perform matching on a government server. This is a privacy nightmare. 2/16
www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/israel…
Can we do better? An international team has designed a protocol that allows tracing, while preserving privacy: DP-3T
/cc @marcelsalathe @mikarv 3/16
Read 16 tweets
20 Jan
The discussion on if Huawei should power 5G networks misses the point. Most European service providers have long lost control over their networks. Banning Huawei will do nothing to change that. Instead, providers should focus on regaining technical skills
berthub.eu/articles/posts…
It is remarkable how the current debate would make one think that picking a specific vendor for 5G would suddenly change things. Instead, most service providers have already outsourced their operations to companies far away. /cc @shashj @cryptoron
This articles does not argue for simply picking Huawei for 5G. It does however argue that if we truly care about our privacy, about the availability of our communication systems even in times of conflict, and about our digital autonomy, much much more needs to be done.
Read 4 tweets
19 Jul 19
Fellow geeks - if after all the Galileo outage stuff you feel the need to go down the wire and receive every GPS/Galileo/GLONASS/Baidu/whatever health message, I can recommend the "NAVILOCK 62524 GPS". It has a stonking chipset (u-blox 8) which delivers the goods. 1/5
There is a huge PDF with full details on how to get the chipset to emit what you need, find it here: u-blox.com/sites/default/… 2/5
To get you going, there is the free u-blox 'u-center' tool which, although Windows only, runs under Wine and it helps to get to know the chipset. The device itself is very Linux friendly. 3/5
Read 5 tweets

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