Fred Ngo 🇨🇦
1.6K posts
Fred Ngo 🇨🇦
@fredngo
Independent Software Professional & Tech Educator
Toronto Katılım Ocak 2008
527 Takip Edilen528 Takipçiler
🇯🇵A Japanese developer built an app that puts a fat cat on your screen and forces you to take a break
Silicon Valley spent billions on wellness platforms, mindfulness subscriptions, and digital detox retreats
A guy in Japan said: fat cat, problem solved
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@Biff234523 @jamesmbrabson @oldfshndanne I got the full 3 dose Novavax priming series way back, and have been getting yearly fall Novavax boosters except for last year, when it wasn’t available in Canada, so I had to settle for Moderna. What do you think, just return to yearly fall Novavax in the fall?
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I usually advise that people really only need 1 annual booster if they’ve previously had a priming series of Novavax. That should maintain protection reasonably well, especially against severe outcomes and especially if not immunocompromised.
And that’s what I do personally. I have enough other layers of mitigations that I’m confident with, and I also have a relatively low-risk lifestyle.
But I also wouldn’t say that someone “should” wait, no. There are plenty of folks who dose every 6 months in perpetuity, and it’s just going to ensure stronger protection. Novavax doses stack on top of each other to provide a larger range of coverage across variants (in short, mainly because of the way that the platform primes our immune system against the more stable S2 subunit of the SARS 2 spike protein), so there’s no concern with getting the same antigen/formulation more than once. The only other thing to look out for would be the quality of antibodies. For example, routine mRNA vaccination is associated with a class switch to IgG4 antibodies, which are associated with creating immune tolerance, but we haven’t seen that issue from repeated Novavax boosters yet.
So, it’s really more a question of personal risk assessment, routine side effects, and inconvenience , not that anyone should necessarily do one or the other.
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Novavax reminder: You should probably be making plans to get your spring Nuvaxovid booster within the next week, if you’re planning on getting one.
Sanofi has confirmed this batch, expiring May 31st, will be the last availability until the release of the 2026/2027 formulation in the fall.
At the very least, confirm with a pharmacy that they’re planning on remaining stocked until the May 31st expiry. It’s common practice, unfortunately, for pharmacies to return inventory a few weeks before it actually expires, especially in the spring when there’s little uptake. This includes @cvspharmacy, which is responsible for the bulk of Nuvaxovid inventory right now.
Biff #SARSisAirborne 🍉@Biff234523
📢 Novavax / Nuvaxovid availability update Novavax has confirmed that the JN.1 product will continue to be available through May 31st. (h/t @MASKattheOpera for this letter - sent by Novavax to the co-owner / pharmacist at Eddie’s Pharmacy in L.A.) In addition to various independent pharmacies, many CVS locations are choosing to restock again, which has also been the case for the last couple of months. If you’re trying to locate a dose, all of the advice below from early January still applies⬇️ If you’re upset that your preferred pharmacy isn’t continuing to stock Nuvaxovid…now is the time to let them know (both at the local store and by calling corporate offices), because this time of year is when the bulk of contracting will be happening between @SanofiUS and pharmacies for the upcoming 2026-2027 respiratory season.
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@aakashgupta What if my body just won’t let me sleep more than 6 or 7 hours?
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The scariest finding in this paper: the subjects couldn't tell it was happening.
UPenn ran this study on 48 healthy adults. One group slept 8 hours. Another slept 6. Another slept 4. For 14 straight days. They tested cognitive performance every 2 hours from 7:30am to 11:30pm.
The 6-hour group's reaction times, working memory, and sustained attention deteriorated on a near-linear curve. By day 14 they were performing at the same level as someone who hadn't slept at all in 48 hours. The 4-hour group hit that threshold by day 6.
Here's the part that should unsettle everyone who thinks they "do fine" on 6 hours: the subjects' self-reported sleepiness flatlined after the first few days. Their brains kept getting worse. Their perception of how impaired they were stopped updating. The cognitive decline was invisible to the person experiencing it.
The researchers found a hard threshold. Any wakefulness beyond 15.84 hours in a day produces cumulative neurobiological cost. That cost compounds every single day you exceed it and does not reset with a weekend of sleeping in.
About 35% of American adults sleep less than 7 hours a night. 40% of those get 6 hours or less. In 1942 that number was 11%. We built an entire professional culture around a sleep schedule that this paper says is functionally equivalent to pulling consecutive all-nighters.
"I'm fine on 6 hours" is the most common response to sleep research. The first thing chronic sleep debt destroys is your ability to notice chronic sleep debt.
Nicholas Fabiano, MD@NTFabiano
Sleeping <6h a night for 2 weeks reduces cognitive performance equal to 2 nights of total sleep deprivation.
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@trikcode I used to work for a French company and the variables, comments, etc. were in French. But of course all the language keywords were in English.
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@TaiwanSpecial The heck? Who says it’s the Chinese government trying to do so? Ethnic Chinese people all over the world including Taiwan, where I have lived, have always called it CNY. In contrast, LNY is a Western influence thing.
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It’s Lunar New Year, NOT Chinese New Year!
Regardless of the Chinese government trying to force the world to call this lunisolar new year festival “Chinese New Year” when referring to it in English, a majority of countries and the UN are aligned with the proper “Lunar New Year” in English usage.
Let’s keep it neutral and don’t let it become a weapon of Chinese cultural hegemony
#ChineseNewYear #ChineseNewYear2026 #LunarNewYear #China #Taiwan #Korea #Japan #Vietnam #Chinese
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@BJMG_1 @Fights_bro Because he’s an empathic man? He didn’t start the fight, he just neutralized the threat. After the threat is neutralized, there is no need to fight anymore, and can treat the attacker as a fellow human being.
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@mayordanda @jacksonhinklle If you love yourself, then you care about self-improvement and continuously becoming a better man in all areas of life.
Same with your country.
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@jacksonhinklle Why do you hate United States 🇺🇸 so much but still have the flag on your bio ?
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🚨🇺🇸🇨🇳 BREAKING: China’s all-female SWAT team beat the US all-male squad by 16 seconds at the UAE challenge, carrying a 120-kg tire.
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@Tekeee In Canada (and other countries) there is the Superficial Loss Rule that specifically deals with this kind of game-playing. Dunno about the US, I’d be shocked if you don’t have something similar.
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@RnaudBertrand And yet none of the tech makes it back to Canada… still in the financial stone age over here 😆
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One of the most interesting aspects of Cambodia that I've noticed so far (I've only been here for 3 days) is its payment ecosystem.
It's the strangest mix:
1) most business in the country is conducted in US dollars (when you buy something in a shop you typically pay in USD)
2) most payments are made via a QR code-based "everything app" called ABA Mobile that's basically a clone of Alipay. And deeply integrated with Alipay: in fact I didn't even download ABA Mobile, I scan all the ABA QR code through Alipay and it just works.
3) ABA Mobile is developed by ABA Bank (Advanced Bank of Asia), which is a 100% subsidiary of the National Bank of Canada
4) It apparently all works off the back of a Cambodian sovereign blockchain system called Bakong, which is a quasi-central bank digital currency powered by Hyperledger Iroha, developed by Japanese firm Soramitsu
So basically in Cambodia I'm paying in USD via a Cambodian Blockchain (Bakong) developed by the Japanese (Soramitsu), using a Chinese App (Alipay) interconnected with a payment system owned by the Canadians (ABA). You couldn't make it up 😅
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@Biff234523 @SanofiCanada @immunocompCA @DonEford @Friesein Thank God, finally won’t have to go to the states to get Novavaxed anymore!
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📢💉🇨🇦Update on Novavax / Nuvaxovid access in Canada: @SanofiCanada has confirmed that, at the current time, they DO plan to commercialize Nuvaxovid in Canada beginning with the 2026-2027 respiratory illness season, per a recent letter sent to @immunocompCA (immunocompromised.ca/wp-content/upl…)
This correspondence is in reply to a June 2025 joint letter to Sanofi Canada by @CanCovSoc and @immunocompCA (covidsociety.ca/wp-content/upl…)
Following all of the recent successes of @Novavax in the U.S. (another largely successful seasonal rollout (Sanofi’s first) and Pfizer’s recent deal to use Matrix-M adjuvant), we’ve been seeing more buzz than usual about expanding availability globally. It’s all great to see, but unfortunately, along with that (as is expected) always comes a lot of misinformation as well.
To be clear, there has never been any issue with @GovCanHealth and the approval of Nuvaxovid. Nuvaxovid has remained approved since September 2024 (covid-vaccine.canada.ca/nuvaxovid-jn1/…), and, as Sanofi points out in the letter, they also just received a Notice of Compliance from Health Canada last July for the new prefilled syringe presentation with a 6-month shelf life (the same presentation and shelf life as the U.S. product).
Nevertheless, contract issues have largely kept it from being available anyway for the past 2 seasons. Below, for anyone interested, is a detailed history of what happened between Novavax and the Canadian federal government a couple of years ago. In short: The original deal fell through because the Trudeau government had a demand for Novavax to produce doses domestically - something that never came to fruition.
With new federal leadership, and with the product transitioning to Sanofi’s hands, the hope and expectation is to put that deal behind us and draft a new one that will make Nuvaxovid available for Canadians who demand access to the better COVID vaccine.
Everyone wants it to happen, but we still need to continue to be vigilant and make sure that @sanofi @SanofiCanada @MarkJCarney @PSPC_SPAC @PHAC_GC @GovCanHealth @ONThealth get it done. Leave nothing up to interpretation, and continue to ensure that all stakeholders involved are well aware of the demand that exists for Nuvaxovid.
Biff #SARSisAirborne 🍉@Biff234523
🧵💉🇨🇦 Summary of where we stand on 2025 #Novavax access for Canada: There is obviously *a lot* of demand to bring @Novavax back to Canada, but I’ve noticed a lot of the energy is being used on the wrong pathways here. For a while now, there has been a very pervasive myth that Novavax is lacking approval in Canada. That is not true, Novavax’s JN.1 formulation received approval from Health Canada on September 19th, 2024, and remains approved today. Source: covid-vaccine.canada.ca/nuvaxovid-jn1/… So why was there no availability for the 2024 season? Essentially, there has been an ongoing dispute about the manufacturing location. The federal government's purchase contract with Novavax was dependent upon Novavax producing the doses in Canada. In 2021, Novavax planed to set up a manufacturing facility in Montreal, but that plan never materialized. As a result, the feds did not place any orders for the 2024 season, and they officially tore up the contract in March of this year: barrons.com/news/canada-ca… Even though the federal government, Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) @PSPC_SPAC, and PHAC @PHAC_GC were not willing to place a purchase order, they did make it clear that individual provinces would still be able to place an order on their own. Most (or all) of the provinces investigated the possibility, but determined that they were unable to meet Novavax’s minimum order requirement, which has been reported as being 500,000 doses. In this article (cbc.ca/news/canada/ne…), Health Canada spokesperson Nicholas Janveau and New Brunswick Department of Health spokesperson Sean Hatchard both confirm the general idea: "However, Canada's current contract with Novavax only provides access to domestically manufactured vaccines, which Novavax has been unable to confirm for the 2024/25 season," Janveau said. If Novavax's JN.1 vaccine does get approved, provinces and territories "may choose to procure independently from Novavax from supply produced in India for their fall vaccination campaigns," he added. But "New Brunswick and other provinces have investigated and are unable to find other options to procure this vaccine," according to Department of Health spokesperson Sean Hatchard. "The amount of vaccine that needed to be ordered to procure it independently was too large based on the minimal demand in the province," he said.” This article (globalnews.ca/news/10789020/…) highlights the fact that most provinces were aware of the situation and also independently decided to either not place an order or that they could not meet the minimum requirement: “As of Tuesday afternoon, several provinces – including Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Nova Scotia, P.E.I. and Newfoundland and Labrador – confirmed to The Canadian Press that they aren’t placing orders for Nuvaxovid.” Things do have the opportunity to change this year, obviously, because we’re dealing with 2 new parties at the table - The @MarkJCarney administration, and @sanofi, who will be booking sales and distribution for Novavax beginning this year. However, in writing, Sanofi has told us this: “Please note that we do not plan to bring Nuvaxovid® to the Canadian market for the upcoming 2025 fall season at this time." But, we still need to push them for more details on where they stand, like trying to figure out if they would fulfill a purchase order from the federal government or a province if approached, and what their minimum purchase requirement would be. This recent letter (covidsociety.ca/wp-content/upl…) is a good start, sent to Sanofi’s Canadian office by @CanCovSoc and @immunocompCA. I’d encourage individuals to follow their lead of reaching out to Sanofi Canada to offer support but also demand more answers, as well as expressing your desire directly to the Carney administration, PSPC, and provincial leaders/health departments. The one thing that is NOT needed is to contact Health Canada or Novavax over the approvals process.
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The impression of people from outside America is that we are stupid and insane:
- everyone has guns and it’s terrible
- have huge protests against the government so why don’t all those people who don’t like what the government is doing just bring out the guns like we keep saying they’re for
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@sethharpesq @TaylorLorenz You must be talking about US airports. Asian airports are amazing 🥰
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Enshittification is most intense at the airport. Every crew is a skeleton crew. Digital systems are brittle. At every step you’re tagged with a fee. You’re the target of relentless advertising and surveillance. The surrounding are dirty. The food is garbage. The air is unclean.
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@ronmortgageguy @BarbellFi Me, my mom, and my sister all live in the same condo building in different units. They can separate the massive house into different units.
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@BarbellFi Try it & you will learn VERY quickly why people don't do it
You will hate everyone including yourself in about 60 days
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My wife & I own a $800k house
My parents own a $1 million house
Sister owns a $1.2 million house
Brother owns a $500k condo
We could sell them all
Pool our money together
Buy one massive house
Share the expenses
And help each other
Why aren’t more families doing this? 🤔
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@buridansridge So… a dancer or a martial artist? But why is it slutty?
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@TripInChina I mean, if there are French restaurants in (say) Korea, staffed by Koreans, why not Chinese restaurants in Africa, staffed by Africans?
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@Oceanbreeze473 Try 20 years. Why would you change your number? Even if moving to a different area code. Every bank, credit card, etc has your number and it’s asking for a world of pain when you can’t login to anything anymore because you can’t access your old number.
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Who can honestly say they’ve had the same cell phone number for the last 5 years?
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@Object_Zero_ You can achieve the desired objective with diplomacy and signing another treaty with Denmark if existing ones are not enough, there is no need to annex Greenland. That’s the big problem.
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Greenland - As viewed from a proper map
Why Greenland? Well because Moscow bases almost all of their strategic military assets on the Kola Peninsula next to Finland. This is where the Russian ICBM silos, submarine bases, and their strategic bombers are.
If you look at the flight path (ballistic or powered) from Kola to anywhere on the lower 48, then everything goes over Greenland.
Greenland is the theatre where any strategic exchange between Washington and Moscow is contested.
If you want to intercept a ballistic missile, the best point to do so is at the apogee, at the top of the flight path. The shortest route for an interceptor to get to an apogee is from directly below the apogee.
That’s where Greenland is.
So, without stating what should happen here, this is **why** the Trump administration says they **need** Greenland for national security.
The other thing that is happening is that the Northern Passage through the Arctic is opening up, and soon there will be Chinese cargo ships sailing through the Arctic to Rotterdam. It’s faster than the Suez and the ships aren’t limited to Suezmax size so China and EU trade is going to accelerate a lot.
This means Chinese submarines will also be venturing under the Arctic into the Northern Atlantic, IF THEY AREN’T ALREADY DOING SO.
Hence, the North East coast of Greenland serves not 1 but 2 critical strategic security objectives of US national security.
If this wasn’t clear to you, please understand that the Mercator global map projection is for children and journalists only. It is not a useful guide to where any countries or territories actually are in the real world that we live in.
No self respecting adult should be using Mercator for their worldview. Anyone saying “there must be some other secret reason for Trump being interested in Greenland” is a certified ignoramus.
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@hanaufaru @Viralcycle_ What the heck kind of dumpling is that? A ketchup dumpling? You’re making my ancestors cry!
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