SoylentNews

upstart writes:

New Study Shows That High R&D Costs Don't Explain High Drug Prices:

For years, defenders of pharma patents loved to claim that the reason that they needed patents and the reason they had to charge extortionate rates for drugs was because of the high cost of R&D for new drugs. The numbers keep going up. [...] The latest I've heard them claiming is an average of $1.5 billion per new drug.

The number has always been bunk. [...]

Anyway, given all that, there's a new study out that [...] compared drug prices with the price of R&D on those drugs. If the high cost of development was really what was driving the high drug prices, there should be some correlation there, right?

"Our findings provide evidence that drug companies do not set prices based on how much they spent on R&D or how good a drug is. Instead, they charge what the market will bear," said senior author Inmaculada Hernandez, PharmD, PhD, associate professor at Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Of course, that finding shouldn't really be a surprise to anyone. Of course pharma companies are going to charge "what the market will bear." But, therein lies the problem: we don't have an actual market for most of these drugs. [...]

But, at the very least, don't just accept the claim that drugs cost a lot because pharma has to spend a lot on R&D. All of the evidence suggests that's ridiculous.

Journal Reference:
Olivier J. Wouters; Lucas A. Berenbrok; Meiqi He; et al. Association of Research and Development Investments With Treatment Costs for New Drugs Approved From 2009 to 2018 JAMA Netw Open. 2022. DOI:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.18623

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Volume 189 of The PCLinuxOS Magazine has an article on Bill Gates' evil prophecy from 40 years ago where he aims for ending general-purpose computing. He achieves that goal a step at a time over the decades, with the help of many a mole and quisling. Lately, the Pluton chip and Restricted Boot play both play key roles towards ending this era of general-purpose computing. The Pluton chip is an extension of the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) used by Vista10 and required by Vista11. Canonical, the maker of Ubuntu, and even its upstream source, Debian, folded years ago in regards to secure boot by using Microsoft's signing key, possibly cementing that as the norm. The article covers that and many other incidents leading up to the current situation.

There is an ever-decreasing amount of time left to keep general-purpose computing alive and the author signs off with how to approach the political maneuvers going on:

The implications are already starting to show

At the beginning of the year, Matthew Garrett, the researcher who created the UEFI bootloader for Linux (which I do not agree with at all, as it sets a precedent for Microsoft to abuse the market, with its position of power, should not be allowed under any circumstances) said that the Pluton chip was not an attack on users' freedom to use whatever operating system they wanted, which was not a threat.

In July 2022, he recanted, when he was unable to install Linux on a high-end Thinkpad Z13, complaining that this was not a legal practice by Lenovo.

But, that's what Microsoft wants. Under the guise of enforcing security, it blocks the machine's access to the user himself, being the gatekeeper of personal computing. In other words, "my" microcomputer is over. From now on, it will be Microsoft's microcomputer, and only what it allows will run...[sic]

hubie writes:

Researchers have measured how uncomfortable and 'creeped out' using apps can make us feel:

You would think that feeling chronically uneasy about products would spur a movement away from them. However, this is not the case for apps use. Even though surveys show users to feel emotional stress by the fact that apps collect personal data, we just continue our use.

"It seems that people accept this uneasy feeling almost as a part of the user experience. Somehow, we have been trained to live with being uncomfortable. But you may ask how it can be defensible to treat people and their emotional states so terribly," says Irina Shklovski [...]

"I think most of us have tried feeling uneasy when downloading apps, but most often you can't really put your finger on what the problem might be. So, we decided to create a way of measuring the degree of discomfort," Irina Shklovski says.

The researchers broke down the problem into three. To be creepy, an app needs to a) violate the boundaries of the user; b) do so unexpectedly; and c) possess ambiguity of threat. High scores in all three categories would amount to one very creepy app.

[...] In one regime, the app would collect your location. In another regime, it would soon start to make suggestions on more music from the identified artists. In yet another regime, the app would post on Facebook what you are listening to. Further, some participants were granted control of what the app was doing: they could approve or deny having their music habits displayed at Facebook.

"We had expected the group with control to feel more comfortable, but surprisingly they didn't," Irina Shklovski comments, noting that this is a major discovery:

[...] "We normally assume people who have a high degree of digital literacy to be more critical towards the apps, but again surprisingly, the opposite is true. The more you see yourself as digitally literate, the higher the likeliness of you continuing using an app which is invasive," says Irina Shklovski.

Journal Reference:
John S. Seberger, Irina Shklovski, Emily Swiatek, Sameer Patil. Still Creepy After All These Years: The Normalization of Affective Discomfort in App Use, [open] CHI '22: Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, April 2022 Article No.: 159. (DOI: 10.1145/3491102.3502112)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

'The Onion' filed a real brief with the Supreme Court supporting man jailed for making fun of cops:

When was the last time you've read an amicus brief? If you're not involved in the legal profession, chances are you may have never actually spent precious time reading one. This amicus brief (PDF) could change that. It was submitted by The Onion, which describes itself in the brief as "the world's leading news publication" with "4.3 trillion" readers that maintains "a towering standard of excellence to which the rest of the industry aspires." [...]

The Onion, of course, is the popular parody website that once named Kim Jong-un as the sexiest man alive. Its team has filed a very real amicus brief with the Supreme Court in support of Anthony Novak, who was arrested and jailed for four days after briefly running a Facebook page parodying the police department of Parma, Ohio back in 2016.

[...] Despite writing the brief in the same voice its publication uses, and despite filling it with outlandish claims and hilarious quips, The Onion made a very real argument defending the use of parody and explaining how it works:

"Put simply, for parody to work, it has to plausibly mimic the original. The Sixth Circuit's decision in this case would condition the First Amendment's protection for parody upon a requirement that parodists explicitly say, up-front, that their work is nothing more than an elaborate fiction. But that would strip parody of the very thing that makes it function.

I highly recommend reading the brief yourself [PDF]. [hubie]

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The Pi Shortage Pricing Changes the Equation:

If the Raspberry Pi was consistently in stock and selling for the MSRP, the pricing for the Raspberry Pi 4 boards would range from $35 for the base 1GB model up to $75 for the 8GB model.

That sweet $35 price point is one of the best things about the Raspberry Pi and exactly why the Pi has become the foundation of so many projects. We love the Pi, and over the years, we've written lots of tutorials about it. I've used Pi boards for media centers, home servers, hobby projects, you name it. So it's safe to say we're big fans.

But shortages that started in 2020 and remain ongoing have changed the landscape. You can't get your hands on a Pi board for $35 right now (and you won't be able to for the foreseeable future). Now your best bet to get a Pi is to shop on auction sites like eBay—but instead of paying $35-70, you're paying $125 to $175. In many instances, that's just for the bare board with no case, storage, or power supply.

And at those price points, the "Wow, I'm getting a lot of microcomputer for $35!" excitement goes right out the window, and you should consider spending the money on something else instead. Enter the Intel NUC. Let's take a closer look.

The author makes the case that a used NUC is more capable, and upgradable, and costs what you'd pay for a new Pi. Are there any options out there near the original $35 price point, or are we looking at +$100 for the foreseeable future?

Original Submission

Anonymous writes:

After a huge backlash Blizzard reversed its decision to require a phone number to play Overwatch 2 — but only for existing accounts. New accounts still require it. Blizzard announced that it would be removing SMS Protect for Overwatch 1 players, but keeping the restriction for new Overwatch 2 accounts.

SMS Protect requires players to link their Overwatch accounts to a non-prepaid phone number, which excludes a large population who cannot afford cellphone plans. The intent behind this system is to cut back on "smurfing," a term used to identify high-skill, high-rank players who create new accounts to beat up on newer players. The move was seen to be equivalent to Google requiring an active phone service to "prevent spamming".

History has shown that this type of two factor authentication does not deliver the outcome desired. Users who want to use and abuse systems will just get a new phone number.

At a first (very brief) glance it might have seemed like a 'good idea' - but it obviously isn't. What other practices have you seen creeping into people's lives where technology (perhaps unintentionally) appears to be disadvantaging a specific group of people?

Original Submission

Snotnose and an AC write:

Adafruit's Cheekmate gets to the bottom (ahem) of chess cheating controversy:

The Internet has been abuzz for weeks about a particularly juicy chess cheating controversy that erupted last month. The reigning chess world champion, Magnus Carlsen, lost in the third round to a 19-year-old upstart, Hans Niemann, in what was widely considered to be a shocking upset. Carlsen withdrew from the tournament the next day, and his cryptic comments on Twitter fueled rampant speculation that Niemann had cheated. The fact that Niemann admitted to cheating in online chess matches didn't help his case, but he steadfastly insisted he never cheated in over-the-board games.

The fierce debate eventually produced a bizarre viral conspiracy theory that Niemann had used anal beads to receive coded messages during the match. But would that even be possible? The folks at Adafruit Industries were sufficiently intrigued to put the theory to the test—you know, just to get to the bottom of the matter. The result is a prototype device called Cheekmate—because the Adafruit team rightfully loves their punny innuendoes—complete with a step-by-step guide for those who might want to build their own prototype.

This device, Adafruit insists, is not for actual cheating: "That would be asinine... in brief, a stain on the sport, but to record for posterior whether this sort of backdoor intrusion is even plausible or just an Internet myth." Lacking any willing human volunteers to test the prototype, they ended up embedding Cheekmate in a big, juicy slab of pork butt.

[...] Enter Adafruit, which naturally designed the Cheekmate prototype around the company's own products, assuming a one-way communication with an accomplice for testing the core idea. (The project also requires a soldering iron.) That includes an Adafruit QT Py ESP32-S2 with built-in Wi-Fi, capable of communicating with any mobile hotspot—like a cell phone with Wi-Fi tethering capability, presumably carried by the cheater's accomplice.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

NASA Wants To Mine The Moon, But Law Experts Say It's Not That Simple:

Exploration in the outer reaches of our solar system and beyond is often the subject of science fiction. Space exploration is a common theme in the genre, and millions of readers flock to new titles in this space on a regular basis — SFWA noted that those who say they read science fiction amounted to about 21% of the U.S. population.

[...] The first roadblock facing humans as we seek to expand our presence in the solar system lies in technology. NASA reports that it takes about seven months (measured in Earth days) to travel from our planet's surface to Mars. Thrillist notes that travel to the Moon only requires a three-day journey, while exploration of Jupiter or Saturn (the next bodies out from Mars) would require a lengthy, six- or seven-year voyage, respectively. On a technical level, our current means of launching satellites and humans at these distant bodies is exactly that, a launch (via NASA). In order to make space travel more feasible for human explorers, we would need to develop a propulsion system that could continually deliver powered flight to a spacecraft, or at least the ability to continually augment flight speed, rather than simply relying on initial launch velocity to carry the craft along to its final destination.

[...] A secondary roadblock stands in the way of human exploitation in regard to these extraterrestrial resources. During the Cold War, great efforts were undertaken by the United States and the Soviet Union to explore distant planets and the Moon. The politics of space exploration are complicated, but suffice to say, world leaders across the globe quickly became worried about the potential for conflict expanding beyond the boundaries of our world. For one thing, warfare in outer space would place human lives in grave jeopardy. But one natural extent of this conflict would be the ability to simply drop ordnance directly over combatant nations (via U.S. Naval War College), threatening to eviscerate the planet in the process. As a result, more than 100 countries including the United States and Russia have signed an agreement barring claims of sovereignty beyond the physical territory of the planet Earth, according to the United Nations.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Drinking two to three cups of coffee a day is linked with a longer lifespan and lower risk of cardiovascular disease compared with avoiding coffee:

"In this large, observational study, ground, instant and decaffeinated coffee were associated with equivalent reductions in the incidence of cardiovascular disease and death from cardiovascular disease or any cause," said study author Professor Peter Kistler of the Baker Heart and Diabetes Research Institute, Melbourne, Australia. "The results suggest that mild to moderate intake of ground, instant and decaffeinated coffee should be considered part of a healthy lifestyle."

There is little information on the impact of different coffee preparations on heart health and survival. This study examined the associations between types of coffee and incident arrhythmias, cardiovascular disease and death using data from the UK Biobank, which recruited adults between 40 and 69 years of age. Cardiovascular disease was comprised of coronary heart disease, congestive heart failure and ischaemic stroke.

[...] A total of 27,809 (6.2%) participants died during follow up. All types of coffee were linked with a reduction in death from any cause. The greatest risk reduction seen with two to three cups per day, which compared to no coffee drinking was associated with a 14%, 27% and 11% lower likelihood of death for decaffeinated, ground, and instant preparations, respectively.

upstart writes:

Taken as a share of the market price, the climate change impacts of mining the digital cryptocurrency Bitcoin is more comparable to the impacts of extracting and refining crude oil than mining gold:

In the paper titled, Economic estimation of Bitcoin mining's climate damages demonstrates closer resemblance to digital crude than digital gold, the authors suggest that rather than being considered akin to 'digital gold', Bitcoin should instead be compared to much more energy-intensive products such as beef, natural gas, and crude oil.

"We find no evidence that Bitcoin mining is becoming more sustainable over time," said UNM Economics Associate Professor Benjamin A. Jones. "Rather, our results suggest the opposite: Bitcoin mining is becoming dirtier and more damaging to the climate over time. In short, Bitcoin's environmental footprint is moving in the wrong direction."

[...] "Globally, the mining, or production, of Bitcoin is using tremendous amounts of electricity, mostly from fossil fuels, such as coal and natural gas. This is causing huge amounts of air pollution and carbon emissions, which is negatively impacting our global climate and our health," said Jones. "We find several instances between 2016-2021 where Bitcoin is more damaging to the climate than a single Bitcoin is actually worth. Put differently, Bitcoin mining, in some instances, creates climate damages in excess of a coin's value. This is extremely troubling from a sustainability perspective."

upstart writes:

The countries say the pact will help combat serious crimes, but privacy advocates have raised concerns:

As of today, a data-sharing pact between the US and the UK is in effect, five years after it was first floated. The two sides claim that the Data Access Agreement, which was authorized by the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data (CLOUD) Act in the US, will help law enforcement to combat serious crimes in both countries. The Department of Justice called the initiative the first of its kind, adding that it would enable investigators "to gain better access to vital data" to fight serious crimes in a manner that's "consistent with privacy and civil liberties standards."

Under the agreement, authorities in one country can request data from ISPs in the other country, as long as it's related to preventing, detecting, investigating and prosecuting serious crimes including terrorism, transnational organized crime and child exploitation. US officials can't submit data requests targeting people in the UK and vice-versa — presumably the requests can either be used to assist domestic investigations or investigations into foreign nationals. Authorities also need to adhere to certain requirements, limitations and conditions when they access and use data.

[...] The US is looking to forge pacts with other countries under the CLOUD Act. It signed a deal with Australia last December and entered negotiations with Canada earlier this year.

Previously:
    Responsibility Deflected, the CLOUD Act Passes
    U.S. law to Snoop on Citizens' Info Stored Abroad

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Exoplanet hunters should check for N₂O:

Scientists at UC Riverside are suggesting something is missing from the typical roster of chemicals that astrobiologists use to search for life on planets around other stars — laughing gas.

Chemical compounds in a planet's atmosphere that could indicate life, called biosignatures, typically include gases found in abundance in Earth's atmosphere today.

"There's been a lot of thought put into oxygen and methane as biosignatures. Fewer researchers have seriously considered nitrous oxide, but we think that may be a mistake," said Eddie Schwieterman, an astrobiologist in UCR's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

[...] "In a star system like TRAPPIST-1, the nearest and best system to observe the atmospheres of rocky planets, you could potentially detect nitrous oxide at levels comparable to CO₂ or methane, [CH₄]" Schwieterman said.

[...] Others who have considered N₂O as a biosignature gas often conclude it would be difficult to detect from so far away. Schwieterman explained that this conclusion is based on N₂O concentrations in Earth's atmosphere today. Because there isn't a lot of it on this planet, which is teeming with life, some believe it would also be hard to detect elsewhere.

"This conclusion doesn't account for periods in Earth's history where ocean conditions would have allowed for much greater biological release of N₂O. Conditions in those periods might mirror where an exoplanet is today," Schwieterman said.

[...] The research team believes now is the time for astrobiologists to consider alternative biosignature gases like N₂O because the James Webb telescope may soon be sending information about the atmospheres of rocky, Earth-like planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system.

Journal Reference:
Edward W. Schwieterman et al 2022 Evaluating the Plausible Range of N₂O Biosignatures on Exo-Earths: An Integrated Biogeochemical, Photochemical, and Spectral Modeling Approach [open] ApJ 937 109. DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac8cfb

Original Submission

owl writes:

http://www.os2museum.com/wp/pc-mos386-source-code/

I missed this when it was initially announced. The source code for PC-MOS/386 version 5.01 is now available on github under the GPLv3 license. It requires the user to supply Borland C++ 3.1 in order to build, but there are binaries checked in as well, including a bootable floppy image.

PC-MOS is a multi-tasking/multi-user DOS clone. It was one of the first commercial products which used the 386's virtual-8086 mode when it was released in early 1987 (but not the first, that was almost certainly CEMM in 1986).

Are there any [gray|grey|white]-beards here who remember using this old version? What is the oldest version you used?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

NASA's DART asteroid impact test left a trail over 6,000 miles long:

NASA's successful asteroid impact test created a beautiful mess, apparently. As the Associated Press reports, astronomers using the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) Telescope in Chile have captured an image revealing that DART's collision with Dimorphos left a trail of dust and other debris measuring over 6,000 miles long. The spacecraft wasn't solely responsible — rather, the Sun's radiation pressure pushed the material away like it would with a comet's tail.

[...] The capture was about more than obtaining a dramatic snapshot, of course. Scientists will use data collected using SOAR, the Astronomical Event Observatory Network and other observers to understand more about the collision and Dimorphos itself. They'll determine the amount and speed of material ejected from the asteroid, and whether or not DART produced large debris chunks or 'merely' fine dust. Those will help understand how spacecraft can alter an asteroid's orbit, and potentially improve Earth's defenses against wayward cosmic rocks.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Biomarkers used to track benefits of anti-ageing therapies can be misleading:

We all grow old and die, but we still don't know why. Diet, exercise and stress all effect our lifespan, but the underlying processes that drive ageing remain a mystery. Often, we measure age by counting our years since birth and yet our cells know nothing of chronological time—our organs and tissues may age more rapidly or slowly regardless of what we'd expect from counting the number of orbits we tale around the sun.

For this reason, many scientists search to develop methods to measure the "biological age" of our cells -– which can be different from our chronological age. In theory, such biomarkers of ageing could provide a measure of health that could revolutionize how we practice medicine. Individuals could use a biomarker of ageing to track their biological age over time and measure the effect of diet, exercise, and drugs and predict their effects to extend lifespan or improve quality of life. Medicines could be designed and identified based on their effect on biological age. In other words, we could start to treat ageing itself.

However, no accurate and highly predictive test for biological age has been validated to date. In part, this is because we still don't know what causes ageing and so can't measure it. Definitive progress in the field will require validating biomarkers throughout a patient's lifetime, an impractical feat given human life expectancy.

[...] Describing their results in the journal PLOS Computational Biology, the research team found that nematodes have at least two partially independent ageing processes taking place at the same time – one that determines VMC [vigorous movement cessation] and the other determines time of death. While both processes follow different trajectories, their rates are correlated to each other, in other words, in individuals for whom VMC occurred at an accelerated rate, so did time of death, and vice versa. In other words, the study revealed that each individual nematode has at least two distinct biological ages.