I benefit from an orphan drug, and the R&D was most definitely subsidised by the public purse.

My insurance pays a few grand a month for it.

The mfg coupon covers most of the rest, minus a copay.

This is the second iteration of the original drug. The first hasn’t meaningfully fallen in price and only the original company can manufacture and distribute the generic even under the name of competitors.

There was no breakthrough in the second iteration, and the logic to solve the “problem” they solved was straightforward. So now I pay more, for an anecdotally less effective version that addresses a risk irrelevant to me but present in the original.

There is yet a third iteration on the way.

Shock revelations:

• pharma companies are greedy and will double dip against both government subsidies and patients/insurance at every opportunity.
• XX Pharma didn’t pay for the original R&D, my gov did.
• if one replaces Na with a/several similar elements, one still ends up with a salt, often resulting in a drug variant that “doesn’t affect blood pressure” and offers no other real benefits, nor risks.
• Clinical trials for said alternative salt are broadly leas expensive than for the original. That does not result in lower prices.

Nationalise pharma research, if not the manufacturers.

Also, generics are often manufactured in countries with, shall we say, fewer controls and regulations. Know who makes those pills and where. If you can’t stomach the FDA reports on that manufacturer, find a pharmacy who will sell you something else…

Probably cheap at the price compared to burning Jet A by the tens or hundreds of gallons.

Not that I am unconcerned about the resource usage. Lesser of two evils.

Generally? Well within the executive power / administrative law of any given state as noted by BlueFalcon below.

Practically? I’d expect it to be quite a struggle. For licensed professions in general (doctors, real estate, insurance, hairdressers, etc.) most or all states ask a question to the effect of “Has your license for profession ever been suspended or revoked in any other state?”. It may or may not be an automatic disqualifier, but even if not it’s an uphill battle.

It prevents the real estate agent who stole someone’s earnest money from upping stakes to the next state and getting licensed, but since the standards for suspending/revoking licenses vary widely by state I lean towards believing that perhaps it should be a factor, and perhaps the state board of profession should meet to review the application, but previous disciplinary action in some other state is in no way an absolute statement about someone’s fitness to practice in their chosen field.

And no asinine private jet commute required for the AI CEO…

Was always curious why there was an extra step to confirm when making a call through the GV app. Not using it anymore, but I see the logic behind requiring that confirmation.

Google Voice, with built-in dialer, voicemail, etc., was useful once upon a time, from when they acquired GrandCentral (original company) up through a few years ago.

Not so much anymore, just recently ported out the last couple of numbers I was using them for. I don’t see much use case for replacing the dialer, except insofar as the ability to do so has value in terms of freedom and open markets.

It’s already trivial to get local banking details from many countries, (e.g., ‘multi-currency’ debit cards) but as far as I’m aware there’s not a practical way to get a foreign debit card without the usual hoops that the full account would require.

Probably because demand for such a thing is low - I can generate disposable card numbers on the fly, but only from my home country. Can’t imagine (aside from this specific edge case in question) generating foreign card numbers would be all that useful most of the time.

End-user support for such a thing would also be a challenge - I’m very accustomed to entering the usual data points with my card, but users would forget the associated postal code, or any number of other things, and then call support whining that it’s ‘broken’.

IOW, not something that one stuck in Ameristan can realistically override. Damn.

A handful of those factors are fairly trivial, but addressing all of them concurrently sounds like a tall order - especially since presumably one can’t talk to countryd directly and feed it the desired data.

Appreciate the clarity - iOS just isn’t a platform I have a need or the tools to code in.

And here I thought that outsourced “HR” folks were a travesty.

Had a small payroll issue recently having to do with some time off and a misunderstanding by the (outsourced) HR folks, was able to speak with enough people who understood one segment or another of the (rather complex) scenario to get it resolved in a couple of days.

AI would be a hard fail in that application, guaranteed.

At least one giant multi-national corp is actively soliciting examples and use cases from their employees.

“Toy” example submissions is fine, the company is just so eager for something to do with AI - they’re hoping for their actual AI folks to be able to take off of that uncompensated IP, while the employee with the idea gets a pat on the head.

Have I had ideas I might otherwise submit and that are well within my capabilities to implement at “toy” level? Hell, yes.

Do I want to contribute concepts into that sort of pipeline? Absolutely not. Not when they more or less automatically own my work product and whatever I do on company time already.

There really is a dearth of choices. I’ve little love for Google’s version of android, mostly for privacy reasons.

If I could get a decent phone that ran at reasonable speed for a tolerable price, without the tracking, I’d be willing to give it a go - and endure more than a few pain points.

Had some very similar questions, TY. Hoping to get another 2ish years out of my Lenovo P70, and then I’ll be on the hunt for something smaller and lighter, preferably Linux native.

I liked the form factor of the older ThinkPads, but not much with current hardware that’s Linux friendly.

Insanity. I spend $5.00 or so on $eCommerceSite and am perfectly happy with the result.

I make that expenditure maybe every four or five years. I don’t need a ‘forever mouse,’ they already last practically that long.

I don’t know offhand, but thanks for the reminder. I would have remembered COVID this year, but could well have forgotten flu!

Woah, that’s absolutely insane. Subway has always struck me as a little pricey for what they offer, but they’re also dead consistent which counts for something.

JJs, no way I’d spent $26 for a sandwich of any size.

At those prices (or McDonald’s prices these days, TBH), I’d just as soon sit down and also tip for basically the same amount of money with better quality food.

Self-checkout tipping has never made sense to me. I haven’t done the deep dive research, but I suspect that since the tips are not directed at an employee, it’s an easy way for the business itself to get tips w/o being in violation of tip theft laws. No intended employee recipient == free-for-all and business can grab the cash.

More that they’ve had a number of food safety issues over the years, and seem not to have taken any definitive steps to resolve that - as opposed to e.g., JJ’s who got rid of the sprouts, since they were entirely unable to be cooked/sanitized/etc.

Yep. I spend more time delivering the local place than eating it, but even the significant local population of college students largely seems to avoid Chipotle when they order in.

This is hardly a new law, so the question follows why this is timely / why now.

I’m hardly the expert here, but I wonder if there is even standing for TX to challenge a thirty year old federal law that’s effectively long settled law.

More PR bullshit.

Understanding the limits of the tech is key - I don’t equate the sleep tracking to the quality of the same I’d receive in a sleep lab, but I do value understanding my perception of sleep quality (i.e., totally subjective and rarely valid) vs the partially objective tracking I get from the watch.

There’s also zero reason for me to ever set foot in a Chipotle when we’ve two different local chains, one primarily sit-down and one primarily food truck-based, offering broader menus, safer food, and better food - along with all the miscellaneous one-offs that one would expect in a city of any size.

(Shout-out to Moe’s, for anybody in Chambana!)