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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: September 26th, 2023

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  • Feel ya, no job is perfect. My giant employer is great about WFH for those hired as such during a particular period of time, but they’ve outsourced HR entirely to a third party - a simple inquiry becomes a three day saga, abd if I’m talking in real time to HR, voluntarily, it’s because I’ve a concern of some immediacy.

    WFH plus great benefits > downsides, but it’s always a balancing act of priorities for sure.




  • 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…





  • 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.





  • 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’.




  • 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.