Well, we already have plenty of evidence that a very large comet full of ice airbursted over Earth several thousands of years ago, so I am not surprised of the article's findings. I've never heard of comets gathering ice over time, rather the opposite (gassing out over time, fragmenting and finally becoming dark/inactive).

The gist of the paper is to claim black holes, as we observe them, cannot form by collapse of a massive star.

Can't wait for nuclear-powered giant octopus submarines. Beats a laser-sporting shark anyday !

Weird. I'm on a sodium-rich and potassium-low diet, my resting heart rate is all over the place between 60 and 80, and no matter the amount of extra sodium I eat, my blood pressure never goes beyond 70-120 (it's usually around 70-110).

African grey parrots in captivity can reach, and have reached, 80 years of lifespan. That should be in the vicinity of 10 billion heartbeats.

Very bad examples here. In both cases of pharma and music, the up-front costs are vastly inflated because of the existence of "intellectual property" laws. This is a basic mechanism: your costs adjust up by the amount of guaranteed income, in the absence of any additional marginal wealth production. Or to put it another way: actual value you produce eventually adjusts down to the amount of value you need to convince other people to pay you. The amount you do not need to convince them to pay, trades for nothing. That's why monopoly rents even exist in the first place: laziness.

One thing Microsoft could do easily and cheaply, which would eventually end this "Calling you from Windows and you have a virus" scam, is to have a short mention about this being a scam on the front page of their website. A single sentence would suffice.

When you get called by the indian call center employee, who for most of them believe they are working for a legitimate business, mention how the caller is NOT really affiliated with Microsoft because their website say it's a scam. "See for yourself !" and hang up.

The actual pirates can probably not do the mass phone call themselves and still rack up enough money, which is why they hire call centres to do it for them, and why they also take precautions to show them some pretense of legitimacy. If the call centres stop working with them they'll go away.

And I wonder what kind of counter-claim of damages the USA can pretend they too suffered in the loss of trade. Probably just about the same amount in total.