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Submission + - SPAM: 'Right to try' legislation heads to the White House

schwit1 writes: The House on Tuesday passed “right to try” legislation that would allow people with life-threatening illnesses to bypass the Food and Drug Administration to obtain experimental medications, ending a drawn-out battle over access to unapproved therapies.

President Trump is expected to quickly sign the measure, which was praised by supporters as a lifeline for desperate patients but denounced by scores of medical and consumer groups as unnecessary and dangerous.

The measure is designed to give patients an alternative way to obtain drugs not approved by the FDA. Currently, there are two options for patients seeking experimental medications: enrolling in clinical trials if they are eligible or participating in the FDA’s “expanded access” program. The agency has said that it approves almost all such requests to that program.

The FDA would be largely left out of the equation under the new legislation and would not oversee the right-to-try process. Drug manufacturers would have to report “adverse events” — safety problems, including premature deaths — only once a year. The agency also would be restricted in how it used such information when considering the experimental treatments for approval.

Patients would be eligible for right-to-try if they had a “life-threatening illness” and had exhausted all available treatment options. The medication itself must have completed early-stage safety testing, called Phase 1 trials, and be in active development with the goal of FDA approval.

Link to Original Source

Submission + - Enlightenment Mysteriously Drops Wayland Support

jones_supa writes: According to the release notes, Enlightenment 0.19.12 is an important release that fixes over 40 issues, which is quite something, considering the fact that the previous versions had only a few improvements, with most of them being minor. However, the big news is that 0.19.12 drops support for the Wayland display server. Unfortunately, the Enlightenment developers have omitted to mention why they decided to remove any form of support for Wayland from this release, and if it will return in upcoming releases of the software.

Submission + - Put Your Enterprise Financial Data In The Cloud? Sure, Why Not (itworld.com)

jfruh writes: For many, the idea of storing sensitive financial and other data in the cloud seems insane, especially considering the regulatory aspects that mandate how that data is protected. But more and more organizations are doing so as cloud providers start presenting offerings that fulfill regulatory needs — and people realize that information is more likely to be accidentally emailed out to the wrong address then hacked.

Submission + - Bitcoin protocol vulnerability could lead to a collapse

stanga writes: Cornell researchers unveiled an attack on the Bitcoin mining protocol that enables selfish mining pools to earn more than their fair share. In a technical report the authors explain this attack can be performed by a pool of any size. Rational miners will join this pool to increase their benefits, creating a snowball effect that may end up with a pool commanding a majority of the system's mining power. Such a pool would be able to single-handedly control the blockchain, violating the decentralized nature of the increasingly successful Bitcoin.

The authors propose a patch to the protocol that would protect the system from selfish mining pools smaller than 25% of the system. They also show that Bitcoin can never be safe from selfish mining pools larger than 33% of the network, whereas it was previously believed that only groups larger than 50% of the network were a threat to the system.

The question is — can the miners operating today adopt the suggested fix and dismantle too-large pools before a selfish mining pool arises?

Submission + - Withhold Passwords From Your Employer, Go to Jail? (forbes.com)

ericgoldman writes: Terry Childs was a network engineer in San Francisco, and he was the only employee with passwords to the network. After he was fired, he withheld the passwords from his former employer, preventing his employer from controlling its own network. Recently, a California appeals court upheld his conviction for violating California's computer crime law, including a 4 year jail sentence and $1.5 million of restitution. The ruling provides a good cautionary tale for anyone who thinks they can gain leverage over their employer or increase job security by controlling key passwords.

Submission + - Silicon Valley could be heading for a new stock collapse. (businessinsider.com)

billcarson writes: Even though for most of us the recession is far from over, analysts are worried the technology sector might be heading for its next bubble. Technology stocks are at records highs at the moment. Companies that have no sound business plan have no difficulty in raising capital to fund their crazy dreams. Even Yahoo is again buying companies without real profit (Tumblr). Andreessen Horowitz, a major venture capitalist in Silicon Valley is already pulling up the ladder. Might this be an indicator for more woe to come?

Comment Re:Problem with literal interpretation (Score 1) 1014

This is the (beginning of the) age of maturity of mankind: interpret scripture yourself.

Before the return of Christ, there were rabbis, priests, mullahs, gurus, etc to guide the faithful. But now, God expects us to grow up and deal with multiple interpretations, seek out truth independently, consult with others as equals, and come to our own understanding.

Comment Problem with literal interpretation (Score 0) 1014

A literal interpretation of holy writings soon leads to confusion, obscures the truth, and makes it unnecessarily hard for rational individuals to realize the spiritual truths enshrined therein.

The stories of Adam and Eve, Noah, Moses provide spiritual teachings, such as: “God the Creator”, “God the Protector”, “God the Provider” - they are not historical accounts.

In this day, now that Christ has returned, such stories, and the teachings they provide can be viewed as the necessary steps and fundamental building blocks of our current task: to build the Kingdom of God on Earth.

PS. The return of Christ: http://www.uhj.net/bahaullah.html

Submission + - Are nudging technologies ethical?

An anonymous reader writes: Researchers are debating the ethics of so-called 'nudging technologies' — ambient technology systems designed to shape or influence human behaviour, such as this installation which encourages people to take the stairs rather than the lift by using hanging coloured balls to represent stairs vs lift usage. A researcher on the project said: "Most people when we asked them, 'Do you think this has changed your behaviour?', they said no. But the data showed that it had actually done that."
Security

Submission + - ADP Experiences Security Breach (securityweek.com)

wiredmikey writes: HR and Payroll outsourcing giant Automatic Data Processing, Inc., (ADP) experienced a system intrusion the company announced today. In an announcement this afternoon, ADP said that it was investigating and taking measures to address the impact of a system intrusion that occurred with a client at Workscape, a benefits administration provider that ADP acquired in August 2010.

ADP has also been actively cooperating with law enforcement to determine the cause of this incident and to assist authorities in identifying and apprehending those responsible.

ADP added the following in a statement released this afternoon:

"Because this incident is the subject of an ongoing law enforcement investigation, ADP cannot disclose any additional details at this time. ADP will provide further updates once information that can be made public becomes available, and we will continue to communicate with all affected parties as appropriate."

With nearly $9 billion in revenues and about 550,000 clients, ADP is one of the world's largest providers of HR, payroll, tax and benefits administration solutions

Comment Re:Sounds interesting (Score 1) 31

Definitely take a look at the Alfresco Community Edition, which is free but without support: http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Download_and_Install_Alfresco
Just install it and try it out, it's an easy install and quick to learn, but full of the options used in enterprise document management systems that you can master when you need them. We use the Share interface to manage the documents in each of our projects.

Idle

Submission + - Face-mounted nose stylus created for phones (wired.co.uk)

Lanxon writes: Designer Dominic Wilcox has come up with a Pinocchio-style "finger-nose stylus" that lets you use your phone hands free, reports Wired. He came up with the design after he found that he wanted to use his touchphone in the bath. A wet hand is not a good touchscreen navigation device, so he found himself using his nose to scroll, but found it hard to see precisely where his nose was touching the screen. The solution was to create a nose extension "finger" that would allow for navigation while holding the phone firmly in his one dry hand.
Science

Submission + - Forty Years of P v NP

An anonymous reader writes: In the afternoon of May 4, 1971, in the Stouffer's Somerset Inn in Shaker Heights, Ohio, Steve Cook presented his STOC paper proving that Satisfiability is NP-complete and Tautology is NP-hard.

The theorems suggest that Tautology is a good candidate for an interesting set not in [P] and I feel it is worth spending considerable effort trying to prove this conjecture. Such a proof would be a major breakthrough in complexity theory.

And thus Cook formulated what was soon to be called the P versus NP problem. The rest is history.

Here's the 1971 STOC Program (there were 143 attendees)and what that sacred ground looks like today.

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