I wonder which country's deep space network they're going to use to communicate with the craft

Actual scientific article is at DOI:10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-18-4022.

Phase 1 prospective cohort trial with 15 enrolled patients undergoing primary resective surgery for non-muscle invasive bladder cancer. Primary endpoint is patient safety; they report no "significant toxicities" from therapy.

Secondary endpoint: evidence of tumor inflammation and viral changes. They show inflammation-related changes in treated patients and resolution of tumor in 1 out of 15 patients.

There's no comparison arm; clinically important measures of efficacy like progression-free survival and overall survival were not assessed. The major aim of the study is to justify phase II/III trials down the road.

COI: one of the authors has received funding from Viralytics and several other authors work for Viralytics. Viralytics funded the study.

There is no way a study like this should receive anything like the headline or coverage it's gotten. It is a phase 1 study only without clinically relevant efficacies reported and without a comparison arm. The power to detect uncommon but not even rare adverse effects is low.

...ought not to be defined by the government against which it is wielded.

There is a trick to creating a AppleID account with no credit card. It does, however cost $5. First buy an iTunes gift card for $5 at the local grocery store. Next use that when you set up the account. It works great and is safe.

Health insurance works more like the extended warranty I bought on my car. To add 4 years and and an extra 40000 miles to my cars warranty, it cost me $2,000. Car insurance of the normal type is about 800 per year for my car.

I am not sure I would call the extended warranty ridiculously expensive.

rare corner-cases

I don't think "stop if there is something in front of the car" is a rare corner case.

I want proof... but that won't be that hard to provide. Google's car already has a better-than-average driving record. That's not enough data points for me, but with sufficient testing, I'd be more than happy to let the computer drive. I can only see in one direction. I blink. I look at hot chicks. I sneeze. I get tired. There is no reason a computer can't be better than me-- it has a better sensorium, faster reaction, and higher uptime than I ever will. It can actuate more controls than I can-- individual braking pressure on all four wheels, for example. Test it out in more depth, and if it turns out to be better than the average human, it's good enough for me.

No, that would be a perilepidopterist!

I am an epileptologist, and I would certainly love to see more effective anti-seizure drugs on the market. But although the newer anticonvulsants aren't necessarily better at stopping seizures than older ones (like the classic four: phenytoin, carbamazepine, phenobarbital, and valproic acid), they are better tolerated, have fewer severe adverse effects, have much more predictable serum concentrations, fewer drug-drug interactions, and require little to no routine bloodwork monitoring. For the 1% of the population suffering from epilepsy who have to take these drugs on a regular basis, this has been a significant change.

> that doesn't mean people who own tablets don't like them.

I'm about done with mine. It was a good compromise for a while... but phones grew up and laptops grew down (and got SSDs and high-PPI touchscreens), and I find myself no longer using my iPad for anything. I'm sure they'll still be useful for other folks, though, and it's good we have lots of choices.

Eh... like a lot of stuff, it may not be true for everybody, but it's true for some. If I was reading slashdot on it, and wanted to reply to your post, I'd set it down and turn on my computer. They're slow for text entry, and most content creation is still just text entry of one sort or another. I'm sure there are other things which they're great for-- but there are an awful lot of people for whom "that old chestnut" is true. If I do anything but read or watch movies on my iPad, I set it down and move to the computer.

"Content Creation" doesn't have to be anything as elaborate as coding or painting or musical composition. Your post and mine are both "content creation," and I don't know about you, but typing more than a couple of sentences in a row on a tablet touchscreen gets old quick.

I don't personally think tablets are going away, but I think the market may shrink going forward for a number of reasons. When the iPad first appeared, they did three amazing things that laptop users immediately noticed: they turned on instantly, they were small and light, and they had high-quality screens. Tablet UI considerations aside, those were areas in which the tablet absolutely trashed existing laptop hardware in user experience. If you just wanted to read or watch a movie, and you had a laptop and a tablet within reach, the tablet would get you there faster.

Fast-forward to now, and laptops have caught up. SSDs killed the boot advantage, and new form factors made possible by the same techniques that worked in the tablets have closed the size gap. If I can get an 11" laptop that does "real computer" stuff, boots instantly, and runs quietly and comfortably in my lap... I don't really have a use-case for the tablet anymore.

In short, it was worth the inconvenience of trying to type on a touchscreen when tablets had so many other advantages-- but those advantages have all either gone away or shrunk considerably. I imagine some folks will probably reconsider their tablet. Not all, but some.

Aren't you supposed to have your fine single-malt neat with a small pitcher of room-temperature water to add?