Jean-Philippe Encausse
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I let Gemini turn complex research into podcasts. I’ll never go back
La Chine accélère sur la fusion nucléaire : un centre colossal dévoilé par satellite
Rogue Scientist Who Gene-Hacked Human Babies Gear Up for More Human Experiments
That rogue scientist who created HIV-resistant designer babies is apparently gearing up for more human gene-editing research.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, He Jiankui said he wants to conduct human trials on his next big project: encoding genetics to prevent Alzheimer's disease, a heritable illness, in future generations.
He identified South Africa, where the government declared in 2024 that it's open to the "significant potential" of genetic editing, as a good place for those trials to take place. Before that, He wants to send two Chinese colleagues to the US to conduct trials on mice and monkeys. As the controversial researcher told the WSJ, he can't go himself because his home country, which imprisoned him in 2019 for scientific misconduct and fraud over his gene-hacking experiments on human fetuses that were subsequently born, won't renew his passport.
Aside from the broad strokes of a comeback, which seem to be more logistical in nature than anything else, we don't know almost anything else about how He plans to start up again.
The self-styled "Chinese Darwin" has declined to identify his financial backers and doesn't, as the WSJ notes, have any affiliations with any academic institution. When the newspaper tried to figure out who he may be working with in the US, it was unable to do so, and South Africa's health department didn't respond to requests for comment from WSJ reporters.
Lofty promises and opaque funding are, of course, nothing new to science. But He is no normal scientist, and as the newspaper notes, his reputation as "China's Frankenstein" has followed the 41-year-old gene-hacking pioneer even after his release from prison last year. It's no wonder he doesn't want to reveal who's funding him: they could, conceivably, be ostracized for doing so.
It also probably doesn't help that He regularly posts photos of himself in his mysterious lab — which the Chinese government would not, the scientist insisted to the WSJ, allow foreign visitors to enter without permission — alongside cryptic declarations, including his claim that ethics are "holding back" science.
For all that creepiness, however, He clearly has heart. Peppered between self-aggrandizing posts are a number of shockingly egalitarian claims, including an insistence that "health is the universal human right" and that "'Survival of the fittest' is unfair for the people born with genetic disadvantages."
"No one," He wrote in the latter post, "should be left behind."
That ethos in particular seems to be related to the seemingly personal inspiration behind the scientist's latest avenue of research: his mother, who is in her late 60s, has Alzheimer's that has progressed far enough that she no longer recognizes her infamous son.
If he can get human trials up and running, He wants to see if he can mimic a genetic mutation found in Icelanders who appear to have a protein that protects them against the debilitating cognitive disease. That's a far cry from the admittedly reckless experiments he conducted on embryos — and it seems far less ethically dubious, too.
And what of the children born of those experiments? Their real identities aren't know, but according to He, they're healthy now.
"I will apologize only if the children have any health issues," the scientist said. "So far, I don’t need to apologize to anyone."
More on genetics: 23andMe Is Crumbling, and That Means Your Genetic Data Is Blowing in the Breeze
The post Rogue Scientist Who Gene-Hacked Human Babies Gear Up for More Human Experiments appeared first on Futurism.
An Artificial Sun In A Manageable Size
The sun is our planet’s source of natural illumination, and though we’ve mastered making artificial light sources, it remains extremely difficult to copy our nearby star. As if matching the intensity wasn’t enough, its spectral quality, collimation, and atmospheric scattering make it an special challenge. [Victor Poughon] has given it a go though, using a bank of LEDs and an interesting lens system.
We’re used to lenses being something that can be bought off-the-shelf, but this design eschews that convenience by having the lenses manufactured and polished as an array, by JLC. The scattering is taken care of by a sheet of inkjet printer film, and the LEDs are mounted on a set of custom PCBs.
The result is certainly a very bright light, and one whose collimation delivers a sun-like effect of coming from a great distance. It may not be as bright as the real thing, but it’s certainly something close. If you’d like something to compare it to, it’s not the first such light we’ve featured.
Actualité : L'humanité doit-elle semer la vie dans l'Univers ?
📰 Création d’images : l’IA passe à la vitesse supérieure
Grok, Gemini, GPT-4o… Les nouvelles versions des outils d'IA repoussent les limites de la génération et de la retouche d’images. Un tournant technologique aux implications majeures.
Grok, l’IA développée par X (ex-Twitter), permet désormais de modifier des photos existantes avec une simplicité déconcertante : changer un arrière-plan, effacer des éléments, se transformer en cow-boy ou appliquer un style Van Gogh… tout devient possible. Une innovation qui inquiète autant qu’elle fascine.
En réponse, Google et OpenAI accélèrent. Gemini 2.0 propose des fonctionnalités similaires, mais c’est surtout GPT-4o qui impressionne : réalisme accru, respect des consignes, écriture dans les images… L’outil marque une nette rupture avec les limites de DALL·E.
Les réseaux s’emballent, notamment autour du style manga “Ghibli” appliqué à des photos d’actualité, tandis que les enjeux éthiques se font de plus en plus pressants : suppression de filigranes, pillage de contenus visuels, droit d’auteur mis à mal.
Jusqu’où l’IA peut-elle et doit-elle aller dans la création ?
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Games publisher Ubisoft announces restructuring, billion-euro investment
Enhanced 6D pose estimation method promises better robotic object handling
Smart textiles and surfaces: How lightweight elastomer films are bringing tech to life
The incredible Samsung Odyssey Ark monitor is $900 off today
Brain-like computer steers rolling robot with 0.25% of the power needed by conventional controllers
AI robot pets can be adorable and emotionally responsive. They also raise questions about attachment and mental health
While You're Churning Out Studio Ghibli Selfies With OpenAI, Remember That Hayao Miyazaki Called AI Art "Disgusting" and an "Insult to Life Itself"
The internet has been flooded with pictures modified by OpenAI's new image tool to evoke the style of animation legend Hayao Miyazaki's work at Studio Ghibli.
Despite going mega-viral — to the point where OpenAI took down the free version of its in-app image generator — the trend flies directly in the face of the animator's personal views on the tech. In a 2016 documentary, the filmmaker was shown a demo of an AI-animated 3D model.
"I am utterly disgusted," he said at the time, arguing that the demo reminded him of a friend with a disability. "If you really want to make creepy stuff, you can go ahead and do it. I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all."
"I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself," he fulminated.
The latest trend spawned countless images that went viral, from Ghibli renditions of the JFK assassination to the photo that showed Donald Trump hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein — and, of course, 9/11.
While it's far from the first time a generative AI-inspired trend has gone viral on the social media platform, the extent to which the Ghibli meme has taken off is notable.
Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wasn't spared, complaining in a Wednesday tweet that "no one" cared about his career until you "wake up one day to hundreds of messages: 'look i made you into a twink ghibli style haha.'"
"My timeline is AGI," Stability AI founder Emad Mostaque quipped with a joke about artificial general intelligence. "All. Ghibli. Images."
Even famous retired boxer Mike Tyson uploaded a Ghibli-fied rendition of his own likeness while holding a white pigeon.
Besides directly opposing the views and wishes of its creator, the trend also highlights the continued debate surrounding copyright and the overall rights of human artists and publishers.
As 404 Media found, it's also trivially easy to generate pictures of far more graphic images in the style of Studio Ghibli movies, demonstrating OpenAI's woefully inadequate implementation of guardrails.
It's an unfortunate new reality, greatly denigrating the iconic, hard work of human animators.
"Imagine being Miyazaki, pouring decades of heart and soul into making this transcendent beautiful tender style of anime, and then seeing it get sloppified by linear algebra," one user tweeted.
Other users also pointed out generative AI's infamous strain on the environment — ironic, given many of Studio Ghibli's films are about humanity's disregard for the planet and ecosystem.
"Irony is dead and all but it’s pretty depressing to see Ghibli AI slop on the timeline not only because Miyazaki famously thinks AI art is disgusting but because he’s spent the last 50 years making art about environmental waste for petty human uses," another user tweeted.
More on the trend: Sam Altman Whines That When You Become a Billionaire, "Everyone Hates You For Everything"
The post While You're Churning Out Studio Ghibli Selfies With OpenAI, Remember That Hayao Miyazaki Called AI Art "Disgusting" and an "Insult to Life Itself" appeared first on Futurism.
La Russie poursuit sa surveillance des internautes en bloquant 47 VPN dans le pays
Le Kremlin continue sa politique de contrôle d'Internet en interdisant l'utilisation de plusieurs dizaines de services de VPN. Des pannes sur des sites populaires ont également été constatées à la suite des restrictions.
La guerre se prépare en orbite : l’US Space Force dévoile le premier « porte-avions » spatial !
Avec la réalité mixte, Bvlgari livre une nouvelle facette de sa Haute Joaillerie
OpenAI halts free GPT-4o image generation after Studio Ghibli viral trend
Alibaba Head Warns AI Industry Is Showing Signs of Bubble
For years now, experts have warned of an AI bubble set to burst.
So far, companies have continued to pour tens of billions of dollars into building out massive data centers to meet the demands of increasingly power-hungry AI models.
Whether the sector will continue to grow or find itself in for a rude awakening is anyone's guess. But something striking is that we're starting to see even tech executives worried that the massive spending could collapse under its own weight. Sluggish demand could struggle to keep up with a rapidly rising supply side, a lopsided equation that has executives freaked out.
Despite having committed to spend more than $52 billion on AI development over the next three years, Chinese tech giant Alibaba's chairman Joe Tsai is now warning of a potential bubble starting to form in AI data center construction, Bloomberg reports. During an event in Hong Kong on Tuesday, Tsai said that many of these projects are being constructed without clear customers in mind.
"I start to see the beginning of some kind of bubble," Tsai said, as quoted by Bloomberg.
Alibaba shares slid by almost four percent today in response to the news.
Perhaps one of the biggest warning signs so far was the explosive emergence of Chinese startup DeepSeek, which left Silicon Valley in shambles after creating a top-tier AI at a tiny fraction of the cost of its Western counterparts.
The company's announcement of its reasoning model, which could keep up with OpenAI's most advanced offerings, triggered a more than $1 trillion selloff, with spooked investors wondering whether they had grossly overpaid the likes of OpenAI and Meta for years.
Despite the massive shakeup, companies continue to pour astronomical sums into the construction of data centers. Just weeks into his second term, president Donald Trump announced a behemoth $500 billion AI infrastructure project, dubbed Stargate, with significant buy-in from OpenAI, investment company SoftBank, tech giant Oracle, and Abu Dhabi state-run AI fund MGX.
Last week, news emerged that the project's first data center complex in the small Texas city of Abilene would have enough space for as many as 400,000 Nvidia AI chips, which would make it one of the biggest known clusters of AI computing power when completed by mid-2026.
But to Tsai, it remains to be seen whether that kind of spending is actually warranted.
"I start to get worried when people are building data centers on spec," he said this week. "There are a number of people coming up, funds coming out, to raise billions or millions of capital."
Outside of Trump's Stargate, Amazon committed $100 billion to build out AI infrastructure. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has pledged $65 billion for this year, while Google parent company Alphabet will invest $75 billion.
To Tsai, that could be a terrible idea in the long run.
"I’m still astounded by the type of numbers that’s being thrown around in the United States about investing into AI," he said at this week's event.
"People are talking, literally talking about $500 billion, several 100 billion dollars. I don’t think that’s entirely necessary," he added. "I think in a way, people are investing ahead of the demand that they’re seeing today, but they are projecting much bigger demand."
More on AI overspending: Microsoft Backing Out of Expensive New Data Centers After Its CEO Expressed Doubt About AI Value
The post Alibaba Head Warns AI Industry Is Showing Signs of Bubble appeared first on Futurism.
3D-Printed Scanner Automates Deck Management for Trading Card Gamers
Those who indulge in trading card games know that building the best deck is the key to victory. What exactly that entails is a mystery to us muggles, but keeping track of your cards is a vital part of the process, one that this DIY card scanner (original German; English translation) seeks to automate.
At its heart, [Fraens]’ card scanner is all about paper handling, which is always an engineering task fraught with peril. Cards like those for Magic: The Gathering and other TCGs are meant to be handled by human hands, and automating the task of flipping through them presents some challenges. [Fraens] uses a pair of motorized 3D-printed rollers with O-rings to form a conveyor belt that can pull one card at a time off the bottom of a deck. An adjustable retaining roller made from the most adorable linear bearing we’ve ever seen ensures that only one card at a time is pulled from the hopper onto an imaging platen. An adjustable mount holds a smartphone to take a picture of the card, which is fed into an app that extracts all the details and categorizes the cards in the deck.
Aside from the card handling mechanism, there are some pretty slick details to this build. The first is that [Fraens] noticed that the glossy finish on some cards interfered with scanning, leading him to add a diffused LED ringlight to the rig. If an image isn’t scannable, the light goes through a process of dimming and switching colors until a good scan is achieved. Also, to avoid the need to modify the existing TCG deck management app, [Fraens] added a microphone to the control side of the scanner that listens for the sounds the app makes when it scans cards. And if Magic isn’t your thing, the basic mechanism could easily be modified to scan everything from business cards to old family photos.
The High Cost of American Health Care
The United States spends substantially more on health care than any other high-income nation, yet achieves poorer health outcomes by many measures. In 2024, health care spending in the US reached nearly $4.9 trillion, representing about 17.6% of the country's GDP—a percentage far exceeding that of peer nations. Despite this enormous financial investment, the US ranks poorly on measures like life expectancy, chronic disease burden, and preventable mortality.
This analysis examines the structural and systemic factors that contribute to America's exceptionally high health care costs. From market consolidation to payment models, from profit motives to administrative complexity, multiple interconnected forces drive excessive spending without delivering commensurate value. Independent from the attributes of health care services is a population of Americans that develop a seemingly unstoppable rate of chronic diseases like heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancers. This coupled with high gun-related deaths, high levels of income inequality, and high rates of negative social determinants of health produces the the underlying demand for health services at high prices. The high prices themselves were the topic of a previous article.
In fact, we received a lot of outreach from the previous article which was intended to review a single Health Affairs article discussing high prices in the US system as the primary driver of US health care spending. There certainly are other factors at play as many pointed out, so I am writing a more comprehensive article on factors that may cause higher prices and total spending on health care in the United States. This is not an exhaustive analysis, but it covers the primary points.
Market Consolidation: The Growth of Health Care Giants
Health care consolidation has accelerated dramatically over the past two decades, with profound implications for costs. Both horizontal integration (mergers between similar entities) and vertical integration (combining different parts of the health care supply chain) have reshaped the American health care landscape.
Horizontal Integration: Less Competition, Higher Prices
Horizontal consolidation occurs when hospitals merge with other hospitals, insurers combine with other insurers, or physician practices join together. These mergers have created regional powerhouses with significant market leverage.
When hospitals consolidate within a region, the impact on prices is substantial. Studies consistently show that hospital prices increase when mergers occur in concentrated markets. With fewer competitors, dominant hospital systems can demand higher reimbursement rates from insurers, costs that are inevitably passed on to employers and patients.
The hospital sector has experienced particularly dramatic consolidation. Between 2010 and 2019, there were over 750 hospital mergers and acquisitions in the United States. By 2021, 76.5% of metropolitan areas, hospital markets were considered highly concentrated according to federal antitrust guidelines. This consolidation extends to rural areas as well, where smaller hospitals have increasingly been absorbed into larger systems.
Physician practices have followed a similar trajectory. Once primarily independent, physicians increasingly work for hospitals or large group practices. The percentage of physicians employed by hospitals or health systems increased from 2012 to 2022. This consolidation gives providers greater bargaining power with insurers and often leads to higher service prices.
Vertical Integration: Control Across the Health Care Value Chain
Vertical integration involves combining different stages of the health care supply chain under single corporate entities. Examples include hospitals purchasing physician practices, insurers acquiring pharmacy benefit managers, or retail pharmacies buying health insurers.
When hospitals acquire physician practices, referral patterns often change. Studies show that hospital-employed physicians refer patients to their employing hospital at higher rates, even when lower-cost options exist. Moreover, services previously provided in lower-cost office settings may shift to hospital outpatient departments, where the same procedure often costs significantly more.
Recent vertical mergers have created powerful conglomerates spanning multiple health care sectors:
CVS Health's acquisition of Aetna combined a major pharmacy chain, a pharmacy benefit manager, and a health insurer
UnitedHealth Group's Optum division owns physician practices, outpatient facilities, and a pharmacy benefit manager
Cigna's acquisition of Express Scripts united an insurer with a major pharmacy benefit manager
These integrated entities enjoy multiple revenue streams and can steer patients within their own systems. While proponents claim vertical integration improves care coordination, evidence of cost savings for patients remains limited. Instead, the market power gained through such integration often translates into higher prices.
Restricting Market Entry: Certificate of Need Laws
Further restricting competition are Certificate of Need (CON) laws, which remain in effect in approximately 35 states. These regulations require health care providers to obtain government permission before building new facilities, expanding services, or purchasing certain equipment. Originally intended to prevent duplication of services and control costs, evidence suggests CON laws have instead protected incumbent providers from competition. Studies show that states with CON laws have higher health care prices and fewer facilities per capita than states without such restrictions. By creating regulatory barriers to entry, these laws effectively shield established health care systems from new competitors who might otherwise drive prices down, further contributing to the market concentration that enables higher prices.
These things really are pretty silly.
Profit Motive: The Business of Health Care
Unlike many other developed nations, the US health care system is predominantly private and profit-driven. This orientation affects prices, utilization, and system priorities.
For-profit hospitals, which constitute approximately ~36% of all hospitals in the US, must generate returns for shareholders while delivering care. These facilities typically charge higher prices than non-profit counterparts and may prioritize lucrative service lines over less profitable ones.
Publicly traded health care companies face quarterly earnings pressure and shareholder expectations. This creates incentives to maximize revenue and minimize costs in ways that may not align with optimal patient care or system efficiency. Health insurance companies regularly report profit margins of 3-8%, pharmaceutical companies often exceed 15-20% margins, and medical device manufacturers typically achieve 20-30% margins. This is not inherently a bad thing when markets are operating competitively, but in a scenario without competition it can lead to less-than-desirable societal outcomes and benefit.
In the pharmaceutical sector, profit motives are particularly evident. US prescription drug prices average 2.78 times higher than in other high-income nations. Unlike countries that negotiate drug prices centrally or regulate them, the US allows manufacturers to set prices largely at will, with limited counterbalancing market forces.
The investor-owned health care model has expanded into previously non-profit sectors. Private equity firms have acquired physician practices, nursing homes, and other care facilities at accelerating rates. These acquisitions often lead to reduced staffing, higher prices, and an emphasis on profitable services at the expense of comprehensive care. This is an area of great attention right now in the aftermath of the Steward Health situation in Massachusetts.
New Technologies: Innovation Without Cost Control
The US leads in developing and adopting new medical technologies, from advanced imaging systems to surgical robots to novel medications. While these innovations often improve care quality, their implementation in the American system typically occurs without robust cost-effectiveness evaluation. In fact, Medicare is barred from considering cost-effectiveness analysis in coverage decisions.
Unlike countries with health technology assessment programs—such as the United Kingdom's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) or Germany's Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG)—the US lacks systematic processes for evaluating whether new technologies justify their costs relative to existing alternatives. Thus, in many cases, costly new technologies enter the market at high prices without necessarily improving quality of care or performance compared to the prior standards of care.
Once approved by the FDA for safety and efficacy, new technologies typically diffuse through the health care system, regardless of their comparative value. Hospitals compete to offer the latest technologies as marketing advantages, insurers face pressure to cover them, and patients and physicians often demand access to the newest options. Americans have a special love of new medical technologies, politically. Therefore, it is politically undesirable for government health care programs, that often set the coverage and payment rate standards for other payors, to be seen as stifling medical innovation.
The result is widespread adoption of expensive technologies that may offer only marginal benefits over existing alternatives. Examples include:
Proton beam therapy facilities costing hundreds of millions of dollars to build, despite limited evidence of superiority for certain cancer types, though the evidence is growing for others.
Robotic surgical systems that increase procedure costs by thousands of dollars without consistently demonstrating better outcomes. This is a hotly debated topic. There is evidence of benefits in certain conditions, yet the return on investment is not well-understood.
New pharmaceuticals priced at premium levels without proportionate improvements in effectiveness compared to current medications.
Medicare Limitations: Statutory Constraints on Cost Control
Medicare, America's public health insurance program for seniors and certain disabled individuals, faces significant constraints in controlling costs due to legislative restrictions.
Most notably, Medicare is explicitly prohibited from considering cost-effectiveness in coverage determinations. The program must cover treatments deemed "reasonable and necessary" regardless of their price relative to benefits. This contrasts sharply with health systems in countries like the UK, Canada, and Australia, which routinely assess both clinical and economic value before covering new treatments.
Additionally, Medicare is forbidden from directly negotiating prescription drug prices with manufacturers. Until recently, the program had to cover virtually all drugs in certain protected classes at whatever price pharmaceutical companies set. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act provided Medicare limited authority to negotiate prices for a small number of drugs, but this represents only a modest change to a system that still largely accepts manufacturer-set prices. This is an ongoing debate.
Medicare's rate-setting ability is also constrained by political pressures and provider lobbying. Payment formulas established by Congress often reflect political considerations rather than economic efficiency, and attempts to reduce payments frequently face fierce resistance from affected stakeholders.
These limitations affect not just Medicare but the entire health care system, as private insurers often follow Medicare's coverage policies and use its payment rates as benchmarks for their own reimbursement structures.
Fee-for-Service Payment: Incentivizing Volume Over Value
The predominant payment model in American health care remains fee-for-service (FFS), where providers receive payment for each service, procedure, test, or treatment delivered. This model inherently rewards volume rather than outcomes or efficiency.
Under fee-for-service, providers have financial incentives to:
Deliver more services, regardless of marginal benefit
Perform more complex procedures that carry higher reimbursement
Order additional tests and follow-up visits
Focus on treatment rather than prevention
The financial consequences are substantial. Studies estimate that 25-30% of all health care services in the US may be unnecessary or provide minimal benefit, directly attributable to the incentives created by fee-for-service payment.
Attempts to shift toward value-based payment models—such as bundled payments, accountable care organizations, and global budgets—have made only incremental progress. As of 2023, approximately 60-70% of healthcare payments still followed traditional fee-for-service arrangements.
Even in "value-based" programs, the underlying fee-for-service architecture often remains, with modifications like shared savings or quality bonuses layered on top. True transformation of payment incentives has proven difficult to implement at scale. CMS has set a goal to have most Medicare beneficiaries covered under some form of shared savings or accountable care-like model by 2030.
Administrative Complexity: The Hidden Cost Driver
Administrative costs represent one of the most significant differences between US health care spending and that of other developed nations. Studies estimate that administrative activities consume between 15% and 30% of total US health care expenditures—roughly $800 billion to $1.3 trillion annually.
This administrative burden stems from the system's complexity and fragmentation:
Billing and Payment Complexity
With thousands of health insurance plans, each with unique coverage rules, prior authorization requirements, and payment rates, providers must maintain extensive billing departments. A typical US hospital employs more billing specialists than beds, and physician practices spend an average of $70,000 per doctor annually on billing-related activities.
The average US hospital submits claims to 51 different payers. Each claim must be coded precisely according to complex classification systems, with errors resulting in payment delays or denials. This administrative burden doesn't exist in single-payer systems or those with standardized and streamlined payment procedures.
Insurance Overhead
Private health insurers in the US spend 12-18% of premium dollars on administrative costs and profits, compared to 1-3% for public programs in other countries. These costs include marketing, underwriting, claims processing, and shareholder returns.
The Medical Loss Ratio provision of the Affordable Care Act requires insurers to spend at least 80-85% of premium dollars on medical care, but this still allows for significant administrative expenses compared to international counterparts.
Provider Administrative Burden
US physicians spend an estimated 15-20 hours per week on administrative tasks not directly related to patient care. This includes documentation for billing purposes, quality reporting, prior authorization requests, and compliance with various regulations.
Nursing staff similarly spend greater than 25% of their time on documentation and administrative tasks rather than direct patient care. This represents both a direct cost (staff time) and an opportunity cost (reduced patient care capacity). This is due to insurance billing administrative burden and the need for documentation for both clinical purposes and defense purposes in the event of litigation.
Duplication and Fragmentation
With multiple payers, providers, and regulatory bodies, the US system suffers from duplicative administrative functions. Each insurer maintains its own claims processing system, provider networks, and utilization management protocols. Each provider organization must interface with dozens or hundreds of different insurers and comply with varying requirements.
This fragmentation contrasts sharply with more unified health systems like those in Canada, Sweden, or Taiwan, where administrative simplicity results from standardized processes across the entire system.
Other Potential Contributing Factors
While the major structural drivers discussed above explain much of America's exceptional health care spending, several additional factors contribute to the high-cost ecosystem:
Physician Compensation
American physicians, particularly specialists, earn substantially more than their counterparts in other high-income countries. US specialist physicians often earn 2-3 times what similar specialists make in countries like Germany, France, or Canada. This compensation differential reflects both the higher costs of medical education in the US and the greater market power of physician groups, especially in consolidated markets with limited competition.
Defensive Medicine
The US malpractice environment encourages "defensive medicine"—the practice of ordering tests, procedures, and consultations primarily to avoid potential lawsuits rather than for clinical necessity. Studies estimate that defensive medicine adds $50-100 billion annually to healthcare costs. While the direct costs of malpractice premiums and settlements are substantial, the indirect costs of defensive practices likely have a larger impact on overall spending.
Price Opacity
Unlike most consumer markets, healthcare prices in the US remain largely hidden until after services are delivered. Despite recent price transparency regulations, meaningful comparison shopping remains difficult for most patients. This opacity prevents normal market dynamics from exerting downward pressure on prices and allows for significant price variation for identical services, even within the same geographic area.
I have a good article on the mechanics of this here.
Employer-Based Insurance System
The predominance of employer-sponsored health insurance, covering approximately 164 million Americans, creates inefficiencies through job lock, administrative duplication, and insulation from true costs. The tax exemption for employer-provided health benefits costs the federal government over $250 billion annually in foregone revenue while incentivizing more comprehensive coverage than many individuals might otherwise choose.
Supply Chain Intermediaries
Numerous intermediaries operate between providers, payers, and patients, each extracting a portion of health care spending. Pharmacy benefit managers, group purchasing organizations, health care consultants, and various brokers add layers of complexity and cost to the system while often obscuring rather than enhancing value.
Social Determinants of Health
The US spends less on social services relative to health care than most developed nations, creating downstream medical costs. Underinvestment in housing, nutrition, education, and community resources leads to more severe health conditions requiring expensive medical interventions. Countries that invest more heavily in social infrastructure typically achieve better health outcomes at lower medical costs.
End-of-Life Care Intensity
Americans receive more intensive, hospital-based care in their final months of life than citizens of other developed nations. Approximately 25% of lifetime Medicare expenditures occur in patients' last year of life, with intensive care utilization particularly high. This pattern reflects both cultural attitudes toward death and the financial incentives inherent in the US healthcare system.
Conclusion: A System Optimized for Revenue, Not Value
America's high health care spending results not from a single cause but from interconnected structural factors that collectively drive costs upward. Market consolidation reduces competition that might otherwise constrain prices. Profit motives incentivize revenue generation over efficiency or population health and in the absence of competition we do not benefit from downward pressure on prices. New technologies enter the market without rigorous cost-effectiveness assessment. Medicare faces statutory limitations on cost control mechanisms. Fee-for-service payment rewards volume rather than value. Administrative complexity consumes resources that could otherwise go toward patient care.
These factors create a health care system optimized for revenue generation rather than health outcomes or economic efficiency. Unlike systems in other developed nations—which prioritize universal access, cost containment, and population health—the US system has evolved to maximize financial returns across multiple sectors of the health care economy. While this is not a comprehensive analysis, it covers some of the key underlying drivers of the US experience with health care.
Meaningful reform would require addressing these structural issues simultaneously rather than implementing piecemeal changes that leave fundamental incentives intact. Until then, Americans will likely continue paying substantially more for health care than citizens of other wealthy nations, without receiving commensurate value for this extraordinary investment. It will require significant political will to unwrap the system.
I discuss potential solutions in the following two articles:
Krisp is using AI to help Indians sound like Americans on calls
Canal Locks
There's something remarkable about a boat travelling uphill. Canal locks are a simple yet ingenious system that has made it possible for centuries.
How a Canal Lock Works
The humble lock gate has more to it than first appears. Here's how one of the most common types works.
For a boat approaching a lock from below and meeting a closed gate:
1. Bring the water to your level
Close the top gate to seal the lock. Then, open the sluice (or paddle) in the lower gate — often a sliding panel — by cranking it with the ever-handy windlass (a simple metal crank that fits onto square spindles on the lock mechanism).
2. Enter and seal the gate
Once the water is at the lower level, you can push the giant counterweights to open the gate and steer the boat inside. Don't nudge too far forward, or you'll bump the cill, a stone ledge at the top end of the lock. Close the gate behind you and shut the sluice to stop water escaping.
3. Raise the water level
With the lock sealed, open the top sluices. These often feed through side channels or culverts, letting water in gently from upstream, usually below the surface, to reduce turbulence. You'll gradually float upward as the lock fills.
4. Head upstream
Once the water level matches the upper pound (the upper stretch of water), open the top gates, close the sluices, and cruise on your way.
The same principles, in reverse, work for approaching the lock from above.
As you can imagine, operating locks is much harder work if you're boating solo.
Water Supply for Canals
One thing that makes all this possible is a steady supply of water. You can't rise in a lock without water to fill it. So, canal builders had to ensure the canal had enough water to stay navigable and to keep the locks functioning.
For some of the London canals, the builders created huge reservoirs with long feeder channels to ensure the canals had enough water. In some places, water is pumped back uphill to be reused at the top of a flight.
Canal water doesn't flow much — it's a closed system in many places. I'd heard that, in principle, it only takes one lock's worth of water for a boat to travel down a whole flight of locks: each lockful of water carries the boat one step down and ends up in the next pound. So, a boat going down several locks essentially transfers a single chamber's worth of water from the top to the bottom.
But in practice, how much water gets used depends on boat traffic from either side, whether you meet locks full or empty, and water-saving features such as side pools. In my research, it wasn't as simple as it seemed.
The Mitre Gate
Holding back tonnes of water is no small task. Mitre gates are angled to meet, pointing upstream and forming a shallow V. This shape means the water pressure pushes the gates closed, creating a tight seal — the water effectively locks itself in.
A stone arch bridge uses a similar principle—compression strengthens the structure under pressure.
Leonardo da Vinci sketched an early design for the mitre gate around 1500. The design still looks like a modern lock gate. Not bad for an invention 500+ years ago.
Understandable Engineering at Large
Canal locks are like playing with water in the bath but on a massive scale. They're inherently satisfying to watch and operate. At their peak, they revolutionised transport across much of Europe and beyond.
The same basic idea still operates in the Panama Canal, where giant ships are lifted 26 metres over the isthmus simply by filling and draining the lock chambers in sequence.
The dimensions of a lock determine the size of the boat that can pass through. Panamax is the maximum size a ship can be to fit through the Panama Canal—a constraint that shapes shipbuilding worldwide.
In the UK, Tardebigge Locks has 30 locks to raise boats 67m over just 3.6km. Not to be outdone, Caen Hill Locks on the Kennet and Avon Canal has 29 Locks, 16 of which are in a straight line, rising 72m over 2.1km.
For a single, remarkable lock, have a look at Falkirk Wheel lock in Scotland. It's the "one and only rotating boat lift", which replaces 11 locks with a 2 min rotating journey lifting boats through the air.
Full disclosure:
We recently took a canal boat trip on London's Regents Canal, including a visit to London's Canal Museum.
Far from its industrial heyday, the whole place was buzzing with people out for leisure up and down the length of the journey. The towpath—horses towed the barges by walking alongside—was packed with walkers, joggers and cyclists.
And it never failed to fascinate when the boats moved up or down a lock.
Engineering at work!
Related Ideas to Canal Locks
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A safe nuclear battery that could last a lifetime
Physical Key Copying Starts With a Flipper Zero
A moment’s inattention is all it takes to gather the information needed to make a physical copy of a key. It’s not necessarily an easy process, though, so if pen testing is your game, something like this Flipper Zero key copying toolchain can make the process quicker and easier when the opportunity presents itself.
Of course, we’re not advocating for any illegal here; this is just another tool for your lock-sports bag of tricks. And yes, there are plenty of other ways to accomplish this, but using a Flipper Zero to attack a strictly mechanical lock is kind of neat. The toolchain posted by [No-Lock216] starts with an app called KeyCopier, which draws a virtual key blank on the Flipper Zero screen. The app allows you to move the baseline for each pin to the proper depth, quickly recording the bitting for the key. Later, the bitting can be entered into an online app called keygen which, along with information on the brand of lock and its warding, can produce an STL file suitable for downloading and printing.
Again, there are a ton of ways to make a copy of a key if you have physical access to it, and the comments of the original Reddit post were filled with suggestions amusingly missing the entire point of this. Yes, you can get a key cut at any hardware store for a buck or two that will obviously last a lot longer than a 3D-printed copy. But if you only have a few seconds to gather the data from the key, an app like KeyCopier could be really convenient. Personally, we’d find a smartphone app handier, but if you’ve got a Flipper, why not leverage it?
Thanks to [JohnU] for the tip.
Blockchain in Egypt: which sectors are already using this technology?
As the dictionary will tell you, the “blockchain” is a decentralised distributed database that stores transaction records as a sequence of blocks with hashes of the previous block, timestamps, and transaction data.
Sounds complicated. But don’t be intimidated by the complexity of the blockchain or write it off as a boring area for IT geeks and mathematicians. Blockchain technology is likely to improve the lives of ordinary people in Egypt very soon.
Blockchain - Is It Something About Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies? Not Only
Many have heard the word “blockchain” in the context of the cryptocurrency world. And it’s true - this technology was first seriously applied in 2008 when the revolutionary Bitcoin technology was proposed. What’s good about cryptocurrencies?
They can be used to quickly pay for any service in the world, stored securely without a single intermediary; they continue to grow rapidly in price, are easily converted into the currency of any country, and allow you to remain completely anonymous.
It is known that to generate cryptocurrency, you need to mine - use electricity and computing power. You can also buy it on the stock exchange - at a higher rate and with a commission. Fortunately, today, Egypt has the opportunity to earn any cryptocurrency absolutely easily and legally - thanks to the MelBet EG betting site.
There, you can bet on matches with the best odds and earn money on football, squash, boxing, tennis, and dozens of other sports - and collect your winnings not only in EGP but also in any cryptocurrency. But, of course, the use of blockchain is not limited to just crypto tokens.
Why Do We Need Blockchain at All?
Without many buzzwords, blockchain is needed to ensure authenticity. What verification methods have been used before? For example, wax seals on envelopes. Or government forms - with watermarks and a complex seal. You can also use trusted intermediaries - for example, a bank - if we are talking about finances. After all, it is unlikely that a bank will betray its reputation for the sake of stealing your transfer of 1000 Egyptian pounds.
And yet, all this is vulnerable. Seals or signatures can be forged (besides, you can’t transfer them to the Internet). Government forms - too, and the state can fall into a crisis or simply cancel old obligations. And even with independent banks, for example, there may be problems - after all, they are controlled by specific people. Blockchain solves all these problems. It is an open register, the records that are available to everyone (for example, you can find out the balance of any cryptocurrency account) - but which cannot be falsified in any way.
How Does Blockchain Work? Principles of the Most Secure Verification Method
Roughly speaking, the blockchain protects against counterfeiting in two ways at once: a large number of witnesses and an impartial mathematical algorithm. The blockchain itself is a database of records with information that is simultaneously owned by all computers in the network. All computers constantly communicate with each other and collectively check every change in the blockchain.
Let's say you have 0.01 BTC to transfer to someone else. Then, you publicly declare this to all computers in the network. Now you need to confirm this operation somehow - control that you have these funds. This requires an independent, honest computer witness. Each time, it is chosen randomly, or rather, it wins a competition for the right to become a witness.
The essence of this competition is to be the first to solve a complex mathematical problem (doing such exercises is called “mining”). All other network participants will check the answer. This can be done by anyone who has a copy of the blockchain database (checking the answer is easy, but calculating it yourself is very difficult). Only after this will the “universal” blockchain be updated - and information about your transaction will appear.
Why Can’t Blockchain Be Faked?
Without many buzzwords, blockchain is needed to ensure authenticity. What verification methods have been used before? For example, wax seals on envelopes. Or government forms - with watermarks and a complex seal. You can also use trusted intermediaries - for example, a bank- if we are talking about finances. After all, it is unlikely that a bank will betray its reputation for the sake of stealing your transfer of 1000 Egyptian pounds.
And yet, all this is vulnerable. Seals or signatures can be forged (besides, you can’t transfer them to the Internet). Government forms - too, and the state can fall into a crisis or simply cancel old obligations. And even with independent banks, for example, there may be problems - after all, they are controlled by specific people. Blockchain solves all these problems. It is an open register, the records that are available to everyone (for example, you can find out the balance of any cryptocurrency account) - but which cannot be falsified in any way.
How Does Blockchain Work? Principles of the Most Secure Verification Method
Blockchain application services are not limited to cryptocurrencies and financial transactions. Remember the example of seals and government forms or intermediary organisations. Wherever they are needed, verification is needed, and therefore, blockchain:
● Confirmation of ownership - for real estate or for an art piece you bought, for example (even digital, as well as for your personal copyrights;
● Gambling - in games and entertainment that are held not for the sake of virtual items and achievements but with real cash prizes, fairness control is especially important; for example, on MelBet, all top online games have the function of independent verification of the fairness of mechanics;
● Issuance of rights and licensing - thanks to the blockchain, it will no longer be possible to buy a fake driver's license or a diploma of higher education;
● Security systems - independent registries can be used in security systems and wherever it is necessary to protect against counterfeiting of information, for example, in IoT devices;
Blockchain systems, in fact, technically prohibit lies and forgeries - therefore, the potential scope of their application is huge.
Blockchain of the Future: Promising Sectors for Using Chain Ledgers
So far, 90% of blockchain technologies are concentrated in the financial sector. However, this does not mean that it will always be like this. Here are some areas where we will see a blockchain breakthrough in the near future - including in Egyptian markets:
● Control of product release and supply chains - if there are goods with license numbers - equipment, medicines, etc., no one will be able to make a counterfeit and enter fake numbers into the database;
● Fair political elections - with blockchain, it will not be possible to miscalculate the results or steal someone else's voting rights;
● Gaming and e-sports - even here, there is an application for blockchain if you want to create an independent system, for example, with rewarding players without taking into account the decision of a single centre;
As for eSports - do not think that the maximum reward in games can be experience points or skins (and it is not even about whether the blockchain has already been implemented or not, but about the emergence of high-quality online betting services. On the Melbet website, bets on eSports tournaments have long been available, from the League of Legends to CS. Of course, winnings can be collected in Egyptian pounds and any of the 20+ popular types of crypto tokens.
Blockchain Pioneers: Egypt's Top Users
Egypt is actively implementing blockchain technologies - both at the private and state levels. For example, the Advanced Cargo Information (ACI) system has been implemented at customs for several years now, and it uses blockchain to increase transparency and security in customs procedures. The system is involved in organising the transfer of documents between carriers and state customs. Service has become faster for all users, except for fraudsters - now they are banned from crossing the border.
Blockchain technologies are mandatory in Melbet betting software. The largest Egyptian betting platform is number 1 in terms of customer security - no one can access your profile and account. Blockchain also allows you to quickly and securely transfer data from sports informants without the risk of counterfeiting, providing the best service for sports analysts, as well as making secure payments of winnings on bets for clients anywhere in the world.
Prospects: What Will the Introduction of Blockchain Bring to Egyptian Reality?
Apparently, in the coming years, we will see blockchain at the service of the Egyptian government, logisticians, and carriers in medical databases. Of course, financiers will continue to implement blockchain.
At the very least, blockchain will reduce the costs of information security - extra money can be redirected to improve the quality of activities in any other area. In the long-term, blockchain can completely change all Internet services and our ways of working with any values - from information to real wealth.
La Chine dévoile un processeur quantique fiable à 99.9% 🚀
Exploiter la rotation terrestre pour produire de l'électricité: l'énergie verte de demain ? ⚡
No cloud needed: Nvidia creates gaming-centric AI chatbot that runs on your GPU
Nvidia has seen its fortunes soar in recent years as its AI-accelerating GPUs have become worth their weight in gold. Most people use their Nvidia GPUs for games, but why not both? Nvidia has a new AI you can run at the same time, having just released its experimental G-Assist AI. It runs locally on your GPU to help you optimize your PC and get the most out of your games. It can do some neat things, but Nvidia isn't kidding when it says this tool is experimental.
G-Assist is available in the Nvidia desktop app, and it consists of a floating overlay window. After invoking the overlay, you can either type or speak to G-Assist to check system stats or make tweaks to your settings. You can ask basic questions like, "How does DLSS Frame Generation work?" but it also has control over some system-level settings.
By calling up G-Assist, you can get a rundown of how your system is running, including custom data charts created on the fly by G-Assist. You can also ask the AI to tweak your machine, for example, optimizing the settings for a particular game or toggling on or off a setting. G-Assist can even overclock your GPU if you so choose, complete with a graph of expected performance gains.
