Month: March 2016

On Monday, the US Supreme Court declined to hear Apple’s request for an appeal on a ruling that said the company was liable for violating antitrust laws and engaging in price-fixing by letting publishers set prices for e-books sold on Apple's iBooks platform. Now out of options, Apple will have to pay $400 million to e-book consumers and $50 million to plaintiff’s lawyers, as per a settlement that the company reached in 2014.

In 2012, Apple and five publishers (Penguin, HarperCollins, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan) were sued by the Department of Justice and 33 states’ attorney general offices for conspiring to offer e-books at a higher price than Amazon’s loss-leading $9.99. The publishers all eventually settled for a total of $166 million to states and consumers, but Apple held out and eventually lost a judgement in Manhattan district court.

The company then appealed to the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that it had actually boosted competition by offering new-release books for $12.99 to $14.99. "Antitrust laws are intended to foster competition, not keep prices down at any cost,” Apple wrote in a rebuttal to the district judge’s ruling in 2014.

George W. Bush stands next to a Frenchified cardboard version of himself. (credit: The Smoking Gun)

A year and a half after he was indicted, a Romanian man who broke into the e-mail of a family member of two former presidents is set to be extradited to the United States.

Romania's top court approved the temporary extradition of Marcel Lehel Lazăr, also known as "Guccifer" and "Micul Fum," according to a report by IDG News. Lazăr allegedly broke into the e-mail account of an unnamed family member of both former president George H. W. Bush as well as George W. Bush, intercepting images including family photos and self-portraits painted by George W. Bush. The hack exposed other deeply personal information about the family, including family e-mails planning a possible funeral for the older former president, written when he was hospitalized in late 2013.

The Romanian suspect, a former cab driver, will face charges of wire fraud, unauthorized access to a protected computer, aggravated identity theft, cyberstalking, and obstruction of justice. He has been charged in the Eastern District of Virginia. The Romanian court decision allows him to be extradited for up to 18 months to face the charges.

Storage device manufacturer Seagate's executives informed employees last week that their income tax data had been shared with an unknown outside party as the result of a targeted phishing attack. On March 1, a Seagate employee sent the data to an outside e-mail address after receiving an e-mail purportedly from Seagate's CEO Stephen Luczo requesting 2015 W-2 data for current and former Seagate employees. The employee, believing the request to be real, forwarded the W-2 reporting data—exposing everyone at Seagate to potential tax fraud and identity theft.

The Seagate breach comes less than a week after Snapchat employees' data was leaked in the same way. Security reporter Brian Krebs reported the breach after learning of it from a Seagate employee who had been given written notification of the breach.

Seagate's spokesperson Eric DeRitis confirmed the incident to Krebs: "On March 1, Seagate Technology learned that the 2015 W-2 tax form information for current and former US-based employees was sent to an unauthorized third party in response to the phishing e-mail scam. The information was sent by an employee who believed the phishing e-mail was a legitimate internal company request.” DeRitis told Krebs "several thousand" employees were affected, and that the company is working with federal law enforcement; employees will receive two years of credit protection from the company.

Valery Polyakov looks out of Mir as space shuttle Discovery approaches the space station in 1995. (credit: NASA)

When Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko returned from space last week after 340 days, they showed few outward signs of fatigue. Moreover, they had the self-satisfaction of putting in nearly a year of very hard work on the International Space Station. Their efforts, along with those of hundreds of scientists on Earth, will undoubtedly advance our knowledge of the effect of long-duration spaceflight on human health.

But to call Kelly and Kornienko pioneers in the truest sense of the word, as those who ventured into the truly unknown, would be a disservice to the Russian cosmonauts who did so much more than two decades ago in more cramped, less comfortable conditions aboard the Mir space station.

Before NASA’s one-year mission, four Russian cosmonauts had spent a year or more in space, beginning with Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov in 1987. Russian and Kazakh space officials were quick to remind Kelly and Kornienko of this last week after they landed in a remote area of Kazakhstan.

In a surprising blog post Monday morning, Microsoft announced that Lionhead Studios, known in recent years for the Fable franchise, is being shut down. Development is being halted on the long-planned cross-platform multiplayer title Fable Legends. Danish studio Press Play, which was behind Max: The Curse of Brotherhood, is being closed as well.

"These have been tough decisions and we have not made them lightly, nor are they a reflection on these development teams—we are incredibly fortunate to have the talent, creativity and commitment of the people at these studios," Microsoft Studios Europe General Manager Hanno Lemke wrote. "We have nothing but heart-felt thanks for the members of Lionhead and Press Play for their contributions to Xbox and gaming. We are committed to working closely with those affected by today’s news to find them new opportunities at Xbox, or partnering with the broader development community to help place them in jobs elsewhere in the games industry should they desire."

Lionhead was founded in 1996 by Peter Molyneux—at the time well-known for PC classics like Populous and Magic Carpet—along with Games Workshop's Steve Jackson and veterans from Molyneux's former Bullfrog Studios. After making a name for itself with the ambitious Black & White series of god games and original Xbox RPG Fable, Lionhead was scooped up by Microsoft in 2006. A series of Fable follow-ups followed (including an ill-fated Kinect-powered spin-off), before Molyneux left the studio in 2012 to start 22cans (which has been mired in some controversy of late).