Month: April 2016

(credit: NBC TODAY)

Elizabeth Holmes, founder and CEO of blood testing company Theranos, said she was “devastated” by failures at the company’s California laboratory, which have left federal regulators threatening to shut down the lab and ban Holmes from the business of blood testing for at least two years.

In an interview that aired Monday on NBC’s TODAY show, Holmes took full responsibility for the problems, which largely involve inaccurate test results and the hiring of unqualified workers. However, she explained the failures by noting that she was unaware of them.

“I’m the founder and CEO of this company,” she said. “Anything that happens in this company is my responsibility at the end of the day.” But when asked why the laboratory didn’t seem to have protocols to ensure that they were following internal and external quality checks for the medical test results or hiring only employees with the necessary licenses and qualifications to handle those medical tests, Holmes responded, “Probably the most devastating part of this is that I thought we did.”

(credit: Roman Boed)

The Supreme Court on Monday declined (PDF) to hear a challenge from the Authors Guild and other writers claiming Google's scanning of their books amounts to wanton copyright infringement and not fair use.

The guild urged the high court to review a lower court decision in favor of Google that the writers said amounted to an "unprecedented judicial expansion of the fair-use doctrine." (PDF)

At issue is a June decision (PDF) by the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals that essentially said it's legal to scan books if you don't own the copyright. The Authors' Guild originally sued Google, saying that serving up search results from scanned books infringes on publishers' copyrights even though the search giant shows only restricted snippets of the work. The writers also claimed that Google's book search snippets provide an illegal free substitute for their work and that Google Books infringes their "derivative rights" in revenue they could gain from a "licensed search" market.

(credit: Amazon)

Amazon wants to appeal to new customers and is doing so by unbundling its Prime services. The company will now offer Prime Video, its TV and movie streaming services, for $8.99 per month. Amazon Prime as a bundle, which includes Prime Video and Music, free two-day shipping, and more, currently costs $99 per year.

The standalone Prime Video subscription is the first Prime service to be separated from the bundle. Amazon has never offered any Prime services outside the $99 annual subscription, so not only does this give potential new customers a way to try out Prime, but it also positions Prime Video as a direct competitor to services like Netflix and Hulu. Currently, Netflix costs $9.99 per month (and early users who still pay $7.99 per month will feel the price hike in May) and Hulu's subscription services starts at $7.99 per month.

According to CNN Money, Amazon will also offer the complete set of Prime services for $10.99 per month, which comes out to $131.88 per year. The annual membership price of $99 is the better deal in both cases (Prime Video monthly charges will amount to $107.88 per year), but a monthly option gives new customers a chance to try out the service first. It also softens the blow for anyone not willing to shell out $99 for the annual membership, or anyone who doesn't want to commit to the full year.

Orphan Black's fourth season premiere aired last Thursday, so we're taking this opportunity to dissect the popular show's game-changing episode and how it may affect the series from here on out. As such, we've included some, but not all, of the episode's plot spoilers, which begin after the first big-bold text heading below.

You’d be forgiven for turning your nose up at the idea of getting involved with a long-running sci-fi series. It's usually somewhere around a show's fourth season that a producer or showrunner decides it’s time for things to shake things up. It’s the fans’ fault! They’ve already made it clear that they’ll stomach a show’s decision to bend the rules of science and logic. Surely they’ll accept just about any cockamamie twist, right? Let’s kinda-sorta kill Starbuck or add some Kromaggs!

Yet of all modern, long-running sci-fi out there, Orphan Black might be in the best position to endure such a shake-up right now. The clone-obsessed series stumbled through the earlier episodes of its third season last year, especially as it focused on boring villain Dr. Coady, and Delphine’s turn as a Dyad executive, and a bunch of other Dyad plot gobbledygook. Eventually, the BBC America and Space co-production returned to the source of its initial charm: its star. Orphan Black has always shined by mining world-collision moments for both drama and humorous effect, as various clone-carnations of lead actress Tatiana Maslany contend with the other clones’ idiosyncrasies (not to mention their odd friends and family members). Orphan Black got back to this, and it tied a surprisingly neat bow on some of its hokey clone-brother plots.