Month: March 2017

Enlarge / Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos CEO. (credit: Getty | CNBC)

Theranos CEO and founder Elizabeth Holmes is planning to give up some of her personal shares to investors who pledge not to sue the disgraced blood-testing company, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The deals would only involve investors from the last round of funding, which ended in 2015 and brought in more than $600 million. These investors include the family of US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, the family behind Walmart stores, and John Elkann, who controls Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. Investors could get about two free shares of the company for every share they bought.

The deals would also mean that Holmes could lose her majority stake in Theranos.

Enlarge / Young woman checking her running results at the smartphone (credit: Getty | AleksandarNakic)

Makers of three popular health apps are changing their tune about the capabilities and privacy policies of their products following an investigation and settlement with the New York Attorney General’s office.

The makers of Cardiio, Runtastic, and My Baby’s Beat apps all agreed to pay a combined total of $30,000 in fines while changing their advertising claims and privacy policy disclosures, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced Thursday. A year-long investigation by his office found that the three made health claims that were not backed up by data or FDA-approval. They also found that the app makers weren’t forthright about how identifying information from users could be shared with third parties.

“Mobile health apps can benefit consumers if they function as advertised, do not make misleading claims, and protect sensitive user information,” Schneiderman said in a press release. “However, my office will not hesitate to take action against developers that disseminate unfounded information that is both deceptive and potentially harmful to everyday consumers.”

Enlarge / Perovskite crystals in a photovoltaic cell. (credit: Los Alamos National Lab)

Currently, silicon is the dominant technology for photovoltaic solar power. There are a handful of competing thin-film technologies, which are easier to manufacture but rely on more expensive raw materials and don't reach the same efficiencies. These sorts of trade offs have helped drive research into perovskite solar cells, which rely on cheap and abundant raw materials but have the potential for much higher efficiencies.

Still, perovskites have two significant issues. One is that the ability to integrate them into mass production techniques hasn't been demonstrated. The second is that they tend to decay pretty rapidly in the real world. There's been some progress on issue two recently, and now a team at the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL)* has figured out a way to make a perovskite "ink" that should allow mass-manufacturing of the material.

Perovskites aren't actually a single material; instead, they're a class of materials that all share the same general crystal structure. Many of them involve a small organic chemical and metals like lead, along with some other simple chemicals. The best perovskites are closing in on silicon, with efficiencies well over 20 percent (meaning over 20 percent of the incoming sunlight is converted to electricity). Critically, crystals of perovskites are easy to form from a water-based solution, meaning that it should be possible to coat all sorts of materials with a photovoltaic material using manufacturing tech that's been in use for decades.

Enlarge / One of these things is a CIA implant dropper. (credit: From an original image by Scott Ackerman)

WikiLeaks today dumped a smaller subset of documents from its "Vault 7" collection of files from a CIA software developer server. Yet again, these documents are more important from the perspective of WikiLeaks having them than for showing any revelatory content. The exploits detailed in these new files are for vulnerabilities that have largely been independently discovered and patched in the past. The files also reveal that the CIA likely built one of these tools after seeing a presentation on the exploits of Apple's EFI boot firmware at Black Hat in 2012.

The latest batch of files, dramatically named "DarkMatter" (after one of the tools described in the dump), consists of user manuals and other documentation for exploits targeting Apple MacBooks—including malware that leveraged a vulnerability in Apple's Thunderbolt interface uncovered by a researcher two years ago. Named "Sonic Screwdriver" after the ever-useful tool carried by the fictional Doctor of Dr. Who, the malware was stored on an ordinary Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter. It exploited the Thunderbolt interface to allow anyone with physical access to a MacBook to bypass password protection on firmware and install one of a series of Apple-specific CIA "implants."

The first (and only documented) version of Sonic Screwdriver was released in 2012. It worked only on MacBooks built between late 2011 and mid-2012, and the tool used a vulnerability in the firmware of those computers that allowed commands to be sent via the Thunderbolt adapter to change the "boot path" (the location of the files used to boot the computer). The change would allow a local attacker to boot the targeted MacBook from an external device to install malware that eavesdropped on the computer during normal use. Those implants included "DarkMatter," the predecessor to "QuarkMatter." (QuarkMatter is malware that was revealed in the previous WikiLeaks dump, and it infected the EFI partition of a MacBook's storage device.)

Cancer cells in culture from human connective tissue, illuminated by darkfield amplified contrast, at a magnification of 500x. (credit: NCI, Dr. Cecil Fox)

What causes cancer? High-profile culprits obviously include bum genes inherited from parents and harmful environmental and lifestyle factors, such as smoking or not wearing sunscreen. But in a new study in Science, researchers yet again say a big factor is random mutations—those that naturally and unavoidably occur as our error-prone cells go about the normal process of replication.

In fact, two-thirds of the mutations behind cancer are random—not inherited or induced by our environment—researchers at Johns Hopkins conclude from a fresh statistical analysis. But, they caution, the contribution of genetic bad luck doesn’t mean that many cancers aren’t preventable. It’s a point they emphasize carefully after their previous work set off fiery controversy on the matter.

Back in early 2015, the lead researchers of the new study, Cristian Tomasetti and Bert Vogelstein, published a straightforward hypothesis (also in Science) that the risk of cancers can, in part, be explained by simple stem cell replication. The idea being that the more stem cells a tissue type has and the faster those cells make copies of themselves, the more chances there are for mutations from sheer cellular sloppiness—thus, more chances for cancer. So, if a tissue type has a lot of fast-replicating stem cells, it would have a higher risk of developing cancer over a person's lifetime. This could help explain why different tissue types do have different risks of cancer. Lung and thyroid cancer are far more common than brain and pelvic bone cancer, for instance.

Enlarge (credit: ymgerman / Getty Images News)

In new filings, local prosecutors told a court in Washington, DC that within the coming weeks, they expect to extract all data from the seized cellphones of more than 100 allegedly violent protesters arrested during the inauguration of President Donald Trump. Prosecutors also said that this search is validated by recently issued warrants.

The court filing, which was first reported Wednesday by BuzzFeed News, states that approximately half of the protestors prosecuted with rioting or inciting a riot had their phones taken by authorities. Prosecutors hope to uncover any evidence relevant to the case. Under normal judicial procedures, the feds have vowed to share such data with defense attorneys and to delete all irrelevant data.

"All of the Rioter Cell Phones were locked, which requires more time-sensitive efforts to try to obtain the data," Jennifer Kerkhoff, an assistant United States attorney, wrote.

Enlarge / Wanna try out SFV's latest fighter, Kolin, for free? Capcom's week-long online-update beta, starting next week, will let you do just that.

Ars' review of Street Fighter V in February of last year began with this simple declaration: "Definitely good, definitely unfinished." Now 13 months later, Capcom is finally tiptoeing toward the fighting game's complete state as one of the game's most crucial elements will get a major unveil next weekend: a full netcode rehaul.

"We understand that Street Fighter V’s server performance has been a less than optimal experience for many of our players," a Capcom staffer frankly admitted at the company's official blog on Thursday. That comment was followed by an announcement of the "Capcom Fighters Network" (basically, the game's underlying matchmaking and connectivity system) receiving a full overhaul—and a week-long freebie to put money where Capcom's mouth is.

To prove the upgrades out, Capcom will unlock the game's online modes for everyone in the world as a separate, free download via Steam starting Tuesday, March 28. If you already own the game, the beta will carry over your current online stats; if you don't, you'll start fresh. Either way, it's free for all Windows Steam gamers until the beta closes on Monday, April 3, and all current characters from both SFV seasons will be unlocked for free as well. The beta will simultaneously test the latest balance tweaks set to reach the official game.