Month: April 2017

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Anthony Levandowski, the embattled Uber engineer who has been accused of illegally downloading thousands of documents while he worked at Google, won't be able to avoid handing over documents by pleading the Fifth Amendment.

That's the decision (PDF) of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, published today. Levandowski filed an emergency motion with the appeals court, seeking to overturn the decision. The decision was made by US District Judge William Alsup, who had told Levandowski he would need to hand over an unredacted privilege log.

"Mr. Levandowski argues that he is entitled to relief under the Fifth Amendment because production of the unredacted privilege log could potentially incriminate him," write the appeals judges in a four-page order. "We are not persuaded that the district court erred in its ruling requiring defendants to produce an unredacted privilege log."

Enlarge / In this post a venture capital partner pulls apart this machine. (credit: Juicero)

A product designer and venture capital partner took apart a Juicero to see what made the notorious $400 juice presser so expensive. What he found was eight separate machined parts and a slew of custom plastic pieces that likely made the presser more expensive than it needed to be.

Juicero came under fire last week when Bloomberg reporters found that they could press juice out of the company’s proprietary juice bags with their hands, eschewing the expensive cold-press juicer. Some investors said they assumed the Juicero would press large chunks of fruit and vegetables, but instead the heavily-funded start-up delivered bags of pre-cut pulp to Juicero owners.

In his teardown, Ben Einstein notes that Juicero seems to rely heavily on custom-designed and complex parts, all of which add considerably to the appliance’s cost to build. Some of the eight machined parts (parts that are cut from a larger piece of material) even have rounded surfaces, which makes the parts even more expensive. Einstein calls out the Juicero for “unnecessary complexity.” He points out that the juice press uses what seem to be an excess of components just to keep the press door sealed, including “10 custom injection molded parts,” two stamped steel parts, a gear, two custom dowel pins, and more.

Enlarge / A Knightscope K5 security robot. (credit: Knightscope)

A 300-pound egg-shaped security robot was punched to the ground by an allegedly drunken man outside a Silicon Valley shopping center, Mountain View police said.

A 41-year-old Mountain View man has been arrested in connection to the alleged parking-lot altercation with the Knightscope-made droid. The accused robo-assailant, who faces charges of prowling and public intoxication, was identified as Jason Sylvain. The robot suffered minor scratches and is back on duty following last week's incident, which was first reported Tuesday by ABC7 News.

Sylvain was not immediately reachable for comment.

Enlarge / Mylan Inc. CEO Heather Bresch testifies on Capitol Hill in a hearing on "Reviewing the Rising Price of EpiPens." (credit: Getty | Alex Wong)

When Mylan dramatically increased the price of its life-saving EpiPen devices, it drew sharp rebuke all around for what seemed like a purely greedy—and heartless—move. But according to a lawsuit filed by French drug maker Sanofi, the move wasn’t just out of simple greed. Instead, it was part of an underhanded scheme to “squash” competition from Sanofi’s rival device, the Auvi-Q.

With the lofty prices and near-monopoly over the market, Mylan could dangle deep discounts to drug suppliers—with the condition that they turn their backs on Sanofi’s Auvi-Q—the lawsuit alleges. Suppliers wouldn’t dare ditch the most popular auto-injector. And with the high prices, the rebates wouldn’t put a dent in Mylan’s hefty profits, Sanofi speculates.

Coupled with a smear campaign and other underhanded practices, Mylan effectively pushed Sanofi out of the US epinephrine auto-injector market, Sanofi alleges. The lawsuit, filed Monday in a federal court in New Jersey, seeks damages under US Antitrust laws.

Enlarge / The announcement of the Creators Update in October 2016.

Two weeks into its phased rollout, the Creators Update (version 1703) is on about ten percent of Windows 10 machines.

That number comes from AdDuplex, which collects statistics from Windows 10 machines running apps built with its advertising SDK. 9.8 percent of Windows 10 machines are on 1703, 82.1 percent are on the Anniversary Update, 6 percent are on version 1511, and just 1.8 percent are on the original RTM release.

That original release (sometimes known as 1507, following the year-year-month-month naming pattern used for subsequent releases) moves out of support on May 9. Although Windows 10 itself has a minimum of ten years of support, maintaining that support will still require periodic upgrades. This is not an entirely new policy; in the days of Windows Service Packs, the release of a new Service Pack would start a two-year countdown for support of the previous Service Pack. After those two years, only the new Service Pack would be supported. The timetable is a little condensed, however; Windows 10 1507 is not yet two years old, and it won't be two years old when it falls out of support.