Month: September 2017

(credit: US Navy)

It's a sad reality in 2017 that a data breach affecting 143 million people is dwarfed by other recent hacks—for instance, the ones hitting Yahoo in 2013 and 2014, which exposed personal details for 1 billion and 500 million users respectively; another that revealed account details for 412 million accounts on sex and swinger community site AdultFriendFinder last year; and an eBay hack in 2014 that spilled sensitive data for 145 million users.

The breach Equifax reported Thursday, however, very possibly is the most severe of all for a simple reason: the breath-taking amount of highly sensitive data it handed over to criminals. By providing full names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and, in some cases, driver license numbers, it provided most of the information banks, insurance companies, and other businesses use to confirm consumers are who they claim to be. The theft, by criminals who exploited a security flaw on the Equifax website, opens the troubling prospect the data is now in the hands of hostile governments, criminal gangs or both and will remain so indefinitely.

Hacks hitting Yahoo and other sites, in contrast, may have breached more accounts, but the severity of the personal data was generally more limited. And in most cases the damage could be contained by changing a password or getting a new credit card number.

Enlarge / Drugs. (credit: Getty | Joe Raedle)

The manufacturer of EpiPen devices failed to address known malfunctions in its epinephrine auto-injectors even as hundreds of customer complaints rolled in and failures were linked to deaths, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

The damning allegations came to light today when the FDA posted a warning letter it sent September 5 to the manufacturer, Meridian Medical Technologies, Inc. The company (which is owned by Pfizer) produces EpiPens for Mylan, which owns the devices and is notorious for dramatically raising prices by more than 400 percent in recent years.

The auto-injectors are designed to be used during life-threatening allergic reactions to provide a quick shot of epinephrine. If they fail to fire, people experiencing a reaction can die or suffer serious illnesses. According to the FDA, that’s exactly what happened for hundreds of customers.

Enlarge / One of Raef Lawson's promotional shots on his IMDB page. (credit: IMDB)

Update (1:40p ET, 9/8): This post has been updated with information from Lawson's re-direct testimony, as well as a transcript (PDF) with that testimony.

The sole plaintiff going to trial over his treatment in the "gig economy" has a serious problem. Under cross-examination yesterday, former GrubHub deliveryman Raef Lawson admitted that he lied on his applications to GrubHub, got paid for shifts he barely worked, and took steps to avoid doing some deliveries.

Lawson also acknowledged that, before applying to GrubHub, he consulted with his attorney, who has specialized in lawsuits against so-called "gig economy" companies, like Uber and Lyft. These companies typically provide workers with part-time work and flexible shifts, but few other benefits. And Lawson was fired from another gig economy platform, Postmates, which directly accused him of fraud.

Enlarge (credit: Michael Theis)

Equifax, a provider of consumer credit reports, said it experienced a data breach affecting as many as 143 million US people after criminals exploited a vulnerability on its website. The US population is about 324 million people, so that's about 44 percent of its population.

The data exposed in the hack includes names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and, in some cases, driver license numbers. The hackers also accessed credit card numbers for 209,000 US consumers and dispute documents with personal identifying information for about 182,000 US people. Limited personal information for an unknown number of Canadian and UK residents was also exposed. Equifax—which also provides credit monitoring services for people whose personal information is exposed—said the unauthorized access occurred from mid-May through July.

"Criminals exploited a US website application vulnerability to gain access to certain files," Equifax said in a statement late Thursday, without elaborating. That leaves open a wide range of possibilities, with injection bugs, faulty authentication mechanisms, and cross-site scripting vulnerabilities topping the list of the most widely exploited website flaws.

Enlarge / In the movie Her, a man falls in love with a commercially available AI. Maybe it was developed at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab? (credit: Annapurna Pictures)

In one of the most lucrative partnerships ever between a corporation and a university, IBM will team up with MIT to engage in 10 years of "fundamental AI research." The $240 million deal will go toward the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, a mix of IBM researchers and 100 MIT academics working at the MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The goal, said IBM reps, is to "advance AI hardware, software, and algorithms related to deep learning and other areas, increase AI's impact on industries, such as health care and cybersecurity, and explore the economic and ethical implications of AI on society."

Working from offices in Kendall Square—a neighborhood that's become an incubator for many hybrid academic/corporate startups—researchers at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab will be focused on basic research with an eye toward commercializing what they discover. IBM wants to "encourage MIT faculty and students to launch companies that will focus on commercializing AI."

MIT has had a number of these academic/corporate partnerships over the years. Perhaps most famously, the MIT Media Lab has contributed to countless successful products, and tech companies can pay to outsource their research and development to Media Lab groups.

A GIF showing the difficulty/skin-color choices in South Park: The Fractured But Whole (credit: Ubisoft)

Writers from John Scalzi to author Shannon Sullivan have called being white living life in "easy mode" when compared to the treatment that people of color receive. The upcoming RPG South Park: The Fractured But Whole takes that concept and integrates it right into the gameplay, increasing the difficulty for created characters as their chosen skin tone becomes darker.

Eurogamer was among the first to notice and publicize the feature. At a recent preview event, the site captured footage showing difficulty levels ranging from "easy" for a light-skinned character to "very difficult" for the darkest skin option. "Don't worry, this doesn't affect combat," character Eric Cartman says as you operate the slider. "Just every other aspect of your whole life."

As the developers clarified to Eurogamer, the difficulty setting "affects the amount of money you receive and the way other characters speak to you throughout the course of the game." That raises the concept beyond a throwaway joke on the character creator and into an integral part of the way the game proceeds.

A more detailed look at how some ground-source systems work: cold fluid absorbs some of the heat from the ground, and that low-level heat is transferred to another liquid in a heat exchanger, which heats the home. Vector illustration. (credit: Getty Images)

Earlier this summer, a Silicon Valley startup called Dandelion was born out of Alphabet’s X Labs. Dandelion hoped to popularize an old and dusty, but energy-saving, technology—that is, ground-source heat pumps. On Thursday, the company released more details on how it plans to complete its first 2017 run.

Dandelion’s pitch to customers and investors was that it had developed new drilling equipment and techniques that would allow it to drill 400-foot-deep holes in a residential yard in a fraction of the time it would take for older ground-source heat pump companies to do the same. But, in August, the company had few details on the internal half of the system (that is, the half that actually operates within your house).

Today, Dandelion announced a partnership with a local ground-source heat company in upstate New York called Aztech. Together, they hope to iron out some of the more squirrely practical details on how a tech-sector startup will place complicated infrastructure in residential homes. The division of labor is as such: Dandelion will drill the holes in the ground, and Aztech will inspect the home and install the outdoor pipes to the home’s existing ductwork. The heat pump itself—a large cabinet made by a company called WaterFurnace—will provide heat and cooling during the winter and summer months.