Month: January 2019

Enlarge / Former Regional Director Sunrise Lee, a defendant in the Insys trial, exits the John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse in Boston on January 29, 2019. (Photo by Matthew J. Lee/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) (credit: Getty Images/Boston Globe)

A former regional sales director for Insys Therapeutics allegedly gave a lap dance to a doctor as the company was pushing him to prescribe its deadly opioid painkiller to patients. That’s according to multiple reports of testimony given Tuesday from a former Insys colleague in a federal court in Boston.

The testimony is part of a federal racketeering trial getting underway this week against Insys founder John Kapoor and four former executives, including the sales director, Sunrise Lee. Federal prosecutors allege that the Insys executives used bribes and kickbacks to get doctors to prescribe the company’s powerful and addictive fentanyl spray, called Subsys—which was intended only for cancer patients experiencing pain that’s not alleviated by other medications (aka “breakthrough pain”). The former executives are also accused of misleading and defrauding health insurance companies that ended up covering the drug for patients who did not need it. A congressional investigation in 2017 concluded that Insys sales representatives bluntly lied and tricked insurers to do that—and the investigators released the tapes to prove it.

Two additional former Insys executives—former Insys CEO and President Michael Babich and former Vice President of Sales Alec Burlakoff—were also charged in the case but have pleaded guilty and are cooperating with prosecutors.

Enlarge / Former Regional Director Sunrise Lee, a defendant in the Insys trial, exits the John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse in Boston on January 29, 2019. (Photo by Matthew J. Lee/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) (credit: Getty Images/Boston Globe)

A former regional sales director for Insys Therapeutics allegedly gave a lap dance to a doctor as the company was pushing him to prescribe its deadly opioid painkiller to patients. That’s according to multiple reports of testimony given Tuesday from a former Insys colleague in a federal court in Boston.

The testimony is part of a federal racketeering trial getting underway this week against Insys founder John Kapoor and four former executives, including the sales director, Sunrise Lee. Federal prosecutors allege that the Insys executives used bribes and kickbacks to get doctors to prescribe the company’s powerful and addictive fentanyl spray, called Subsys—which was intended only for cancer patients experiencing pain that’s not alleviated by other medications (aka “breakthrough pain”). The former executives are also accused of misleading and defrauding health insurance companies that ended up covering the drug for patients who did not need it. A congressional investigation in 2017 concluded that Insys sales representatives bluntly lied and tricked insurers to do that—and the investigators released the tapes to prove it.

Two additional former Insys executives—former Insys CEO and President Michael Babich and former Vice President of Sales Alec Burlakoff—were also charged in the case but have pleaded guilty and are cooperating with prosecutors.

Enlarge / Google and Facebook circumvented the App Store to distribute VPN apps that collected user data against Apple's policies. (credit: Aurich / Getty)

Both Facebook and Google have used Apple's Enterprise Developer Program—which is intended for exclusive use by companies to give system administrators the ability to distribute apps to employees' devices internally—to circumvent Apple's app store and distribute to users applications that closely monitor users' app, messaging, and network activity.

News of Facebook's application was published on TechCrunch yesterday, leading Apple to revoke Facebook's enterprise certificate. This same certificate had been used internally by Facebook for distributing beta builds of Facebook's apps and for other needs, so the revocation poses a serious challenge for the company.

News of Google's similar program also broke on TechCrunch, but that happened more recently, and Apple has not yet indicated whether it intends to take similar action with Google. We'll start by unpacking the Facebook side.

Enlarge / Not your typical "Romero" zombies: the undead in Kingdom turn fast, move fast, and seem to only come out at night. (credit: YouTube/Netflix)

A disgraced crown prince in medieval Korea must outsmart a power-hungry rival clan and battle a zombie outbreak before it wipes out the country in Kingdom, a genuinely thrilling new period drama from Netflix. It's based on a popular South Korean webcomic, Kingdom of the Gods by Kim Eun-hee, who also adapted it for television.

(Mild spoilers below.)

The series is set in Korea's Joeson period, a medieval dynasty that lasted some 500 years (1392-1897). The current king has been ill with smallpox (supposedly) and confined to his palace, with only his physicians, royal guards, and young pregnant wife, Queen Cho (Kim Hye-jun), allowed to see him. Not even the king's only son and heir, Crown Prince Lee Chang (Ju Ji-hoon) has seen his father in the last 10 days, and there are rumors that the king has died, with all the civil unrest that entails.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich / Getty)

LAS VEGAS—Like it or not, CES has now become a car show, for the same reason we cover the automotive world now at Ars Technica. Simply put, the tech sector has taken a look at the automobile, and it sees dollar signs. Whether or not this vast annual trade show is the right way to kick off a new year (spoiler—it's not), attending CES does have some value in trend-spotting. And this year, the main trend appeared to be "the same product you saw last year, but with AI." AI-enabled TVs, AI-enabled induction cooktops, and yes, AI in cars.

Truth be told, the idea of an in-car AI personal assistant has been around for a while now. I got my first glimpse at this brave new world in 2016 when Audi showed me its concept called PIA (for Personal Intelligent Assistant). Since then, I've heard talk of such AI helpers from more and more car makers, and the technology is getting closer to production.

Take BMW—in a couple of months, in some markets, you'll be able to buy a 3 Series (or 8 Series, or X5, or Z4) that includes the company's new Intelligent Personal Assistant as a feature of the new seventh-generation infotainment system. Leveraging some rather good voice recognition (take a bow, Nuance), you can give the car instructions like "Hey BMW, I'm cold" at which point it will increase the cabin temperature for you. "We expect much higher engagement with voice interaction," said Dieter May, BMW's SVP for digital products and services.

Enlarge (credit: Thomas Hawk)

If a new proposed municipal ordinance passes in the coming months, San Francisco could become the first city in America to outright ban the use of facial recognition technology by its police department or any other city agency.

According to a new bill unveiled Tuesday and first reported by the San Francisco Examiner and The Verge, the city would also impose a new pre-emptive "Surveillance Technology Policy" for city agencies that want to acquire any new gear that could impact privacy. Such a requirement would put San Francisco in line with its neighboring cities of Oakland and Berkeley.

"Our intent is to catch people’s attention and have a broader conversation as to where the moral precipice is for technology, after which you’ve gone too far," said Lee Hepner, a legislative aide to Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who proposed the bill. "This is a harm to our way of life, a harm to our democracy, and a harm to marginalized communities. There is a salient interest in facial recognition, too: it creeps people out."