Month: July 2022

Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto)

When Amazon launched Amazon Care to its employees in 2019, the goal was to test the product before rolling it out nationwide. After that rollout happened earlier this year, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told Insider that the expansion would "fundamentally" change the health care game by dramatically enhancing the medical-care process. He predicted that patients in the future would be so used to telehealth and other new conveniences that they'll think that things like long wait times and delays between in-person visits commonly experienced today are actually "insane."

Now, The Wall Street Journal reports, Amazon has gone one step closer to that future by agreeing to a $3.9 billion deal to purchase One Medical, a company that operates a network of health clinics. With this move, Amazon will expand the number of patients it serves by gaining access to "a practice that operates more than 180 medical offices in 25 US markets and works with more than 8,000 companies to provide health benefits to employees, including with in-person and virtual care."

Echoing Jassy's enthusiasm, Neil Lindsay, Amazon Health Services' senior vice president, told WSJ that the company thinks "health care is high on the list of experiences that need reinvention." Purchasing One Medical is a way for Amazon to break further into the $4 trillion health care industry at a time when Amazon's revenue is down and costs are up.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | ollo)

US Senators Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) want to ban Internet data caps. The senators today introduced the "Uncap America Act," which would "prohibit predatory data caps that force families to pay high costs and unnecessary fees to access high-speed broadband," they said in a press release.

"A broadband Internet access service provider shall not impose a data cap except when tailored primarily for the purposes of reasonable network management or managing network congestion," the bill says. The proposed law would order the Federal Communications Commission to issue "regulations to define the conditions under which a data cap is to be considered tailored to the purpose of reasonable network management or managing network congestion."

Data caps that don't comply with the exceptions would violate the Communications Act. "While certain broadband Internet access service networks may require practices to effectively manage congestion, those practices should be tailored to improve equitable access among consumers," the bill says. "Unnecessary data caps limit participation in the digital economy and are contrary to the public interest."

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A secretive seller of cyberattack software recently exploited a previously unknown Chrome vulnerability and two other zero-days in campaigns that covertly infected journalists and other targets with sophisticated spyware, security researchers said.

CVE-2022-2294, as the vulnerability is tracked, stems from memory corruption flaws in Web Real-Time Communications, an open source project that provides JavaScript programming interfaces to enable real-time voice, text, and video communications capabilities between web browsers and devices. Google patched the flaw on July 4 after researchers from security firm Avast privately notified the company it was being exploited in watering hole attacks, which infect targeted websites with malware in hopes of then infecting frequent users. Microsoft and Apple have since patched the same WebRTC flaw in their Edge and Safari browsers, respectively.

Avast said on Thursday that it uncovered multiple attack campaigns, each delivering the exploit in its own way to Chrome users in Lebanon, Turkey, Yemen, and Palestine. The watering hole sites were highly selective in choosing which visitors to infect. Once the watering hole sites successfully exploited the vulnerability, they used their access to install DevilsTongue, the name Microsoft gave last year to advanced malware sold by an Israel-based company named Candiru.

Enlarge / The Euclid mission is ready to go—all it needs is a launch vehicle. (credit: Thales Alenia Space)

The author of this piece is part of the team that has helped developed the Euclid mission.

The European Space Agency had been on the verge of launching the billion-euro Euclid satellite, which is designed to address the most pressing unsolved questions in astronomy: What are the true natures of dark matter and energy? ESA had scheduled a March 2023 launch for Euclid from French Guiana—but it was on a Soyuz rocket. The war in Ukraine brought an end to Soyuz operations from Guiana and started a period of uncertainty for Euclid’s team.

Keeping Euclid in storage could cost 100 million euros per year and put its entire scientific team and infrastructure in standby mode, potentially compromising European leadership in space-based observational cosmology. The partner ESA has used for almost all its launches, Arianespace, is building what should be a good backup launcher, the Ariane 62. But that rocket has not flown yet, and with each passing month, its test flight date slips further. Once it’s ready, Euclid would not even be the first Ariane 62 launch: at least four other satellites are in the queue before it.

Enlarge / Ubisoft insists that its first video game based on the film series Avatar is still on the way—but will now miss its original "2022" launch window. (credit: Ubisoft)

Fans of gaming mega-publisher Ubisoft may have held out hope that an upcoming presentation, slated to stream online in September, might contain a few surprises or confirmations for more big games coming in 2022. The company's latest financial disclosure presentation popped that balloon, however, in a massive way.

A Thursday disclosure to investors was paired with an audio presentation hosted by Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, and its first nine minutes contained mostly doom and gloom. After confirming previously announced plans to launch a Mario + Rabbids sequel and the long-delayed Skull & Bones pirate-battling game, Guillemot confirmed two lengthy game delays and four game cancellations—while remaining mum about at least two games in apparent development limbo.

More like “The Way of the Wait”

The arguably biggest news concerns a delay to Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, an open-world adventure game based on James Cameron's Avatar film series. The game is now slated to launch in Ubisoft's "fiscal year 24," which could mean any time between April 2023 and March 2024. That's a substantial bump from its original "2022" launch window—which could have put it near the December 16 launch of that film series' first sequel in 13 years, Avatar: The Way of the Water.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | peterhowell)

Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has ordered mobile carriers to explain what geolocation data they collect from customers and how they use it. Rosenworcel's probe could be the first step toward stronger action—but the agency's authority in this area is in peril because Congress is debating a data privacy law that could preempt the FCC from regulating carriers' privacy practices.

Rosenworcel sent letters of inquiry Tuesday "to the top 15 mobile providers," the FCC announced. The chairwoman's letters asked carriers "about their policies around geolocation data, such as how long geolocation data is retained and why and what the current safeguards are to protect this sensitive information," the FCC said.

The letters also "probe carriers about their processes for sharing subscriber geolocation data with law enforcement and other third parties' data-sharing agreements. Finally, the letters ask whether and how consumers are notified when their geolocation information is shared with third parties," the FCC said.

Enlarge / Pouch cells of the sort tested for endurance. (credit: Cuberg)

While lithium-ion batteries have experienced steady improvements, a lot of research has gone into new chemistries that provide a much larger leap in performance. Some of that work has focused on materials like silicon or sulfur that can potentially store far more lithium than existing electrode materials. But other options get rid of electrode materials entirely. These include lithium-air and lithium-metal batteries.

All of these have faced issues with stability, with batteries based on the technology having a short life span compared to existing lithium-ion batteries (though batteries with some silicon are already in use). But on Thursday, a company is announcing that a lithium-metal battery it has in development has reached a stability that's competitive with existing lithium-ion batteries, retaining 80 percent of its initial capacity out to nearly 700 charge/discharge cycles—and that this has been validated by an outside testing lab.

To learn more about this advance and where lithium metal might get used, we talked with Richard Wang, founder of Cuberg, a subsidiary of battery giant Northvolt.