Month: June 2023

Enlarge (credit: Bloomberg)

Lordstown Motors has filed for bankruptcy protection, marking the end of the road for an ailing electric truck manufacturer that promised a corner of the US Rust Belt hundreds of jobs tied to the auto industry’s green transition.

The company said the move followed the unraveling of a deal with Taiwan’s Foxconn, which in 2021 agreed to partner with Lordstown and help produce its flagship pick-up truck, the Endurance, and last year purchased its plant.

In a statement on Tuesday, Lordstown accused Foxconn of failing to “execute on the agreed-upon strategy, leaving us with Chapter 11 as the only viable option to maximize the value of Lordstown’s assets for the benefit of our stakeholders.”

Enlarge / Starfield is the astronaut marooned on the Xbox planet, gazing longingly at Call of Duty exploring the rest of the PlayStation galaxy. Look,don't think too hard about it... (credit: Bethesda)

Amid the ongoing regulatory and legal hurdles Microsoft has faced in its proposed $69 billion purchase of Activision, much has been made of the difference between Microsoft's promise to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation and the company's moves to bar Bethesda games like Starfield from Sony's platform. That contrast was large enough, in fact, that a prominent Bethesda executive was bewildered by it in a private email to fellow Bethesda employees last year.

The February 2022 email, which was revealed as part of the Federal Trade Commission trial seeking to block the Activision deal (as noted by Axios' Steven Totilo), shows Bethesda Senior VP of Global Marketing and Communication Pete Hines perplexed by Microsoft's public comments at the time regarding keeping Call of Duty on PlayStation consoles going forward. "I'm confused," Hines writes. "Is [this Call of Duty policy] not the opposite of what we were just asked (told) to do with our own titles? What's the difference?"

"I understand that there is likely nuance here, but at its core it's being read as the opposite of what happened with us," Hines said in a separate email to Microsoft Xbox Chief Phil Spencer the same day.

Enlarge (credit: Brandon Martin/Rice University)

On average, patients with chronic illnesses follow their prescribed treatments about 50 percent of the time. That’s a problem. If drugs aren’t taken regularly, on time, and in the right doses, the treatment may not work, and the person’s condition can worsen.

The issue isn’t that people are unwilling to take their prescriptions. It’s that some drugs, like HIV medications, require unwavering commitment. And essential medicines, like insulin, can be brutally expensive. Plus, the Covid pandemic illustrated the difficulties of delivering perishable follow-up vaccine shots to regions with no cold chain. “Are we really squeezing all the utility out of those drugs and vaccines?” asks Kevin McHugh, a bioengineer at Rice University. “The answer is, in general, no. And sometimes we’re missing out on a lot.”

For example, the injectable drug bevacizumab can be used to treat macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness. But even though it’s effective, dosing adherence is notoriously low. “People hate getting injections into their eyes,” McHugh says. “And I don’t blame them at all—that’s terrible.”

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Researchers have discovered previously unknown Mac malware infecting a cryptocurrency exchange. It contains a full suite of capabilities, including the ability to steal private data and download and execute new malicious files.

Dubbed JokerSpy, the malware is written in the Python programming language and makes use of an open-source tool known as SwiftBelt, which is designed for legitimate security professionals to test their networks for vulnerabilities. JokerSpy first came to light earlier this month in this post from security firm Bitdefender. Researchers for the company said they identified Windows and Linux components, suggesting that versions exist for those platforms as well.

Five days later, researchers for security firm Elastic reported that the diagnostic endpoint protection tool they sell had detected xcc, a binary file that’s part of JokerSpy. Elastic didn’t identify the victim other than to say it was a “prominent Japanese cryptocurrency exchange.”