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(credit: frankieleon)

To help curb “one of the most pressing public health issues” of the day—the epidemic of opioid addiction and overdoses—the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released broad, first-of-its-kind guidelines for the use of the deadly medications.

Of the 12 recommendations in the agency’s guidance, the most prominent is the suggestion that doctors refrain from giving opioid prescriptions for chronic pain—the drugs are OK to use for palliative care, cancer patients, and end-of-life treatments. Patients suffering from chronic pain should explore alternative treatment plans and strategies, such as non-opioid medications and exercise therapy, the agency says. And if a doctor feels an opioid should be used for chronic pain management in a patient, it should be done very thoughtfully and with close monitoring, including urine tests for undisclosed opioid use.

“Plainly stated, the risks of opioids are addiction and death, and the benefits for chronic pain are often transient and generally unproven,” CDC Director Tom Frieden said in a press briefing Tuesday.

(credit: Frank Farm)

On Tuesday, San Francisco-based on-demand food delivery SpoonRocket told customers that it had closed its doors over the weekend. The company’s closure is one of the latest signs that there’s been a financial slowdown in Silicon Valley. The startup offered a short list of relatively inexpensive food options (under $10) and could deliver them in under 10 minutes in many parts of the Bay Area.

"Despite our efforts, unfortunately, the downturn of market and lack of interest in on-demand companies like SpoonRocket from the venture community has forced us to shut down prematurely before we are able to grow into a viable business," SpoonRocket wrote.

TechCrunch reported that the company had raised $13.5 million in venture capital through Y Combinator and other angel funds, as well as some Series A funding.

Comcast is mailing this flyer to Atlanta residents. (credit: TheBen91)

Comcast has begun selling its new gigabit cable service in parts of Atlanta, and the company is heavily pushing customers toward three-year contracts as it tries to fend off a challenge from Google Fiber.

Customers will be able to buy the Internet service for $70 a month and not face any data caps if they sign a three-year deal that has an early termination fee. Without a contract, customers would have to pay $139.95 a month and face a 300GB-per-month data cap.

Customers on the no-contract option can upgrade to unlimited data for an extra $35 a month. Thus, Comcast's gigabit Internet service with unlimited data costs $70 per month with a contract and about $175 without. (A DSLReports article described the data cap details today, and Comcast confirmed them to Ars.)

Enlarge / If you're a gamer (or anyone else), this is not a screen you want to see. (credit: Bromium Labs)

Mainstream websites, including those published by The New York Times, the BBC, MSN, and AOL, are falling victim to a new rash of malicious ads that attempt to surreptitiously install crypto ransomware and other malware on the computers of unsuspecting visitors, security firms warned.

The tainted ads may have exposed tens of thousands of people over the past 24 hours alone, according to a blog post published Monday by Trend Micro. The new campaign started last week when "Angler," a toolkit that sells exploits for Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, and other widely used Internet software, started pushing laced banner ads through a compromised ad network.

According to a separate blog post from Trustwave's SpiderLabs group, one JSON-based file being served in the ads has more than 12,000 lines of heavily obfuscated code. When researchers deciphered the code, they discovered it enumerated a long list of security products and tools it avoided in an attempt to remain undetected.

(credit: NEC Corporation of America)

As telecommunication with doctors—telemedicine—is an increasingly popular way to skip a trip to the doctor’s office, one group of patients may be clamoring for screen-time even when a doctor is right in front of them.

For 88 patients preparing for surgery, a short medical video viewed on an iPad was overwhelmingly preferred for explaining the procedure and ensuring informed consent over actual face-time with the doctor. The randomized, controlled trial, presented at the annual European Association of Urology Congress being held this week in Munich, suggests that technology may be an effective tool for doctors to better prepare patients for treatments.

“Often doctors work within busy practices and clinical environments with time limiting the quality of a consult and or verbal consent for a procedure,” lead researcher Matthew Winter of the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney, Australia, said in a statement. “Through the use of portable video media, a doctor can present his/her own practice and procedural technique in an innovative, dynamic, and engaging manner.”

DUBAI—As the dust settles on Dubai’s World Drone Prix, the first truly global drone-racing event, it’s one of the youngest pilots on the scene who walks away with the top prize. 15-year-old Luke Bannister, flying for the UK-based Tornado X-Blades team, out-performed 150 global teams here in Dubai to become the first World Drone Prix champion, netting a cool $250,000 (£175,000) in the process.

British teen Luke Bannister, who went on to win the grand prix and claim a $250,000 prize. (credit: David Stock)

Chad Nowak, of team Rotor Riot (credit: David Stock)

The event, held on Dubai’s Gulf coast, saw 150 pilots battle through the week for just 32 spots in the finals, which were held last Friday and Saturday on a custom-built, outdoor track. "Luke was always a threat," says Australian pilot Chad Nowak who won a major tournament in Sacramento, USA, last year and flies for Rotor Riot here in Dubai. "He’s so fast, and doesn’t have the fear or the nerves that the older pilots can have," he says.

Nowak lost out to Bannister in an exciting semi-final race, where four evenly matched pilots jostled for position throughout. Pushed to their limit, three of the four pilots eventually crashed, leaving Bannister the only pilot holding his nerve to complete the course. Despite losing, Nowak wasn’t too upset. "That was a great race," he enthused afterwards. "It felt like we were really pushing the limit of what each other could do, and the crowd were responding, too. They were loving it. I was loving it," he says.