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A cluster of E. coli bacteria. (credit: ARS/USDA)

At this point, alarmist headlines about the end of the antibiotic era may seem a lot like those car alarms that periodically go off on your street: distracting, annoying, and probably nothing worth panicking over. After all, despite years of distressing headlines, drug-resistant superbugs have yet to rain down upon the public, striking the otherwise healthy with deadly, incurable infections.

Yet, the unfortunate reality is that the longstanding challenge of drug resistance is cause for concern and action. Bacteria have been developing resistance to powerful antibiotics ever since the drugs were first introduced in the 1930s. In some cases, bacteria developed widespread resistance in years and sometimes months after a new drug came out. And bacteria are building up ever more extensive immunity thanks to current practices of overusing and misusing the drugs—antibiotics given thoughtlessly for mild illnesses, or used to treat viral infections (which antibiotics don’t fight), or poured into the feed of healthy livestock. Coupled with the sluggish development of new drugs in the past few decades, the public health problem has reached a crisis level.

Right now, drug resistant infections are mainly a threat to those that are already sick and/or in medical facilities. But, if we continue down this path, mundane infections in the otherwise healthy could someday morph into life-threatening ordeals, and simple medical procedures and surgeries may be skipped to avoid risk of infection.

The Blackphone and its parent, Silent Circle, have taken some knocks over the past few months, as the company prepares a new course. Will hardware be part of it? (credit: Sean Gallagher)

When we reviewed the Blackphone 2 last September, the company behind the privacy-focused smartphone was in transition. Silent Circle had moved to bring the Blackphone joint venture with the Madrid-based Geeksphone back under its umbrella, hired a telecom industry veteran as CEO, and was fine-tuning its marketing to go after an enterprise audience. The phone’s Android-based operating system, rebranded as Silent OS, became simultaneously more user-friendly and more hardened, paving the way for features that would be incorporated into Android for Work.

Less than a year later, Silent Circle has substantially changed. For starters, that new CEO is gone. Bill Conner resigned June 27 after, as he put it, Silent Circle "extended its privacy leadership into the enterprise as a secure communications SAAS [Software as a Service] company." The company’s general counsel is now serving as interim CEO as it seeks new leadership.

Over the course of the last year, many more core security team members—including co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Jon Callas, Chief Architect Mike Kershaw (AKA "dragorn," creator of the Kismet wireless network security tool), and Chief Security Officer Dan Ford—left the company. Callas remains as an investor, but he now works for Apple. There have also been layoffs.

Ron Amadeo / Google Maps

Here's a rough outline of the current Google and LinkedIn territories near the company's two headquarters. LinkedIn is trading both of the blue parts here to Google. The bottom blue portion isn't actually office space yet—right now it seems to be a shopping center.

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Google and LinkedIn have worked out a deal that will see the Mountain View neighbors swap a few million square feet of real estate. Silicon Valley Business Journal reported the deal, which should help alleviate both companies' space problems and give Google room to develop its futuristic "canopy" campus.

Google will receive all of LinkedIn's existing Mountain View territory, which consists of LinkedIn's 370,000 square feet headquarters and almost 8 acres of land LinkedIn had planned on turning into office space. LinkedIn will move a few miles across town into four office buildings currently owned by Google, which come out to about 750,000 square feet of office space. LinkedIn instantly gets to double its office space while avoiding a costly "five to six year" construction project, and Google gets the space and building rights it needs to build its crazy indoor/outdoor spiderweb canopy utopia.

For a very rough idea of what is going on, the above gallery shows the current territory layout at Google and LinkedIn headquarters. (Google might actually own more area than this, we just based this off of "buildings that start with 'Google'" on Google Maps, which might be incomplete). In the first picture, LinkedIn's headquarters is the blue area in the top right, while the bottom blue area is a shopping center LinkedIn wanted to turn into office space. All of that space is now going to Google. In the second picture, you can see the Google office buildings LinkedIn is moving to, just a few miles away.