An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: This past week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration mandated testing for the Zika virus at all U.S. blood centers. That juices demand for Zika-testing technology, but one company that isn't welcome to provide it yet is Theranos. The beleaguered blood analysis startup has run afoul of the FDA, yet again, The Wall Street Journal reports (Warning: may be paywalled). Specifically, regulators found that in developing and testing a new Zika-diagnostic technology, Theranos failed to use proper patient safety protocols, the type approved by an institutional review board. Such protocols are critical in ensuring the ethical treatment of patients involved in studies, and their safety. Theranos had sought the same FDA authorization, but voluntarily withdrew its request once regulators called the startup out, this time, on the safety protocols issue.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The European Commission says the Irish government helped Apple artificially lower its tax bill for more than 20 years.

The European Commission says the Irish government helped Apple artificially lower its tax bill for more than 20 years.

Back in March 2016, we reported that version 2.90 of the Transmission BitTorrent client had been hacked to include the KeRanger ransomware. Though Transmission’s developers acted quickly to solve that problem, it has happened again. For less than 24 hours between August 28th and 29th, the distribution copy of Transmission 2.92 was infected with the OSX/Keydnap malware, so if you downloaded Transmission during that time, your Mac might be infected. Transmission’s developers once again resolved the problem quickly and posted instructions for eliminating OSX/Keydnap from an infected Mac, but anyone contemplating using Transmission should keep this risk in mind. Note too that several studies have identified a significant percentage of BitTorrent downloads as containing malware — stick to the well-lit parts of the Internet if you’re concerned about safety.

 

Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

Veteran tech journalist Walt Mossberg has taken a look at Apple under CEO Tim Cook, five years after Cook took the position. Overall, Mossberg praised Cook for guiding the company to new financial heights, refining its popular product lines, and retaining most of its senior talent. However, Mossberg deducts points for the fact that Apple under Cook has yet to introduce a game-changing product, though he admits that the Apple Watch might be that game-changer, saying that it took 3–4 years before the iPod took off. We’d also note that some of Apple’s biggest wins were actually low-hanging fruit — the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and MacBook Air all entered markets with radically inferior competition (the iPad didn’t have much to compete with in terms of tablets, but Steve Jobs set it against the entire netbook category). But there isn’t much low-hanging fruit left in the consumer electronics world.

 

Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

Veteran tech journalist Walt Mossberg has taken a look at Apple under CEO Tim Cook, five years after Cook took the position. Overall, Mossberg praised Cook for guiding the company to new financial heights, refining its popular product lines, and retaining most of its senior talent. However, Mossberg deducts points for the fact that Apple under Cook has yet to introduce a game-changing product, though he admits that the Apple Watch might be that game-changer, saying that it took 3–4 years before the iPod took off. We’d also note that some of Apple’s biggest wins were actually low-hanging fruit — the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and MacBook Air all entered markets with radically inferior competition (the iPad didn’t have much to compete with in terms of tablets, but Steve Jobs set it against the entire netbook category). But there isn’t much low-hanging fruit left in the consumer electronics world.

 

Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

Back in March 2016, we reported that version 2.90 of the Transmission BitTorrent client had been hacked to include the KeRanger ransomware. Though Transmission’s developers acted quickly to solve that problem, it has happened again. For less than 24 hours between August 28th and 29th, the distribution copy of Transmission 2.92 was infected with the OSX/Keydnap malware, so if you downloaded Transmission during that time, your Mac might be infected. Transmission’s developers once again resolved the problem quickly and posted instructions for eliminating OSX/Keydnap from an infected Mac, but anyone contemplating using Transmission should keep this risk in mind. Note too that several studies have identified a significant percentage of BitTorrent downloads as containing malware — stick to the well-lit parts of the Internet if you’re concerned about safety.

 

Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

Yesterday, it was reported that Russia has detected a strong signal around 11 GHz coming from HD164595, a star nearly identical in mass to the Sun and located about 95 light years away from Earth. Well, long story short the signal came Earth. Ars Technica reports: "First, astronomers with the search for extraterrestrial intelligence downplayed the possibility of an alien civilization. 'There are many other plausible explanations for this claimed transmission, including terrestrial interference,' Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer with SETI, wrote. Now the Special Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences has concurred, releasing a statement on the detection of a radio signal at the RATAN-600 radio astronomy observatory in southern Russia. 'Subsequent processing and analysis of the signal revealed its most probable terrestrial origin,' the Russian scientists said."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New figures released by India's crime records bureau show that vast majority of victims knew their attackers.

New figures released by India's crime records bureau show that vast majority of victims knew their attackers.

An anonymous reader writes:The birthplace of Hewlett Packard and Xerox Parc and founding place of Facebook is now considering whether to enforce a zoning regulation banning firms whose "primary business is research and development, including software coding," according to the New York Times. As the Times wrote, "To repeat: The mayor is considering enforcing a ban on coding at ground zero of Silicon Valley." Palo Alto Mayor Patrick Burt told the Times: Big tech companies are choking off the downtown. It's not healthy. Palo Alto is a software capital. It has also become a company town, with Palantir Technologies renting 20 downtown buildings, as Marisa Kendall wrote. Other notable tech firms there include Tesla, SAP, Flipboard, VMWare and many others. It has become a center for automation and cars and is home to Ford's research and development center.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New president Temer swears to uphold constitution, hours after senators vote to remove Dilma Rousseff from office.

New president Temer swears to uphold constitution, hours after senators vote to remove Dilma Rousseff from office.