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Freeman writes:

Holmes to face maximum of 80 years in prison when she’s sentenced in September:

While she is likely to receive prison time for defrauding investors, she will be able to spend the next eight and a half months out on bail. She faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for each of the four counts she was convicted of, though it’s unlikely that she’ll be sentenced to all 80 years.

Holmes has been out on bail since June 2018, when she and alleged co-conspirator Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani were charged. Both were released after posting $500,000 bonds and surrendering their passports. Now that Holmes has been convicted and is awaiting sentencing, her bond will have to be secured by property. Their trials have been repeatedly pushed back, first because of the COVID pandemic and then later because Holmes gave birth.

Part of the reason Holmes’ sentencing has been postponed is because the government still has to prosecute its case against Balwani.

Previously:
2022/01/04 - Elizabeth Holmes Found Guilty on 4 of 11 Charges
2020/09/13 - Judge in Theranos Fraud Case Orders 14-Hour Psychological Test for Holmes
2019/07/01 - Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes to Face Trial Next Year on Fraud Charges
2018/09/06 - Theranos to Dissolve in a Pool of Blood
2018/06/17 - Elizabeth Holmes Steps Down as Theranos CEO as DoJ Levels Charges
2018/03/15 - Blood Unicorn Fairy Tale: Theranos Founder Charged With Fraud
2017/12/24 - Theranos Given Indirect Lifeline From Softbank
2016/10/06 - Theranos Lays Off 340, Closes Labs and "Wellness Centers"
2016/08/03 - Theranos Introduces New Product to Distract from Scandal

Original Submission

upstart writes:

16 top colleges sued for alleged violation of federal antitrust laws by colluding on their financial-aid practices:

(CNN)Sixteen top US universities, including Duke, Vanderbilt and Northwestern, are being sued by five former students claiming those schools may be involved in antitrust violations in the way those institutions worked together in determining financial aid awards for students, according to the lawsuit filed in a US District Court in Illinois.

The complaint, which was filed Sunday, alleges that these private national universities have "participated in a price-fixing cartel that is designed to reduce or eliminate financial aid as a locus of competition, and that in fact has artificially inflated the net price of attendance for students receiving financial aid."

The suit is asking for class-action status to cover any US citizen or permanent resident who paid tuition, room, or board at these institutions within varying timeframes from 2003 to the present. The plaintiffs want a permanent injunction against this alleged conspiracy, and that they are also seeking restitution and damages to be determined in court.

[...] The lawsuit alleges nine schools (Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, Georgetown, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern, Notre Dame, the University of Pennsylvania and Vanderbilt) have "made admissions decisions with regard to the financial circumstances of students and their families, " thereby disfavoring students who need financial aid."

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

The Secret to Building the Next Silicon Valley:

POLITICAL LEADERS HAVE been trying to replicate Silicon Valley’s high-tech magic since the invention of the microchip. A tech-curious Charles de Gaulle, then president of France, toured Palo Alto in his convertible limousine in 1960. Russian Federation President Dmitri Medvedev dressed business casual to meet and tweet with Valley social media tycoons in 2010. Hundreds of eager delegations, foreign and domestic, visited in between. “Silicon Valley,” inventor and entrepreneur Robert Metcalfe once remarked, “is the only place on earth not trying to figure out how to become Silicon Valley.”

In the US, too, leaders have long tried to engineer another Silicon Valley. Yet billions of dollars of tax breaks and “Silicon Something” marketing campaigns later, no place has matched the original’s track record for firm creation and venture capital investment—and these efforts often ended up benefiting multinational corporations far more than the regions themselves. Wisconsin promised more than $4 billion in tax breaks and subsidies to Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn in 2017, only to see plans for a $10 billion factory and 13,000 jobs evaporate after hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars had already been spent to prepare for Foxconn’s arrival. Amazon’s 2017 search for a second headquarters had 238 American cities falling over each other to woo one of the world’s richest corporations with tax-and-subsidy packages, only to see HQ2 go to two places Amazon likely would have chosen anyway because of their preexisting tech talent. One of the winners, Northern Virginia, promised Amazon up to $773 million in state and local tax subsidies—a public price tag for gleaming high-tech towers that seems especially steep as Amazon joins other tech giants in indefinitely pushing back post-pandemic plans to return to the office.

While the American tech industry is vastly larger than it used to be, the list of top tech clusters—the Bay Area, Seattle, Boston, Austin—has remained largely unchanged since the days of 64K desktop computers and floppy disks. Even the disruptions of the Covid-19 pandemic have done little to alter this remarkably static and highly imbalanced tech geography.

upstart writes:

AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU could be in short supply when it launches:

AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X3D, the new 3D V-cache processor revealed at CES, may only be produced in small numbers when it lands in early 2022 – and the chip may remain thin on the ground until the second half of the year rolls around, going by the latest from the rumor mill.

This comes from DigiTimes (via PC Gamer), which reports that TSMC, which is making the 5800X3D, is only expected to kick off with 'small-volume production' of the processor, according to the usual industry sources in the know. However, the report also makes clear that production could ramp up considerably when TSMC's new packaging plant in Chunan (Taiwan) goes live later in the year (supposedly in the second half of 2022).

So, while everyone is (rightly) cautious about the potential amount of stock when it comes to many new PC components at launch, it appears that the Ryzen 7 5800X3D could be particularly shaky to begin with – perhaps for the first few months of the CPU being on shelves (or not, as the case may be).

At least if this report is correct, anyway; and note we certainly must be cautious on that score, as DigiTimes isn't always the most reliable media outlet.

[...] We know that component shortages are making life difficult for AMD (and everyone else) anyway, certainly for the first half of this year, and as PC Gamer points out, the company has to prioritize enterprise chips (Epyc) to a large extent at the high-end as these are big profit spinners.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

RNA Discovery May Lead to Better Diagnosis and Treatment of Liver Cancer:

In a new study, researchers at Karolinska Institutet have identified the presence of a specific connection between a protein and an lncRNA molecule in liver cancer. By increasing the presence of the lncRNA molecule, the fat depots of the tumor cell decrease , which causes the division of tumor cells to cease, and they eventually die. The study, published in the journal Gut, contributes to increased knowledge that can add to a better diagnosis and future cancer treatments.

Our genome gives our cells instructions that determine each cell type's highly specialized function. The information is sent out using two different types of RNA molecules: coding RNA that converts DNA into proteins and non-coding RNA that do not produce proteins.

Because non-coding RNA molecules do not produce proteins, they have not been the main focus of research in the past, even though they amount to approximately 97 per cent of the RNA in our body. However, certain proteins, called RNA-binding proteins, have been shown to play a crucial role in cancer because of their ability to affect several different properties of RNA molecules.

upstart writes:

The FTC's antitrust case against Facebook is going forward after all:

After an initial setback, the Federal Trade Commission's antitrust case against Facebook, which recently renamed itself Meta, is going ahead.

Back in June, a US federal judge ruled that the FTC's initial argument accusing Facebook of being a monopoly was too vague. But the agency refiled the case, and now, the same judge has ruled that the FTC's amended case against Facebook is "more robust and detailed than before" and can go ahead. The court rejected Facebook's request to dismiss the case altogether, a decision that dealt a blow against Facebook's ongoing battle with government regulators over its market power.

The FTC is one of the most powerful US regulatory agencies. If it wins its case against Facebook, there could be major negative implications for the social media company.

"FTC staff presented a strong amended complaint, and we look forward to trial," said Holly Vedova, director of the FTC Bureau of Competition, in a statement to Recode.

Facebook, meanwhile, said it believes it will ultimately succeed in its battle against the FTC.

"We're confident the evidence will reveal the fundamental weakness of the claims. Our investments in Instagram and WhatsApp transformed them into what they are today. They have been good for competition, and good for the people and businesses that choose to use our products," said Meta company spokesperson Chris Sgro, in part, in a statement to Recode.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Widespread, Easily Exploitable Windows RDP Bug Opens Users to Data Theft:

Most Windows versions are at risk of remote, unprivileged attackers abusing RDP from the inside to hijack smart cards and get unauthorized file system access.

Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) pipes have a security bug that could allow any standard, unprivileged Joe-Schmoe user to access other connected users' machines. If exploited, it could lead to data-privacy issues, lateral movement and privilege escalation, researchers warned.

Insider attackers could, for instance, view and modify other people's clipboard data, or impersonate other logged-in users using smart cards.

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2022-21893, wasn't ballyhooed amid yesterday's crowded mega-dump of Patch Tuesday security updates, but it's more than worthy of scrutiny, according to a Tuesday report from CyberArk, which discovered the bug lurking in Windows Remote Desktop Services.

What's more, it's a widespread issue. The bug dates back at least to Windows Server 2012 R2, CyberArk software architect and security champion Gabriel Sztejnworcel wrote, leading the firm to conclude that the latest versions of Windows – including client and server editions – are affected.

"We can say that the majority of Windows versions in use today are affected," he confirmed. It's also easy to exploit. Microsoft said that an exploit of the vulnerability would be of low complexity[,] leading to a CVSS criticality rating of 7.7 out of 10, making it "important" in severity.

upstart writes:

As the EU finalizes its Digital Markets Act, Google is making a last-ditch lobbying effort with ads, emails, and social media posts targeted at politicians:

Google is making a last-ditch effort to change the EU's incoming laws on Big Tech with a flurry of advertising, emails and targeted social media posts aimed at politicians and officials in Brussels.

As EU policymakers put the finishing touches to the Digital Markets Act (DMA), executives at Google's headquarters in Silicon Valley are stepping up their efforts to water down parts of the legislation that they fear may have a severe impact on their business. "Top executives in California have known about the DMA all along but they are only waking up now," said one Google insider.

The campaign includes direct lobbying by Google, but also by several trade associations that the search engine giant funds.

Kim van Sparrentak, a Dutch MEP, said she had noticed a marked escalation in lobbying in recent weeks, with the message that curbing Google would harm small businesses. She said she had been invited to discuss her views with Google, at a time of her choosing, and had been invited to an event organised by the company on the benefits of digital marketing to small businesses.

upstart writes:

Remembering faces and names can be improved during sleep: Research finds memory reactivation:

The researchers found that people's name recall improved significantly when memories of newly learned face-name associations were reactivated while they were napping. Key to this improvement was uninterrupted deep sleep.

[...] The research team found that for study participants with EEG measures (a recording of electrical activity of the brain picked up by electrodes on the scalp) that indicated disrupted sleep, the memory reactivation didn't help and may even be detrimental. But in those with uninterrupted sleep during the specific times of sound presentations, the reactivation led to a relative improvement averaging just over 1.5 more names recalled.

The study was conducted on 24 participants, aged 18-31 years old, who were asked to memorize the faces and names of 40 pupils from a hypothetical Latin American history class and another 40 from a Japanese history class. When each face was shown again, they were asked to produce the name that went with it. After the learning exercise, participants took a nap while the researchers carefully monitored brain activity using EEG measurements. When participants reached the N3 "deep sleep" state, some of the names were softly played on a speaker with music that was associated with one of the classes.

When participants woke up, they were retested on recognizing the faces and recalling the name that went with each face.

[...] "We already know that some sleep disorders like apnea can impair memory," said Whitmore. "Our research suggests a potential explanation for this -- frequent sleep interruptions at night might be degrading memory."

See, also, Wikipedia entry on Prosopagnosia:

upstart writes:

Illuminating Origami Is Just Around The Corner:

Pop-up greeting cards are about to get a whole lot more interesting. Researchers at Seoul National University in Korea have created glowing 3D objects with a series of prototypes that fold thin QLED (Quantum Dot LED) sheets like origami. They used a CO₂ laser to etch "fold lines" in the QLED so the sheets could be formed into 3D shapes. The bends are actually rounded, but at 5μm they appear to be sharp corners and the panels continue to illuminate across the fold lines for at least 500 folds. Some glow in solid colors, while others use smaller addressable areas to create animated matrix displays of patterns and letterforms. See the short video after the break, read the Physics World article or to see all the prototypes and dig into details of the full research paper in Nature (freed from the paywall by SharedIt).

51-second YouTube video.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

In farming regions that receive limited moisture, fallow phases are used to maximize crop yield potential with special attention given to weed removal. When fields are laying fallow, it is very important to remove the weeds that are trying to establish themselves. When the density of the weeds is low, it is not efficient to spray the whole field with herbicide, so proprietary sensor-based spray booms are used to identify and spray herbicide directly onto the weeds. Researchers from the University of Sydney have developed an open-source, low-cost and image-based device for weed detection in an effort to give this technology wider availability. The demonstration system uses a Raspberry Pi 4 with a Raspberry Pi HQ Camera and 6-mm focal length lens. The Python code and detailed instructions reside in the OWL github repository.

OWL represents a novel opportunity for community-driven development of weed recognition capability using existing ‘off-the-shelf’ hardware and simple yet effective image-based algorithms. The combination of the OWL device, supporting documentation and repository create a channel for practical education of key image-based weed detection and actuation concepts for growers and the wider weed control community. The topic is of particular importance now, given the emergence of image-based in-crop weed recognition technologies. OWL has been designed as a community-focused educational platform that will grow over time with initial baseline validation performed in the present research.

Reference:
Guy Coleman, William Salter, and Michael Walsh. OpenWeedLocator (OWL): an open-source, low-cost device for fallow weed detection. [open] Sci Rep 12, 170 (2022). (DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-03858-9)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

New Evidence of Gravitational Wave Background Permeating All of Spacetime:

The results of a comprehensive search for a background of ultra-low frequency gravitational waves has been announced by an international team of astronomers including scientists from the Institute for Gravitational Wave Astronomy at the University of Birmingham.

These light-year-scale ripples, a consequence of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, permeate all of spacetime and could originate from mergers of the most massive black holes in the Universe or from events occurring soon after the formation of the Universe in the Big Bang. Scientists have been searching for definitive evidence of these signals for several decades.

The International Pulsar Timing Array (IPTA), joining the work of several astrophysics collaborations from around the world, recently completed its search for gravitational waves in their most recent official data release, known as Data Release 2 (DR2).

This data set consists of precision timing data from 65 millisecond pulsars – stellar remnants which spin hundreds of times per second, sweeping narrow beams of radio waves that appear as pulses due to the spinning – obtained by combining the independent data sets from the IPTA’s three founding members: The European Pulsar Timing Array (EPTA), the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), and the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array in Australia (PPTA).

upstart writes:

Moxie Marlinspike leaves encrypted-messaging app Signal:

Moxie Marlinspike, the co-founder and chief executive of encrypted-messaging app Signal, has resigned.

He blogged it was a "good time to replace myself as CEO" after working on Signal for over a decade.

Signal recently enabled crypto-currency payments within the app, which has concerned some users. Mr Marlinspike remains a board member of the Signal Foundation, while the board's executive chair, Brian Acton, becomes interim chief executive.

[...] Mr Marlinspike - whose real name is Matthew Rosenfeld - blogged he had always hoped to reach a point where Signal could "grow and sustain" beyond his involvement.

"I was writing all the Android code, was writing all of the server code, was the only person on call for the service, was facilitating all product development, and was managing everyone," he wrote. "I couldn't ever leave cell service, had to take my laptop with me everywhere in case of emergencies, and occasionally found myself sitting alone on the sidewalk in the rain late at night trying to diagnose a service degradation."

More than 40 million people now use Signal.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Scientists Have Discovered Unexpected Benefits of Fat in Type 2 Diabetes:

With nearly 10% of the world's population affected, type 2 diabetes is a major public health issue. An excessively sedentary lifestyle and a too-caloric diet encourage the development of this metabolic disease by altering the functioning of pancreatic cells and making blood sugar regulation less effective. However, fat, which is often cited as the ideal culprit, could be rehabilitated. Indeed, fat does not necessarily aggravate the disease and could even play a protective role: by studying insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells, scientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, have shown that these cells suffered less from excess sugar when they had previously been exposed to fat. By investigating the cellular mechanisms at work, the researchers discovered how a cycle of fat storage and mobilization allows cells to adapt to excess sugar. These results, published in the journal Diabetologia, highlight an unexpected biological mechanism that could be used as a lever to delay the onset of type 2 diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes results from a dysfunction of pancreatic beta cells, which are responsible for insulin secretion. This impairs the regulation of blood sugar levels and can lead to serious heart, eye, and kidney complications. In the 1970s, fat was singled out and the concept of lipotoxicity emerged: exposure of beta cells to fat would cause their deterioration. More recently, excess sugar has also been blamed for damaging beta cells and promoting the development of type 2 diabetes. However, while the culpability of sugar is no longer in doubt, the role of fat in beta cell dysfunction remains ambiguous. What are the cellular mechanisms involved? "To answer this key question, we studied how human and murine beta cells adapt to an excess of sugar and/or fat", explains Pierre Maechler, a Professor in the Department of Cell Physiology and Metabolism and in the Diabetes Centre of the UNIGE Faculty of Medicine, who led this work.

[...] By further analyzing the cellular changes at stake, the research team realised that fat droplets were not static reserves, but were the site of a dynamic cycle of storage and mobilization. And thanks to these released fat molecules, beta cells adapt to the excess sugar and maintain a near-normal insulin secretion.

Journal Reference:
Lucie Oberhauser, Cecilia Jiménez-Sánchez, Jesper Grud Skat Madsen, et al. Glucolipotoxicity promotes the capacity of the glycerolipid/NEFA cycle supporting the secretory response of pancreatic beta cells, Diabetologia (DOI: 10.1007/s00125-021-05633-x)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Should Microsoft sell Windows and Office? This former exec believes so:

A former Microsoft executive has offered up some advice for current CEO Satya Nadella: spin off Windows and Office and focus on Azure, Microsoft's cloud computing crown jewel.

Ben Slivka, a 14-year veteran at Microsoft who left in 1999, gave the unsolicited advice to Nadella in an interview with CNBC, saying: "The right thing probably is to bet the future on the cloud."

[...] On top of this, Nadella invested heavily in building out Azure and other enterprise-focused offerings to compete with Amazon's AWS and Google Cloud. By some estimates, Azure hold 20% of the cloud market, below AWS' 32% and above Google's 9%.

According to analysts that CNBC spoke to, spinning off Windows and Office would make very little sense. Nadella has built significant and much-needed synergies between Microsoft's various businesses, in such a way that the rise of one boosts the others.

So what do you think?

Original Submission