Steve Ballmer’s US data trove isn’t the first, but may be the best

Steve Ballmer spent years at Microsoft chasing money for the tech giant to add to its bottom line, but now he’s devoted to following the money the US government spends. After his retirement and conversations with his wife about what to do next, Ballmer earmarked part of his personal fortune to launch USAFacts.org. Its goal? To figure out what happens to money as it flows from our wallets into government coffers and beyond. For a man who helmed one of the greatest companies of all time and then decided he wanted to own the L.A. Clippers, stepping into the role of unbiased government watchdog sure seems strange. And yet, the end result is a strong step in the right direction.

For one, USAFacts is geared just as much toward decision-makers at (all levels) as it is for armchair policy wonks. It strictly uses non-partisan numbers provided by government agencies for consistency, rather than the forecasts that many federal agencies traffic in. Oh, and perhaps the most important thing: it’s just beautiful, thanks to help from Seattle-based design firm Artefact.

True accessibility requires elegance and simplicity, and USAFacts has it — even if it packages its findings in CEO-friendly formats like a pseudo-10-K. Needless to say, USAFacts is a hell of a tool, but it’s far from the first project that has tried to cast more light onto the murky process of government spending. So why do I think USAFacts is going to be a big deal for a long time? Well, mainly because of two reasons: a clear vision, and lots of Ballmer’s money.

See, Ballmer has said he looks at the creation of USAFacts as a sort of “civic contribution,” and the organization adheres to a strict mission. Forget about the financial nitty-gritty the services allows you to get into — zoom out far enough and you’ll find that USAFacts is basically showing people how the federal government is doing at delivering on promises. Promises codified in the US Constitution no less. It’s a big goal, certainly, and one that seems crucial enough to keep the USAFacts team on-mission even if Ballmer decides to move onto the next big thing. That said, we’ve seen other platforms with similar philosophical aims suddenly flounder due to a lack of clear leadership and goals, financial support alone isn’t enough.

Just look at the Sunlight Foundation. It launched in 2006 with a $3.5 million grant from chairman and co-founder Mike Klein and a mandate to push for open government and investigate how politics and money interact. That first influx of cash was used in part to fund 16 OpenGov grants that year, ranging from an effort to jumpstart Readthebill.org ($200,000) to providing polling data to a political blog in Connecticut ($1,600). There’s no question that the Sunlight Foundation has done some incredible work over the years — my mind most readily jumps to Politwoops, which chronicles poorly thought-out tweets deleted by public officials — but things wouldn’t last.

USAFacts.org

Sunlight co-founder Klein announced in September 2016 that, after a long and unsuccessful search for a new executive director, the foundation would discontinue certain projects and shutter its Sunlight Labs division. Part of the foundation’s change in direction came about because one of the team’s original goals — to support regulation of money and politics — was made moot by the contentious Citizens United Supreme Court decision. Sunlight still lives on as a non-profit advocate for more open government, but it’s certainly not the same entity it used to be. That’s where Ballmer’s money and expertise comes into play.

Remember: when he resigned his post as Microsoft CEO, he was already worth around $15 billion, and his golden parachute worked out to nearly a billion dollars. Not too shabby, right? The New York Times reports that Ballmer has spent about $10 million on the USAFacts initiative so far — to put that in perspective, that’s $6.5 million more than the Sunlight Foundation had to start with, and just 0.5 percent of what Ballmer paid to buy the Clippers in 2014. More importantly, Ballmer has also said that he’s willing to spend “several million dollars a year” to keep the service up and running. USAFacts didn’t return our request for comment so we’re not exactly sure how much he plans to devote to the project in the long term. Regardless, his philanthropic largesse gives USAFacts a chance to survive in a time where we might need it the most.

To be clear, shining a light on federal finances has never been a cakewalk. Even the government got it wrong at least once (I know, what a surprise). In 2006, then-President George W. Bush signed the Federal Funding and Accountability Act, which begat a publicly available website — USAspending.gov — where regular people could attempt to figure out how the government spent its money. It wasn’t exactly an eye-catching attempt, and it wasn’t free of flaws either. In 2014, a Government Accountability audit revealed that numbers provided by USAspending.gov weren’t telling the whole story. Federal agencies failed to report nearly $619 billion in grants and loans, prompting the GAO to report that only between “2 percent and 7 percent of the [financial] awards contained information that was fully consistent with agencies’ records.” Way to go.

The government eventually bounced back from that debacle with the passage of 2014’s DATA Act, which expanded on the Federal Funding Act by directing the government to disclose all of its spending in a standardized digital form. All government agencies must report that standardized spending data by May 9 of this year, and all of that data should be made available to public on USAspending.gov by May 9, 2018. Sounds like a net win for transparency, but we’ve already seen the current administration display a concerning lack of regard for openness, financial or otherwise.

Tax returns aside, the Trump administration recently shut down Open.gov, a repository of White House visitor logs, staff financial information and appointments. We may well continue to see these important datasets evaporate, and that does the people trying to speak truth to power no good. That’s why USAFacts feels so refreshing to me: it’s an effort by a man who has clearly found his own success and wants to use his resources to help inform the public. In a time where the workings of the federal government seem more closed off than ever, it’s refreshing to see tech magnates devoting their resources to issues that really need attention.

Turns out, pacemaker security is terrifying

The hacker who uses her wizard powers to get rich by manipulating stocks is a tired Hollywood trope. But that doesn’t mean some hackers don’t dream about making the fantasy come true, or that the ridiculous vulnerabilities necessary to facilitate such a thing don’t exist.

Some hackers do indeed have that dream. And reductive Hollywood-style vulns in critical financial (and other) systems are as real as they are plentiful in our world of crap security.

It’s just rare that all these things come together in a real-life event, as they have with the St. Jude Medical pacemaker-hacking debacle. And it’s even more awful when someone dies in the background as companies fight over press coverage, hacks and cash — which is exactly the twist that happened this week.

If you’re not familiar with the story, here’s the light version.

Last August, short-selling firm Muddy Waters and its business partner, security company MedSec Holdings, released a set of scathing and hotly contested findings. The report said St. Jude Medical’s pacemakers and implantable heart devices have critical security flaws.

Rather than the standard disclosure process, in which researchers go to the manufacturer first so they have an opportunity to fix and patch the flaws, both MedSec and Muddy Waters went public. As in, to the press. Where MedSec admitted that its payment for the damning security findings on St. Jude Medical was tied to Muddy’s profits.

Muddy Waters founder Carson Block gave investors — and press — a report warning “that tens of thousands of Americans are living with ticking time bombs: St. Jude pacemakers and defibrillators that are easily compromised, causing potentially fatal disruptions.”

Even though that is still in the realm of Hollywood and CSI: Cyber fantasy, Block went on Bloomberg TV spreading some serious fear. “The nightmare scenario is somebody is able to launch a mass attack and cause these devices that are implanted to malfunction.” He added that St. Jude Medical “should stop selling these devices until it has developed a new secure communication protocol.”

While there have been documented cases of police investigations supported by pacemaker surveillance, there have been no documented cases of mass pacemaker hacking.

The report hit the news, and shares of St. Jude immediately fell 5 percent. St. Jude Medical called the Muddy Waters report “false and misleading,” saying most of the findings applied to older and unpatched versions of its devices.

In a blog post, MedSec CEO Justine Bone gave a parenthetical on why it didn’t disclose to the manufacturer first, saying the company believed St Jude Medical “has known about security problems in their products since at least 2013.” But MedSec said that because the devices had such bad security, it believed going to the press and Muddy Waters was “the only way to spur St Jude Medical into action.”

“For the past 18 months, our team has been quietly evaluating the security of various medical devices,” wrote Ms. Bone. She continued: “One company, St Jude Medical, has stood out as lagging far behind. For years this company has continued to put patients at risk by profiting from the sale of devices and a device ecosystem which has little to no built-in security.”

Some in infosec said the researchers were endangering patients and behaving unethically by not telling St. Jude Medical about the problems first. Debates raged about responsibility, disclosure and the role of the press. Some wondered if the findings were reproducible, and called for independent audits to objectively determine what was really going on — some researchers even had conflicting findings.

Ultimately, St. Jude Medical’s stock plunged as much as 10 percent in the aftermath. The company launched a lawsuit against MedSec and Muddy Waters, and the three firms skirmished in the press again when MedSec’s findings were allegedly reproduced by security firm Bishop Fox. What’s more, the second set of researchers claimed they could take over the pacemakers at a distance of around 10 feet.

At the time of the Muddy Waters press drama, the Food and Drug Administration declined to comment on St. Jude’s devices.

Now the FDA has something to say, and it looks like MedSec was right. According to a scathing letter from the FDA, St. Jude Medical knew about grave security issues in its implantable medical devices as early as 2014 “but failed to address them with software updates or by replacing those devices.”

The government concluded that St. Jude Medical, “time and again, failed to adhere to internal security and product-quality guidelines, a lapse that resulted in at least one patient death.”

Despite learning about vulns in its April 2014 security tests from a hired third party, St. Jude Medical “failed to accurately incorporate the findings of that assessment” in subsequent risk evaluations for its devices. The FDA said one of the serious flaws is a “hardcoded universal unlock code” for the company’s High Voltage heart implants.

St. Jude Medical parent company Abbott responded with a statement saying that “patient safety comes first” and it “takes these matters seriously, continues to make progress on our corrective actions, will closely review FDA’s warning letter, and are committed to fully addressing FDA’s concerns.”

“It is refreshing to see the disclosure,” Bone told press. “St. Jude Medical, for the first time, publicly acknowledge that they knew about [the security risks], but continued to sell these products and have them implanted in patients,” she said.

I’ll be honest: I didn’t want to revisit the Muddy Waters, MedSec and St. Jude story. Going to the press before actually working for a fix isn’t really a clever stick, and it’s certainly not an effective one when there’s no carrot. And then to see that bad behavior rewarded by a too-little-too-late FDA spanking…

It’s a good reminder of why infosec’s limelight addiction makes me sick. Making hack-scare headlines for profit about a situation in which someone actually died is repulsive.

And I don’t know about you, but I scream into the wind every week right here on these pages wishing it wasn’t happening. Not like this. I write hoping no one dies in the middle of a story where hackers say they want fixes, but maybe they’re in it more for the cash-headlines-fame, and we can no longer determine what it looks like when they really do care.

REUTERS/Brendan McDermid (St. Jude Medical stock)

Sony made a gigantic PS4 controller no one can use

Sony has eSports-tailored PlayStation 4 controllers, but aside from that, the gaming juggernaut hasn’t made any major changes to the gamepad that shipped with the PS4. But as a Japanese promo for the recent Parappa the Rapper re-issue, the company made a gigantic version of its best controller in years. We’re talking perfect-for-Wun-Weg-the-giant from Games of Thrones size.

As Japanese publication Gigazine notes, not all of the buttons are functional. Only the D-pad and square, triangle, circle, cross and shoulder buttons L1 and R1 work. Analog sticks and the L2 and R2 triggers are for show only, and we’d suspect the touchpad is as well.

If you think the bigger controller would make playing Parappa easier, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Gigazine said that pressing the oversized face buttons in rhythm with the action actually amps up the difficulty versus using a standard DualShock 4. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll get to test that theory out for ourselves at E3 — similar to how we played catch with a life-sized Trico at the 2015 Tokyo Game Show.

The size might be a problem for you and me, sure, but if Wun Weg can pound trees (and White Walkers) into the ground with a single fist, he’d probably own the competition with this controller. It’s too bad then that the 7-foot 7-inch tall Neil Fingleton who played the giant passed back in February. Standing him next to this giant piece of plastic would’ve probably given a better idea of its scale than the mere mortals in the video below.

Sure Sony isn’t the first here, as we’ve seen coffee-table-sized NES controllers a number of times previously, but that doesn’t make the gargantuan gamepad any less cool.

Source: Gigazine (Japanese)

Court documents reveal more shady dealings by Theranos

Things just got a lot worse for Theranos, the beleaguered blood-testing company that’s seen its share of bad press and class-action lawsuits. The latest complaint is mostly based on testimony from 22 former employees and directors, according to the Wall Street Journal. The filings allege that Theranos directly misled its own directors about its testing practices, secretly purchased off-the-shelf lab equipment to pass off as its own revolutionary gear and gave its investors false financial projections.

It’s a battle of back-and-forth as Theranos tries to retain its ability to eventually operate as a lab again while it weathers allegations of even more shady practices than originally thought. For example, the machines being used to test blood weren’t even made by Theranos but purchased through a shell corporation. In the newly-unsealed filings, former director and retired Navy admiral Gary Roughead claimed that he was unaware of the fact that there were “extensive commercial analyzers in use” — a reference to the commercial gear Theranos used to conduct much of the tests it claims it ran itself.

In addition, financial projections given by Theranos in were overstated. While the company’s former controller testified that Theranos had estimated $100 million to the IRS, investors were promised gross profits of more than $1 billion in 2014. The lab also ran fake tests for investors using the commercial devices it passed off as its own, according to the court document.

The latest revelations come from depositions in a suit by Partner Fund Management (PFM), one of the several companies to have sued Theranos. For its part, Theranos is playing it straight, calling the documents one-sided and saying that it disagrees with “much of what PFM alleges in its complaint.” The publically-accessible documents only include the complaint and a related brief, writes the Journal. Theranos has filed with the court to keep any more excerpts from the depositions under seal.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Dell’s first HDR display is aimed squarely at video editors

HDR10 and Dolby Vision are the two main competing standards for high dynamic range displays. Today, Dell lent its support to the former as it announced its first HDR10-compliant display, the Dell UltraSharp 27 4K HDR Monitor. Dell revealed the new device at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show today, along with two other UltraSharp monitors and various PC workstations for high-end image, video and VR production.

While 4K is the term bandied about most often, HDR brings better contrast, brightness, and vibrant color to the mix. It’s not just the number of pixels that are important anymore, but what your monitor does with them. Dell’s new 27-inch monitor, then, is meant for creative professionals who view and edit HDR content, but it will also work just fine with consoles like the NVIDIA Shield, Xbox One S and PlayStation 4, all of which support the standard. Dell is also showing off a couple of products it had at CES: the Precision 5720 All-in-One workstation PC for digital content creators and the Dell Canvas, its 27-inch touchscreen device that’s set to take on Wacom’s devices for digital artists.

You’ll be able to get Dell’s new display at Dell.com in the US on May 23rd, and it will retail for $1,999.99. Of course, if you want a 4K display but don’t need HDR, Dell’s standard 27-inch 4K monitor is a much more affordable $550.

Source: Dell

Apple Hires Two Google Executives With Satellite Expertise

Apple has recently hired John Fenwick and Michael Trela, two Google satellite executives, reports Bloomberg. Fenwick led Google’s spacecraft operations, while Trela was head of satellite engineering.

Both Trela and Fenwick are reporting to Greg Duffy, the former co-founder of camera company Dropcam. What the two are doing at Apple is unclear, but Bloomberg speculates they’re either working on satellites for image collection or satellites for communications.

Rumors have suggested Apple is using a fleet of drones to collect data to improve Apple Maps, with the company having filed for an FAA permit to be able to fly drones for commercial purposes. Apple also acquired Aether Industries in 2015, a previously unknown purchase.

Aether Industries develops high-bandwidth radio transceivers and high-altitude balloons. On its website, Aether Industries shows off a range of high-resolution aerial imagery and claims to provide a “full imaging and mapping solution for full color aerial images.”

There’s also evidence Apple is interested in deploying satellites for communication purposes. Boeing has been working on sending more than 1,000 satellites into low-earth orbit for the purpose of providing broadband access, and the company has reportedly been in talks with Apple.

The aerospace company has talked with Apple about the technology company being an investor-partner in the project, a person familiar with the situation said. It’s unclear if those talks will result in a deal.

At the annual Satellite 2017 conference in Washington D.C. last month, industry insiders said Boeing’s project was being funded by Apple, Tim Farrar, a satellite and telecom consultant at TMF Associates Inc., wrote in a recent blog. A Boeing spokesman declined to comment.

Former Boeing executive James Bell also joined Apple’s board of directors back in October of 2015, another potential link between Apple and Boeing.

It continues to be unclear if Apple will get involved with Boeing’s broadband endeavor, but it’s easy to see why Apple might be interested with Boeing aiming for faster speeds than existing cellular systems.

Apple and Google declined to comment on the hiring, while Fenwick, Trela, and Duffy did not respond to Bloomberg’s request for comments.

Tags: Google, satellite, Aether Industries, Apple acquisitions
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Apple Begins Notifying 2017 WWDC Scholarship Winners

Apple today began sending out emails to students and STEM organization members who have won a scholarship to attend the 2017 Worldwide Developers Conference, which will take place in San Jose, California from June 5 to June 9.

Scholarship winners receive free tickets to WWDC, a huge benefit as a ticket is normally priced at $1,599. Apple is also providing scholarship winners with free lodging this year, housing them at the San Jose State University dorms, located approximately 15 minutes away from the venue when walking.

To win a WWDC scholarship, students and STEM members were tasked with sharing a three-minute visually interactive scene created in Swift Playgrounds. Entries were judged on technical accomplishment, creativity of ideas, and content of written responses. Scholarship winners must accept the scholarship award by April 28.

Apple has also already selected WWDC ticket lottery winners and charged chosen developers the attendance fee.

Developers and students who were not selected to attend WWDC are able to watch both the keynote event and sessions with engineers through the Apple Developer website and the WWDC app for iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV.

(Thanks, Ian!)

Related Roundup: WWDC 2017
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MacRumors Giveaway: Win a Gravitas iPhone Dock From Henge Docks

For this week’s giveaway, we’ve teamed up with Henge Docks to give MacRumors readers a chance to win a Gravitas dock for the iPhone or iPad.

Made from a heavy, sturdy metal alloy base, the Gravitas is designed for single-handed docking and undocking, but it’s also made to minimize the amount of space that it takes up on a desk.

It is made from an alloy that’s 265 percent denser than aluminum and it weighs in at 2.5 pounds, giving it enough stability to work with both the iPhone and the iPad. Due to the design, it’s compatible with thin cases, such as those made by Apple, but it won’t work with thicker Otterbox-style case options.

The Gravitas works with the iPhone 6, 6s, 7, and 7 Plus, along with multiple iPad models. It ships with a three-foot USB cable for charging and it also features a 3.5mm Stereo Audio Out port for listening to music.

Henge Docks normally charges $69 for the Gravitas, but we have four docks to offer to MacRumors readers for free. To enter to win, use the Rafflecopter widget below and enter an email address. Email addresses will be used solely for contact purposes to reach the winner and send the prize. You can earn additional entries by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, subscribing to our YouTube channel, following us on Twitter, or visiting the MacRumors Facebook page.

Due to the complexities of international laws regarding giveaways, only U.S. residents who are 18 years of age or older are eligible to enter. To offer feedback or get more information on the giveaway restrictions, please refer to our Site Feedback section, as that is where discussion of the rules will be redirected.

a Rafflecopter giveawayThe contest will run from today (April 21) at 11:45 a.m. Pacific Time through 11:45 a.m. Pacific Time on April 28. The winners will be chosen randomly on April 28 and will be contacted by email. The winners will have 48 hours to respond and provide a shipping address before new winners are chosen.

Tags: giveaway, Henge Docks
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Apple Autonomous Driving Training Program Confirms Self-Driving Software Platform

Apple has developed a training program to instruct employees on how to handle cars being used to test its autonomous driving software platform, according to documents obtained by Business Insider.

The company’s “Development Platform Specific Training” document references an “Apple Automated System” and a “Development platform,” alluding to the self-driving software platform Apple is rumored to be building after plans for a full autonomous electric vehicle fell through.

Click to enlarge
Apple recently obtained a permit from the California DMV that will allow it to test self-driving vehicles on public roads, and as part of that process, the company appears to be training employees to use whatever system it’s testing. According to the DMV, Apple plans to use three 2015 Lexus RX450h SUVs, which will be driven by six drivers with expertise in areas like machine learning.

Based on the documents, drivers are required to pass seven tests as part of their training before being allowed to work with Apple’s software platform. Each driver must complete two practice runs and three trials to pass tests, which cover topics like taking control of the vehicle at tight U-turns, sudden acceleration, sudden braking, and more.

Click to enlarge

According to the training packet, Apple’s self-driving car uses a Logitech wheel and pedals to actuate drive by wire, and it supports one person at a time.

Pressing the brake pedal or grabbing the steering wheel in Apple’s test vehicles will disengage the electronic driving mode, but drivers can accelerate without overriding the “drive by wire” mode.

Apple’s work in the car industry has been something of an open secret for the past three years. The company was originally planning to create its own autonomous vehicle, but pivoted to an autonomous driving software platform following internal strife and leadership issues.

Apple is now said to be creating a driving system under the leadership of Bob Mansfield, with the car team having been given until the end of this year to prove the feasibility of a self-driving car platform. Such a system could potentially allow Apple to partner with car manufacturers as a sort of expansion of CarPlay.

With Apple ready to test the software on public roads, it appears development is fairly far along. Should the company take vehicles out on California streets, its work will need to be publicly shared with the DMV based on California law.

Related Roundup: Apple Car
Tag: businessinsider.com
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Samsung Galaxy Book 2-in-1 PC pre-orders kick off today

Why it matters to you

The Galaxy Book is Samsung’s big attempt to carve out a slice of the growing hybrid market, and it’s set to debut sooner rather than later.

In February, Samsung officially unveiled its Galaxy Book 2-in-1 PC, the first laptop in the Galaxy line. Now, the company has offered up comprehensive specs for the device, and announced that it will be available to purchase starting Friday, April 21.

The Galaxy Book will come in two different sizes: A 10.6-inch model and a 12-inch model. The larger system will be available with or without LTE functionality, and all iterations come bundled with the S Pen accessory and a keyboard.

The 10.6-inch Galaxy Book is fitted with a TFT display that’s capable of a 1920 x 1280 resolution. It features an Intel Core m3 processor, 4GB of RAM and either 64GB or 128GB of eMMC storage. In terms of connectivity, it offers a single USB 3.1 Type-C port, as well a MicroSD port that can be used for extra storage.

Meanwhile, the 12-inch Galaxy Book is packing a super AMOLED display with a resolution of 2160 x 1440. Its processor is an Intel Core i5-7200U, and it has two USB 3.1 Type-C ports, as well as a MicroSD slot.

Things get a bit complex when it comes to the 12-inch version’s memory. The LTE model boasts 4GB of RAM and a 128GB solid state drive, whereas the Wi-Fi variant can be outfitted with up to 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD.

The 12-inch LTE Galaxy Book will be available from Verizon Wireless starting on April 21, and is priced at $1,300. Pre-orders on the 12-inch Wi-Fi model, which costs $1,130, and the 10.6-inch Wi-Fi model, which costs $630, will also open on April 21 ahead of general availability on May 21. A silver version of the hybrid will be available nationwide, with a black variant offered exclusively at Best Buy locations.

Samsung is clearly aiming the Galaxy Book at the same sector of users who have made Microsoft’s Surface line such an enormous success. However, our hands-on time with the device revealed some significant issues with its keyboard, which may make it difficult for the 2-in-1 to compete with the Surface Book.