Texas family blame Apple’s FaceTime in suit over fatal crash

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A Texas couple whose five-year-old daughter died in a crash involving a driver who was allegedly using Apple’s FaceTime video chatting app is suing the tech company.

The lawsuit filed this month in Santa Clara Superior Court accuses Apple of not implementing iPhone features that would automatically disable FaceTime based on technology that calculates highway speeds.

Apple hasn’t responded to the lawsuit and didn’t immediately respond to an email Saturday seeking comment.

Moriah Modisette was killed in a 2014 Christmas Eve accident near Dallas. The lawsuit obtained by California television KTLA claims police found FaceTime running on the iPhone of the driver who struck the Modisette family at 65 mph (105 km/h).

The family claims Apple knew the risks of using FaceTime while driving because the company patented “lock-out” technology in 2008.  

Want to fight global warming? Watch some car racing this weekend

Here’s the most important thing you can do this weekend: Turn on the television.
Formula E, a new motor racing championship, begins in Beijing tomorrow. The E stands for electric. As in electric cars. And there’s a lot riding on its success.
The money put in by sponsors is one thing. The investment by the participating teams is another, as are the jobs that have been created as a result. But if the new championship is a success, the most important outcome will not be profits for firms or continued employment for drivers, but the very future of private mobility.
The thinking goes something like this: Motor races in the late 19th and early 20th centuries drove some of the most major advancements in automotive technology. Developments by Peugeot in the 1910s had big effects on engine design. Later, things like fuel injection, commonplace in modern cars, were a direct result of innovations on the race track, says John Heitmann, president of the Society of Automotive Historians and a professor at the University of Dayton. Heitmann sees a similar revolution if electric car racing takes off. “There’s inordinate promise for technology transfer to go from racing to production,” he says.
The question of sustainability has been dogging motor sports for years. Even as Formula 1 has grown into a global behemoth, it has tried to reduce its environmental impact by changing engines to be more efficient. But that is incremental change. Formula E presents the chance to rethink engines altogether, and to create a market for innovation in electric cars and batteries.
“Motor sport has been losing a bit of its relevance. So this was a way to come back to where the mainstream is and to bring relevance to motor sport and do something useful for society,” says Alejandro Agag, a former Formula 1 man who owns the rights to Formula E and runs the company handling and promoting the championship.
Agag and his team have faced criticism along the way. Purists complain that the cars are too silent (hear for yourself in the video above), and that audience engagement tactics such as giving an extra power boost to the driver who receives the most tweets—perhaps materially altering the outcome of the race—are too gimmicky. But Agag argues that such innovations are necessary for a sport created in the 21st century. “It’s a designed media strategy consistent with the way media works in the modern world,” he says.

Bank of America reaches record $17B settlement with U.S.

Bank of America has reached a record $17 billion settlement to resolve an investigation into its role in the sale of mortgage-backed securities before the 2008 financial crisis, officials directly familiar with the matter said Wednesday.
One of the officials, who spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the announcement isn't scheduled until Thursday at the earliest, said the bank will pay $10 billion in cash and provide consumer relief valued at $7 billion.
The deal is the largest settlement arising from the economic meltdown in which millions of Americans lost their homes to foreclosure. It follows agreements in the last year with Citigroup for $7 billion and with JPMorgan Chase & Co. for $13 billion.
Like the Bank of America deal, those settlements were a mixture of hard cash and "credits" for various forms of consumer aid that the banks promised to provide in coming years.
The Bank of America settlement was negotiated through a joint federal and state working group established by President Barack Obama two years ago with the Justice Department and other federal and state authorities. Individual states are expected to share in the settlement.
Justice Department spokeswoman Ellen Canale declined to comment, as did New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a co-chairman of the group. The bank also declined comment.
The deal requires Bank of America to acknowledge making serious misrepresentations about the quality of its residential mortgage-backed securities issued by itself and by Countrywide Financial and Merrill Lynch. Those institutions were acquired by the bank when they were on the brink of failure in 2008 and they were responsible for the bulk of the questionable loans.
The deals are intended to offer some financial relief to homeowners, whose mortgages were bundled into securities by the banks in question and then sold to investors.
The securities contained residential mortgages from borrowers who were unlikely to be able to repay their loans. Still, the securities were promoted as relatively safe investments until the housing market collapsed and investors suffered billions of dollars in losses.
The poor quality of the loans led to huge losses for investors and a slew of foreclosures, kicking off the recession that began in late 2007. The cash totals now being paid by some of the country's largest banks are not nearly enough to reverse the damages caused by the bursting of the housing bubble and the ensuing recession.
Bank of America had argued that it shouldn't be held liable for the subprime mortgages issued by Countrywide and Merrill Lynch. Combined, those three firms issued $965 billion in mortgage-backed securities from 2004 to 2008, according to public records. Roughly 75 per cent of that total came from Countrywide.
In a federal lawsuit last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Bank of America and two subsidiaries with defrauding investors in an offering of residential mortgage-backed securities by failing to disclose key risks and misrepresenting facts about the underlying mortgages.
The Justice Department filed a parallel civil action against Bank of America alleging violations of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act.

Nintendo Shares Fall by 18% After Loss Forecast

Shares in Japan's Nintendo dived by nearly a fifth at the open on Monday after the gaming giant warned it would swing back into the red.
The shares were changing hands at 11,945 yen on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, down 18.43 percent from Friday's pre-warning close.
It later clawed back a bit of the loss to be trading down 13.38 percent at 12,685 yen around 20 minutes after the opening bell.
Nintendo said Friday it expects a loss of 25 billion yen ($240 million) in the year to March, reversing an earlier 55 billion yen net profit forecast.
The dramatic downgrade sent shock waves through a market where the yen's recent depreciation has broadly lifted earnings of export-oriented companies.
It also stands in marked contrast to rivals Sony and Microsoft which have seen huge demand for their new consoles as the firms battle for control of a sector worth about $44 billion annually around the globe.
The company, maker of the Donkey Kong and Super Mario brands, also said it expected to sell just 2.8 million units worldwide of the Wii U, less than a third of it earlier prediction for 9.0 million consoles.
Nintendo's hopes for big holiday season demand to boost flagging sales were dashed, forcing it to chop forecasts as demand for the Wii's high-margin software slumped, it said.

Rodman takes a vist to an alcohol rehab

Former basketball star Dennis Rodman, facing a backlash for a series of visits to North Korea, has checked himself into an alcohol-rehab facility, according to US media.
"He has been in rehab most of this week, and I am very proud of him," Darren Prince, his agent, was quoted as saying by CNN.
"His drinking escalated to a level that none of us had seen before. When he came back (from North Korea), I discussed with him on a personal level how concerned I was. We sat down and decided for him to go to rehab. It is a 28- or 30-day facility."
The 52-year-old Rodman apologized earlier this month upon his return from his latest visit to secretive North Korea for saying a fellow American imprisoned there may have caused his own fate. Rodman blamed alcohol for his comments.
Rodman, who reportedly entered a rehab center on the US East coast on Wednesday, took a team of former National Basketball Association players to North Korea for his most recent visit and sang "Happy Birthday" to leader Kim Jong-Un inside a packed sports arena.
The former NBA star was widely criticized for refusing to bring up human rights abuses or the plight of detained US missionary Kenneth Bae during his latest week-long visit.
Rodman had said he planned to return to North Korea next month.
Rodman has developed an unlikely friendship with the young North Korean leader since making his first trip there last February, when he declared Kim a "friend for life."
Kim, who was educated in Switzerland, is reported to be a huge fan of basketball and especially of the Chicago Bulls, with whom Rodman won three NBA titles alongside Michael Jordan in the 1990s.

Elastic Glue for Heart Surgery Inspired by Slugs

Researchers in Boston have developed a medical adhesive they say can seal holes in the heart and other tissue, an advance that could replace the use of staples and sutures to close wounds.
The new adhesive, invented by Canadian-born Harvard medical school associate professor Jeffrey Karp, was inspired by the sticking abilities of slugs.
It's both water-resistant and elastic, allowing it to stretch as a beating heart expands and contracts.
In an interview airing Saturday on CBC Radio’s Quirks & Quarks, Karp tells host Bob McDonald that the glue only becomes active when ultraviolet light shines on it, so surgeons can more accurately bind the adhesive exactly where needed.
A biodegradable adhesive in the body offers advantages over metal-based staples or sutures, he added.
“Sutures and staples really are not mechanically similar to the tissues in the body, so they can induce stress on the tissue over time,” said Karp, who is also a co-director of the Center for Regenerative Therapeutics at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
“This is a material that’s made from glycerol and sebacic acid, both of which exist in the body and can be readily metabolized,” he said. “What happens over time is that this material will degrade. Cells will invade into it and on top of it, and ideally the hole will remain closed and the patient won’t require further operations.”
Researchers from Boston Children’s, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology helped to develop the nontoxic substance.
The adhesive has been tested successfully on the hearts of pigs and rats, and on the carotid artery of a pig. The researchers hope the product will be on the market within the next two to three years.
To listen to the entire interview, tune in to CBC Radio One at noon on Saturday to catch Quirks & Quarks.

Blackphone, the weapen to go in the Security Wars

It's a fully encrypted smartphone that aims to foil snooping governments, industry rivals and hackers.
It's also a sleek, attractive device that fits in your pocket and can impress friends and colleagues, according to its makers.
The Blackphone is set to be released next month by the secure communications firm Silent Circle and the small Spanish-based manufacturer Geeksphone, amid a fever pitch of concern over revelations about vast US surveillance of data and telephony.
But Silent Circle chief executive Mike Janke said his company was working on the handset even before last year's revelations about the wide-ranging US National Security Agency programs, leaked by former contractor Edward Snowden.
"We did this because there was a problem that was not being solved: secure communications," Janke said in an interview in the Silent Circle offices overlooking the Potomac River just outside Washington.
Silent Circle was formed in 2011 and in 2013 launched apps and other services which allow smartphone and PC users to send encrypted messages and videos.
The Blackphone is an extension of that effort, says Janke, a former Navy SEAL who co-founded the firm with other ex-SEALs and Silicon Valley cryptographic experts.
"We offer completely encrypted, peer-to-peer communications. We have encrypted video, encrypted text and secure VoIP (Voice-over-Internet-Protocol) calls," Janke said.
The founders include Phil Zimmermann, who created the widely used PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) standard, and former Apple cryptographic expert Jon Callas.
Last year, Silent Circle halted its encrypted email service to avoid becoming a target after the US government subpoenaed the records of a similar service called Lavabit.
"We destroyed all that data," said Janke, while adding that the company never faced a subpoena.
Silent Circle customers include major global corporations, human rights activists and even the Tibetan government in exile.
Because of its work, he said, "almost all of the major smartphone manufacturers came to us" to collaborate on a more secure smartphone.
Janke said Silent Circle chose to form a joint venture for Blackphone with the small Spanish company which recently began making smartphones using the Firefox operating system.
The larger firms, said Janke, "want to own your soul. These companies are in the business of monetizing data."
Silent Circle developed a modified or "forked" version of Android called PrivatOS for the phone, which is set to be unveiled at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on February 24.
'It's sexy, it's thin'
The company declined to release detailed specifications or pricing ahead of the unveiling, but Janke said it will be sold around the world at prices lower than the iPhone 5S or Samsung Galaxy S4.
But he maintained it would be comparable in terms of performance to those flagship devices. It is designed as a user-friendly phone that could be carried by executives, government officials, activists or ordinary people.
"It's sexy, it's thin, it's sleek, but it also solves a problem," Janke said.
"You can still go to Google and browse the web, but Google doesn't know who you are. It's a high-end smartphone. The user doesn't have to know how to use or how to spell encryption."
As an added assurance to customers, the Blackphone venture is incorporated in Switzerland with a Swiss data center and has "minimal data retention."
"All we have is the user name you give us and a 10-digit phone number," he said.
Even if the company faced a court order in Switzerland, it could only hand over the user name. Authorities seeking more information would need to subpoena a separate payment processing firm "and try to match that to our users," Janke said.
Janke said there is interest in the device worldwide, and that Blackphone has "verbal pre-orders" from four international telecom carriers and 30 enterprise customers.
Interest in Blackphone, Janke said, suggests "several million" will be sold within 12 months, and some 10 million total over the coming four years.
He did not disclose where the Blackphone would be made, but said there would be "neutral" partners making components and a tightly controlled assembly process to ensure no backdoors are inserted.
Janke said the US State Department wanted to buy some of the phones and distribute them to human rights groups but that the company refused, out of concern that the Blackphone would be associated with the US government.
"We decided to distribute this ourselves," he said.
Customers worldwide are interested "because it's not just the NSA -- there are 72 countries that have some NSA-like capabilities and they're all spying on us and on each other. If you're living in Kenya or Germany or Argentina, you have the same threats."
Even though some reports suggest the NSA has found ways to intercept encrypted communications, Janke said his systems will be effective.
"We know that encryption works," he said, adding that "brute force" attacks to break encryption are rare because they are time-consuming, and that spy agencies generally use other means like inserting viruses in emails or hardware that can intercept messages.
Because of this, Janke is careful not to promise too much. He said Blackphone is not a "hardened" device like some designed for military use.
"There is no such thing as a completely secure phone," he said. "Nothing is going to protect you from your own behavior. But out of the box, this phone does a lot of things to protect your privacy."

Why Google is More Innovating than Apple

In a recent interview with CNBC, Steve Jobs' biographer, Walter Isaacson, said that Google (NASDAQ: GOOG  ) is more innovative than Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL  ) -- clearly a bold statement from someone who spent hours interviewing Jobs and many people from Apple.
While some investors will inevitably disagree, there are three main reasons he's right: wearables, automobiles, and the coming Internet of Things. Google is already strolling down these three avenues, and all of them could propel the company ahead of the iMaker in the not too distant future.
First-mover advantage in wearables
With Google's Glass experiment, the company is one of only a few technology concerns that has produced and released wearable technology. While Glass is still being tested out by "Explorers," Google recently opened up invitations to purchase Glass to those with a Google Play Music All Access account.
While Glass may not appeal to everyone, and has come with plenty of criticism, the device still puts Google ahead of Apple and many other companies looking to make a business out of wearables. Of course Apple is rumored to be working on an iWatch that could release later this year, but that still doesn't make up for the experience Google is gaining tight now through Glass.
Juniper Research expects shipments of smart wearable devices like watches and glasses will hit 130 million by 2018, and spending on the devices could hit $19 billion that same year. While it's difficult to predict exactly how consumers will respond when an iWatch or Glass hits the mass market, the fact is that Google is already making a huge splash in the space and is gaining traction with consumers and developers because of it. When it comes to innovation, tech companies can only get credit for what products they actually have made, and that's why Google wins this category for now.
The other mobile revolutionThough wearables could eventually be a huge industry, there's already one industry that's undergoing a massive technological change right now: automobiles. Car companies are trying to keep up with new technologies, platforms, and apps but the pace of mobile is much faster than a carmaker's product release. To address technology in cars, Google recently announced the Open Automotive Alliance with chipmaker NVIDIA and automakers Honda, Audi, General Motors, and Hyundai to bring its Android platform into vehicles later this year.

Foreign Investment going to Cuba

Cuba plans to open its economy to greater foreign investment under a new law to be taken up soon by its legislature, a report in state-run media said Saturday.
Outside investment no longer would be merely a "complement" to Cuba's state-run economy but "would occupy a major role" under the proposed law, said Pedro San Jorge, a top official at Cuba's Ministry of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment.
The national assembly is take up the bill in March as part of an ongoing overhaul of Cuba's Soviet-style economy under President Raul Castro.
San Jorge, who heads the ministry's economic policy office, said it envisions among other things a role for foreign investment in agriculture, which he said was unusual.
His remarks were published in Cuba's Opciones weekly newspaper.
A 1995 law mandates that foreign capital should play only a complementary role in Cuba's economy, including providing funds and technological know-how to enterprises run by the Cuban state.
San Jorge said that the planned changes reflect the "current circumstances" faced by Cuba, which has been struggling to get out from under an inefficient, top heavy, state-run industrial apparatus.
Castro last month called an extraordinary session of the assembly in March to approve the bill.
He said that the measure opening up the economy to outside investment seeks to attract greater foreign capital, generate new jobs and bolster domestic industry.
Castro said he also wants to increase Cuba's exports and reduce its dependence on goods purchased from overseas.
"You have to strengthen the country's capacity to generate many of the products that we currently import," the Cuban leader said.
The island of some 11.1 million people has seen some significant changes since 2011.
The reforms have covered everything from the currency system to the kinds of jobs Cubans are permitted to take on as self-employed workers.
Castro also has created hundreds of cooperatives from former state enterprises, in a bid to reduce the legions of state workers who get a government paycheck.

The Technology of 2014

Electric cars take to the track

As the name suggests, Formula E is all about electric power. The arrival of this new petrol-free motor racing competition is a significant step for both the car and the environment. Two years ago motorsport's international governing body, the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), announced its ambitious plan for an electric car race that would mimic the hugely popular F1 series. As the arrival of Formula E looms, experts predict that it could have a big impact on the future of car manufacturing.

Initially, the cars in the competition will be powered by enormous battery engines. Each battery weighs 200 kilograms, producing around 200 kilowatts of power. Depending on the speed, the electric engines will last anywhere from a few hours to just 25 minutes and the cars can reach speeds of up to 220 kilometers per hour.

"If you look in the past, a lot of development in the car industry has come from racing," said Formula E CEO Alejandro Agag. "The transfer of technology is potentially very big."

Space tourism blasts off

After a number of false starts and delays, Virgin Galactic is finally poised to lift off in 2014. Billionaire Richard Branson's planned commercial spacecraft underwent a successful test flight last year over California, making a commercial launch this year a distinct possibility.

In September 2013, Branson's Virgin Galactic said SpaceShipTwo completed an important test, breaking the sound barrier as it climbed from 42,000 feet to 69,000 feet over the Mojave Desert before descended using its tilt-wing "feathering" maneuver. It was the second successful powered flight for SpaceShipTwo -- a craft designed to carry up to six passengers.

Initially, Virgin Galactic flights are scheduled to be suborbital, but the hope is to take passengers further into space as the technology is refined. Already, a host of famous names have signed up to head into near orbit including Katy Perry, Stephen Hawking and Ashton Kutcher.

"We couldn't be more delighted to have another major supersonic milestone under our belts as we move toward a 2014 start of commercial service," said Branson after the test flight last year.

Wind power blows stronger

As scientists look to find alternatives to traditional fossil fuels, a number of major projects, including Cape Wind (in Massachusetts' Nantucket Sound) and Deepwater Wind (near Block Island, Rhode Island), are vying to become the first offshore windfarm in the U.S.

Alongside power from volcanoes, waves, biomass and the sun, wind power is set to become a significant alternative energy source in 2014.

Are we finally heading to Mars?

A new type of engine, called the VASIMR (or Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket) will be tested in space in March. If successful it is estimated that it could reduce the time it takes to get to Mars from nine months to just three months. The technology -- an "advanced plasma space propulsion system" -- will be tested by NASA on the International Space Station, taking the prospect of interplanetary exploration one step closer.

Synthetic biology begins to grow

Marcus Fairs, the editor of dezeen.com, a highly influential online design magazine, says that in his view 2014's most significant emerging technologies will be in the field of synthetic biology.

"This emerging field started to hit the headlines at the end of last year and will be huge in 2014," Fairs say. "It involves the creation of new types of artificial life forms that perform useful functions. At the smallest scale it could mean man-made microbes that live inside your body and detect illness; at the largest scale it could mean synthetic creatures that are released into the wild to clean up pollution or attack parasitic species."

Wearable technology is on trend

Wearable technology fired some preliminary warning shots in 2013 with the release of the Samsung Galaxy Gear and Pebble smartwatches, but this year will see the arrival of a selection of truly innovative wearable devices. Most notably, Google Glass is expected to launch this year, offering head-mounted computing that could, ultimately, make smartwatches and mobile phones a thing of the past.

Alongside Google's new high-tech glasses, Fairs says that in 2014 "technology will migrate onto the body as digital services are miniaturized and embedded in our clothing or worn against our skin. We already have Google Glass and wearable fitness trackers, but a vast array of services -- from health monitoring to augmented information (telling you what's around you and helping you navigate) will become commonplace."

Fairs points to clothing with in-built solar panels, devices that scan your body for disease, and self-repairing trainers as some of the more exciting wearable technologies on the near horizon.

Tim Meyer, Head of Strategic Planning and Communications at TRIUMF, Canada's national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics, agrees. "This year's Las Vegas CES show is revealing new wearable technology, but what we're going to see this year is the development and test-marketing of smart clothing, not just smart gadgets," Meyer says. "New fibers, new micro-sensors, and new communications protocols will allow your clothes to actually work for you and collect and process information. I suspect we'll see some fashion statements first: clothes that change shape or color. Then we'll see clothes that do computing; first step will be storing information. My socks will store today's to-do list."

Dark matter

Meyer also believes that 2014 will be a significant year for physics, particularly in the search for dark matter: "Dark matter is being searched for in everyone's sock drawer as well as deep underground and with satellites. The underground experiments are likely to find something before the Large Hadron Collider turns back on to try "making" it. We could see a conclusive discovery of weakly interacting, massive dark matter particles this year. That will blow your mind."

Crowd-funding comes of age

Mid-way through 2014 new laws (known as the JOBS act) will allow anybody to buy equity in start-ups through new online crowd-funding marketplaces. This will make it almost as easy for individuals to fund new technology ventures as it currently is to support a Kickstarter project, bringing a flood of new capital to fledgling tech companies. "The ability to aggregate a bunch of individuals around a common funding goal is absolutely game changing," Vince Molinari, founder and chief executive of GATE Technologies, an online trading company said.

With these new laws in place, the rapid technology developments of 2014 may be dwarfed by innovations in 2015 and beyond. Watch this space.