An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday announced what the agency calls a "historic action" -- the first approval of a cell-based gene therapy in the United States. The FDA approved Kymriah, which scientists refer to as a "living drug" because it involves using genetically modified immune cells from patients to attack their cancer. The drug was approved to treat children and young adults suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a cancer of blood and bone marrow that is the most common childhood cancer in the United States. About 3,100 patients who are 20 and younger are diagnosed with ALL each year. The treatment involves removing immune system cells known as T cells from each patient and genetically modifying the cells in the laboratory to attack and kill leukemia cells. The genetically modified cells are then infused back into patients. It's also known as CAR-T cell therapy.

The treatment, which is also called CTL109, produced remission within three months in 83 percent of 63 pediatric and young adult patients. The patients had failed to respond to standard treatments or had suffered relapses. Based on those results, an FDA advisory panel recommended the approval in July. The treatment does carry risks, however, including a dangerous overreaction by the immune system known as cytokine-release syndrome. As a result, the FDA is requiring strong warnings.

In October, Kaspersky Labs was sued by a "do-nothing patent holder in East Texas who demanded a cash settlement before it would go away," reports Ars Technica. Today, founder and CEO Eugene Kaspersky said his company has defeated five patent assertion entities, including the infamous claims from Lodsys, "a much-maligned patent holder that sent demand letters to small app developers." The patent-licensing company who sued Kaspersky Labs in October was not only defeated, but they ended up paying Kaspersky $5,000 to end the litigation. From the report: The patent-licensing company, Wetro Lan LLC, owned U.S. Patent No. 6,795,918, which essentially claimed an Internet firewall. The patent was filed in 2000 despite the fact that computer network firewalls date to the 1980s. The '918 patent was used in what the Electronic Frontier Foundation called an "outrageous trolling campaign," in which dozens of companies were sued out of Wetro Lan's "headquarters," a Plano office suite that it shared with several other firms that engage in what is pejoratively called "patent-trolling." Wetro Lan's complaints argued that a vast array of Internet routers and switches infringed its patent. Most companies sued by Wetro Lan apparently reached settlements within a short time, a likely indicator of low-value settlement demands. Not a single one of the cases even reached the claim construction phase. But Kaspersky wouldn't pay up. As claim construction approached, Kaspersky's lead lawyer Casey Kniser served discovery requests for Wetro Lan's other license agreements. He suspected the amounts were low. Wetro Lan's settlement demands kept dropping, down from its initial "amicable" demand of $60,000. Eventually, the demands reached $10,000 -- an amount that's extremely low in the world of patent litigation. Kniser tried to explain that it didn't matter how far the company dropped the demand. "Kaspersky won't pay these people even if it's a nickel," he said. Then Kniser took a new tack. "We said, actually, $10,000 is fine," said Kniser. "Why don't you pay us $10,000?" After some back-and-forth, Wetro Lan's lawyer agreed to pay Kaspersky $5,000 to end the litigation. Papers were filed Monday, and both sides have dropped their claims.

Google announced today several new third-party speakers that will support the Assistant. Their blog post is a follow-up to a post in May where they announced the general availability of the Google Assistant SDK, which lets anyone download and run the Google Assistant on the gadget of their choice. TechCrunch reports: That's likely to be good for both the voice-powered assistant market, as well as for Google's ability to use its service to collect useful data which it can then use to work on its advertising and marketing products. The more places Assistant appears, the more likely it is that people will engage with the voice companion, and that's not territory Google wants to cede to someone like Amazon. Some of the devices getting Google Assistant coming to IFA include the Anker Zolo Mojo, a small cylinder speaker that's sort of like a third-party Google Home, which will go on sale in late October. Two other smart speakers powered by Assistant, including the Panasonic GA10 and the TicHome Mini, are also on their way. Google is also now making it possible to use Assistant to check on the state of your laundry or dishes, using an integration with LG's line of home appliances, which also includes voice commands for LG's Roomba competitor.

According to a new report, TCL will be manufacturing palm-branded devices next year. SlashGear reports: The Palm brand has been in limbo for the past half-decade, moving in and out of HP-connected devices then on into relative obscurity. The Palm operating system was acquired by LG and continues to be used (in some form or another) in LG smart TVs to this day -- as such, it won't be coming with the Palm phone set for next year. On the day when gesture controls for the next iPhone just started to look like the last phone version of Palm OS, word appears of Palm's resurgence. Sadly, this resurgence almost certainly wont include Palm OS. Word comes from Android Planet that TCL Marketing Manager Stefan Streit confirmed that they've finally gotten to a place where they can make a Palm phone. TCL acquired the Palm brand all the way back in 2011.

In addition to relaunching the world's fastest bullet train, China is working on developing technology similar to Elon Musk's Hyperloop, which will allow passengers to travel at speeds up to 4,000 km/h (~2,500 mph). The first stage of the company's plan, however, will be to create a network of these "flying trains" operating at 1,000 km/h (~600 mph). Shanghaiist reports: Earlier today, the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), one of the nation's major space contractors, announced that it had begun research and development into a new, futuristic type of transport which would operate via supersonic "near ground flight." The system would presumably be similar to that of the Hyperloop, proposed earlier this decade by Elon Musk, in which capsules would fly at ultrafast speeds down reduced-pressure tubes, dramatically reducing travel times. Of course, the CASIC isn't looking to reach speeds of 4,000 km/h right away. The first stage of the company's plan will be to create an intercity network of these "flying trains" operating at 1,000 km/h. In the second phase, this network would be extended and the max speed of the pods increased to 2,000 km/h. Finally, in the third stage, the speed would be boosted all the way up to 4,000 km/h -- five times the speed of civil aviation aircraft today.

Five years after the opportunity arose in 2011 for Kansas City to become the first community to pilot Google Fiber, expansion of the gigabit per second service has come to a screeching halt. Kaleigh Rogers from Motherboard writes about how Kansas City's broadband future is "to be determined." From the report: Thousands of customers in KC who had pre-registered for guaranteed service when Fiber made it to their neighborhood were given their money back earlier this year, and told they may never get hooked up. Fiber cycled through two CEOs in the last 10 months, lost multiple executives, and has started laying off employees. Plans to expand Fiber to eight other American cities halted late last year, leaving the fate of the project up in the air. I recently asked Rachel Hack Merlo, the Community Manager for Google Fiber in Kansas City, about the future of the expanding the project service there, and she told me it was "TBD." Kansas City expected to become Google's glittering example of a futuristic gig-city: Half a decade later, there are examples of how Fiber benefitted KC, and stories about how it fell short. Thousands of customers will likely never get the chance to access the infrastructure they rallied behind, and many communities are still without any broadband access at all. Many are now left wondering: is that it?

An anonymous reader writes: Starting next month, Best Buy will launch a free service where salespeople will come to your house to make recommendations about gadgets and services to try and sell you stuff. The service has been in testing in five markets and will be expanded to more cities around the U.S., according to the Associated Press. The Verge reports: "Best Buy has found that shoppers spend more money when at home than in store. CEO Hubert Joly says the in-house service is one way the company will open up 'latent' customer demand. Sales associates are responsible for promoting the service -- when customers ask about certain products, the salesperson will suggest an in-home visit. The topics discussed during the home visits usually involve recommendations for products and gadgets, and other services. Best Buy says the salespeople working in the in-home service receive hourly rates, or a salary, and not commissions. The company already operates a 'Geek Squad' facility, but that's a paid service that offers repairs and installations."

Between the events of Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049, much has happened in the dystopian, neo-Los Angeles future, including the era of replicant prohibition. To help bridge the first Blade Runner, which was released in 1982, with Blade Runner 2049, director Luke Scott has created a short film (YouTube) that examines Niander Wallace's role in the decision to overturn the prohibition ruling. From an article, shared by several readers: As explained by Blade Runner 2049 director Denis Villeneuve in the introduction for this video, he invited a few filmmakers to create three shorts that set the stage for his film. Blade Runner 2036: Nexus Dawn was directed by Luke Scott, and it reveals that Replicant technology was outlawed in the intervening years. That can't be considered too much of a surprise, considering the Replicants of 2019 were able to elude conventional detection. The short officially introduces Jared Leto's Niander Wallace, as he makes a personal request to repeal the anti-Replicant laws. In reality, Wallace had no intention of abiding by those rules, and he's already created at least one new Replicant whom he describes as an "angel." Intriguingly, Wallace argues that the new Replicants are necessary for humanity's survival in the off-world colonies, and he promises that his Replicants will never rebel and will only obey. But we've heard that promise before! And it never ends well.

PayPal is turning to its old nemesis, plastic, to help it expand beyond the digital realm. From a report: The online payments venture is introducing a credit card that offers customers 2 percent cash back on purchases -- one of the industry's highest rebate rates -- with no annual fee. The rewards will appear in users' online wallets and can be spent immediately on additional PayPal purchases or transferred to a bank. The move is part of Chief Executive Officer Dan Schulman's effort to transform PayPal from a payments button on websites into a versatile financial tool for everyday use, even in brick-and-mortar stores. He's forged 24 deals over the past 18 months with technology and financial companies including Apple, Visa and JPMorgan Chase, looking to make PayPal ubiquitous in the lives of its 210 million customers. The company already tested the card with some of them.

Stack Overflow data scientist David Robinson published an interesting observation: There exists a small but meaningful divide between the programming technologies used in wealthy countries and those used in developing countries. From a report: To be sure, programmers everywhere tend to build things with the same tools, which makes sense because software is a global industry. The first is in data science, which tends to employ the programming languages Python and R. "Python is visited about twice as often in high-income countries as in the rest of the world, and R about three times as much," Robinson writes. "We might also notice that among the smaller tags, many of the greatest shifts are in scientific Python and R packages such as pandas, numpy, matplotlib and ggplot2. This suggests that part of the income gap in these two languages may be due to their role in science and academic research. It makes sense these would be more common in wealthier industrialized nations, where scientific research makes up a larger portion of the economy and programmers are more likely to have advanced degrees." C and C++ use is similarly skewed toward wealthy countries. This is likely for a similar reason. These are languages that are pushed in American universities. They also tend to be used in highly specialized/advanced programming fields like embedded software and firmware development where you're more likely to find engineers with advanced degrees.

A German man -- Norbert Blum -- who claimed to have solved the P vs NP problem is seeing several challenges to his solution. From a report: Numerous mathematicians have begun to raise questions about whether the German mathematician solved it at all. Since Blum's paper was published, mathematicians and computer scientists worldwide have been racking their brains as to whether the Bonn-based researcher has, in fact, solved this Millennium Prize Problem. After an initially positive reaction, such as the one from Stanford mathematician Reza Zadeh, doubts are beginning to arise about whether Blum's reasoning is correct. In a forum for theoretical mathematics, a user named Mikhail reached out to Alexander Razborov -- the author of the paper on which Blum's proof is based -- to ask him about Blum's paper. Razborov purports to have discovered an error in Blum's paper: Blum's main argument contradicts one of Razborov's key assumptions. And mathematician Scott Aaronson, who is something of an authority in the math community when it comes to P vs. NP, said he would be willing to bet $200,000 that Blum's mathematical proof won't endure. "Please stop asking," Aaronson writes. If the proof hasn't been refuted, "you can come back and tell me I was a closed-minded fool." In the week since Aaronson's initial blog post, other mathematicians have begun trying to poke holes in Blum's proof. Dick Lipton, a computer science professor at Georgia Tech, wrote in a blog post that Blum's proof "passes many filters of seriousness," but suggested there may be some problems with it. A commenter on that blog post, known only as "vloodin," noted that there was a "single error on a subtle point" in the proof; other mathematicians have since chimed in and confirmed vloodin's initial analysis, and so the emerging consensus among many mathematicians is that a solve for P vs. NP remains elusive.

China's State Administration for Industry and Commerce is reviewing an antitrust complaint accusing Apple of abusing its dominant position in smartphone applications, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. From the report: The regulator is studying the information following a complaint filed on behalf of developers before deciding if a formal investigation is necessary, said the people, who asked not to be named because the matter isn't public. The review is preliminary and Chinese antitrust agencies usually review such information before deciding whether a official probe is needed. Beijing-based law firm Daxiao, or Dare & Sure, said earlier this month it filed complaints on the developers' behalf to the SAIC and the National Development and Reform Commission. The lawyers accused Apple of removing apps without a proper explanation and taking an excessive 30 percent cut of in-app transactions, it said in an Aug. 8 statement. The law firm now represents close to 50 developers, producing games and a number of other apps, according to Lin Wei, managing partner of Dare & Sure.

In what may be a first, patients with heart conditions that are using particular pacemaker brands will have to visit their doctors for firmware updates to keep their embedded devices safe from tampering. From a report: It seems such an odd concept at first, but with many kinds of pacemakers now "smarter," with connections to mobile devices and diagnostic systems, the avenue has been carved for these medical devices to potentially be tampered with, should a threat actor choose. In particular, Abbott's pacemakers, formerly of St. Jude Medical, have been "recalled" by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on a voluntary basis. The devices must be given a firmware update to protect them against a set of critical vulnerabilities, first reported by MedSec, which could drain pacemaker battery life, allow attackers to change programmed settings, or even change the beats and rhythm of the device. On Tuesday, the FDA issued a security advisory, warning that the pacemakers must be recalled -- and as they are embedded within the chests of their users, this requires a home visit or trip to the hospital to have the software patch applied.

An anonymous reader writes: A researcher at a high-profile Washington, D.C.-think tank, which receives funding from Google, was pushed out after criticizing the company. In June, Barry Lynn, who was a scholar at New America, posted a statement praising the European Union's record $2.7 billion fine against the company. Lynn ran a team, Open Markets, that researched competition policy and was increasingly critical of giants like Google and Amazon. Google executive chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt, criticized Lynn's statement to the think tank's CEO, Anne-Marie Slaughter, according to The New York Times. Schmidt chaired New America until 2016. The think tank has received $21 million from Google and Schmidt's family's foundation since its founding in 1999. The statement reportedly disappeared from the think tank website but returned hours later. According to the Times, word of Schmidt's displeasure spread across the think tank. Slaughter fired Lynn days later, saying in an email obtained by the Times that "the time has come for Open Markets and New America to part ways." Slaughter told Lynn in an email that his firing was "in no way based on the content of your work," but said he was "imperiling the institution as a whole." Lynn told the Times he believed his dismissal was because he criticized Google.

Tim Harford, a columnist for the Financial Times, uses the example of Rachael and Rick Deckard from Blade Runner to explain how we humans, when asked about how new inventions might shape the future, often tend to leap to technologies that are sophisticated beyond comprehension. Also spoiler of the Blade Runner plot is ahead. He writes: So sophisticated is Rachael that she is impossible to distinguish from a human without specialised equipment; she even believes herself to be human. Los Angeles police detective Rick Deckard knows otherwise; in Rachael, Deckard is faced with an artificial intelligence so beguiling, he finds himself falling in love. Yet when he wants to invite Rachael out for a drink, what does he do? He calls her up from a payphone. There is something revealing about the contrast between the two technologies -- the biotech miracle that is Rachael, and the graffiti-scrawled videophone that Deckard uses to talk to her. It's not simply that Blade Runner fumbled its futurism by failing to anticipate the smartphone. That's a forgivable slip, and Blade Runner is hardly the only film to make it. It's that, when asked to think about how new inventions might shape the future, our imaginations tend to leap to technologies that are sophisticated beyond comprehension. We readily imagine cracking the secrets of artificial life, and downloading and uploading a human mind. Yet when asked to picture how everyday life might look in a society sophisticated enough to build such biological androids, our imaginations falter. Blade Runner audiences found it perfectly plausible that LA would look much the same, beyond the acquisition of some hovercars and a touch of noir.