Current Events in May 2015

Well, that didn't take long: earlier this week, Google introduced a new anti-phishing tool called Password Alert to its Chrome browsers. Password Alert would show you a warning if you type your Google password into a site that isn't a Google sign-in page.

So if, for example, a scammer sent you an email purportedly (but not really) from Google, claiming there's some problem with your Google account so you should click the link in this-here email to log in and type your password when asked – Password Alert would send you a warning notice advising you to reset your password since it had just been typed into a non-Google page.

But it took less than 24 hours for security researchers to discover a workaround which ArsTechnica called a “drop-dead simple exploit that nukes Google's password alert.”

White-hat hacking

Paul Moore, an information security consultant with the UK-based Urity Group, developed a simple proof-of-concept exploit, shown here,which looks convincingly similar to a genuine Google login page even though it's completely fake, with no connection to Google at all — yet if you're in Chrome and type your password into it (don't try this yourself), you won't see Google's Password Alert warning because the program will suppress it.

A proof of concept (or PoC) exploit is an example of white-hat hacking (or “good guy” hacking). PC Mag's encyclopedia defines a PoC exploit as: “An attack against a computer or network that is performed only to prove that it can be done. It generally does not cause any harm, but shows how a hacker can take advantage of a vulnerability in the software or possibly the hardware.”

To its credit, Google swiftly responded to news of Moore's PoC exploit with an update to patch it. Yesterday, a Google engineer took to Twitter to say that Password Alert has been updated to version 1.4, in order to prevent Moore's PoC exploit from working:

It's now fixed in 1.4. To update quickly, go to chrome://extensions/ , enable developer mode, click update extensions now.

A company called Jet.com has been promoting itself as the beginning of the end for Amazon Prime, promising to provide much lower prices to its customers and driving Amazon into the history books.

Although it hasn't launched yet, Jet.com has been raising money at a healthy clip, with about $220 million invested so far. The company's valuation is estimated at about $600 million, which isn't bad for a retailer that has yet to sell a single pair of shoes or box of tissues.

Why are investors so bullish on this upstart?

It's mostly because of its founder and CEO, Marc Lore, lionized on Wall Street as one of the gods of e-commerce. He's known mostly for starting Diapers.com, a successful site that was eventually sold to none other than Amazon, the company Lore now promises to decimate.

And this will happen how, exactly?

Half price!

As Lore tells it, Jet.com will sell memberships for $50 a year, roughly half the $99 cost of Amazon Prime. In exchange, consumers will be guaranteed the absolute lowest prices, along with free shipping for orders over $35.

There are some potential problems with this. For starters, Amazon Prime offers free shipping on nearly everything with no minimum. And, Amazon currently sells literally hundreds of millions of products. Jet.com promises it will have 10 million by the time it launches later this spring.

Then there are all the things that are included free in Prime -- music, streaming video and books to mention a few. 

In business school, budding entrepreneurs learn about something called the "value proposition" -- basically a fancy term that defines what consumers think they're getting for shelling out their money.

In the crudest possible terms, Lore thinks consumers will rush to spend half as much for a Jet.com membership as for a Prime subscription, in exchange for getting access to a fraction of the inventory with no movies, books or tunes thrown in and free shipping only on bigger orders.

Sound good to you?

If so, get that $50 ready to hand over. If not, it might be wise to hold onto the cash for awhile and see what early adopters have to say about it.

There's gold in all that gray. At least that's how home builders see it.

The National Association of Home Builders’ (NAHB) 55+ Housing Market Index (HMI) was in positive territory for the first quarter of 2015. Compared with the previous quarter, the measure of builder confidence edged down slightly -- 1 point -- to 58, which is the fourth consecutive quarter above 50.

Two of the three components of the 55+ single-family HMI posted increases: Present sales increased 1 point to 64 and expected sales for the next six months rose 3 points to 67, while traffic of prospective buyers dropped 8 points to 40.

“Builders in many parts of the country were affected by a particularly severe winter, but builders and developers in the 55+ sector continue to be positive as we move forward in 2015,” said Timothy McCarthy, chairman of NAHB's 50+ Housing Council. “The weather had an effect on traffic, and moderated and delayed settlement schedules. Nonetheless, 55+ builders’ confidence remains bullish on the outlook for the balance of the year.”

Separate segments

There are separate 55+ HMIs for 2 segments of the 55+ housing market: single-family homes and multifamily condominiums. Each 55+ HMI measures builder sentiment based on a survey that asks if current sales, prospective buyer traffic and anticipated six-month sales for that market are good, fair or poor (high, average or low for traffic). An index number below 50 indicates that more builders view conditions as poor than good.

The 55+ multifamily condo HMI dipped 4 points to 38, and all components of the index dropped in the first quarter as well: Present sales dropped 3 points to 41, expected sales for the next 6 months fell 5 points to 39 and traffic of prospective buyers dipped 1 point to 33.

Three out of the 4 indices tracking production and demand of 55+ multifamily rentals posted increases for the first quarter. Present production jumped 8 points to 58, expected future production increased 1 point to 52 and current demand for existing units rose 3 points to 68, while future demand dipped 2 points to 64.

“The strong eight-point surge in the 55+ HMI survey’s index for multifamily rental production is a positive sign, and a contrast to the relatively low attitudes builders are currently expressing towards 55+ multifamily condos,” said NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe. “This suggests that there is a significant number of 55+ households who desire to live in dense multifamily settings but not to own -- at least not right away.”

Despite advances in modern medicine, there are still many diseases that stubbornly persist. Cancer, heart disease and diabetes are being worked on tirelessly by researchers and scientists every day.

So if there were a medicine that could help with these illnesses, wouldn’t you want to know about it? Unfortunately, it seems that many medical professionals are keeping us in the dark, or may be in the dark themselves.  

A study from UCLA shows that only a small fraction of practicing doctors are prescribing metformin, which has been proven to help prevent the onset of diabetes. It indicates that only 3.7% of U.S. adults with pre-diabetes were recommended to take the drug in a recent three-year period.

While many people struggle with fully formed diabetes, pre-diabetes is often understated. It is found in people who have higher-than-normal blood sugar levels, yet do not reach the threshold for diabetes. It is projected that one third of adults in the U.S. currently meet the requirements for pre-diabetes. Dr. Tannaz Moin, who is the study’s lead author and a professor of medicine at UCLA, says metformin can help those at risk.

“Diabetes is prevalent, but pre-diabetes is even more prevalent and we have evidence-based therapies like metformin that are very safe and that work," Moin said.

Different organizations have recognized the benefits of metformin in recent years. The American Diabetes Association added metformin to its guidelines for diabetes prevention in 2008. The organization specifically mentions that the drug should be used by those who have high blood sugar levels, even if they are not yet in the diabetes range.

Despite all of this support, only small fractions of patients are advised to take the drug. Of these, there were specific people that were more likely to get a prescription. In particular, women, the obese, and those suffering from multiple chronic diseases were preferred.

Various theories

Researchers are not completely certain why the drug is not being recommended, but they do have theories. One of these is that medical professionals are reluctant to “medicalize” pre-diabetes. Even patients may be hesitant to admit that they could be in danger. This lack of acceptance could very well be the reason that the FDA has not approved the drug for treatment of pre-diabetes.

While the study is telling, there are some shortcomings that need to be followed up on in the future. For example, the researchers focused only on adults who had commercial insurance. This excludes those who are uninsured or older. Being able to verify if patients could take the drug could also adjust the findings significantly.  

Additional research could very well lead to drastic improvements in health, says Dr. Sam Ho, a co-author of the study: "Identifying more effective ways to help people avoid diabetes is essential to individuals' lives and to society as a whole, which is why it was important to us to support this research," he says.

Wholesome Soy Products of Chicago, Ill., owner Julia Trinh and manager Paul Trinh have been barred from receiving, processing, manufacturing, preparing, packing, holding and distributing ready-to-eat mung bean and soybean sprouts. The company had sold its products to wholesale distributors and retail stores in Illinois.

The consent decree of permanent injunction was ordered by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois following multiple findings of contaminated food and environmental samples by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“It is FDA’s responsibility to ensure that appropriate action is taken when we conduct inspections and find results that could put consumers at risk,” said Melinda K. Plaisier, the FDA’s associate commissioner for regulatory affairs. “Agreeing to the consent decree is a first step in the right direction for this company.”

Listeria found

In August 2014, during a routine inspection of the company, the FDA collected environmental and product samples that tested positive for Listeria monocytogenes (L. mono), a foodborne pathogen that can cause serious illness or even death in vulnerable groups including elderly adults and those with impaired immune systems (such as HIV/AIDS, cancer, diabetes, kidney disease and transplant patients). In pregnant women, L. mono can cause miscarriage, stillbirth and serious illness or death in newborn babies.

On Aug. 28, 2014, Wholesome Soy Products agreed to recall and temporarily stop production of their sprout products. The company reported that it cleaned and sanitized its facility. The firm also hired an independent consultant to collect and test several samples that reportedly came back negative for L. mono. Operations were resumed on Sept. 15, 2014, after these corrections were made.

Later that month, the company was notified of an outbreak of human infections with a strain of L. mono linked to strains found in the samples previously collected by the FDA during its inspection of the company. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were 4 cases in Illinois and 1 in Michigan. All 5 patients were hospitalized and 2 died.

Follow-up inspection

The FDA began a follow-up inspection of in October 2014 to verify the effectiveness of the company’s corrective actions. Nine samples taken by FDA inspectors tested positive for L. mono. Due to these findings, the FDA concluded that sprouts could not be manufactured safely by the company in that environment.

In November 2014, the company agreed to shut down operations, and the Illinois Department of Public Health oversaw the company’s voluntary destruction of remaining inventory. The CDC closed its investigation in January 2015 and no further cases of illness in connection to the company have been reported.

Hyundai Motor America is recalling 2,580 model year 2015 Accent vehicles manufactured September 15, 2014, to February 10, 2015.

In very cold temperatures, the occupant detection system (ODS) may not be able to determine if a child restraint seat is in the front passenger seat. This will prevent the front air bag from being deactivated and, in the event of a crash necessitating front air bag deployment, the risk of injury to the occupant in the child restraint seat is increased.

A Hyundai spokesman said that "very cold" is something of an understatement.

"[T]his problem might only occur in temperatures below 0 degrees Fahrenheit and would go away as soon as the interior of the car reached a temperature above 0 degrees," Hyundai's Jim Trainor said. 

Hyundai will notify owners, and dealers will correct ODS software, free of charge. The recall is expected to begin on June 5, 2015.

Owners may contact Hyundai customer service at 1-855-671-3059. Hyundai's number for this recall is 129.

Ohanyan’s Bastirma & Soujouk Company of Fresno, Calif., is recalling approximately 159,291 pounds of sausage products.

The products contain soy lecithin, an allergen not listed on the label.

There are no reports of adverse reactions due to consumption of these products.

The following products are being recalled:

• 1-pound cryovac packages of SOUJOUK Dried Beef Sausage Hot & Spicy with plant EST. 5867-A.
• 1-pound cryovac packages of SOUJOUK Dried Beef Sausage Mild with plant EST. 5867-A.

The recalled products were produced from April 30, 2014, through April 30, 2015 and bear the establishment number “EST. 5867-A” inside the USDA mark of inspection with the sell by date printed on the label. They were shipped to distributors, retailers and consumers nationwide.

Consumers with questions may contact Hayik Garabetyan at 1-559-243-0800.