Saran999

The cast-iron cookware was loved by colonists and settlers because of its versatility and durability. It could be used for boiling, baking, stews, frying, roasting, and just about any other use. The ovens were so valuable that wills in the 18th and 19th centuries frequently spelled out the desired inheritor of the cast iron cookware. For example, Mary Ball Washington (mother of President George Washington) specified in her will, dated 20 May 1788, that one-half of her "iron kitchen furniture" should go to her grandson, Fielding Lewis, and the other half to Betty Carter, a granddaughter. Several Dutch ovens were among Mary’s “iron kitchen furniture.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RkfLwe8Jl4Q Good cast-iron cookware will last you a lifetime, if you take good care of it. We've shown you how to clean, how to season, and the best oils to use, but this video from America's Test Kitchen combines everything into one package that's easy to remember or share with someone whose cast iron pans have seen better days.

A fake Apple ad has been spreading on social networks, encouraging people to destroy their iPhones, The Independent's James Vincent reports. The ad, which is uses Apple's same font and clean white background, states: "Update to IOS 7 and become waterproof." Then it says, "“In an emergency, a smart-switch will shut off the phone’s power supply and corresponding components to prevent any damage to your iPhone’s delicate circuitry.” The ad goes on to explain what "iOS" is.

To me English is a second, or third language, and sometimes I met with strange and funny terms that I strive to learn better. In my opinion, learning the slang and the jargon it's the right way to enrich my culture and my knowledge, getting to know better the peoples that speak a specific language. Today, I've met with the word: "peeps" that means 'peoples', but also marshmallow candies, sold in the United States and Canada and shaped into chicks, bunnies, and other animals. There are also different shapes used for various holidays. Peeps are used primarily to fill Easter baskets, though recent advertising campaigns market the candy as "Peeps - Always in Season", as Peeps has since expanded to include Halloween, Christmas and Valentine's Day. They are made from sugar, corn syrup, gelatin, and various food dyes. Thanks God, today I've learned a new thing!

Deipnosophy learned dinner-conversation

Not all people waiting in line for iPhones this week were homeless men being exploited. Some people were just... actually, as this video shows, a lot of people were confused why they were living outside for a phone. Some were doing it to sell it online for thousands of dollars. Others were being paid to do it. Either way, this outstanding short film by Casey Neistat documents the iPhone lines in New York City, filled with Apple enthusiasts, confused foreigners, and a woman sleeping in a sealed garbage bag. Total madness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rRwcIumf-mI

The company that used to make standard issue hardware for suits, geeks, and spoiled college kids is, as long expected, sliding into oblivion: BlackBerry will lay off 4,500 employees after a quarterly loss of almost $1 billion. No one wants the phones. The company will cut 4,500 jobs and record an inventory writedown of as much as $960 million for the fiscal second quarter, according to a statement today. Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry expects to report a net operating loss of as much as $995 million for the period. Sales were about $1.6 billion, compared with the $3.03 billion average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. The shares fell the most in three months. In a concession that it has failed to gain traction against Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPhones or Google Inc.’s Android devices, BlackBerry is narrowing its focus to the market for corporate and professional users. Even that decision may not be enough, with customers such as Morgan Stanley holding off on committing to new BlackBerry devices. “That’s the nail in the coffin,” said Keith Lam, managing partner with Red Sky Capital Management Ltd. in Toronto. His firm manages C$220 million ($214 million) and is getting rid of its BlackBerry shares because of the results. “If you’re not selling your devices -- and that’s the thing everyone was hoping would turn around the company -- that’s just not happening.”

Security biz RSA has reportedly warned its customers to stop using the default random-number generator in its encryption products - amid fears spooks can easily crack data secured by the algorithm. All encryption systems worth their salt require a source of virtually unpredictable random values to create strong cryptographic keys and similar things; one such source is the NSA-co-designed pseudo-random-number generator Dual_EC_DRBG, or the Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generator, which is well known for being cryptographically weak: six years ago it was claimed that someone had crippled the design, effectively creating a backdoor so that encryption systems that relied on it could be easily cracked. http://rump2007.cr.yp.to/15-shumow.pdf RSA's BSafe toolkit and Data Protection Manager software use Dual_EC_DRBG by default. Now the EMC-owned company "strongly recommends" customers pick another pseudo-random-number generator (PRNG) in their setups. This comes after documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden allegedly show that the NSA nobbled Dual_EC_DRBG during its inception - which could allow the spook nerve-centre to crack HTTPS connections secured by RSA's BSafe software, for example. The suspect algorithm, championed by the NSA according to security expert Bruce Schneier, was given the seal of approval and published by the US government's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2006. But a year later researchers at Microsoft highlighted fundamental flaws its design: crypto-prof Matthew Green lays out the history and faults of the PRNG here. Since Snowden's leaks came to light, NIST has denied weakening this particular PRNG - one of four approved for wider use in 2006 - at the behest of shadowy g-men. However, earlier this month, Schneier said NIST needs to go much further to restore confidence in its practices and procedures, especially when doubts linger about the robustness of Dual_EC_DRBG. Cryptographers have known for literally years that Dual_EC_DRBG was slow and not especially effective, leading to criticism that RSA was wrong to pick it as a default option for BSafe - and the more paranoid to question its motives. "Despite many valid concerns about this generator, RSA went ahead and made it the default generator used for all cryptography in its flagship cryptography library," noted Green late last week. "The implications for RSA and RSA-based products are staggering. In a modestly bad but by no means worst case, the NSA may be able to intercept SSL/TLS connections made by products implemented with BSafe." "So why would RSA pick Dual_EC as the default? You got me,” shrugged Green, who is a research professor at John Hopkins University in Baltimore. “Not only is Dual_EC hilariously slow - which has real performance implications - it was shown to be a just plain bad random number generator all the way back in 2006. By 2007, when [cryptographers Dan] Shumow and [Niels] Ferguson raised the possibility of a backdoor in the specification, no sensible cryptographer would go near the thing." RSA's CTO Sam Curry defended RSA's choices in an interview with Ars Technica. RSA is reviewing all its products, he confirmed. Green was unimpressed by the RSA man's claims. Curry was quoted as explaining in an email: "The hope was that elliptic curve techniques — based as they are on number theory — would not suffer many of the same weaknesses as other techniques (like the FIPS 186 SHA-1 generator) that were seen as negative, and Dual_EC_DRBG was an accepted and publicly scrutinized standard." The NSA's alleged weakening of encryption algorithms was part of a wider campaign aimed at making it easier for spooks to decrypt supposedly secure internet communications, first outlined in the New York Times two weeks ago. Other tactics include attempting to persuade technology companies to insert backdoors in their products, including it is claimed Microsoft's Outlook.com, and running so-called man-in-the-middle attacks to hoover up the world's online chatter and transactions.

Touch-what? You know, the fingerprint sensor built into the Home button on the new iPhone 5s. It’s for unlocking the handset and buying stuff through iTunes and the App Store. I thought the fingerprint was stored in some secure chip. How’d it get hacked? It is, and this isn’t a hardcore technological hack so much as a good old-fashioned fake fingerprint technique. You find the iPhone owner’s print somewhere (the device itself may carry a few on its glossy surfaces), put some powder on it to make it more visible, then photograph or scan it at high resolution. Clean up the reversed image, print it at high resolution using thick ink, then use that to make a thin latex dummy, which you can put on your finger and use to unlock the iPhone. I thought TouchID was supposed to be smarter than that. Well it was, and I admit I’m a bit confused by what was revealed on the weekend. A big selling point of the new generation of fingerprint readers, including that in the iPhone 5s, is that they don’t simply read the outer, dead layer of skin – instead, they use a radio frequency (RF) scanner to read a living layer of skin underneath. According to a Citeworld report, this assures the system that it’s dealing with a living finger, nixing both the old lift-a-print trick (see above) and the chop-off-some-poor-person’s-finger-to-unlock-their-phone trick. But according to the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) and hacker Starbug, who claimed TouchID’s breakage on Sunday, “the marvels of the new technology” are less impressive than touted. Here’s what Starbug said in a statement: “In reality, Apple’s sensor has just a higher resolution compared to the sensors so far. So we only needed to ramp up the resolution of our fake.” If that’s correct – and it should be noted that Apple itself only talks about taking “a high-resolution image from small sections of your fingerprint from the subepidermal layers of your skin” in its online FAQ — then TouchID isn’t actually that good at making sure it’s dealing with a living finger. It appears that it can be fooled by, as Starbug describes, breathing on the latex sheet “to make it a tiny bit moist” before using it on the sensor. I’m waiting for Apple to comment on all this, and have also asked the CCC if anyone is available to discuss the technique further. Can we trust “Starbug”? In the first of the two videos Starbug has published on YouTube, someone programs the iPhone with their index finger, then puts the latex sheet on another finger to unlock the device. In the second, a completely different person dons the sheet to fool the phone. It looks legit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=npR11DOzqRw Starbug has been around for a while. Also, even though there’s a crowdfunded bug bounty out there for cracking TouchID, the CCC is Europe’s largest hacker organization and it has a reputation to uphold. I sincerely doubt anyone’s pranking the world on this one. As an iPhone 5s user, should I be afraid? Depends on the scenario you’ve got in your head. If it’s pickpocketing you’re worried about, then bear in mind that your iPhone is probably covered in your fingerprints. That said, making a fake print of the quality we’re talking about here is not trivial and it also takes a while, making it likely that the owner would just remotely wipe the device before anything can be accessed. So I guess it depends on the caliber of pickpocket, and their desire to do more than simply steal and sell the hardware. If it’s muggers or overzealous law enforcement or border agents that you’re thinking about, then this “hack” doesn’t make a blind bit of difference. Merely having a biometric access mechanism makes it possible to grab your hand and use it to unlock the phone – much simpler than having to go through the tedious process of passcode extraction (or making fake prints). The only real worry here relates to a more targeted attack, perhaps by a private investigator who’s after some juicy corporate secrets. If the victim’s fingerprint has already been lifted from somewhere – which any idiot with a degree of patience could achieve — and a corresponding latex sheet made, then a skilled pickpocket armed with that sheet could get very quick access indeed. So… So for most people this won’t be a problem. And indeed, if you’re the type who forgoes passcodes because they slow you down, it’s better to use TouchID than to use no security at all. Also, it’s not like we’re talking about someone hacking into the phone’s secure A7 chip. But do remember that, compared with passcodes, the inclusion of biometric access can in certain circumstances make it just that little bit easier for someone to get into your phone. And if that phone carries secrets that others really want to steal, you may want to bear this new risk in mind.

Japanese manufacturer Sharp is well known for producing TVs, smartphones, printers, and a whole range of electronic components. But what you may not know is that the company is attempting to revolutionize the production of fruit and vegetables by creating a facility that can grow them pretty much anywhere in the world. Since July, Sharp has been growing strawberries in a new facility located in Dubai. What’s special about this facility is the fact it is hermetically sealed and its contents is never exposed to real sunlight or the environment outside. Instead, artificial lighting and Sharp’s Plasmacluster air filtration technology are used to grow fresh strawberries in a managed environment. Why is this important? Certain fruit and vegetables are in high demand around the world but can’t always be grown naturally in the locations where the demand exists. That means they get imported, which both ups the cost of producing/purchasing them and can result in a percentage of the goods spoiling. Sharp figured out it would be much easier and cheaper to grow the goods locally even if the environment wasn’t suitable for doing so. By creating this growing facility, the environmental factors are removed. As long as a power and water supply exist, the sealed growing facility will produce freshly grown food. With the system now proven, Sharp aims to commercialize these plant growing facilities for deployment around the world. The focus will remain on strawberry production for the time being, but there’s nothing to stop other fruit and vegetables also being grown in the same way.

While the cost of 3D printers are coming down, it's unlikely we'll start to see them invade everyone's homes 'til they become much cheaper. That's the idea, at least, behind the Peachy Printer, a device that's promising to retail for less than $100. Unlike printers made by companies such as Makerbot, Peachy uses a laser to set objects from liquid resin. The laser is guided by a pair of mirrors that take instructions from your PC's audio in / out ports, and the system even allows you to scan objects with your own camera. Having launched on Kickstarter three days ago, Peachy Printer has more than tripled its CDN$50,000 goal. We doubt you'll find anyone trying to build an Aston Martin replica on one of these things, but it's a neat idea that employs a different 3D-printing method to significantly reduce hardware costs.

The New York Police Department is taking the unusual step of asking people to upgrade their devices to iOS 7. NYPD officers have been spotted handing out fliers to people on the streets, telling users to download iOS 7 onto their iPhones and iPads, due to the introduction of Apple's new "Activation Lock" security feature. Officers located near an Apple Store and a Manhattan subway station were handing out the leaflets, which were initially spotted by Jim Rosenberg and picked up by All Things D. Last week, the New York Attorney General and the San Francisco District Attorney praised the addition of Activation Lock, calling it an "important first step towards ending the global epidemic of smartphone theft," as part of the "Secure Our Smartphones" joint effort. Activation Lock prevents potential thieves from being able to erase the device, reactivate, nor to turn off Find My iPhone without the Apple ID and password. This in theory makes it easier for law enforcement to find stolen iPhones, as well as to deter thieves from stealing them by making them effectively unusable to unrecognized users.

Microsoft wants you to be able to run any app in all three ecosystems Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) currently curates three environments -- Xbox, Windows 8, and Windows Phone 8 -- all of which have different development libraries and require a lot of work to port from one to another. But Microsoft hopes that with the Xbox One and Windows/Windows Phone 8.1 releases, these platforms can be brought together to the extent that a developer can make single app that can run on all three devices. That's the vision new Windows Chief Terry Myerson -- formerly the head of the Windows Phone unit -- is pushing as Microsoft reorganizes following the acquisition of phonemaker Nokia Oyj. (HEX:NOK1V) and the pending departure of CEO Steve Ballmer. At the a Financial Analysts meeting, he remarked: Of course it may be impossible to escape some sorts of optimizations for more serious apps; after all Windows Phone is a very different screen size, while Xbox has extra media and gaming hardware resources. Critcs complain about Microsoft's lack of a unified tablet/phone Windows Store. Some are surprised that given Microsoft's push of various apps including the Office Suite to the cloud that it still lacks a single unified app store for its tablets and smartphones. Apple, Inc. (AAPL) already has such an app store. Microsoft might be able to follow a similar model to Apple in order to deal with the screen size problem -- allowing phone apps to run on the tablet, in upscaled form -- while making higher definition apps tablet/PC exclusive. It's important to understand that at this point it's just talk -- we have no idea when Microsoft's unified environment will actually be ready for the market. But Microsoft already has a unified interface (the Modern UI, aka "Metro UI") across all of its upcoming devices, so we're not that far off. Microsoft's many developers should prepare themselves for this shift.

Over the weekend, videographers uploaded many slow-motion video clips shot with the iPhone 5S. Crave's Christopher MacManus shares a few amusing -- and cool -- clips that show off the potential of the new slow-mo feature found on Apple's latest smartphone. Similar to many modern cameras and Android smartphones, Apple's iPhone 5S can shoot crisp 120fps (frames per second) slow-motion video. As the iPhone 5S reached the masses this weekend, many examples of this keen slow-motion video feature popped up on the Internet. Don't miss these five clips showing 120fps video in action. YouTube user jnaina69 captured this neat slow motion footage of a GP2 night race in Singapore. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=58GWIE4VUeo Terry White uploaded an interesting video that shows the Detroit Metropolitan Airport fountain jetting streams of water toward its center in regular speed and slow mo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2dUPc0U6WC4 The gang at Mutual Mobile shared an amusing montage of slow mo office pranks that involves a lot of face slapping and other calamity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nGCsmbPArPM In the following slow-motion video, YouTube user Shiza Farza's daughter stars as an adventurous dynamo that takes a trust fall on plush leather couch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Jt0-M5CcjN8 YouTube user l3gitjailbr3aks puts the pedal to the medal with his Mustang in this slow-mo clip. It's quite amazing to see the wheels slow down so much before taking off. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Bd-cBSTxMoM

iOS 7 is all kinds of sexy, but with a slew of fancy new features comes more strain on the ever-important statistic of battery life. iOS 7 is compatible with iPhone 4 or later (though not all features are supported on older devices), so if you're upgrading your current device to the new operating system, there's a good chance you could see a noticeable decrease in battery life. If you're looking to avoid any pitfalls in the battery department, here are a few settings you can tweak to keep iOS 7 from sucking your iPhone's life like an evil, software vampire. Disable background refresh iOS 7 lets certain apps refresh even when you're not using them, which is both super convenient and a big problem for users who want the most out of their batteries. Disabling Background Refresh entirely would be your best bet, but even disabling the feature on just a few apps should help your device remain lively for a bit longer. Alter your location services It seems like just about every app wants to track your location these days. For some apps, like Maps, this makes a lot of sense, but if you've authorized other apps (Twitter, Facebook) to track your location without actually using the in-app features that go along with it, you should turn it off. In addition to apps, iOS 7 has a whole host of system-level options for location tracking, including local advertising and even the compass. If you don't use the apps to begin with, turning off the GPS tracking won't do much, but if you can disable tracking for a few of your most-used apps, you could see a decent boost in battery life. Not using AirDrop? Kill it iOS 7 introduces AirDrop to the iPhone for the first time, but even if you find yourself using the handy Dropbox-style feature from time to time, you should be turning it off when you don't need it. This is made easy by the new Control Center in iOS 7, which can be brought up by swiping upwards on the home screen. From here, it's just two taps to either enable or disable AirDrop, and while you're here, you can also disable Bluetooth and/or WiFi to help save additional battery life when you're not using them. Note: AirDrop is not available on the iPhone 4 or 4S. 3D goes bye-bye OK, this one is going to hurt: You know that fancy 3D parallax wallpaper effect that iOS 7 introduces? Unfortunately for users who want the most out of their battery, it's a luxury that does nothing but burn power to make your home screen look cool. You can disable this feature by toggling on the "Reduce Motion" option in the Accessibility menu. The same goes for the new dynamic wallpapers. Yes, a moving background image is a pleasant bit of eye candy, but it serves no functional purpose other than shortening your time between charges. Kick these features to the curb and your battery will thank you.

In addition to snaring dinner and protecting spider babies, spider silk makes a pretty good shield for bioreactive enzymes. Even when it’s not made by the spiders themselves. Turns out, self-assembling spider silk capsules, crafted by colonies of bacteria, are pretty good at keeping reactive molecules calm. “We called this ‘Spiderbag’,” said Thomas Scheibel, a protein-chemist-turned-engineer, and coauthor of a study describing the capsules published in Advanced Functional Materials. The tiny spheres, produced by Scheibel and his colleagues at the University of Bayreuth, are about as strong as glass — comparable to the ornamental globes that hang on Christmas trees, “just a few sizes smaller,” Scheibel says. At once both tough and malleable, the silky containers can sheath proteins that would normally want to react with many things around them. The silk stops the enzymes from unfolding or becoming inactive before they’re needed. Soon, the team says, these capsules will be ready for use in medical diagnostics. Though tiny, the spheres are too large to be injectable. Instead, though he won’t go into details, Scheibel says the capsules could be used as a super-sensitive array capable of detecting performance-enhancing substances in athletes, for example. “They could be used as an analytical tool, to identify substances in the body, in the blood — like drugs,” Scheibel says. Araneus diadematus, the European garden spider. Scheibel and his colleagues inserted silk-making genes from this spider into E.coli, and used the resultant proteins to make silk capsules The capsules aren’t hard to make. Scheibel and his team mix a solution of tiny water droplets into silicon oil, forming what’s called an emulsion. The water droplets carry the dissolved silk proteins, which spring out of solution and self-assemble into wispy, 50- to 70-nanometer thick capsules at the oil-water boundaries. Then, the filmy capsules trap the water-based solution inside. “That’s the trick,” Scheibel said. “You encapsulate anything that’s inside the water droplet.” So, if you’ve included an enzyme in that original watery solution, it’s now locked up and waiting for the right time to step outside. The team tested the system with enzymes and proteins normally used in lab work, such as beta-galactosidase and serum albumins, but Scheibel says it could be used with just about anything that doesn’t react with spider silk itself. Modifying the size of the initial droplets allows scientists to make the capsules larger or smaller, in effect customizing the silky spheres for various applications. “You could also do it the other way around, too, and make oil droplets in water,” Scheibel said. Such a reversal would be useful for systems needing oil-friendly enzymes. “This concept of utilizing silk as a matrix to house or contain enzymes or other bioactive molecules is a fantastic direction to go in,” said David Kaplan, a biopolymer engineer at Tufts University who is working on something similar using silkworm silk. “It offers tremendous control over what you want those containers to do.” Others would like a bit more evidence that silky capsules offer something that other engineered molecules don’t. “I don’t see the obvious advantages over other synthetic polymers yet,” said Randy Lewis, a molecular biologist at Utah State University. Lewis’ group recently received funding from the U.S. Navy for a project involving spider silk adhesives – they’re hoping to make something resembling one-sided Velcro that will easily stick to anything, even wet or slimy surfaces. It’s no surprise that different research groups are examining the potential offered by synthetic silks. Spider silk itself has earned a reputation as a wonder-material: As tough as steel, biocompatible, environmentally friendly, stretchy and antiseptic, the substance can seemingly do pretty much anything you want it to. “For hundreds of years, there’s been a myth that spider silk is the best performing fiber. Which is actually true,” Scheibel says. “Mechanically, it outcompetes everything.” The web of Nephila clavipes, another spider whose genes have been inserted into silk-making organisms Modifying spider silk, by attaching carbon nanotubes, for example, can give it additional properties – like conductivity – that aren’t normally found in nature. But most of its natural properties are more than useful. For centuries, people have even collected spider webs and used them as wound dressings; the webs stick to the skin, forming a barrier, and the silk’s tough surface prevents infiltration by bacteria and viruses. It’s also kind of smart. “You can design it, and under the right conditions, it knows how to find its corresponding polymer partner and organize itself into a structure that becomes very robust and useful,” Kaplan said. And when you’re done with it, “You could eat it. Or put it in the water or soil — it’s not going to hurt anything,” he says. But making enough spider silk to use commercially has been a challenge. Spiders, unlike other critters amenable to farming, tend to eat one another when sharing captive spaces. They also don’t produce much silk – it took a million spiders and four years to create a single, gleaming golden cloth. So, scientists are coaxing other organisms to produce the spider silk. So far, goats, silkworms, E.coli, and alfalfa (yup), have made the strong, sticky substance – or at least, the proteins that go into making the actual fiber. Inside a spider, silk proteins live in a soupy, unstructured jumble that remains goopy until the spider pulls a trigger that snaps the proteins into steely, fiber form. Perhaps not surprisingly, different labs are experimenting with ways to replicate this part of the silk-crafting arachnid experience; so far, methods like pulling the proteins through a fine syringe, and electrospinning (where an electrical charge pulls fibers from a solution), have been the most used. Silky coatings, capsules, gels and foams form readily when other triggers, like salts, are pulled. Scheibel’s team uses little bacterial factories – colonies of E.coli – to make silk. These bacteria carry the silk protein genes from orb-weaving spiders such as Nephila clavipes and Araneus diadematus. Normally, though, E.coli would look at the genetic sequence for spider proteins and hit the road; it’s tough for a single-celled organism to produce massive, repetitive proteins like the silk’s building blocks. So, Scheibel and his team removed some of the repetitive elements and translated the code into something the bacteria could understand – then let them get to work. Similar methods have been used to insert spider silk genes into goats, which dump the proteins into their milk, silkworms – which spin the a modified spider silk instead of their own — and alfalfa, the plant Randy Lewis works with. A few years ago, Scheibel helped found a company called AMSilk, which is beginning to release products on the commercial market that are made from synthetic spider silk and its proteins. AMSilk’s line includes cell culture materials, a skin cream containing silk proteins, and, soon, shampoos and spider silk bandages.

What's the best way to keep your customers coming back for more? Keep them alive for a long time. Google is seemingly securing its Android user base for the long haul by establishing Calico, a new company focused on extending human life. "Illness and aging affect all our families," said Google CEO Larry Page. "With some longer term, moonshot thinking around healthcare and biotechnology, I believe we can improve millions of lives. It's impossible to imagine anyone better than Art -- one of the leading scientists, entrepreneurs and CEOs of our generation -- to take this new venture forward." Page is referring to Calico's new CEO and founding investor Arthur Levinson, who will remain Chairman of Genentech and a director of Hoffmann-La Roche, as well as Chairman of Apple. Calico will be established in the Bay Area, not far from Google's headquarters. "I've devoted much of my life to science and technology, with the goal of improving human health," Levinson said. "Larry's focus on outsized improvements has inspired me, and I'm tremendously excited about what's next." Sources told TIME Magazine that Google is keeping its plans highly secretive, but will likely start with a small number of employees and initially focus on new technologies. The company is expected to use its data-processing resources to investigate age-related maladies and speed up the process from idea to solution that currently slows down the healthcare system. "Are people really focused on the right things? One of the things I thought was amazing is that if you solve cancer, you'd add about three years to people's average life expectancy," Page told TIME. "We think of solving cancer as this huge thing that'll totally change the world. But when you really take a step back and look at it, yeah, there are many, many tragic cases of cancer, and it's very, very sad, but in the aggregate, it's not as big an advance as you might think." Unlike the Google Glass project and the company's self-driving car initiative that stem from the company's secretive Google X research arm, Calico will be a completely separate entity from Google Prime. According to Page, Calico will "focus on health and well-being, in particular the challenge of aging and associated diseases." "Art and I are excited about tackling aging and illness," Page said on Google Plus. "These issues affect us all—from the decreased mobility and mental agility that comes with age, to life-threatening diseases that exact a terrible physical and emotional toll on individuals and families. And while this is clearly a longer-term bet, we believe we can make good progress within reasonable timescales with the right goals and the right people." Levinson said that when he served on Google's board, he got to know Page rather well, and was "deeply intrigued" when the Google CEO and Bill Maris approached him about a venture that would take the long term view on aging and illness. "For example, what underlies aging?" Levinson explained on Google Plus. "Might there be a direct link between certain diseases and the aging process? We agreed that with great people, a strong culture and vision and a healthy disregard for the impossible, we could make progress tackling these questions, and improving people's lives." The company's name is actually an abbreviation for the "California Life Company," he said.

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That's a good excuse for when the Streets Patrol will stop you and you are drunk. We must all bring this news with us and show them way we may 'seem' drunk, but we have actually not touched a glass of alcohol.... No, ok, will not work. In any case you are drunk and you're driving... At least he will spare money on booze

A sea crashing makes to hope good for the personnel... pls, post updates when available... Thanks for the info

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Apple write it's own code, and apart from what they have contributed for the iPhone, they still bet on a patent oriented business schema. Microsoft... it's really loosing everything for a short sighted and panel oriented strategy. And I don't think that the new CEO will in ANY way change this route. I'm start to badly miss Bill Gates mind... hated, but at least has demonstrated to be able to surf the waves of change, directing them. Alas, S. Jobs came always second in that, demonstrated by the fact that his success came after B. Gates leave. And that's history... we do badly need more men like them! MORE!

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