In today’s Bulldog wrapup of technology news:
- Google-backed Magic Leap sues ex-employees
- Gawker has a big backer in dispute with Hulk Hogan, who has support from billionaire Pete Thiel
- Cellphone radiation is risky
- North Korea suspected in bank hack
The details:
- Google-backed Magic Leap alleges workers stole its secrets
Artificial reality startup Magic Leap is accusing two Silicon Valley employees of stealing the closely guarded secrets behind its technological tricks.
The allegations of betrayal and skullduggery surfaced in a lawsuit that Magic Leap filed late Thursday in federal court after the two workers, Gary Bradski and Adrian Kaehler, sued the company for wrongful termination earlier this week. An attorney for Bradski and Kaehler denied the company’s allegations.
The legal tussle over intellectual property and stock options highlights the rising stakes in artificial reality as more technology companies bet it will produce the industry’s next big breakthroughs.
Since its inception six years ago, Magic Leap has emerged as one of artificial reality’s most intriguing startups while raising $1.4 billion from a list of investors that include Google and China’s Alibaba Group. The last round of financing completed earlier this year valued the Dania Beach, Florida, company at $4.5 billion, even though it hasn’t released a product yet and hasn’t even disclosed a timetable for doing so.
Magic Leap instead has released videos providing tantalizing glimpses at what it’s working on: a pair of goggles that will project three-dimensional, life-like images within the real world. The company describes the technique as “mixed reality,” although it’s known as “augmented reality” through most of the technology industry.
Other headsets, such as Facebook’s Oculus Rift, that immerse users in a completely fabricated world are examples of what’s known as “virtual reality.”
Whatever its technology is called, Magic Leap has enthralled the media with its demonstrations and the pedigree of its backers.
In a recent cover story, Wired magazine hailed Magic Leap as “the world’s hottest startup.” Google, now part of Alphabet Inc., has become so intertwined with Magic Leapthat its CEO, Sundar Pichai, sits on the startup’s board.
But the battle with two of the 85 employees located in its Mountain View, California, office threatens to drag Magic Leap into the mud.
Jack Russo, the lawyer representing Bradski and Kaehler, said the wrongful termination suit filed against Magic Leap will prove the company tried to wrest away employee stock options worth millions of dollars without a valid reason. He predicted the evidence will make other top engineers reluctant to work for Magic Leap.
- Now Gawker has its own billionaire backer, sort of
The courtroom fight between former pro wrestler Hulk Hogan and news-and-gossip site Gawker is becoming a battleground of sorts for Silicon Valley tycoons as well.
First Look Media, a news organization financed by Pierre Omidyar, philanthropist and the co-founder of eBay, says it is reaching out to other media outlets to file supportive briefs about Gawker. The briefs could be used for the site’s appeal of a $140 million invasion-of-privacy verdict Hogan won two months ago because Gawker posted a sex tape of him.
On Wednesday, Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel revealed that he has been secretly bankrolling Hogan’s case against Gawker. There’s no indication that Omidyar might fund Gawker’s defense.
“The possibility that Gawker may have to post a bond for $50 million or more just to be able to pursue its right to appeal the jury’s verdict raises serious concerns about press freedom,” First Look wrote in a statement explaining its move.
Thiel, who co-founded PayPal and was an early investor in Facebook, has been a frequent target of Gawker writers, who have written unflattering pieces about Thiel’s political beliefs and utopian goals . One 2007 post outed Thiel as gay. The same Gawkersite, Valleywag, ran a number of stories skewering Facebook, which provided a big chunk of Thiel’s estimated $2.7 billion fortune.
Omidyar’s eBay bought Thiel’s startup PayPal in 2002. Omidyar stepped down as eBay chairman last year after PayPal was spun off as a separate company. He and Thiel have conflicting political views — Omidyar is liberal, while Thiel will serve as a delegate for presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Hogan sued Gawker after it posted a 2007 video of him having sex with the wife of his best friend, Tampa radio personality Bubba The Love Sponge Clem. Hogan said Clem betrayed him by secretly videotaping him.
- Cellphone radiation study raises concerns despite low risk
A new federal study of the potential dangers of cellphone radiation, conducted in rats, found a slight increase in brain tumors in males and raised long-dormant concerns about the safety of spending so much time with cellphones glued to our ears.
But the study had enough strange findings that it has caused other federal scientists to highlight flaws in the research, and experts said these findings and those from other studies continue to suggest the potential risk from cellphone radiation is very small.
The National Institutes of Health study bombarded rats with cellphone radiation from the womb through the first two years of life for nine hours a day. It found tumors in 2 to 3 percent of male rats, which the study’s authors called low. But females weren’t affected at all and, strangely, the rats not exposed to the cellphone radiation died much faster — at double the rate — of those that were.
The results were preliminary, and only part of what will ultimately be released. They were made public before they were officially published — and despite strong criticism from other NIH scientists — because the results were similar to other studies that hint at a potential problem, said study author John Bucher.
The study is part of a seven-year, $25 million effort conducted by the National Toxicology Program at the request of the Food and Drug Administration. It looked at the specific type of radiation that cellphones transmit, called non-ionizing radiofrequency.
“This is the first study to actually show that non-ionizing radiation (causes) cancer,” said Dr. Otis Brawley, the American Cancer Society’s chief medical officer. The cancer society in a statement praised the study for “evidence that cellphone signals could potentially impact human health” but notes that it doesn’t quite address real risk to people.
“If cellphones cause cancer, they don’t cause a lot of cancer,” he said in an interview. “It’s not as carcinogenic as beef.”
He said people should be far more concerned about “distraction caused by cellphone,'” which he said causes more deaths.
- Researchers: Asian bank hacks may be linked to North Korea
Cybersecurity researchers say North Korea might be connected to a recent attack that resulted in the theft of over $100 million from the Bangladeshi centralbank and the attempted thefts of millions more from other Asian banks.
If the finding holds up, the attacks would amount to a new strategy for the rogue nation, whose state-sponsored efforts have been have long been motivated by politics, not money.
Security researchers at Symantec say that the malware used in February to steal $101 million from the Bangladeshi bank’s account in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is similar to that used in the past by a group known as “Lazarus.”
That group has been linked to a string of hackings largely focused on U.S. and South Korean targets dating back to 2009. That includes the crippling 2014 hack of Sony Pictures, which the FBI has blamed on the North Korean government . North Korea denied the allegation.
According to the Symantec research, the malware’s rare code also showed up in the October 2015 hack of a bank in the Philippines and another of a Vietnamese bank about two months later, tying both to the breach of the Bangladesh bank.
Earlier this month, the global money-transfer coordinator Swift reported a new cyberattack against another unnamed bank. Swift said the attack was part of a coordinated campaign following the theft from the Bangladesh bank.
