EVERYBODY SOYLENT. Lee Hutchinson TechCrunch is reporting that Rob Rhinehart’s Soylent, the nutritionally complete meal replacement shake/drink mix, has just closed out a $1.5 million seed funding round from a wide mix of investors led by Andreessen Horowitz and Lerer Ventures. This is on top of the $1.5 million in pre-orders the company already amassed as part of its crazy-successful crowdfunding run earlier this year. The project has been a poster child for crowdfunding success—in fact, the sheer volume of orders has caused its own set of delays in scaling Soylent from a hand-mixed product for a few dozen testers to a mass-produced meal replacement for hundreds of thousands of customers. Rhinehart and company have discussed the ongoing growing pains on the official Soylent blog . The round of funding should give the Soylent crew some breathing room. TechCrunch reports that the company has finalized the 1.0 formulation of the product and will be moving some amount of manufacturing in-house. The company is also moving offices from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and Soylent will bring in a “culinary director” to help evolve the product’s flavor and (currently extremely chalky) mouthfeel. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Soylent gets a $1.5 million infusion of venture capital
The Department of Health and Human Services announced on October 20 that the agency has launched a “tech surge” to make improvements to the troubled Affordable Care Act (ACA) health insurance exchange website , HealthCare.gov. The move comes as President Barack Obama reportedly prepares to speak about the site’s issues at an event today highlighting the ACA, frequently referred to as “Obamacare.” Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius had previously blamed most of the problems experienced by citizens visiting the site on unexpected demand. But as problems have continued, the White House has grown increasingly frustrated with the site’s performance. An administration official told the Washington Post that the president and others in the administration “find [the problems with HealthCare.gov] unacceptable.” While HealthCare.gov is being operated almost entirely by a team of contractors, HHS is now stepping in to take an active role in resolving the site’s problems. In a blog post , an unidentified agency spokesperson wrote “Our team is bringing in some of the best and brightest from both inside and outside government to scrub in with the team and help improve HealthCare.gov.” Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments 
After the customary six months of incubation, Ubuntu 13.10—codenamed Saucy Salamander—has hatched. The new version of the popular Linux distribution brings updated applications and several new features, including augmented search capabilities in the Unity desktop shell. Although Saucy Salamander offers some useful improvements, it’s a relatively thin update. XMir, the most noteworthy item on the 13.10 roadmap, was ultimately deferred for inclusion in a future release. Canonical’s efforts during the Saucy development cycle were largely focused on the company’s new display server and upcoming Unity overhaul, but neither is yet ready for the desktop. Due to the unusual nature of this Ubuntu update, this review is going to diverge a bit from the usual formula. The first half will include a hands-on look at the new Unity features. The second half will take a close look at the Ubuntu roadmap and some of the major changes that we can expect to see over the course of the next several releases. Read 46 remaining paragraphs | Comments 
For nearly a decade now, TrueCrypt has been one of the trusty tools in a security-minded user’s toolkit. There’s just one problem, though. No one knows who created the software, and worse still, no one has ever conducted a full security audit on it—until now. Since last month, a handful of cryptographers have newly discussed problems and alternatives to the popular application, which lead on Monday to a public call to perform a full security audit on TrueCrypt. As of Tuesday afternoon, that fundraiser reached over $16,000, making a proper check more likely. Much of those funds came from a single $10,000 donation from an Atlanta-based security firm. “We’re now in a place where we have nearly—but not quite enough—to get a serious audit done,” wrote Matthew Green , a well-known cryptography professor at Johns Hopkins University, on Twitter. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments 