Month: January 2017

Enlarge / Neon introduces the use of transparency, such as on the left panel of Groove Music. (credit: MSPoweruser)

After reports last year that Microsoft was going to revise and update the design language used for Windows applications, some screenshots have leaked to MSPoweruser giving an indication of how the appearance is going to change.

Windows 10 presently uses a design language known as MDL2 (Microsoft Design Language 2), which is an evolved version of the Metro design first introduced with Windows Phone 7. Both Metro and MDL2 put an emphasis on clean lines, simple geometric shapes, attractive typography, photographic imagery, and minimal use of ornamentation. Both heavily borrow from responsive Web design concepts. Google's Material design language builds on similar themes, adding transitions and animations to better show how pieces of information are related.

The new Microsoft look is named Neon. It continues the evolution of Metro—it retains the emphasis on clean text and a generally flat appearance but adds certain elements of translucency (which the company is calling "acrylic") and greater use of animation and movement. Additional new elements are "Conscious UI," wherein an acrylic element might change depending on what's behind the current app, and "Connected Animations." The current preview of the Groove Music app, available to users of Windows Insider builds, already includes Connected Animations. Headers and pictures shrink as you scroll down the list of songs. As with Metro before it, much of this is already familiar and commonplace in Web design.

Enlarge / (L-R) Defense Undersecretary for Intelligence Marcell Lettre II, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and United States Cyber Command and National Security Agency Director Admiral Michael Rogers testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee. (credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

In a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee—a regularly scheduled unclassified briefing on "foreign cyber threats"—Director of National Intelligence James Clapper did very little to preview a report on Russian "cyber" activities around the US elections scheduled to be delivered to President Barack Obama this week. Clapper did say that an unclassified version of the report would be released to the public early next week. However, that version is unlikely to contain any new specific evidence to support the intelligence community's assertions that the Russian government directed hacking and propaganda operations against Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party in an attempt to deliberately affect the outcome of the US election.

"We plan to brief the Congress and release an unclassified version of this report early next week, with due deference to the protection of highly fragile sources and methods," Clapper said in his opening statement. "We have invested billions, and we put people's lives at risk to get such information. If we were to expose how we got this, we could just kiss that off. We're going to be as forthcoming as possible."

Clapper and National Security Agency Director Admiral Michael Rogers both asserted, however, that the intelligence community was even more certain of Putin's involvement in the meddling in the US election than they were when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October. "We stand more resolutely now on that statement than we did on the seventh of October," Clapper said.

Enlarge / Probably not in President Obama's Social Media Archive: this fake-selfie moment.

In one of the weirder political coincidences in recent memory, digital archives for President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump launched within hours of each other on Thursday.

The Obama Social Media Archive, launched officially by Obama’s administration and developed by ArchiveSocial, serves as the first-ever culling of an administration's full online presence. It contains every post from every social media channel made by everyone within the Obama White House, from the president to the first lady and all the way down to various staffers who posted in one way or another on the White House's behalf.

This fully searchable archive lets users type in all kinds of search terms, then refine results based on poster, social media platform, and other search criteria. (For example, a lot of White House staffers spoke about pizza.) While image-based social media (e.g. Instagram) is also included, search terms do not include terms for visual tags (meaning, if an image doesn't have a descriptive caption, you'll have to find certain images in more granular ways).

(credit: Tolbxela)

The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday sued Taiwan-based D-link in federal court. The FTC alleges that D-link routers and webcams left "thousands of consumers at risk" to hacking attacks.

"Defendants have failed to take reasonable steps to protect their routers and IP cameras from widely known and reasonably foreseeable risks of unauthorized access, including by failing to protect against flaws which the Open Web Application Security Project has ranked among the most critical and widespread web application vulnerabilities since at least 2007," the FTC said in a complaint (PDF) filed in San Francisco federal court.

The commission's move comes 11 months after the agency settled with Asus over its insecure routers that allowed attackers to remotely log in to them and, depending on user configurations, change security settings or access files stored on connected devices.

Enlarge / The newly imagined USS Ares, as seen in the Prelude to Axanar short film. (credit: Prelude to Axanar)

A federal judge in Los Angeles has decided that the copyright lawsuit over the pending Star Trek fan film Prelude to Axanar should move forward. For now, a civil trial is set to begin on January 31, 2017.

Earlier this week, US District Judge Robert G. Klausner rejected the motion for summary judgment filed by the plaintiffs, Paramount and CBS. He also rejected a motion filed by the defendants, Axanar Productions. The judge was unpersuaded by Axanar Productions’ arguments that it was entitled to the fair use exception.

The legal battle began in late 2015, when the two entertainment giants sued a group of filmmakers who had released an unlicensed and unauthorized short 20-minute trailer a year earlier.

Enlarge / Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). (credit: Getty | Chip Somodevilla)

As Republican lawmakers eagerly prepare to scrap President Obama’s signature healthcare legislation, the Affordable Care Act, they’ve announced that while doing so, they'll also strip funding from Planned Parenthood.

In a press conference Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) confirmed that “Planned Parenthood legislation would be in our reconciliation bill” when asked about potential defunding. The reconciliation bill is the budgetary tool that Republicans plan to use to dismantle the ACA with a simple majority and without the potential for a filibuster. A straight repeal would require a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate, which the Republicans don’t have. A straight repeal would also open the possibility of a filibuster. (For more on how that process would work, check out Ars’ previous coverage on this matter.)

Republicans have long railed against Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider. A 2015 reconciliation bill, put forth by Tom Price (R-Ga.), President-elect Trump’s nominee for the secretary of health and human services, also defunded Planned Parenthood. That legislation made it through the House and Senate, but it was vetoed by President Obama.