Month: February 2017

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The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California has also sued the Trump Administration over its recent executive order, which restricts entry into the country for people who hail from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

The new ACLU lawsuit (Al-Mowafak et al v. Trump et al), joins an ever-growing list of cases filed in various federal courts around the country that challenge the legality of the executive order.

However, the ACLU proposed class action lawsuit, which was filed on Thursday on behalf of a number of California students affected by the order, makes creative use of President Donald Trump’s tweets against him—pointing out specific instances where the president has described the action as a "ban" on Muslims.

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A federal judge in Washington has joined several of his counterparts across the country in ruling against the federal government’s executive order that restricts citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.

In the suit, which was filed by the State of Washington earlier in the week, officials from Expedia and Amazon filed formal legal declarations saying that their employees are directly affected by the President Donald Trump’s policy. Expedia further explained that its business interests would be negatively impacted if the executive order was allowed to stand.

On Friday afternoon, US District Judge James L. Robart, who was nominated to the court by President George W. Bush in 2003, ruled against the government and granted a temporary restraining order, effective nationwide. This restraining order can still be overturned or altered later.

Enlarge / The Google Now Launcher. (credit: Google)

The Google Now Launcher has been the go-to choice for Android users looking for a simple, stock home screen since its general availability in 2014. If you had a skinned phone and wanted something that looked a little more like "Google's Android," you could hop down to the Play Store, install the app, and get a home screen with Google's predictive Google Now cards integrated.

Sadly, the Google Now Launcher will probably be gone soon. According to Android Police, Google is sending out letters to OEM partners declaring that the Google Now Launcher will be retired in Q1 2017. Devices that have the launcher installed will be able to continue using it, but the app will no longer show up on the Play Store.

Google actually has two home screen apps on the Play Store, the Google Now Launcher—which is widely available and the stock launcher on the Nexus phones—and the Pixel Launcher, which is exclusive to the Pixel and Pixel XL. Neither app actually contains the code for the home screen; they are just small "enabler" apps.

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The Federal Communications Commission has told nine companies that they can no longer provide broadband using a federal assistance program. The program gives low-income people a $9.25 monthly household subsidy to purchase home Internet or mobile broadband service.

These nine companies were the first to gain a new designation made possible by the Lifeline phone subsidy program's expansion into broadband service. Until today, the companies could sell broadband-only plans in many states to people who were eligible for the monthly subsidy. The FCC decision released today acknowledged that some poor people "will see their monthly bills increase by no more than $9.25" as a result of the decision.

This is one of several decisions made by the commission's former Democratic leadership that were rolled back today by newly appointed Chairman Ajit Pai, a Republican. "These last-minute actions, which did not enjoy the support of the majority of commissioners at the time they were taken, should not bind us going forward," Pai said.

Enlarge (credit: Nintendo)

Fire Emblem Heroes sees Nintendo entering new game-design territory. Sure, Nintendo has previously toyed with free-to-play games on both 3DS and iOS, and it has experimented with radically altering beloved series to fit on a phone in Super Mario Run (unlike Mario, Fire Emblem is launching simultaneously on both iOS and Android). This time around, though, Nintendo is diving head-first into the "gacha" mold, wrapping its turn-based strategy/RPG series around randomized, pay-per-pull hero collection.

The results are odd, but Nintendo may have an obnoxious hit on its hands. Fire Emblem's core gameplay is free to try here, and it's still eminently satisfying on the phone—so long as you know what to expect regarding exactly when Nintendo will (and won't) nag you to pay up, that is.

Turn-based tactics meet microtransactions

(credit: Johannes Hemmerlein)

There's a zero-day exploit in the wild that exploits a key file-sharing protocol in all supported versions of Windows. That includes Windows 10, the latest and most secure version of the Microsoft operating system. The exploit is probably not worth worrying about, but you'd never know that based on the statement Microsoft officials issued on Thursday when asked what kind of threat the exploit poses:

"Windows is the only platform with a customer commitment to investigate reported security issues and proactively update impacted devices as soon as possible," an unnamed spokesperson replied. "We recommend customers use Windows 10 and the Microsoft Edge browser for the best protection."

An employee at Microsoft's outside PR firm, WE Communications, wouldn't explain why the statement advised customers to use Windows 10 and Edge when the exploit works on all versions of Windows and doesn't require that targets use a browser. Ars reminded the employee that an advisory issued hours earlier by the CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University warned that the vulnerability might leave users of all supported versions of Windows open to code-execution attacks.