Month: September 2020

Enlarge / Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Ranking Member Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) disagree about many issues, but they both support the Open Courts Act. (credit: KEVIN DIETSCH/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

The House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday unanimously approved the Open Courts Act—legislation to overhaul PACER, the federal courts' system for accessing public documents. The proposal would guarantee free public access to judicial documents, ending the current practice of charging 10 cents per page for many documents—as well as search results.

The bill must still be passed by the full House and the Senate and signed by the president. With Election Day just seven weeks away, the act is unlikely to become law during this session of Congress.

Still, the vote is significant because it indicates the breadth of Congressional support for tearing down the PACER paywall. The legislation is co-sponsored by Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), whose bill we covered in 2018, and a fellow Georgian, Democrat Hank Johnson.

Enlarge / Fun colors—but we're waiting to see what the innards look like. (credit: Gateway)

Back in 2007, Taiwan-based PC manufacturer Acer bought the once-iconic Gateway brand in order to stick a thumb in the eye of rival OEM Lenovo and increase its US market presence. In the 13 years since, the Gateway brand has languished largely unused, while Acer built up its own name in the United States directly. The cow is officially back now, though, with a new line of mostly budget, Walmart-exclusive Gateway laptops.

The new line ranges from $180 to $1,000, and several models seem interesting—but when we looked closer, we found a familiar and not particularly attractive name behind the brand. Gateway is also making two models of Android tablet—an 8" GWAT8-1 which doesn't appear to be available retail yet, and a 10" model available at Walmart for $67. Trying to find more detail on the GWAT8-1 led us to a surprising discovery—it's actually made (or imported) by EVOO.

In June of this year, we reviewed and absolutely despised a $140 EVOO laptop—a device powered by an AMD A4-9120e CPU, just like the cheapest model of Gateway laptop in the table above. The new GWTN116-1BL has twice the RAM and storage compared to the effectively uncooled, drastically underclocked, and absolutely bletcherous EVOO EV-C-116-5—but when we went sleuthing, we discovered shipping records indicating that it, too, is an EVOO system.

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  Fancy, reflecting eyeballs for FFXVI.

As part of a PlayStation 5 showcase today, Sony finally revealed the launch pricing for the PlayStation 5: $499.99 for the standard edition (€499.99, £449.99, ¥49,980) or $399 for the "All-Digital" version without a disc drive (or €399.99, £359.99, ¥39,980).

Both consoles will launch on Nov. 12 in the US, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea, followed by a Nov. 19 launch in the rest of the world.

The $499 price matches Microsoft's Xbox Series X pricing on the top end of the next console generation. The All Digital Edition, however, comes in at $100 more than the similarly discless Xbox Series S, which is also a step down in hardware power from the Series X.

Enlarge / Federal Communication Commission Republican members (L-R) Brendan Carr, Michael O'Rielly, and Chairman Ajit Pai participate in a discussion during the Conservative Political Action Conference on February 23, 2018, in National Harbor, Maryland. (credit: Getty Images | Chip Somodevilla )

President Donald Trump today nominated one of his administration officials to serve on the Federal Communications Commission in an attempt to push through his proposed crackdown on social media websites.

Trump announced the nomination of Nathan Simington, who is currently a senior advisor in the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). Simington "played a significant role in the agency's social media regulation agenda," as The Verge reported last week when news broke that Trump was considering Simington for the FCC position.

Simington would replace Republican Michael O'Rielly, who apparently angered Trump by saying that the FCC must uphold First Amendment speech protections "that apply to corporate entities, especially when they engage in editorial decision making." O'Rielly's comments signaled that he isn't likely to support the Trump administration petition, submitted by the NTIA, that asks the FCC to reinterpret Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in order to limit social media platforms' legal protections for hosting third-party content when the platforms take down or alter content they consider objectionable.

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  Apple is letting users more substantially customize the home screen with iOS 14. [credit: Apple ]

Today marks the launch of most of Apple's major annual updates to its operating systems—excepting macOS Big Sur. iOS 14, iPadOS 14, tvOS 14, and watchOS 7 are rolling out to users across the globe and throughout the day today (and tomorrow, in some regions).

The timing is unusual this time around. Normally, Apple launches OS updates several days after its September product-announcement livestream, typically timed closely with the release of new iPhones. But with no iPhones announced this week, Apple instead pushed these updates only one day after the event and one day before the new Apple Watch and eighth-generation iPad are expected to end up in users' hands.

iOS 14 brings major new features to the home screen and app management experience for the iPhone, with support for the home screen widgets that were introduced in iPadOS last year and a new App Library view that allows for easier managing of all installed apps on one panel. Along with that comes systemwide picture-in-picture support for videos—another feature that has made its way from iPadOS—and a number of significant improvements to Messages, Maps, and other applications, as well as a new live translation app.

Enlarge / David Legates speaks at a Heartland Institute event. (credit: Scott K. Johnson)

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently hired a new person in an upper-level deputy assistant secretary position. Normally, this would not be too surprising or newsworthy, but this is an exception. Joining NOAA as the “Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Environmental Observation and Prediction” is University of Delaware Professor David Legates—a well-known contrarian who rejects the science of human-caused climate change.

The position apparently reports to acting head of NOAA Neil Jacobs, although the circumstances of the hire are unknown. Ars asked NOAA about the duties of this position, but the agency has not responded. Jacobs was entangled in the fallout from President Trump’s inaccurate tweets about Hurricane Dorian that culminated in a forecast map doctored with a black marker. A pair of investigations found that Jacobs capitulated to directives from the office of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and the White House, releasing an unsigned NOAA statement that sought to rescue the president’s inaccurate statements by mildly admonishing the forecasters who corrected him.

The Washington Post reported that Legates’ department at the University of Delaware informed students in an email that he would not be teaching in the fall semester while noting, “David hopes to be back at UD in the spring.”

Enlarge / Artist's conception of Apple's conception of Epic trying to evade punishment for its breach of Apple's developer agreement with regards to Fortnite. (credit: Epic Games)

As the legal battle between Epic Games and Apple moves toward a September 28 hearing, the iPhone maker is mincing no words in arguing against Epic's request for a preliminary injunction that would bring Fortnite back to the iOS App Store. In a 37-page motion filed late Tuesday, Apple says that it needs to retain the ability to punish "one of the most egregious acts of sabotage that Apple has experienced with any developer."

"Epic started a fire, and poured gasoline on it, and now asks this Court for emergency assistance in putting it out, even though Epic can do so itself in an instant by simply adhering to the contractual terms that have profitably governed its relationship with Apple for years," the motion reads, in part. "Epic is a saboteur, not a martyr."

Security-centered arguments

Apple's argument for keeping Fortnite off the App Store without changes relies heavily on arguments around protecting iPhone security. When Apple first created the iOS App Store, it says, "Rather than recreating the Internet, Apple opted instead to create a safe and trusted place for its iPhone customers to discover and download apps, confident that they will work seamlessly and securely with the tap of a finger."