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(credit: USPTO)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is hoping that the saga of US Patent No. 8,473,532 will serve as a reminder that many universities aren't doing what they can to make the patent system work better. The '532 patent, "Method and apparatus for automatic organization for computer files," describes little more than a system of sorting files into folders. That alone would be enough to make it the Electronic Frontier Foundation's pick for "Stupid Patent of the Month." 

In September, Louisiana Tech went on to strike a deal with an entity called Micoba LLC to enforce the patent, which resulted in a series of 11 lawsuits filed later in the year, all in the Eastern District of Texas. Defendants in those lawsuits include seven defendants that already appear to have settled the claims, since the federal court records show their cases are closed: Syncplicity, iDrive, Dropbox, SpiderOak, Workshare Technology, Egnite, and Carbonite. Four other companies—Asustek, Box, Citrix, and SugarSync—have ongoing litigation.

The lawsuits accuse the companies of having products that automatically sort files into folders based on the names of the files and the folders. The allegedly infringed claim is number 13, which reads:

Enlarge (credit: william87 / Getty Images Plus)

On Monday, a former county prosecutor based in Brooklyn, New York, formally pleaded guilty to orchestrating an extensive illegal wiretapping scheme.

By her own admission, while she still served as deputy chief of the Brooklyn District Attorney's Violent Criminal Enterprises Bureau, Tara Lenich forged a judge’s signatures to fraudulently authorize wiretaps on the phone of a police detective that she was having an affair with, as well as one of her own co-workers.

"Between approximately 2015 and 2016, while I was working at the Kings County District Attorney’s office here in Brooklyn, I intentionally forged court orders that allowed me to wiretap cellphones for two different people," Lenich said, according to The New York Times. Between "muffled sobs," Lenich said she knew that this was illegal, and she apologized.

(credit: Todd Martin)

Denis Grisak, the man behind the Internet-connected garage opener Garadget, is having a very bad week. Grisak and his Colorado-based company SoftComplex launched Garadget, a device built using Wi-Fi-based cloud connectivity from Particle, on Indiegogo earlier this year, hitting 209 percent of his launch goal in February. But this week, his response to an unhappy customer has gotten Garadget a totally different sort of attention.

On April 1, a customer who purchased Garadget on Amazon using the name R. Martin reported problems with the iPhone application that controls Garadget. He left an angry comment on the Garadget community board:

Just installed and attempting to register a door when the app started doing this. Have uninstalled and reinstalled iphone app, powered phone off/on - wondering what kind of piece of shit I just purchased here...

Shortly afterward, not having gotten a response, Martin left a 1-star review of Garadget on Amazon:

Enlarge / Peebee likes things short. Fewer cutscenes make her happy.

We like Mass Effect: Andromeda and said so in our preliminary review, but the game has some problems and rough edges. We’re hip-deep in writing our final review, but it looks like we may be able to wipe a number of our complaints off the list while the writing is still in progress. In a blog post today, BioWare General Manager Aaryn Flynn explained that the Andromeda team has been keeping track of feedback on the game and that this coming Thursday, the team will release a patch aimed at correcting the things that have garnered the most complaints. The full patch notes are here.

The list of confirmed fixes stretch from the superficial to the deeply technical. There will be general performance and stability fixes, but most welcome is the option to skip the transition animations while traveling between places on the galaxy map. The animations are beautiful but intolerably long; if you’re exploring multiple systems in one go, you’ll spend far more time staring at unskippable animations than you’ll spend exploring. Adding the option to skip will reclaim a huge amount of lost time.

Also on the list are updates to the eyes for human and Asari character models and fixes to animation lip-syncing, along with a fix for Ryder’s weird running animation glitch. Additionally, players will get a larger inventory, more Remnant decryption keys at merchants for folks who hate the pseudo-Sudoku minigame, and an improved multiplayer experience with better matchmaking and less latency.

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That's the thing about nostalgia: Everything seems better in the past, even when it wasn't. It isn't a good idea to put '90s TV demagogue Chris Evans back on the air, for instance. Nor is it a good idea to buy all your music on the hiss-filled tape of a compact cassette. The Nokia 3310 isn't the greatest phone ever made, blue passports won't usher in a grand era of pre-war British prosperity, and not all '90s 3D platformers were all they were cracked up to be.

But then, if you were one of the thousands that helped Yooka-Layee ride a wave of nostalgia to a £2 million Kickstarter windfall back in 2015, you know what you let yourself in for: anthropomorphic animals, dry British humour, a saccharine soundtrack, thousands of collectibles...comic sans (or at least a close match). Kickstarter backers eager to dig into a game that ignores the past 20 years of games development—including its many wonderful platformers—in favour of rose-tinted thrills will find Yooka-Layee delivers and then some.

What backers might not expect (it certainly took me by surprise) are a few modern, if subtle, twists. Yooka-Layee is painfully true to its roots at times (developer PlayTonic is made up of ex-Rare employees that worked on the likes of Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong Country), with unfriendly level design and a wayward camera ranking high on the list of period particulars that should have had a makeover. But Yooka-Layee also sprawls over its vast levels like a modern open-world game, luring you in with endless collectibles, challenges, and power-ups.

After a lengthy beta period that began in January, Google released Android Nougat 7.1.2 on Monday. Images and OTAs are up on Google's factory image page, and a rollout has started to creep across the Google device landscape.

Google is releasing the update for the Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel C, Nexus 6P, 5X, and Nexus Player. As we reported during the beta release, 7.1.2 marks the end of the line for the Nexus 6 and Nexus 9, Google's flagship devices from 2014.

Enlarge / The 2013 Mac Pro, doomed to never be updated again. (credit: Apple)

Wonders never cease. Apple, normally secretive to a fault and allergic to talking about future products before it considers them ready, summoned a small group of journalists from outlets including TechCrunch and Mashable to its headquarters earlier this month to tell them that the Mac Pro will once again be completely redesigned. But it isn't saying what the redesign will look like, and a new Mac Pro is not launching until sometime "next year."

The 2013 Mac Pro was controversial right from the jump. It replaced a hulking desktop with multiple expansion slots, multiple CPU sockets, and multiple internal drive bays with a tiny shiny computer that looked more than a little like a high-end designer trash can ("can't innovate, my ass," a defiant Phil Schiller said when it was announced). Users could still upgrade the RAM and the SSD themselves relatively easily, but most internal expansion space was replaced with a whopping six Thunderbolt 2 ports. Brave buyers could also pop in a new CPU if they were comfortable tearing the system apart, but the machine offered only one CPU socket, and its proprietary graphics cards couldn't be upgraded unless Apple released new versions (something it never did).

We don't know much about the new design except that we can expect it to be a response to the old one. Apple acknowledges that the new Mac Pro design will be "modular," which could mean anything but hopefully at least means that users will be able to swap out their own drives and GPUs if they want. The company wants to be able to "keep [the machine] fresh with regular improvements" and to make the Pro Apple's "highest-end, high throughput desktop system." The system will also be introduced with a new first-party external display, a business that Apple said it was leaving last year when it discontinued its Thunderbolt Display and leaned on LG to provide external screens for the new MacBook Pros.