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US District Judge Rodney Gilstrap of the Eastern District of Texas hears more patent cases than any other federal judge. Last year, he installed a set of controversial rules for those cases, leading to rare public criticism. Changes to Gilstrap's order (Word file), dated last week, suggest some of those rules have been withdrawn.

Section 101 of the US patent laws is what the Supreme Court has deemed bans overly abstract patents. Since the high court decided Alice v. CLS Bank in 2014, Section 101 has become more important, since courts have been reading it as banning many software patents that recite basic processes.

Last year, the patent rules for Gilstrap's court held that defendants seeking to file a motion under Section 101 "may do so only upon a grant of leave from the Court after a showing of good cause, which shall be presented through the letter briefing process."

An iOS app called Summer of Darkness was released earlier this summer, just in time for the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. What few people remember is that Shelley wrote Frankenstein during a terrifying summer in the Swiss Alps, after a massive volcanic eruption at Mount Tambora in Indonesia caused weather across the globe to turn grim and cold. Many Europeans believed this disaster-induced climate change meant the world was ending. Summer of Darkness recreates this historical moment with daily updates from the writings of four famous authors who traveled together that summer.

Shelley spent the apocalyptic months between May and September touring the Swiss Alps. She was joined by a group of literary friends, including poets Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, who would soon become her husband, as well as writer John Polidari. Spurred by a writing challenge from Byron and the terrible weather, the group wrote ghost stories. Two of those stories, Shelley's Frankenstein and Polidari's Vampyr, gave birth to new genres of popular fiction. Meanwhile, Byron and Percy wrote poetry together in a blaze of productivity kindled by their new friendship.

Summer of Darkness offers a fascinating look at the lives of these writers, as well as the events that inspired their creativity that year. The app was built by designer Andrew Sempere and author Anindita Basu Sempere, an American couple who have been living in Switzerland for many years, surrounded by the same landscapes that Shelley and her friends saw two centuries ago. As you read snippets of letters, poems, memoirs, and stories by the group, the app provides beautifully rendered maps to show where exactly each person was as the summer unfolded. Brief flashes of rain and lightning illuminate the screen behind the text, providing a delightful but non-invasive hint of atmosphere. You receive updates to unlock material as the summer unfolds in real time, and if you download the app now you can consume all the past updates in one glorious binge. New updates continue into September.

While Nintendo tried to temper expectations and the impact of augmented reality game Pokémon Go ahead of its financial results, its latest quarterly earnings still make for surprisingly bad reading. Compared to the same quarter last year, Nintendo saw net sales drop 31 percent from ¥90 billion (£651 million, $853 million) to ¥62 billion (£448 million, $587 million) with an operating loss of ¥5.1 billion (£37 million, $48 million).

While the company blames "foreign exchange rates" and "significant yen appreciation" for the loss, the reality is that hardware and software were down across the board, and software growth has been minimal. Nintendo sold 220,000 Wii U consoles, a 53 percent decrease year-on-year, bringing the total number of consoles sold to just over 13 million. Wii U software sales rose a mere three percent to 4.7 million units.

Meanwhile, 3DS hardware sales dropped seven percent to 940,000 units, but software fared a little better, rising seven percent to 8.5 million units off the back of games like Kirby: Planet Robobot and Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright/Conquest. Even Amiibo sales, which have been a bright spot for the company of late, remained flat due to "a lack of new titles that are compatible with Amiibo." Sales of downloadable games and content were also down year-on-year.

An attendee at the first day of the Democratic National Convention protests the DNC's treatment of Bernie Sanders, as hinted at by e-mails exposed by an alleged Russian hack. (credit: Chip Somodevilla , Getty News Images)

The well-timed leak of e-mails from the Democratic National Committee, following a long-running breach of the DNC's network, is a masterful piece of information warfare. The leak may only be the beginning of an effort to shape the US presidential election, or it may be a backup plan triggered by the exposure of the long-running breach. But the hacking of the DNC and the direct targeting of Hillary Clinton are only parts of a much larger operation by Russia-based hackers who have breached a number of US government networks.

Evidence collected by the security firm CrowdStrike and forensic work by Fidelis point to the breach being caused by two "threat groups" associated with Russian intelligence organizations. A pair of reports published in June by SecureWorks suggests that the same threat groups conducted phishing campaigns against the e-mail addresses of the DNC. The same attackers targeted the addresses of Clinton campaign staffers, political consultants, journalists, and current and former members of the military, among others.

At a minimum, this suggests that the DNC breach was part of a larger intelligence collection operation. The leaked data from the DNC breach, however, may have been intended to create chaos and uncertainty around the election. But why would the Russian government open that can of worms? It's possible that this fits into a larger Russian strategy aimed at splintering NATO and countering what Russia has seen over the past decade as encroachment by the West on Russia's national interests.