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Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our partners at TechBargains, we have a bunch of deals to share today. Of note, we have a bestseller from earlier this month—you can still get the redesigned Dell Inspiron 3650 PC with Core i7 Skylake processor, 16GB of RAM, and an AMD R9 360 GPU for just $579. That's over $300 off its original price of $899, so if you're on the market for a new desktop, this is one you should consider.

Also check out the rest of the deals below.

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The default theme on the Huawei Honor 5X. Of course a gold phone needs a gold interface.

A report from The Information (subscription required) claims that Huawei is building its own in-house OS as a possible "Plan B" to Android. To spearhead the development of an in-house operating system—and improve its Android skin—Huawei has hired former Apple designer Abigail Brody. The report says that the non-Android OS "isn’t far along" and is a "contingency measure" in case Google's current Android terms become undesirable to Huawei.

Huawei is the number three smartphone OEM, behind Samsung and Apple. The Chinese company isn't a huge deal in the West, though—a big portion of those sales come from Huawei's home turf. Huawei is often seen as being in a position similar to Samsung's, just at an earlier stage of development. Like Samsung, Huawei is a massive company. It's the world's largest telecom equipment manufacturer, and it designs its own SoCs. Now Huawei is taking another page from the Samsung playbook, and the company is trying to develop an Android alternative.

Samsung's homegrown operating system is Tizen, a Linux-based OS that works a lot like Android (especially Samsung's Android phones) but lacks the app ecosystem and developer support of Android. That's the challenge with creating an Android alternative—can you make something that's so much better than Android that the lack of apps becomes acceptable for consumers?

19-year-old Giuseppe Cuozzo's drawing of his idea, from 2000. (credit: USPTO)

Patent trolls don't fare well at the Supreme Court. When they show up, their cases tend to result in decisions that are ruinous for the profit margins of their industry. Two prominent examples: the 2006 eBay v. MercExchange case effectively ended trolls' abilities to get injunctions, and the 2014 Alice Corp. case made it far easier for patent defendants to invalidate abstract software patents.

And yet, the cases keep coming. The most recent example is Cuozzo Speed Technologies LLC v. Lee, a case that was resolved earlier this week with an 8-0 opinion dismantling arguments presented by Cuozzo, a patent-holding entity controlled by two New York patent lawyers, Daniel Mitry and Timothy Salmon. The two attorneys own dozens of other patent shell companies through their consultancy, Empire IP.

What were Mitry and Salmon hoping for? Using the Cuozzo case as their vehicle, they hoped to tweak changes in the rules for "inter partes reviews," or IPRs, a proceeding created by Congress in 2012 that allows the patent office to take a second look at patents to see if they should never have been issued in the first place. While the tech sector still seeks legislative reform to end the spate of "patent troll" lawsuits, IPRs have been an effective way to shut down some patent cases at a fraction of the cost of a full-blown court trial.

(credit: Jorge Correa)

There's this pesky thing called the US Constitution, and sometimes there's a price to be paid when it's subverted.

That's what is happening in New Mexico, where a convicted murderer serving a life term won a new trial because a DNA prosecution expert in the prosecution's case testified via Skype, denying the defendant Truett Thomas' Sixth Amendment rights to confront witnesses in court, according to the New Mexico Supreme Court.

The case against Thomas began in 2010 when Albuquerque police discovered Guadalupe Ashford's body behind a trash can in a small parking lot. The woman was assaulted, and sustained significant head injuries, "including lacerations, skull fractures and a dislodged tooth." Police found blood on the scene that didn't match the woman's and ran it through the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) database, which matched the defendant. The defendant denied he knew the woman.

Boston Dynamics, the high-profile robotics company that Alphabet reportedly doesn't want, has released a video of its latest robot: SpotMini. SpotMini is a 4-legged robot that weighs just 55lbs and has an all-electric locomotion system.

SpotMini is one of the quietest robot Boston Dynamics has ever built thanks to the all-electric system. In the past, the company has used gas engines and hydraulics in its robots, making for loud, outdoor-only bots that sound like dirtbikes or chainsaws. Boston Dynamics' Alphadog was a much larger 4-legged robot, but it deemed too loud by the US Marines when they tested it as a pack mule last year.

The goal with the SpotMini seems to have been to build a robot quiet enough, small enough, and clean enough that it can be used as a house robot. It's shown indoors walking up steps and ducking under tables. There's even an attachable arm that lets it do useful things like fetching a soda or cleaning the dishes (well, moving a dish from the sink to the washing machine, but that's a start!).

(credit: Kārlis Dambrāns)

SACRAMENTO, Calif.—Attorney Thomas Johnson came ready to defend a novel legal theory in court. Earlier this year his client had abandoned a Samsung Galaxy phone at a burglary crime scene, which allowed authorities to find the device, call 911 from the lock screen, and acquire the phone's actual number. Law enforcement soon determined the phone’s owner, Matthew Muller, and arrested him days later.

But while executing that arrest, authorities found materials related to a separate kidnapping case reported earlier in the year. Muller eventually pleaded guilty to the burglary, but he denied any role in the kidnapping. And according to his attorney Johnson, this whole thing should have been avoided. When law enforcement grabbed the Samsung Galaxy and acted on that fateful day, the attorney believes they engaged in an unconstitutional search against his client.

However, a federal judge disagreed with Johnson on Thursday. "I don't think this is a very difficult issue," US District Judge Troy L. Nunley told the court after hearing oral arguments from the defense lawyer and from government prosecutors. Judge Nunley denied Johnson's attempt to suppress evidence that stemmed from Muller’s arrest and his attempt to seek an evidentiary hearing.

Pro-net neutrality rally at the White House. (credit: Joseph Gruber)

The White House has urged Republican lawmakers to give up efforts to strip the Federal Communications Commission of regulatory powers and tens of millions of dollars in budget funding. President Obama's senior advisers would recommend that he veto the House of Representatives' budget bill for fiscal 2017 because of these and other provisions.

The Republican budget proposal "includes highly problematic ideological provisions," like ones that "prevent the Federal Communications Commission from promoting a free and open Internet and encouraging competition in the set-top box market, impacting millions of broadband and cable customers," the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement of administration policy yesterday.

The budget plan includes sections delaying or preventing implementation of the FCC's net neutrality rules, which were just upheld by an appeals court despite a lawsuit filed by broadband providers. With the case possibly heading to the Supreme Court, a budget rider would prevent enforcement of net neutrality rules until broadband providers have exhausted all appeals. The budget plan would also prevent the FCC from stopping unjust and unreasonable pricing and data cap practices, regardless of the lawsuit's outcome.