An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: California's state Assembly yesterday approved a strict net neutrality bill despite opposition from the telecom industry. California's Senate already approved an earlier version of the bill in May. But some minor changes were made in the Assembly, so the Senate must vote on the bill again today before going into recess. If the Senate approves, California Governor Jerry Brown would have until September 30 to sign the bill into law. The bill would prohibit Internet service providers from blocking or throttling lawful traffic, and from requiring fees from websites or online services to deliver or prioritize their traffic to consumers. The bill also imposes limits on data cap exemptions (so-called "zero-rating") and says that ISPs may not attempt to evade net neutrality protections by slowing down traffic at network interconnection points. Yesterday's Assembly vote was 61-18. All 55 Democratic members of the Assembly and six Republicans voted for the bill. All 18 votes against it came from Republicans. "ISPs have tried hard to gut and kill this bill, pouring money and robocalls into California," Electronic Frontier Foundation Policy Analyst Katharine Trendacosta said. "California could pass a gold standard net neutrality bill, providing a template for states going forward. California can prove that ISP money can't defeat real people's voices."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lenovo has launched a laptop with an e-ink display in place of a normal keyboard. An anonymous reader writes: The Yoga Book C930 laptop follows in the footsteps of the Yoga Book A12, the convertible that was all the rage at IFA back in 2016. That device swapped the standard keyboard for a touchscreen, so the surface could double as a drawing pad. It wasn't particularly conducive for typing, but it certainly was innovative. The C930 takes things even further, swapping the Halo keyboard for E Ink. It's an interesting application for the technology, which has largely been relegated to the world of e-readers. The secondary display serves the same function as on the A12, doing triple duty as a keyboard, notepad and e-reader. The C930 will be available in October, starting at $1,000.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NetNewsWire Lite 4.0 was the last version I shipped before the sale to Black Pixel, back in 2011. It was a free app on the Mac App Store.

I put the source up on GitHub.

I’m not publishing it as some kind of example app — some code is good, some is bad, and most is middlin’, and it’s all old. It’s published for historical reasons only.

However — if we can get it building, and I bet we can — I’ll end up making it available as a download.

I don’t know what to do about NetNewsWire 3.3.2, which was the last release of the non-Lite full version. That code is really, really old and I don’t even really want to publish it. But I might. Or I might get it building and release a 3.4 version of it.

We’ll see! No need to rush, of course.

Fillipo Grandi, head of UNHCR, cautions over fresh displacement from potential government push on last rebel stronghold.

China's regulators plan to curtail the number of online games and discourage play-time, part of a broader effort to tackle device addiction and other ills that sent shares reeling from the U.S. to Japan. From a report: The curbs were just one aspect of a swathe of edicts intended to address the health and growing incidence of myopia among children. But they come on top of a months-long freeze in game approvals, further muddying the waters for an industry that labors under one of the world's most opaque regulatory regimes. While the new regulations encompassed everything from encouraging outdoor activities to usage of electronics, investors zeroed in on the game curbs during a highly sensitive time for the industry. The government hasn't given any explanation for a freeze on title approvals since March, prompting debate over whether it's a temporary halt due to regulatory reshuffling or whether Beijing is planning a crackdown in a wider campaign against online content. Tencent's inability to monetize its hottest games also cast doubt over the relationship between the world's largest gaming company and the government.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The smell of incompetence and desperation.

Dean Takahashi, reporting for VentureBeat: Gil Hyatt has gotten many rewards from his days as an inventor. In 1990, he received a fundamental but controversial patent on what he called the first microprocessor, or computer on a chip. It was 22 years late, but he nosed out rivals such as Intel in being the first to file for a patent application in 1968. He then licensed that patent and 22 of his 69 other patents to Philips Electronics, which then began enforcing them on the rest of the electronics industry and collecting royalties. Philips' efforts netted Hyatt more than $150 million, though the state of California would try for 24 years to take a big chunk of that money for taxes. It argued that Hyatt pretended to move to Las Vegas in 1991, but in 2017, he finally prevailed in convincing the tax board that he really did move. But at 80 years old, Hyatt still isn't resting on the rewards he got. In fact, he's still in a bitter battle with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He claims the office is sitting on his remaining applications, and is waiting for him to die. Hyatt sued to get the patent office to issue his remaining patent applications. The patent office declined to comment, citing the litigation. Further reading: Gil Hyatt interview: Why patent examiners gave controversial patents a scarlet letter.

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The Village Voice is shutting down. A New York institution, it was born the same year I was. One nice thing is that they are keeping half the staff, 15 to 20 people, to figure out how to archive the site. Any time a publication does this, we should offer to help, to learn from the experience, and develop a base of knowledge and best practices. I need to figure out how to do that for my blog. I want to do that sooner than later. Tick tock, the runway isn't getting any longer. ✓

Elevation of sanctioned official and opposition bans prompt analyst fears ahead of December 23 presidential election.

The rising cost of living in Silicon Valley is pushing startups out, the Economist reports, and re-focusing innovation in new cities around the country [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. From the story: More Americans are leaving the Valley than moving to it. In 2017 several counties in the area saw their largest combined domestic outward migrations in around a decade. In a recent survey by the Bay Area Council, a think-tank, 46% of Bay Area residents said they planned to leave in "the next few years," up from 34% in 2016. This is not just a case of people of more modest means being pushed out by carpet-bagging techies. At this year's "FOO camp," a freewheeling annual gathering of hackers and others, a session called "Should I/you leave the Bay Area?" saw a strong turnout. Participants shared their gripes about the high cost of living, bad traffic and a "toxic" culture obsessed with money.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A day after anti-austerity protests, IMF says it will work with Argentina on 'revised plan' to help its ailing economy.

Rights groups say Nicaragua expels a UN human rights mission over damning report on rising repression in the country.

Russia accuses Ukraine of assassinating separatist leader of self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic.

A new study from email security company Mimecast shows that malicious links in emails are being missed by many security systems. From a report: Mimecast examined more than 142 million emails that had passed through organizations' email security vendors. The latest results reveal 203,000 malicious links within 10,072,682 emails were deemed safe by other security systems -- a ratio of one unstopped malicious link for every 50 emails inspected. The report also finds an 80 percent increase impersonation attacks in comparison to last quarters' figures. Additionally, 19,086,877 pieces of spam, 13,176 emails containing dangerous file types, and 15,656 malware attachments were all missed by these incumbent security providers and delivered to users' inboxes.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After some years spent traveling the world, NetNewsWire is now back where it started! It’s my app again.

We’ve kept its room ready for all these years. And I am thrilled to welcome it home.

Thanks to Black Pixel

First thing: I want to thank Black Pixel for their stewardship. They released NetNewsWire 4 for Mac and iOS, and they even brought it to Apple TV. They wrote and deployed a syncing system — which is a massive challenge. (I happen to know, from several first-hand experiences, just how difficult syncing is.)

They kept it moving forward — the app is now 16 years old — and that’s huge.

And I want to thank them for a second thing: their incredible generosity in bringing it back to me. When I asked them about it, they told me they’d already been discussing it. There was never a need to convince them: they thought it was the right thing to do before I even said a word.

You might reasonably wonder if nevertheless they asked for some large amount of money. There was no charge. That’s what I mean by “incredible generosity.”

As a friend of mine said on this subject, “Sometimes life is poetic.” Thanks to Black Pixel for making that true.

If you haven’t already, you should read Black Pixel’s announcement.

What This All Means

Here’s the scoop:

You probably know that I’ve been working on a free and open source reader named Evergreen. Evergreen 1.0 will be renamed NetNewsWire 5.0 — in other words, I’ve been working on NetNewsWire 5.0 all this time without knowing it!

It will remain free and open source, and it will remain my side project. (By day I’m a Marketing Human at The Omni Group, and I love my job.)

Black Pixel will stop selling their versions of the app, and will turn off the syncing system and end customer support — all of which is detailed in their announcement. (Important note: I will not get any customer data from them, nor will I be doing support for Black Pixel’s NetNewsWire.)

My Goal

I want one thing: to make the very best versions of NetNewsWire ever made.

And, along the way, I’d love to have your help.

Nothing to Download Yet

I don’t actually have an app bearing the name NetNewsWire ready to download yet. I will have test versions ready soon, though. It’s still going to be a while before the final version of 5.0 ships.

The repository is on GitHub.

I’ll also be creating a website for it, of course. And I’ll have news about a Slack group you can join.

PS For Reference

I should outline NetNewsWire’s history:

• 2002: NetNewsWire Lite 1.0
• 2003: NetNewsWire 1.0
• 2005: Bought by NewsGator. I continued working on NetNewsWire as a NewsGator employee.
• 2011: Bought by Black Pixel. I remained at NewsGator, and stopped working on NetNewsWire.
• 2015: Started work on Evergreen
• 2018: NetNewsWire comes home; Evergreen renamed to NetNewsWire

It was acquired twice before now. I worked on it for nine years before it went to Black Pixel, and it was there for seven years. And now it’s back home.

For good!

PS Pardon the dust — there’s a bunch of renaming to do and ducks to line up. Things may be confusing at first. But where you see the name Evergreen, think NetNewsWire.