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President Trump plans to order a new travel ban next week
President Donald Trump said he will sign an executive order next week that updates his contentious January 27th ban on travelers and refugees from seven majority-Muslim countries. Last week, a federal appeals court ruled to keep a stay on the president's travel ban, which has been openly opposed by leaders in the technology industry including Google and Facebook. The new executive order will address the legal pitfalls that have paused the first travel ban, Trump said at a press conference today. "The new order is going to be very much tailored to what I consider to be a very bad decision," he said. "But we can tailor the order to that decision and get just about everything, in some ways more, but we're tailoring it now to the decision."
Facebook is being used to sell weapons in the Middle East
Facebook's social network reaches billions of people around the world, but its tools aren't always used with the best intentions. The New York Times reports that Facebook Groups are being used to sell weapons in the Middle East. The sales violate Facebook's policy for selling goods on the site of course, but that's not stopping folks in Libya, Syria, Iraq and other countries from posting weapons commonly used by terrorists and militants for sale.
EVE Evolved: Ten years of EVE Online
Tomorrow marks a huge milestone in MMO history as sci-fi sandbox EVE Online officially turns ten years old. Released by a tiny icelandic development studio whose only previous release was a board game featuring Reykjavik's favourite cross-dressing mayor, EVE has slowly grown over the past decade to become one of the industry's biggest and most stable subscription titles. Following 2011's monoclegate scandal that led to around 8% of players quitting and CCP Games shedding 20% of its employees, this year saw EVE Online climb to new heights as it regained the playerbase's confidence and smashed the 500,000 subscriber barrier. As a special side-note, the EVE Evolved column also turned five years old last week; it has now officially been running for over half of EVE's lifetime. The past year has been remarkably successful for CCP, with both of the year's EVE expansions being extremely well received and console MMOFPS DUST 514 finally starting to take shape. The Inferno and Retribution expansions fixed a staggering number of small issues that were broken in the game while also making big changes to bounty-hunting, piracy, and PvP across the board. We also saw huge emergent events like the Battle of Asakai, a $6,000 ship kill, and the five trillion ISK faction warfare exploit this year. With DUST 514 officially launching in just over a week on May 14th and players fired up about the upcoming Odyssey expansion, the future's looking bright for EVE Online as it heads into its second decade. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look back at some of year's top EVE stories, stories that touched real life, and what the future holds for EVE's second decade.
Former EVE CSM member Vile Rat killed in attack on Libyan consulate [Updated]
All too often, we read news of conflict in other countries with an impersonal detachment, as if it's so far away that it will never touch our lives in any significant way. Mainstream media twists each event into a political message with the same detachment, forgetting the reality of the lives that are destroyed every day. This morning that fact was brought home as we read news of a US official killed in an attack on the Libyan consulate in Benghazi. Just a few hours ago, EVE Online alliance GoonSwarm released a statement that the US official killed was apparently GoonSwarm director and former Council of Stellar Management member Sean "Vile Rat" Smith. Players, CCP developers, and GMs have begun leaving their condolences on the official EVE forums. According to those who knew him, Vile Rat was a well-loved player and a respected leader whose actions indirectly touched the lives of every EVE player. Massively extends its own condolences to his family and friends. [Update: In the time since this story was published overnight, the BBC has updated its coverage, noting that a total of four Americans were killed in the attack, the US Ambassador to Libya and Sean Smith among them.]
Internet access blocked across much of Libya
It's sort of becoming the "thing to do" when people are revolting: find a way to cut people's access to the internet. This happened across most of Libya yesterday, according to various traffic monitors. Traffic from the country to sites like YouTube and Google nearly disappeared, even though it seems that technically, the servers are still up and running. Unlike the previous actions of the Egyptian government, which took down entire servers, it appears that in this case, some wicked throttling is occurring. While it's not completely clear who is choking the bandwidth, the assumption that it's the Libyan government is probably not an insane one. Hit up the source links for more.
Libya cracking down on .ly domain names, reportedly yanking them at will
Ruh roh. It looks as if current owners of .ly domain names may need to be on high alert -- you know, in case the Libyan government decides to yank your URL from the face of the internet. According to a thorough report from Ben Metcalfe, that's exactly what's happening. Vb.ly was recently pulled because the content on the site (read: not the domain) was found to be "obscene, offensive and illegal," presumably based on what would be expected under Libyan Islamic / Sharia Law. More concerning still is that Libya seems to be dictating the pulls on their own, even if the site content isn't in violation of that law. 'Course, it's all pretty vague to begin with, making it even easier to toss under said umbrella and call it a day. We're also hearing that .ly domain names with less than four letters are now being reserved for local Libyans only, and we're guessing that a continued fallout is upon us. Bit.ly, Ow.ly, Ad.ly -- you guys still with us, or what?
Libya's education ministry purchases 150,000 Classmate PCs
You may recall Libya's initial pledge to purchase 1.2 million low-cost lappies from OLPC, but some 12 months later, it looks like the nation's education ministry has given its business (for realz this time) to Intel and Microsoft. Reportedly, the country placed an order in August for 150,000 Classmate PCs, and deployment has just recently begun. Intel spokeswoman Agnes Kwan noted that Intel and Microsoft were "not subsidizing the price of the laptops," but she failed to mention exactly how much the Libyan education ministry was forking out for the machines. Furthermore, Kwan stated that Nigeria was also on board and should be placing an order of its own soon, but considering how sketchy these commitments have been in the past, we wouldn't hold our breath just yet.
OLPC XO user interface demo vid hits the web
While we saw the OLPC XO-1's OS emulation earlier this week, not everyone (including us) took the time to set up the necessary software needed in order to run it. Luckily, we've just gotten a better glimpse (via an online video on the next page) at how the XO's software actually runs. Although Linux-based, the XO-1's operating system appears to have been very much simplified, with menu bars and icons being kept to a bare minimum. Most notably, the entire desktop interface is entirely pictographic, with no title bar menus and very little in the way of pull down commands, which probably makes it easier to teach kids who may still be learning how to read. The YouTube video shows some of the various standard applications that come with the XO-1: Firefox, an unnamed instant messaging program, a variant of Abiword (word processing), and an application called eToys that looks like a combination of traditional computer games (such as Chinese Checkers) combined with something resembling the children's art program Kid Pix. One quick caveat to you soon-to-be-XO-1-toting Libyan kids: we will so pwn you at Chinese Checkers.[Via Slashdot]
NickNeg signs up Libya for 1.2 million 2B1 laptops
Now it's really on. Sure, plenty of countries have expressed interest, and Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina, and Thailand have all tentatively agreed to snap up 1 million laptops each, but Libya has just reached an agreement with the OLPC foundation to lay down $250 million for 1.2 million of the cute little 2B1 units -- one for every schoolchild in Libya. That price also includes one server per school, a team of tech advisers to help with setup, satellite internet and other infrastructure to help make the laptops more than attractive paperweights. In Negroponte's talks with Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, there were also mentions of Libya financing laptop purchases in poorer African nations such as Chad, Niger and Rwanda. Sounds like a big win for team OLPC, and Libya just might become the first nation in the world to have all its school-age children hooked up to the internets on educational computers, according to Nick, though the rollout is targeted for completion by June 2008, and a lot can happen in two years.[Via Smart Mobs]
