Month: February 2017

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Since their introduction in 2002, Microsoft's pair of .NET programming languages, C# and Visual Basic.NET, have been close siblings. Although they look very different—one uses C-style braces, brackets, and lots of symbols, whereas the other looks a great deal more like English—their features have, for the most part, been very similar. This strategy was formalized in 2010, with Microsoft planning coevolution, to keep them if not identical then at least very similar in capability.

But the two languages have rather different audiences, and Microsoft has decided to change its development approach. The company has made two key findings. First, drawing on the annual Stack Overflow developer survey, it's clear that C# is popular among developers, whereas Visual Basic is not. This may not be indicative of a particular dislike for Visual Basic per se—there's likely to be a good proportion within that group who'd simply like to consolidate on a single language at their workplace—but is clearly a concern for the language's development.

Second, however, Microsoft has seen that Visual Basic has twice the share of new developers in Visual Studio as it does of all developers. This could indicate that Visual Basic is seen or promoted as an ideal beginners' language; it might also mean that programmers graduating from Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros in programs such as Word, Access, and Excel are picking the option that is superficially most comfortable for them. Visual Basic developers are generally creating business applications using WinForms, or occasionally ASP.NET Web Forms; the use of WinForms in particular again suggests that developers are seeking something similar to Office macros.

It's not just a curriculum—it's a set of cool shirts, too. (credit: Flickr user Scott Jones)

While fans of science may be nervously watching the goings on in Washington, it's always worth paying attention to what's going on at the state level, as each state has control over how science education is handled within its borders. In the past, many state legislators haven't thought twice about attempting to inject cultural battles into the science classroom.

This year, as it has in years past, South Dakota has decided to get in on the action. Its Senate has passed a bill that echoes language used in the past to attack the teaching of evolution.

Senate Bill 55 is remarkably short and to the point. Its entire text reads:

Enlarge / Demonstrators at Philadelphia International Airport recently protest against the executive order that President Donald Trump signed clamping down on refugee admissions and temporarily restricting travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries. (credit: Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images)

A federal judge has blocked President Donald Trump's immigration executive order, which has spurred many lawsuits and has been deeply castigated by tech sector bosses.

Trump's order Friday halted refugee arrivals for 120 days and banned for 90 days citizens of Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. US District Judge Andre Birotte Jr. issued an emergency order, which became public Wednesday, that forbids the government from enforcing Trump's order on those entering the US with a valid immigrant visa from the seven countries Trump listed. The order by the President Barack Obama appointee, however, was silent about refugees trying to enter the country, and it also did not mention the fate of tourists or others with non-immigrant visas.

Here's the important part of the ruling:

Jonathan Gitlin

PALO ALTO, Calif.—After what has felt like an interminable wait since our brief taster at CES last year, we finally landed some proper seat time with the new Chevrolet Bolt. It's the most convincing battery electric vehicle (BEV) to emerge thus far from one of the traditional automakers, a ground-up design with clever packaging and a 60kWh battery that gives it a range of 238 miles (383km). And until Tesla's Model 3 goes into production later this year, it's the only reasonably affordable long-range BEV on the market.

It's not entirely surprising that Chevrolet was the first of the traditional OEMs to respond to Tesla. Parent General Motors tried to make EVs viable in the early 1990s with the EV1, perhaps a little too soon before battery technology made the leaps it has. More recently, it has sold more than 110,000 plug-in hybrid EVs in the form of the first- and second-generation Volt. While the Bolt obviously benefits from this institutional know-how, the new car is a ground-up design, not an evolution of its PHEV platform.

Enlarge / The 15-inch MacBook Pro connected to a bunch of accessories.

Apple is working on more ARM co-processors for future MacBooks, at least if a new report from Bloomberg is to be believed. The company is allegedly developing a chip codenamed "T310" that could be used to handle macOS' "Power Nap" functionality and other low-power features.

The chip would sit alongside an Intel processor that would still do all the heavy lifting when the computer was awake, much like the Apple T1 chip that powers the new MacBook Pros' Touch Bar. The T310 would be slightly more capable and more deeply integrated into the system than the T1, since it would be allowed to use the computers' Wi-Fi adapters and access RAM and storage. But as described, the chip would still be filling a niche role rather than doing any major processing.

While Bloomberg notes that Apple has "no near-term plans to completely abandon Intel chips," the report frames Apple's new chip as the next step down a road toward "Intel independence." This could eventually lead to Macs that are powered by Apple's own A-series processors rather than standard x86 PC processors; Intel's chip development has slowed significantly in recent years, and the company's roadmap doesn't look as rosy as it did back in 2006 when Apple originally switched away from the PowerPC architecture.

Enlarge / Watch out for explosions when you're in the outer system. (credit: Syfy)

This story contains spoilers for season 1 of The Expanse.

There are two kinds of realism in science fiction: scientific accuracy (which is always debatable when it comes to space travel), and social insight. If you’re lucky, you’ll get one. And if you’re watching The Expanse, returning for its second season tonight on Syfy, you’ll get whopping doses of both. Plus you’re in for one helluva ride.

Based on the bestselling novels by James S.A. Corey, pen name for the crack writing team of Ty Frank and Daniel Abraham, the series follows the adventures of an interplanetary ice hauler crew 150 years in our future. On a hum-drum run between the asteroid mines of the Belt and water-hungry colonies of the inner system, they find themselves drawn into a conspiracy that could spark a war between Earth and Mars. But from the earliest moments in its first season, it was obvious that this show wasn’t going to be your typical space adventure. Sure there are explosions, zero-gravity antics, glowing blob zombies, and swashbuckling heroes, but there is also a rich, rewarding social world to explore.

Enlarge / Elon Musk arrives at Trump Tower on January 6, 2017, in New York City. (credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Just before and after the US presidential election, SpaceX's head of communications, Dex Torricke-Barton, took to all manner of social media to warn of a Donald Trump presidency. On Medium, he wrote of his support for Hillary Clinton, "Diversity and openness to the world aren’t threats to this country—they are what make America great. I’m with her. I’m with Earth." After Trump won, Torricke-Barton wrote in a now deleted tweet, "Earth has fallen." And on his personal Facebook page, Torricke-Barton said, "Donald Trump, we will tear down your wall. I promise." Less than a week later, and only about six months into his high-profile job at SpaceX, Torricke-Barton was gone from the company.

Torricke-Barton told me he left SpaceX on his own, and he has since written that he will devote his career to social causes. However, after the company received pressure from NASA and the US Air Force as a result of these public anti-Trump musings, SpaceX's director of communications was likely—at a minimum—encouraged to leave. After the election, SpaceX may not have been thrilled about who the new president of the United States was. But clearly SpaceX—and more importantly its founder, Elon Musk—was ready to work with the new president.

Since that time, Musk joined other tech industry leaders for meetings at Trump Tower with the president-elect. He also became a member of President Trump's Strategic and Policy Forum to help the administration fashion its economic agenda. Few begrudged Musk his willingness to help Trump and speak with his advisers about the importance of climate change and the need for further commercialization of spaceflight.

Enlarge / President Donald Trump shakes hands with Judge Neil Gorsuch after nominating him to the Supreme Court during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House on Tuesday. If confirmed, Gorsuch would fill the seat left vacant with the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016. (credit: Getty Images)

"The qualifications of Judge Gorsuch are beyond dispute. He is a man our country needs badly to ensure the rule of law and the rule of justice... I only hope both Democrats and Republicans can come together, for once, for the good of the country."

That's what President Donald Trump said late Tuesday when he nominated Neil Gorsuch, a 49-year-old federal appeals court judge, to the Supreme Court. Gorsuch was tapped to replace the deceased Justice Antonin Scalia, and Trump has said all along he wanted a new justice to follow in the footsteps of Scalia's originalist approach. Anyone identifying as an originalist theoretically interprets the Constitution in a manner they believe is consistent with what the drafters and adopters of the document understood it to mean. Such a philosophy can lead to conservative results, though even Scalia had been accused of practicing "contradictory originalism."

(credit: Jason Farrar)

The Federal Communications Commission's new Republican leadership has decided not to defend FCC inmate calling rules that place a cap on intrastate calling rates.

Chairman Ajit Pai and fellow Republican Michael O'Rielly repeatedly opposed attempts to cap the phone rates charged to prisoners while Democrats held the FCC's majority. Republicans argued that the FCC exceeded its authority, and commission attempts to enforce rate caps have been stymied by a series of court decisions.

As a lawsuit filed by phone company Global Tel*Link heads for oral arguments on Monday in the DC Circuit US Court of Appeals, an FCC lawyer informed the court that the agency will no longer defend an intrastate calling cap. Since the FCC prison rate order was adopted by a 3-2 vote in October 2015, Democrats Jessica Rosenworcel and Chairman Tom Wheeler have left the commission, FCC Deputy General Counsel David Gossett noted in a brief filed yesterday.