Month: November 2017

Enlarge (credit: MariaDB Foundation)

NEW YORK CITY: On the first day of its Connect developer conference, Microsoft announced that it is joining the MariaDB Foundation, the group that oversees the development of the MariaDB database.

Connect is Microsoft's other annual developer conference. The big conference, Build, takes place each spring and covers the breadth of Microsoft-related development, from Windows to Azure to Office to HoloLens. Connect has tended to have something of an open source, database, and cloud spin to it. At Connect last year, Microsoft announced that it was joining the Linux Foundation. In years prior, the company has used the event to announce the open sourcing of Visual Studio Code and, before that, .net.

MariaDB is a fork of the MySQL database that's developed and maintained by many of the original MySQL contributors. In 2008, Sun Microsystems bought MySQL AB, the company that developed and created MySQL. In 2009, Oracle announced its plans to buy Sun, creating fear in the community about MySQL's future as a successful, community-developed, open-source project. To ensure that the database would continue development in spite of the purchase, the MariaDB fork was created in 2009. The subsequent development of MySQL arguably justifies those fears; while Oracle still publishes source code, the development itself happens behind closed doors, with minimal outside contributions.

With Live Share (here in Visual Studio Code) you can see what the other person is looking at, from the comfort of your own IDE. (credit: Microsoft)

NEW YORK—Decades after introducing IntelliSense, the code completion and information features that transform Visual Studio into something more than just a text editor, Microsoft is introducing something that it claims is just as exciting: Live Sharing.

Collaboration is critical for many developers. Having another pair of eyes look over a problematic bug can offer insight that's proving elusive; tapping the knowledge of a seasoned veteran is an important source of training and education. Some developers advocate pair programming, a system of development where two people literally share a keyboard and take turns to drive, but most feel this is intrusive and inconvenient. Ad hoc huddles around a single screen are common but usually mean that one developer has to contend with the preferences of another, hindering their productivity. Screen sharing avoids the awkward seating but also means that the sharer either has a loss of control if they give the other person keyboard and mouse access, or, if they don't, it prevents the other person from taking the initiative.

Live Share is Microsoft's solution. It provides a shared editing experience within Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code (currently only for JavaScript, TypeScript, and C#) that's similar to the shared editing found in word processors; each person can see the other's cursor and text selections; each person can make edits—but it goes further, by enabling shared debugging, too. A project can be launched under the debugger, and both people can see the call stack, examine in-scope variables, or even change values in the immediate window. Both sides can single step the debugger to advance through a program.

Enlarge / Artist’s impression of the planet Ross 128 b. (credit: ESO)

Astronomers have discovered a planet 35 percent more massive than Earth in orbit around a red dwarf star just 11 light years from the Sun. The planet, Ross 128 b, likely exists at the edge of the small, relatively faint star's habitable zone even though it is 20 times closer to its star than the Earth is to the Sun. The study in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics finds the best estimate for its surface temperature is between -60° and 20° C.

This is not the closest Earth-size world that could potentially harbor liquid water on its surface—that title is held by Proxima Centauri b, which is less than 4.3 light years away from Earth, and located in the star system closest to the Sun. Even so, due to a variety of factors Ross 128 b is tied for fourth on a list of potentially most habitable exoplanets, with an Earth Similarity Index value of 0.86.

In the new research, astronomers discuss another reason to believe that life might be more likely to exist on Ross 128 b. That's because its parent star, Ross 128, is a relatively quiet red dwarf star, producing fewer stellar flares than most other, similar-sized stars such as Proxima Centauri. Such flares may well sterilize any life that might develop on such a world.

Ron Amadeo

Another six months, another LG flagship phone. Typically the V series has been LG's wacky, experimental line with an extra "ticker" screen on the front. This year, though, the V30 is all business. The ticker is gone in exchange for a slim-bezel device and a clean look.

With the V30, LG is still basically following the same path that Samsung travels by shipping a heavily skinned phone with a glass back and slow updates. When you do all the same things as Samsung without the marketing budget, it's hard to stand out.