Month: March 2018

Enlarge / Uber's current self-driving cars are based on the Volvo XC90. (credit: Uber)

In a Tuesday letter to Uber, the California Department of Motor Vehicles formally acknowledged that Uber will not seek to renew its autonomous vehicle permit in the state, which is due to expire at the end of March 2018.

In addition, the brief letter notes that Uber has also "indefinitely suspended" such testing in Pennsylvania—the home of its Pittsburgh research center—and in Arizona and Toronto. Uber had been ordered by Gov. Doug Ducey to halt testing in Arizona, the site of its recent tragic accident that killed a woman in Tempe.

"Prior to resuming autonomous vehicle testing operations in California, Uber must apply for a new autonomous vehicle testing permit," Brian Soublet, deputy general counsel for the California Department of Motor Vehicles, wrote in the letter, which was provided to Ars. "Any application for a new permit will need to address any follow-up analysis or investigations from the recent crash in Arizona and may also require a meeting with the department."

Enlarge (credit: Microsoft)

After starting with Ubuntu, Microsoft has added a number of Linux distributions to its Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) Linux runtime environment. A Windows machine can simultaneously offer an Ubuntu, SUSE, Debian, and Kali "personality," providing users with a choice of the different distributions' preferences and package management.

But if your distribution isn't yet available or if you want a Linux installation that's customized just the way you like it, there's now an answer: Microsoft has an open source tool for building your own Linux package. The tool is aimed at two groups: distribution owners (so they can produce a bundle to ship through the Microsoft Store) and developers (so they can create custom distributions and sideload them onto their development systems).

Microsoft's tool provides the basic glue between Windows and the Linux distribution. It handles telling the system about the distribution and performing initial setup such as user creation, and it can be customized to—for example—print a message of the day when the distribution is started.

Enlarge / Apple VP of Product Marketing Greg Joswiak speaks at Apple’s event in Chicago on March 27, 2018. (credit: Eric Bangeman)

In today’s Apple event at Lane Tech High School, Apple CEO Tim Cook reminded the audience that Apple has been in the education business for 40 years. I can’t speak to the 1978-80 timeframe, but I do remember showing up for my sophomore year of high school in the fall of 1981 and walking into the computer lab to find that my beloved Challenger 2P computers, nine-inch black-and-white TVs, and cassette players were gone. In their place were a handful of Apple ][ computers with green-screen monitors. After messing around with them for a day or so, I decided they were an improvement.

That has been the hook for Apple in the education market for the last four decades: it's an improvement. Back when Microsoft was struggling to put together a polished Graphical User Interface, Macintoshes offered a lower barrier to entry for students and teachers. Unfortunately, that lower barrier generally came with a higher price tag.

Despite that, the combination of a dedicated education sales force, less-expensive hardware created for and targeted at the .edu market—like the eMac, and before that, the Power Macintosh 7500/75—and software tailored to the needs of teachers enabled Apple to make serious inroads in the school system. Apple’s reputation as a secure platform likely helped in the 1990s and early 2000s.