Month: March 2018

Enlarge (credit: Git)

Microsoft's switch to using Git as the version control system for Windows' development has resulted in many challenges. Git wasn't really built for a 300GB repository with 3.5 million files, and the engineering effort to make Git scale in this way continues.

But in adopting and developing what the company is calling One Engineering System (1ES), the Windows and Devices Group (WDG) has adopted more than just Git; the group has also adopted Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS), the company's source control, item tracking, integration and testing system, and with VSTS a more integrated, devops style approach to developing. Git is an important part of this but far from the whole story. Microsoft wrote today about some of its experiences using VSTS, including some of the problems the scale of the operation has caused.

The adoption of VSTS features and devops practices isn't uniform across WDG. Continuous integration and continuous delivery make sense for some parts of WDG—online services are an obvious example, and even some of the apps in the Microsoft Store could qualify—but they're less applicable to the core Windows operating system itself. Nonetheless, the company has worked to standardize practices that are common to every component.

Jonathan Gitlin

As Ars' resident racer, I often get asked what steering wheel people should buy for racing games. And for the past few years, my default answer has been to head thee to Logitech. The G29 (for Playstation 4) or the G920 (for the Xbox One) have been out for a while now, and they offer a good balance of affordability and immersiveness.

But not everyone uses the same criteria to pick such things; after all, would Lee Hutchinson be content to play Elite: Dangerous with just a janky old Logitech Extreme 3D Pro? If you play a lot of Gran Turismo Sport and are looking for something a tier above the G29, it's time to check out the Thrustmaster T-GT. With an MSRP of $799.99, it's not the cheapest way to play GT Sport, but deals are available—right now on Amazon, it's $689.72—and you do get a quality product for your hard-earned credits.

Enlarge / A version of Calendar 2 downloaded on Sunday from the Mac App Store.

Resource-draining currency miners are a regular part of the Google Play market, as scammers pump out apps that covertly harness millions of devices, in some cases with malware so aggressive it can physically damage phones. A popular title in the Mac App Store recently embraced coin mining openly, and so far Apple gatekeepers haven't blocked it.

The app is Calendar 2, a scheduling app that aims to include more features than the Calendar app that Apple bundles with macOS. In recent days, Calendar 2 developer Qbix endowed it with code that mines the digital coin known as Monero. The xmr-stack miner isn't supposed to run unless users specifically approve it in a dialog that says the mining will be in exchange for turning on a set of premium features. If users approve the arrangement, the miner will then run. Users can bypass this default action by selecting an option to keep the premium features turned off or to pay a fee to turn on the premium features.

Feels like the first time

If Calendar 2 isn't the first known app offered in Apple's official and highly exclusive App Store to do currency mining, it's one of the very few. The discovery comes as sky-high valuations have pushed the limits of currency mining and led to a surge of websites and malware that surreptitiously mine digital coins on mobile devices, personal computers, and business servers. Calendar 2 is slightly different in the sense that it clearly discloses the miner it runs by default. That puts it in a grayer zone than most of the miners seen to date.

Enlarge / MADISON, New York - 2015/10/11: Wind farm with autumn color. (credit: John Greim/LightRocket via Getty Images)

On Friday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that his state would commit $1.4 billion to 26 renewable projects, including 22 solar farms, three wind farms, and one hydroelectric project. The outlay is a huge sum compared to what most states spend on renewable energy.

At the same time, the governor denounced the Trump administration's plan to open nearly 90 percent of offshore federal waters to oil drilling. Cuomo asked that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke exclude two areas off the New York coast from lease sales, citing concerns about oil spills like the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico. Cuomo noted that Florida has been able to obtain verbal approval that lease sales won't be held in waters adjacent to the Florida coast (although some officials in the administration have contradicted that exemption).

The renewable projects will be sited throughout the state and were chosen by New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) based on the proposed cost of each project, the project's ability to create local jobs, and developer experience in building renewable projects in New York.

Enlarge (credit: Garrett / Flickr)

Over the past few years, momentum has been building to make cities a focus of climate change action. “Although they cover less than 2 percent of the earth’s surface, cities consume 78 percent of the world’s energy,” reports the UN, “and produce more than 60 percent of all carbon dioxide and significant amounts of other greenhouse gas emissions.”

But there’s a problem: there’s a lot we don’t know about emissions in cities, because the ability to detect emissions on local, fine-grained scales is a relatively recent development. This technology is improving steadily, and this week, a paper in PNAS reports results from a detailed analysis of Salt Lake City. Its findings add to growing evidence that dense urban populations, rather than suburban sprawl, has an important role to play in climate action.

A one-of-a-kind case study

Salt Lake City has an emissions sensor network that is ahead of the game. There have been urban CO₂ monitoring projects in Pasadena and Heidelberg (Germany) for more than 10 years, but only at a single location in each city. That makes it impossible to get a multi-faceted picture of how emissions vary across the different spaces in the city.

Enlarge / Demonstrators rally outside the Federal Communication Commission building in Washington, DC, to protest the end of net neutrality rules on December 14, 2017. (credit: Getty Images | Chip Somodevilla)

Twelve lawsuits filed against the Federal Communications Commission over its net neutrality repeal have been consolidated into one suit that will be heard at a federal appeals court in California.

The 12 lawsuits were filed by more than three dozen entities, including state attorneys general, consumer advocacy groups, and tech companies.

Here's a list of who filed the 12 lawsuits against the FCC: