Month: April 2019

Enlarge / Democrats vs. Republicans. (credit: Getty Images | Linda Braucht)

Democrats in the US House of Representatives yesterday rejected Republican attempts to weaken a bill that would restore net neutrality rules.

The House Commerce Committee yesterday approved the "Save the Internet Act" in a 30-22 party-line vote, potentially setting up a vote of the full House next week. The bill is short and simple—it would fully reinstate the rules implemented by the Federal Communications Commission under then-Chairman Tom Wheeler in 2015, reversing the repeal led by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai in 2017.

Commerce Committee Republicans repeatedly introduced amendments that would weaken the bill but were consistently rebuffed by the committee's Democratic majority. "The Democrats beat back more than a dozen attempts from Republicans to gut the bill with amendments throughout the bill's markup that lasted 9.5 hours," The Hill reported yesterday.

Enlarge / Large power lines transport power outside Milford, Utah. (credit: George Frey / Getty Images)

Idaho Power announced recently that it had secured a 20-year deal to buy power from a 120MW solar farm being built by a company called Jackpot Holdings for $21.75 per megawatt-hour (MWh). The price is less than 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), which appears to be a record-low price for solar energy in the United States.

The price isn't a perfect reflection of solar panel cost—Idaho Power's price is as low as it is because Jackpot Holdings is taking advantage of a federal subsidy in the form of the solar Investment Tax Credit (ITC), which is set to begin phasing out in coming years. Still, industry watcher and investor Ramez Naam tweeted last night that, without the ITC, he estimates the price per kWh for the project would be about 3 cents per kWh, which is still extremely cheap.

Just two years ago, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced that the average utility-grade solar project in the US had hit 6 cents per kWh, achieving the DOE's national goal three years early. Last October, Nature Energy published a paper investigating whether super-cheap, 3-cents-per-kWh solar prices in the Middle East reflected actual cost or simply existed as loss leaders and subsidy vehicles in oil-rich countries. (Spoiler: the researchers found that 3-cents-per-kWh prices were possible and rational in the Middle East.)

Enlarge / Windows is now perpetually under construction. (credit: David Holt / Flickr)

Microsoft really wants to avoid a repeat of the mess surrounding the release of the last Windows 10 feature update. Windows 10 version 1809, the October 2018 update, was found to have a bug that in some circumstances destroyed user data, forcing the company to suspend its rollout. It turned out that the bug had been reported but was overlooked, and even once that problem was resolved that version still suffered certain other awkward bugs.

Accordingly, the company is going to take a very different tack with the next feature update to Windows 10. Codenamed 19H1 and currently still branded 1903 (denoting it was completed in March of 2019), the next update was expected to be released as the April 2019 update. But that's not the case: it's going to be the May 2019 update, because Microsoft is being a great deal more cautious about this release. Next week, a build will be pushed to the Release Preview ring, which should provide around a month of testing before its expected release date.

This alone is a major difference as compared to 1809, as that release largely skipped the release preview ring for reasons that remain unclear. But Microsoft is going much further to make this release a success.

Enlarge / Pope Francis in Vatican City, Vatican. (credit: Getty | Pacific Press)

A Kentucky judge has ruled against an unvaccinated Catholic high school student who sued his local health department for banning unvaccinated students from school and extracurricular activities amid a chickenpox outbreak.

On April 2, Judge James Schrand of Boone County Court denied the request for a preliminary injunction that would allow the student, 18-year-old Jerome Kunkel, to return to classes and activities at Our Lady of Assumption Academy in Walton, Kentucky. In denying the request, Judge Schrand sided with Northern Kentucky Health Department, which argued that it had lawfully done what it deemed necessary to curb the spread of a dangerous infectious disease.

The outbreak sickened at least 32 in the Assumption’s community and had the potential to spread further. Of Assumption’s 240 students, only 18 percent have received all of their vaccinations, according to the school’s registrar.

Enlarge (credit: Getty / Aurich Lawson)

Since Epic started taking a 12 percent cut of sales revenue generated on its news Games Store, much has been made of whether Steam's baseline 30 percent revenue cut is justified. But a new analysis shows that Valve sometimes receives much less than that headline revenue percentage for some of the most popular games on Steam.

The reason for the discrepancy is Steam keys, which developers can generate pretty much at will to sell through non-Steam storefronts and brick-and-mortar retailers. While these key-based purchases are still redeemed through Steam and can take advantage of Steam's suite of features, Valve actually takes no commission from sales that don't take place directly through its own storefront.

Valve doesn't directly publicize how many of a game's sales come from keys versus direct Steam purchases. But as Twitter user @RobotBrush recently pointed out, the Steam store does publish the numbers of user reviews that come from Steam purchases vs "Other" key-based sources (a feature designed to prevent key-based review manipulation).