Month: June 2020

Enlarge / A couple looks at the sea as a vast cloud of Sahara dust is blanketing the city of Havana on June 24, 2020. (Photo by YAMIL LAGE/AFP via Getty Images) (credit: Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images)

A hot desert wind is carrying a massive cloud of Saharan dust into the Southern United States this week. Dust plumes from the Sahara routinely blow westward across the Atlantic at this time of year, but this event is a doozy—by some measures, the biggest in decades. And a second plume appears to be forming about a week behind the big one.

Across the southeastern US, from the Gulf Coast to the Carolinas and potentially as far north as Indianapolis and Cincinnati, dust effects will likely be visible in the coming days. Trillions of dust grains will reflect sunlight in every direction, creating milky white skies. The dusty haze reflects some sunshine back to space, cooling the surface a bit where the plume is thickest.

Longer waves of red and orange light tend to penetrate the dusty haze, so sunrises and sunsets are likely to be especially beautiful. On the downside, where the plume mingles with showers or thunderstorms, downdrafts may carry desert dust to Earth’s surface. This will impair air quality and could trigger allergic reactions and asthma attacks. The more dust reaches an area, the more pronounced the effects will be.

Enlarge / One upside of Windows 10 2004: You won't find old install CDs all over the office two decades from now. (credit: Ramzi Haidar/AFP via Getty Images)

The Internet may have fun trying to guess the next natural feature of California or animal alliteration name for the other major operating systems, but Windows build naming conventions can be downright hard to parse. The latest officially released build was originally known as 20H1—meaning the first half of 2020. As it got closer to release status, it received its official build number: 2004, meaning April 2020. However, it didn't actually hit release status for another month, on May 27.

Maybe that's all indicative of what awaits users when they finally upgrade to Windows 10 2004; this is not Microsoft pumping out major changes like its debut of Windows 2000 roughly two decades ago. Still, a new Windows release is a new Windows release. So we recently spun up a fresh VM with a clean install of Build 2004 to take a look at its new features.

Edge, Installation size, Search, and Kaomoji

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  The first, and saddest thing we noticed about 2004 is that it still doesn't come with the new Edgium—clean installs still provide the legacy version of Edge. [credit: Jim Salter ]

The very first thing we noticed after a fresh install of Build 2004 was Edge. To be specific, Legacy Edge. You'll still need to go out of your way to install the new and improved Chromium-based Edge, which we're going to keep calling "Edgium" until the legacy version finishes going away.

Enlarge / This is the Volvo VRN Electric, the company's first electric class-8 truck. (credit: Volvo)

The days of diesel delivery trucks and vans in California are numbered. On Thursday, the state's Air Resources Board adopted a new rule that will phase out these most polluting of vehicles from the state over the next quarter-century. Beginning in 2024, OEMs that want to sell medium- and heavy-duty trucks in the state will have to ensure that some of those trucks are zero emissions vehicles (ZEVs). Over time, the percentage of those ZEV trucks has to increase, so that by 2045, any new truck sold in the state will be emission-free. Currently, CARB estimates that 2 million diesel trucks and vans are the cause of 70 percent of smog-causing pollution in the state.

"California is an innovation juggernaut that is going electric. We are showing the world that we can move goods, grow our economy, and finally dump dirty diesel," said Jared Blumenfeld, California’s secretary for Environmental Protection.

The new rule excludes light trucks (8,500lbs/3,855kg and under), so the new Ford F-150 doesn't count. But it does apply to pretty much anything bigger than that—class 2b (like a Ford F-250 for example) all the way through the biggest class 8 trucks and tractors. The mandate starts gently: in 2024, only 3 percent of class 2b and class 3 trucks, 7 percent of class 4 through 8 trucks, and 3 percent of class 7 and 8 tractors have to be emissions free. And in fact, for pickup trucks—ie trucks that came from the factory with a load bed rather than some other configuration—the class 2b-class 3 rule only kicks in during 2027.