Month: November 2021

Right now, a lot of the methane created or extracted during other activities goes to waste. (credit: Lawrence Berkeley Lab)

The EPA announced new rules today that would slash methane leaks from the oil and gas sector, a significant source of carbon emissions that represents 30 percent of methane pollution in the US.

Nearly every step in the oil and gas supply chain would be affected, from production to processing, storage, and transmission. In a first, the rules would apply to old wells in addition to new ones, and they would introduce “a comprehensive monitoring program to require companies to find and fix leaks,” the EPA said. Altogether, the rules would trim the oil and gas sector’s methane leaks by 75 percent, the administration estimated.

Leaks are rife throughout the industry, amounting to 2.3% of all natural gas production in the US. Globally, leaks are responsible for just over 5 percent of all energy-related greenhouse gas emissions, according to the International Energy Agency.

Enlarge / The state of US charging infrastructure might seem dire, depending on where you live. (credit: Getty Images)

The United States passed an important electric vehicle milestone earlier this year. At some point during the first three months of 2021, the country installed its 100,000th EV charger. That's according to the US Department of Energy's Alternative Fueling Station Locator, an extremely helpful resource that tracks "ethanol (E85), biodiesel, compressed natural gas, electric vehicle (EV) charging, hydrogen, liquefied natural gas, and propane stations."

That milestone coincided nicely with a call from President Joe Biden to build out more EV charging infrastructure. In March of this year, the Biden administration set a goal of reaching 500,000 publicly accessible EV chargers by the year 2030. (This preceded an August announcement from the White House that set a lukewarm target of half of all new cars and trucks being zero-emissions, also by 2030.)

If you're considering adopting an EV, then you can use this helpful online tool at the Department of Energy to see where all the chargers are. (credit: US Department of Energy)

Of course, the actual composition of those chargers is important. It's no good having half a million places to plug in if they're all level 1 (120 V AC) chargers that take days to top up a battery EV. But a new report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has dug into the data, looking at trends to see whether the nation is on track to meet its goals.

Enlarge (credit: Getty)

Although PCs are still selling at a greater volume than before the COVID-19 pandemic, demand is starting to drop. In Q3 2021, shipments of laptops, desktops, and tablets dropped 2 percent compared to Q3 2020, according to numbers that researcher Canalys shared on Monday. Interest in Chromebooks dropped the most, with a reported decline as high as 36.9 percent. Demand for tablets also fell, showing a 15 percent year-on-year decline, according to Canalys.

Chromebooks’ “massive downturn”

Both Canalys and the IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker shared Q3 numbers for Chromebooks and tablets on Monday. Canalys said 5.8 million Chromebooks shipped globally during this time, while the IDC said the number was 6.5 million. Both pointed to a huge decline compared to Q3 2020. Canalys reported the drop at 36.9 percent, and IDC pegged it at 29.8 percent.

Canalys said that Q3 Chromebook sales took a "major downturn" as the education markets in the US, Japan, and elsewhere became saturated. Demand lessened as government programs supporting remote learning went away, the research group said. After reaching a high of 18 percent market share since the start of 2020, Chromebooks reportedly represented just 9 percent of laptop shipments in Q3 2021.

Enlarge / The stable version of Microsoft Edge running on Linux Mint. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Big news for the assuredly huge pool of Linux users who also love Microsoft's software: Microsoft has released the first stable version of the Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser for Linux. The move follows about a year of early availability in the Dev and Beta channels and nearly two years of stable-channel availability for Windows and macOS.

The Linux version of Edge is compatible with most major distributions. Microsoft offers both .deb and .rpm installers (for Debian and Red Hat-based distributions, respectively) on its download page, and the browser can also be installed via the command line or your package manager of choice.

In our brief testing of the stable version of Edge running on Linux Mint, the browser seems to offer most of the same features as Edge running on Windows or macOS, including syncing for passwords, extensions, bookmarks, and open tabs. If you're a Linux user who has to use Windows for work, it's handy to have a version of the browser that can sync that data back and forth. The Linux version of Edge lacks the Internet Explorer compatibility mode (also missing from the Mac version) that some businesses use to get around updating outdated internal websites, but most of the other features seem to be here.

Enlarge / The Pixel 6 and Pixel 3. If you've forgotten what the 3 XL's bathtub notch looks like, I'm sorry I had to remind you. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

The start of a new month means it's time for Google to roll out an Android security patch. November's patch is more notable than usual, thanks to some Pixel 6-specific bugfixes and the cutoff of the three-year-old Pixel 3 hardware.

This release also marks the death of the Pixel 3 in Google's support lineup. The Pixel 3 launched in October 2018 with one of the biggest display notches ever and a serious dearth of RAM, earning it a lukewarm reception and disappointing sales. While the phone survived long enough to get the big Android 12 update and the October 2021 security patch, October marked three years of updates, so the November security update won't be arriving on the Pixel 3.

The Pixel 3 hardware is still perfectly functional, as its Snapdragon 845 and 4GB of RAM are not far from a brand-new $300 phone. Google could treat its customers better and reduce the amount of e-waste it puts into the world by extending its support timelines, but it has been reluctant to do that. Even the new Pixel 6, over which Google has end-to-end control, will still be obsolete after three years, though it will continue to get security updates. We're only asking that Google's $900 flagship match the support window of a $400 budget iPhone.