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Enlarge (credit: US DOE)

So far, the focus on cutting the US' carbon emissions has fallen on two obvious targets: electrical production and transportation. But to engage in the sort of deep decarbonization we'll need to address climate change, we can't really ignore any significant source of emissions. And the places we live are significant sources—even before the pandemic kept many of us from leaving the house, US households accounted for about 20 percent of the country's energy-related carbon emissions.

On its own, the authors of a new analysis say, US housing would be the world's sixth largest emitter of greenhouse gases, placing it ahead of Germany. How do we get that down in order to address climate change? To find out, some researchers from the University of Michigan did an incredibly detailed analysis of the US' housing stock, figuring out the factors that influenced its carbon emissions. They then calculated which options might bring those emissions down to where they'd be compatible with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Emissions at home

To understand US housing's energy use, the researchers started with average samples of the housing in each state, with the number of buildings ranging from 100,000 to 10 million. This data included information on the building's age, how much space it enclosed, how it's heated, and so on. Their model also incorporated details of things like power use, housing density, details of the electric grid, and so on.

Does this fight between Master Chief and new character "the pilot" bear any resemblance to quarrels between Microsoft and Halo Infinite's development team? (credit: Xbox / 343 Industries)

On Thursday, I quickly consumed and reported on the first "gameplay" reveal of Halo Infinite, the long-awaited sequel slated to launch this holiday on Xbox Series X. I'll admit, I really liked what I saw at first blush. Its combat, movement, and weapon impact struck a clever balance between the glory of Halo 3 and the uneven-but-ambitious experiments of later sequels. (At least, as much as a five-minute sequence can demonstrate.)

I also liked the new weirdness of the "grapple shot," which lets series hero Master Chief cast a line and zip toward foes or pick up objects. I'm a sucker for a grappling hook, and I have previously felt that another Xbox game series, Gears of War, would benefit from such a gimmick. With that in mind, I went back to my 2019 review of Gears 5, where I'd last suggested such a thing.

I noticed that game's screenshots, which prompted me to look at images I captured from Halo infinite. Then I looked at Gears 5 again. And Halo Infinite again. Hmm, I said out loud.

Enlarge / A DJI Phantom 4 quadcopter drone. (credit: Andri Koolme)

The Android version of DJI Go 4—an app that lets users control drones—has until recently been covertly collecting sensitive user data and can download and execute code of the developers’ choice, researchers said in two reports that question the security and trustworthiness of a program with more than 1 million Google Play downloads.

The app is used to control and collect near real-time video and flight data from drones made by China-based DJI, the world's biggest maker of commercial drones. The Play Store shows that it has more than 1 million downloads, but because of the way Google discloses numbers, the true number could be as high as 5 million. The app has a rating of three-and-a-half stars out of a possible total of five from more than 52,000 users.

Wide array of sensitive user data

Two weeks ago, security firm Synactive reverse-engineered the app. On Thursday, fellow security firm Grimm published the results of its own independent analysis. At a minimum, both found that the app skirted Google terms and that, until recently, the app covertly collected a wide array of sensitive user data and sent it to servers located in mainland China. A worst-case scenario is that developers are abusing hard-to-identify features to spy on users.