Today marks the next milestone in Microsoft’s campus modernization effort. Deconstruction is beginning, and buildings will start coming down.

When the project is complete, the new campus will provide a modern workplace and create greater collaboration and community. To commemorate the original buildings, the company offered an exclusive opportunity for a group of employees to say goodbye to the original campus with a demolition party to kick off the destruction. On Tuesday, one employee and nine of his teammates (who collectively donated money to charity to win the experience via the Employee Giving Campaign auction) took to the company’s first buildings equipped with hard hats, sledgehammers and “the claw.” Check out some highlights from the fun below:

“It is great to see the interest and excitement from employees for the campus modernization,” said Michael Ford, Microsoft general manager of global real estate and security. “Our employees are crucial to building an exceptional place to work, and this event was a great way to kick off this journey together.”

Moving forward

Over the next few months, Microsoft will continue the decommissioning and demolition of 12 buildings, embracing sustainable practices throughout the process.

In 2016, Microsoft became the first technology company in the U.S. to be certified Zero Waste for diverting at least 90 percent of its waste from the landfill. The company’s goal with this project is to remain in line with this certification for construction materials and divert a majority of building materials from the landfill. This means focusing on reusing, donating and recycling. From concrete and steel framing to carpets, ceiling tiles, electronic and networking gear, interior debris and loose assets like furniture, chairs and whiteboards, to even the artificial turf outside — most of the materials in the old spaces will find a new life.

“We strive to make a positive impact on the community,” Ford said. “We’re putting a lot of effort behind finding innovative ways to reduce our impact and optimize our resource usage.”

Beyond what is being recycled, the company is also considering where materials will be processed. To maximize sustainability, Microsoft’s construction team is engaging with local waste processing and recycling companies to study and prioritize the hauling distances to further shrink the project’s construction carbon footprint.

“Corporate and environmental responsibility are equally as important as budget and schedule — and we are aligning our design and construction practices with Microsoft’s global corporate responsibility and sustainability missions,” Ford said. “It feels good to know that here in our hometown we’re supporting this vision.”

Follow updates and developments as this project progresses on Microsoft’s Modern Campus site.

BREAKING: Kelly Marcel to write and executive produce the VENOM sequel which will bring back Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams and Woody Harrelson as Carnage.

— Jeff Sneider (@TheInSneider) January 7, 2019

The post-apocalyptic saga that began with Metro 2033 and continued into Metro: Last Light returns to Xbox One this February in Metro Exodus. Debuting today, the story trailer for Metro Exodus teases what’s ahead as you flee the shattered ruins of dead Moscow and embark on an epic, continent-spanning journey to shoot, sneak, and survive in a hostile world.

To equip players for an immersive experience as they trek across the ravaged Russian landscape, we’re announcing the Xbox One X Metro Saga Bundle, which includes full-game downloads of Metro 2033 Redux, Metro: Last Light Redux and Metro Exodus, so you can jump into the haunting tale of humanity’s survival from the very beginning. Enhanced for Xbox One X in 4K Ultra HD and with HDR support, Metro Exodus will take players on a journey through vast sandbox levels packed with apocalyptic creatures across four beautiful but hostile seasons.

Along with full-game downloads of the entire Metro saga, the Xbox One X Metro Saga Bundle includes an Xbox One X console with a 1TB hard drive, an Xbox Wireless Controller and 1-month trials to Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Live Gold.

Embark on the ultimate post-apocalyptic gaming destination when the Xbox One X Metro Saga Bundle arrives on February 15, or pre-order today for $499.99 USD at Microsoft Store or participating retailers.

As part of the Xbox One family of devices, you’ll get access to the only console system that plays the best games of the past, present, and future with more than 1,300 games available today, including over 200 exclusives and over 400 Xbox classics. With the Xbox One X Metro Saga Bundle, you’ll also have features like a built-in 4K UHD Blu-ray player, 4K streaming with High Dynamic Range and Dolby Vision, premium audio with Dolby Atmos and DTS:X support and services unique to the Xbox platform like Xbox Game Pass, Xbox Live and Xbox One Backward Compatibility at your fingertips, making Xbox One the best place to play.

For more information on Xbox One or the Metro saga, visit xbox.com or Microsoft Store, near you or online.

By Joe Robinson 08 Jan 2019

Back in June of 2018, Microsoft acquired GitHub for an eye watering 7.5 Billion dollars.  This transaction took several months to make it through regulatory approval, with Microsoft finally taking control near the end of 2018.  Yesterday, we saw the first official impact of the ownership change and for end users, it’s a pretty good change.  The free tier of GitHub now offers unlimited private code repos!  This was arguably the biggest reason for many small developers to actually pay for a premium account, so for these developers, they can downgrade to free and save their money.  Now the major limitation between Free and Pro accounts is the number of collaborators in a private repo, with the free tier have a limit of 3, while the pro tier has no such limit.

Details of the new changes from the Github blog:

• GitHub Free now includes unlimited private repositories. For the first time, developers can use GitHub for their private projects with up to three collaborators per repository for free. Many developers want to use private repos to apply for a job, work on a side project, or try something out in private before releasing it publicly. Starting today, those scenarios, and many more, are possible on GitHub at no cost. Public repositories are still free (of course—no changes there) and include unlimited collaborators.

• GitHub Enterprise is the new unified product for Enterprise Cloud (formerly GitHub Business Cloud) and Enterprise Server (formerly GitHub Enterprise). Organizations that want the flexibility to use GitHub in a cloud or self-hosted configuration can now access both at one per-seat price. And with GitHub Connect, these products can be securely linked, providing a hybrid option so developers can work seamlessly across both environments.

Pricing for individuals now breaks down as follows:

Not a bad first move…

GameDev News Tools

Learn how to transition to Linux in this tutorial series from our archives.

In this series, we provide an overview of fundamentals to help you successfully make the transition to Linux from another operating system. If you missed the earlier articles in the series, you can find them here:

Part 1 – An Introduction

Part 2 – Disks, Files, and Filesystems

Part 3 – Graphical Environments

Part 4 – The Command Line

Part 5 – Using sudo

Part 6 – Installing Software

Linux gives you a lot of control over network and system settings. On your desktop, Linux lets you tweak just about anything on the system. Most of these settings are exposed in plain text files under the /etc directory. Here I describe some of the most common settings you’ll use on your desktop Linux system.

A lot of settings can be found in the Settings program, and the available options will vary by Linux distribution. Usually, you can change the background, tweak sound volume, connect to printers, set up displays, and more. While I won’t talk about all of the settings here, you can certainly explore what’s in there.

Connect to the Internet

Connecting to the Internet in Linux is often fairly straightforward. If you are wired through an Ethernet cable, Linux will usually get an IP address and connect automatically when the cable is plugged in or at startup if the cable is already connected.

If you are using wireless, in most distributions there is a menu, either in the indicator panel or in settings (depending on your distribution), where you can select the SSID for your wireless network. If the network is password protected, it will usually prompt you for the password. Afterward, it connects, and the process is fairly smooth.

You can adjust network settings in the graphical environment by going into settings. Sometimes this is called System Settings or just Settings. Often you can easily spot the settings program because its icon is a gear or a picture of tools (Figure 1).

Network Interface Names

Under Linux, network devices have names. Historically, these are given names like eth0 and wlan0 — or Ethernet and wireless, respectively. Newer Linux systems have been using different names that appear more esoteric, like enp4s0 and wlp5s0. If the name starts with en, it’s a wired Ethernet interface. If it starts with wl, it’s a wireless interface. The rest of the letters and numbers reflect how the device is connected to hardware.

Network Management from the Command Line

If you want more control over your network settings, or if you are managing network connections without a graphical desktop, you can also manage the network from the command line.

Note that the most common service used to manage networks in a graphical desktop is the Network Manager, and Network Manager will often override setting changes made on the command line. If you are using the Network Manager, it’s best to change your settings in its interface so it doesn’t undo the changes you make from the command line or someplace else.

Changing settings in the graphical environment is very likely to be interacting with the Network Manager, and you can also change Network Manager settings from the command line using the tool called nmtui. The nmtui tool provides all the settings that you find in the graphical environment but gives it in a text-based semi-graphical interface that works on the command line (Figure 2).

On the command line, there is an older tool called ifconfig to manage networks and a newer one called ip. On some distributions, ifconfig is considered to be deprecated and is not even installed by default. On other distributions, ifconfig is still in use.

Here are some commands that will allow you to display and change network settings:

Process and System Information

In Windows, you can go into the Task Manager to see a list of the all the programs and services that are running. You can also stop programs from running. And you can view system performance in some of the tabs displayed there.

You can do similar things in Linux both from the command line and from graphical tools. In Linux, there are a few graphical tools available depending on your distribution. The most common ones are System Monitor or KSysGuard. In these tools, you can see system performance, see a list of processes, and even kill processes (Figure 3).

In these tools, you can also view global network traffic on your system (Figure 4).

Managing Process and System Usage

There are also quite a few tools you can use from the command line. The command ps can be used to list processes on your system. By default, it will list processes running in your current terminal session. But you can list other processes by giving it various command line options. You can get more help on ps with the commands info ps, or man ps.

Most folks though want to get a list of processes because they would like to stop the one that is using up too much memory or CPU time. In this case, there are two commands that make this task much easier. These are top and htop (Figure 5).

The top and htop tools work very similarly to each other. These commands update their list every second or two and re-sort the list so that the task using the most CPU is at the top. You can also change the sorting to sort by other resources as well such as memory usage.

In either of these programs (top and htop), you can type ‘?’ to get help, and ‘q’ to quit. With top, you can press ‘k’ to kill a process and then type in the unique PID number for the process to kill it.

With htop, you can highlight a task by pressing down arrow or up arrow to move the highlight bar, and then press F9 to kill the task followed by Enter to confirm.

The information and tools provided in this series will help you get started with Linux. With a little time and patience, you’ll feel right at home.

Learn more about Linux through the free “Introduction to Linux” course from The Linux Foundation and edX.