PCWorld executive editor Gordon Mah Ung, a tireless journalist we once described as a founding father of hardcore tech journalism, passed away over the weekend after a hard-fought battle with pancreatic cancer. Gordon was 58, and leaves behind a loving wife, two children, older sister, and mother. With more than 25 years' experience covering computer tech broadly and computer chips specifically, Gordon's dogged reporting, one-of-a-kind personality, and commitment to journalistic standards touched many, many lives. He will be profoundly missed by co-workers, industry sources, and the PC enthusiasts who read his words and followed him as a video creator. Gordon studied journalism at San Francisco State University and then worked as a police reporter for the Contra Costa Times in the late 1990s. In 1997, he joined Computerworld (a PCWorld sister publication) before I recruited him to join boot magazine (later re-launched as Maximum PC), where he would ultimately lead hardware coverage for 16 years. At Maximum PC, Gordon developed his trademark voice that blended a hardcore passion for PC tech with non-sequiturs, deadpan humor, and occasional bursts of outrage.

You can manage your newsletter subscriptions at any time. As is now tradition, the final quiz of the year is a look back at the past 12 months. It was a year fraught with discord, so grab your favorite beverage, maybe a cookie or two, and take a deep, relaxing breath before you plunge into 2023 for one last time in this week's Slate News Quiz. If this is your first time playing, read the rules here. The quiz may require you to turn on cookies in your browser for it to function properly.

Your message has been sent. There was an error emailing this page. The Windows 10 April 2018 Update is coming April 30, and we've already tried the most important new features through recent Insider builds. Check out what's coming in these detailed stories: For the big-picture perspective, catch up on the drama around the recent executive shakeup within Microsoft's executive ranks, which could mean big changes for future versions of Windows. One exec who just started is Cortana's new boss, Javier Soltero, who's eager to see Microsoft's digital assistant branch out far beyond Windows.

Your message has been sent. There was an error emailing this page. The Windows 10 April 2018 Update is coming April 30, and we've already tried the most important new features through recent Insider builds. Check out what's coming in these detailed stories: For the big-picture perspective, catch up on the drama around the recent executive shakeup within Microsoft's executive ranks, which could mean big changes for future versions of Windows. One exec who just started is Cortana's new boss, Javier Soltero, who's eager to see Microsoft's digital assistant branch out far beyond Windows.

The focus here is on data: from R tips to desktop tools to taking a hard look at data claims. R users can now use the popular dplyr package to tap into Apache Spark big data. The new sparklyr package is a native dplyr interface to Spark, according to RStudio. After installing the package, users can "interactively manipulate Spark data using both dplyr and SQL (via DBI), according to an RStudio blog post, as well as "filter and aggregate Spark data sets then bring them into R for analysis and visualization." There is also access to Spark distributed machine-learning algorithms.