Month: September 2016

Enlarge (credit: Rural Learning Center)

British consumer rights group Which? isn't very happy with the way that Microsoft has handled Windows 10. The group says that Microsoft should compensate Windows 10 users for when the upgrade caused downtime due to software or hardware incompatibility, and it needs to do more to ensure that Windows users are aware of the customer support options that are available to them.

This comes after a June survey of Windows users showed that 12 percent of upgraders reverted back to Windows 7 or 8.1, with a majority of those downgraders saying that the upgrade adversely affected their PC.

The group cited a laundry list of complaints about the upgrade, with most of the complaints boiling down to compatibility issues. Hardware compatibility was a particular problem, with devices such as printers and Wi-Fi adapters ceasing to function after installing Windows 10. This points at one of the more unsatisfactory aspects of the upgrade. Although in principle the upgrade should have verified that there were no compatibility issues (both hardware and software), there are numerous reports that this didn't work in practice, with the upgrade being pushed to machines that were then left partially inoperable as a result.

Enlarge / The Transantarctic Mountains. (credit: NASA/Jim Yungel)

Since 1984, researchers have been arguing about what to make of tiny ocean plankton shells sitting atop the Transantarctic Mountains. That is obviously not a place plankton would call home, so how did they get there? And what might their presence tell us about Antarctica’s past?

The researchers who initially discovered the surprise diatom shells found them mixed in with glacially deposited sediment. They argued that the shells told a pretty big story. Around 3 million years ago, when these species of diatom were alive, we know there were several periods of climatic warmth. During these periods, the researchers said, the Antarctic ice sheets must have “collapsed” down to a much smaller size, opening basins in the interior of the continent that flooded with seawater. That is where these diatoms would have lived, piling up at the bottom of the seaway when they died.

When the climate cooled, the ice would have advanced back into these basins, scraping up diatoms and sediment and pushing it up against the Transantarctic Mountains—where it was perhaps lifted to even higher elevation by tectonic uplift of the landscape. This would require a much more dynamic ice sheet than most glaciologists expected, vulnerable to warmth that would drive serious melting and raise sea levels significantly.

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our partners at TechBargains, we have a number of deals to share today. One of the best is a steal on a Samsung 4K TV—you can now get a 2016 Samsung Series 6 4K UltraHD LED Smart HDTV with high dynamic range plus a $250 Dell gift card for just $749. That's a great deal for a new 4K smart TV, and getting the $250 gift card is a fantastic bonus. There are also bunch of discounted unlocked smartphones available on Amazon now.

Check out the full list of deals below.

Featured

Enlarge

According to a report from CNBC, Twitter wants to sell. CNBC's sources say that Twitter's board of directors is "largely desirous of a deal," and the company has "received expressions of interest" from tech and media companies. The most notable buyers on the shortlist? Salesforce.com and Google.

Twitter has had trouble growing its user base, and in turn, its advertising revenue. Twitter's monthly active user count of 320 million puts it in the same neighborhood as Google+ (300 million) and far from Facebook's offerings of Instagram (400 million) and Facebook (1.59 billion).

News of a possible sale has sent Twitter stock up over 20 percent.

Enlarge / Same for Siri.

Apple may be planning to introduce Siri to a new home, one that doesn't live in your pocket or on your wrist. A Bloomberg report suggests that Apple may be developing a smart home device akin to Amazon's Echo that uses Siri to control other devices around the home, including smart lights and locks. Individuals "familiar with the matter" claim that the project has already gone through research and development, and it has now entered the prototype testing phase.

According to the report, Apple will try to set its product apart from Echo and Google's new Home device by incorporating "more advanced" microphones and speakers as well as facial recognition sensors that could help the device identify who is in the room. Apple has acquired the startups Faceshift and Emotient over the past couple years, both of which have experience in facial-recognition technology.

Since the device is assumed to be controlled by Siri, it could potentially be used for many existing Siri commands; for example, you might be able to ask the device to read your e-mail, stream Apple Music tracks, or send a text message. Apple reportedly first tried to integrate Siri into the Apple TV, which would have let users speak commands to the set-top box. However, project was never completed, and Apple instead decided to integrate voice-commands into the TV's controller.