Month: September 2017

Enlarge / An ice cave on Antarctica's Mount Erebus. (credit: National Science Foundation)

Antarctica is a relentlessly icy place, with estimates placing the amount of exposed land on the continent at less than one percent of its total surface. During glacial periods, the ice even expanded further—to the point where the edges of the continent's ice sheets extended far out into the ocean.

Yet somehow, life exists on Antarctica. And not just microbial life; there are insects and worms present, too. How have they survived the intensely icy conditions on the continent? A new paper suggests that volcanoes could be the key to life's persistence in our planet's deep south.

Seeking refuge

One of the researchers behind the new work, Ceridwen Fraser, has an ongoing interest in the idea of what are termed "refugia." These are locations where, due to quirks of geography and local climate, life can ride out otherwise harsh conditions that would extinguish it in the surrounding terrain. Once the conditions become more conducive to life—the glacial period ends, for example—the organisms in the refugia spread out and repopulate a wider area.

When the Mi Mix came out last year, it featured a stunning slim-bezel design that we called "the future of smartphones." Xiaomi's "concept" phone threw out a lot of the smartphone conventions—like the location of the earpiece and the front facing camera—and came up with a few other unique features like a ceramic back and a screen with curved corners. In 2017, we found out Xiaomi wasn't the only company with the idea for a slim-bezel phone. Samsung and LG both quickly came out with phones that maximized screen space, and soon it looks like Apple will follow this trend, too. The Mi Mix was the vanguard for this movement, though, and it still has the most extreme design.

In the past, we've witnessed Fox News take an editorial position against basic facts, but has it really influenced anyone's vote? (credit: Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock)

While it has presented itself as "balanced" over the years, there's little doubt that Fox News has consistently supported Republican candidates and positions even when that required taking an editorial position against basic facts. On some level, this has worked, as surveys have indicated Fox viewers are more likely to get those same facts wrong. But is it working in terms of the larger goal of supporting Republican causes?

According to a new study, the answer is yes. Two researchers, Gregory Martin and Ali Yurukoglu, have taken advantage of huge amounts of public data, some inadvertent experiments, and a lot of previous research to look into the influence of Fox News on people's votes. They conclude that, in recent elections, the mere availability of Fox could shift nationwide votes by over a percentage point.

The paper itself is rather complicated and tackles a lot of related issues regarding the influence of news media on voting. Martin and Yurukoglu are quite fond of mathematical analysis; it's rare for them to go more than a paragraph without regressing something (often several somethings). As a result, a lot of the paper reads like the following: "If voters treat signals from slanted outlets as true draws on the state of the world, and further, if they do not account for the correlation between repeated signals from the same source as in the model of DeMarzo, Vayanos, and Zwiebel, then equation 8 arises as the inverse-variance-weighted average of signals observed by viewer i in period t."

Enlarge (credit: Apple)

We all know what September brings: vibrant green leaves turning red, the (un)welcome return of pumpkin spice everything, and new Apple devices. While we can't speak for the two former categories, we can say that this September will likely bring the biggest changes to Apple's iPhone that we've seen in years. Subtly marking this change in routine is the location of Apple's next event: it's the first held in the new Steve Jobs Theater on Apple's new campus, kicking off on September 12 at 10am PST/1pm EST/6pm UK.

Last year, the company announced the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus in predictable fashion, but so much of this year's handset announcement is uncertain. Even the names of the new devices aren't clear: will we get the "S" iterations of the iPhone 7 in addition to a high-end iPhone 8? Or will Apple throw us all a curveball by skipping the S line entirely and going with a lineup of all new iPhone 8 models, with a radically different iPhone X model? What we can say with some certainty is that we will get three new iPhones and one of them will likely look and feel entirely different from the rest. Rumors suggest an OLED edge-to-edge display, no physical Home button, a vertical dual-camera setup, wireless charging, and other brand new features will debut on the high-end iPhone 8.

The new iPhones will likely steal the show, but Apple is expected to lump other announcements into this event. The company may reveal a new 4K Apple TV set-top box and an Apple Watch model with standalone LTE service. We'll also know when a bunch of software updates will be available to the public, including iOS 11, macOS High Sierra, and watchOS 4. For full details coming out of the event as it's happening, check out our liveblog.

Enlarge / The kind of idyllic FireWatch scene that will no longer be allowed on PewDiePie's channel if Campo Santo has anything to say about it.

Campo Santo, the developer behind forest exploration game Firewatch, is using DMCA requests to take down videos of its game streamed by popular YouTube personality Felix "PewDiePie" Kjellberg. The move comes after PewDiePie called another player a "n-----r" (NSFW video) during a live stream of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds yesterday.

"We're filing a DMCA takedown of PewDiePie's Firewatch content and any future Campo Santo games," Campo Santo cofounder Sean Vanaman said in a Twitter thread yesterday evening. "There is a bit of leeway you have to have with the internet when u [sic] wake up every day and make video games. There's also a breaking point. I am sick of this child getting more and more chances to make money off of what we make."

Vanaman went on to call PewDiePie a "propogator [sic] of despicable garbage that does real damage to the culture around this industry," and he encouraged other developers to similarly cut off their relationship with him (no other major developers have publicly answered that call as of press time). A Let's Play video of PewDiePie playing FireWatch has been taken down from the service as of Monday morning, though it's not clear if a DMCA request was the direct cause.