Earlier this year, Microsoft renamed its Windows Azure cloud computing platform to be just "Azure," reflecting support for operating systems other than Windows.

Today, the company made an equivalent announcement for Windows Intune, its cloud-based mobile device and application management tool. Since it supports iOS and Android, neither of which are actually Windows, Windows Intune is now known simply as Microsoft Intune. The software itself will pick up the new branding in a major update that's planned for later in the year.

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Standard fluorescence microscopy (left) and PALM images (right). Note that the scale bar in the far right image is roughly the diffraction limit. Nobel Prizes/originally Betzig et. al., Science

This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry honors an interesting mix of developments. It honors three researchers who overcame an apparent physical limitation in our ability to image microscopic objects, in the process building microscopes that are proving to be incredibly useful for biology. But because the breakthroughs depended in part on our understanding of the behavior of individual molecules, the prize comes in chemistry.

The limit in question is the diffraction limit, first described back in the 1800s by Ernst Abbe. This limit means that the best resolution we can obtain in imaging an object is half the wavelength of the light we're using to image it. If we're using visible wavelengths, this means we can't do much better than about 250nm—a distance that dwarfs viruses and individual proteins. Although lots of improvements in microscopy have been made since the 1800s, all of them kept running into diffraction-related problems.

At least, that was the case until recently. The Nobel Prize honors not one but two distinct ways of overcoming the limit. (Conveniently, we have coverage of both—see the sidebar.) In the case of one of the recipients, it honors an idea that came to him when he had given up on research and was working in the family business.

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AT&T

AT&T has agreed to pay $105 million to settle a case with the government over alleged bill cramming that cost consumers tens of millions of dollars. It’s the largest-ever settlement over wireless bill cramming.

$80 million of the settlement will cover customer refunds, which will be distributed by the Federal Trade Commission. Another $20 million will be paid in penalties and fees to states attorneys general, and $5 million in penalties will head to the Federal Communications Commission, according to today’s announcement.

FTC

The FTC has set up a website where consumers can seek refunds until May 1, 2015. “Current and former AT&T customers who paid for unauthorized third-party charges after January 1, 2009 may apply for refunds,” the site says. Customers can fill out an online form or request a refund by mail.

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On Tuesday, a JetBlue passenger took to Twitter to publicly complain about an hours-long delay to her flight, and she accused JetBlue of delaying her return home even longer by not letting her reboard the flight.

Boston resident Lisa Carter-Knight used Twitter to report her flight's delay, using a #JetBlue hashtag to announce to her followers—as of press time, roughly 300—that the "pilot accuses passengers of accusing him of being intoxicated demands all passengers back." As she told Philadelphia's ABC affiliate WPVI, "We had been waiting an hour, so there was a joke by another passenger—it had been a long night and he hoped there was a fully stocked bar on the airplane. The pilot ran out and said, 'That's it, everybody out by the gate. I've been accused of being intoxicated."

The pilot reportedly ordered all passengers off the flight so he could take a sobriety test as mandated by law. At that point, Carter-Knight posted six tweets about the delay, commenting on an "unruly pilot" and "false accusations" of his sobriety being questioned. When she attempted to reboard hours later, she was not allowed to do so.

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A 14-year-old boy's videotape of an Indiana cop smashing an ax though a vehicle window, shooting the passenger with a stun gun, and ripping him from the vehicle has become the subject of an excessive force lawsuit.

Monday's lawsuit [PDF] is among the most recent in a wave of police encounters gone awry that have been captured on video and resulted in legal action. The incident was filmed two weeks ago in Hammond, Indiana, and it started with a motorist being stopped and pulled over for allegedly not wearing a seatbelt.

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More than 99 percent of Comcast shareholders today voted in favor of the company's $45.2 billion purchase of Time Warner Cable, Comcast announced.

The merger "is subject to various regulatory approvals and other customary conditions and also requires approval by Time Warner Cable shareholders," who are scheduled to vote tomorrow, Comcast said. If all goes well for Comcast, the merger will close in early 2015.Not many people attended the meeting in Philadelphia. "Five people spoke at a sparsely attended special shareholder meeting at the Kimmel Center on South Broad Street—three against the deal, and two for it," according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

The real test for Comcast will be getting approval from the government. Consumer advocates have argued that the two largest cable companies in the country should not be allowed to merge, while Comcast points out that it doesn't compete against Time Warner Cable in any city or town.

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Apple

Apple is having another media event on October 16, just under a week after Re/code first predicted the date. The event will be in Apple's small town hall event space at its 1 Infinite Loop campus, implying a much smaller event than the iPhone 6 and Apple Watch event in the Flint Center last month.

If the rumor mill is to be believed, new iPads will be the headlining item for the event, and we'll also supposedly be getting the public release of OS X Yosemite. Both the iPads and Yosemite will reportedly be accompanied by iOS 8.1, the first major update to iOS 8. Other rumors also suggest we'll be seeing new Macs at the event—the most interesting ones suggest a new Retina iMac, but several other computers in Apple's lineup (including the Mac Mini and Mac Pro) are ripe for a refresh.

The event starts at 10am Pacific. We'll be on site to liveblog the proceedings and go hands-on with the new hardware afterward.

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Another day, another online-centric game launching to widespread server issues. This time it's the PlayStation 4's DriveClub, whose servers are apparently causing so many problems for launch day customers that Sony and developer Evolution Studios have indefinitely delayed a planned "PlayStation Plus" edition that would have given limited access to millions more.

"We are seeing a lot of activity and new social behaviors right now, but unfortunately this is pushing the servers to their absolute limits," Evolution Studios Director Paul Rustchynsky wrote in a Facebook post Wednesday morning. "In order to help all DriveClub players who have the game already, we're temporarily holding back the PS Plus Edition and the My DriveClub app to ease the load and traffic to the servers. This should give players a better chance of connecting to the game servers and, once the servers are operating well, we’ll be sure to let you know when the PS Plus Edition and My DriveClub app will be available to download."

While DriveClub does have a limited single-player mode, operating servers are necessary to join clubs with other players and compete in the online challenges and time trials that form the bulk of the game. The PS Plus edition, which was supposed to launch alongside the full game, will give PlayStation Plus subscribers free access to 11 tracks and a limited selection of cars.

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Minneapolis

While the use of renewable energy is booming, the boom started from a very low point. We're only now reaching the stage where renewable power is providing a substantial fraction of the energy used in some developed economies. Pushing things further and faster would require a lot of resources as, per unit of electricity produced, renewable power equipment takes more material than fossil fuel plants. Plus, at least initially, a lot of the manufacturing will be powered by fossil fuel plants.

How does all this balance out? An international team of researchers has looked at the material demands and pollution that would result from a push to get the globe to 40 percent renewables by the middle of the century. The analysis finds that despite the increased materials and energy demands, a push like this would result in a dramatic reduction in pollution. And for the most part, the material demands could be met, with the possible exception of copper.

The work involved what's called a life cycle analysis, which tracks the material and energy demands of items from the production of the raw materials through to obsolescence and recycling. Normally, these studies are done with static assumptions; take the life cycle of copper in 2011, for example, and use that figure for the entire analysis. In this case, however, being able to shift values over the course of the study period was essential. For example, as more renewable energy is produced, the pollution associated with producing new equipment will go down, as less of it will be provided by fossil fuels. Meanwhile, demand for raw materials could shift mining to sources that result in higher environmental damage.

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Apple Pay is one of the biggest features expected to launch with iOS 8.1 later this month. Apple

Last week, numerous publications (including Ars) reported seeing references to iOS 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3 in their site analytics pages. iOS versions 5, 6, and 7 only saw one major point update apiece during their respective lifespans, so evidence of three different updates being tested simultaneously just weeks after the release of iOS 8.0 came as a surprise.

It looks like we'll be seeing the first of those updates sooner rather than later. Today Apple pushed out the second beta build of iOS 8.1 in as many weeks to its registered developers, and the final version of the software is rumored to be released at or near Apple's event later this month.

Obviously such a quick turnaround time will make iOS 8.1 a smaller update than iOS 7.1, which gestated for around six months and fixed a host of problems when finally released. But the update is still rumored to include a handful of significant features—here's a list of the most important additions.

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Free Press

Wireless carriers like to say that monthly data caps are necessary to prevent heavy users from slowing down less active ones.

After surveying the four biggest carriers this year, the US Government Accountability Office reported that “some wireless ISPs told us they use UBP [usage-based pricing, i.e. data caps] to manage congestion.” Verizon Wireless has insisted to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that data caps are so effective at reducing congestion that they eliminate the need to throttle most customers.

I won't argue that data caps have no positive impact on wireless networks—they can prevent the most egregious overuse of what is a limited resource. But it's a crude tool at best, targeting monthly averages with no regard for whether the network is congested at a particular time or place.

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Conal O'Rourke remains frustrated after his year-long battle with Comcast, which allegedly led to his termination. Cyrus Farivar

OAKLAND, CA—Speaking over lunch last Friday, a Northern California man named Conal O'Rourke laid out what admittedly sounds like a crazy story: a year-long billing dispute over his home Comcast service that ultimately resulted in Comcast getting O'Rourke fired from his job at PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) in nearby San Jose earlier this year.

But O’Rourke arrived to last week’s lunch meeting with Ars with an astonishing amount of documentation: he has pages and pages of Comcast invoices. He has a spreadsheet, photos, notes, business cards, and complaint letters. He and his lawyer, Maureen Pettibone Ryan, happily provided digital copies of these materials to Ars, which we have re-published with his permission here.

As a result of his firing, O’Rourke has hired a local attorney and is now threatening to file a lawsuit against Comcast if the company does not agree to his demands, which include "a full retraction and apology, his re-employment with his former employer, and $100,312.50" by October 14.

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DC Comics

The high-profile "copyright termination" dispute over Superman—arguably the most famous comic character of all time—is finally over. DC Comics defeated the heirs of artist Joe Shuster and writer Jerry Siegel.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court declined (PDF) to hear the petition filed by the heirs' lawyers. That leaves standing a ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, and the heirs won't be allowed to wrest the copyright away.

The litigants in the case included Shuster's sister, Jean Peavy, as well as Siegel's daughter Laura Siegel Larson. They lost their case in Los Angeles federal court in 2012, and lost again on appeal.

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Adobe even logs what you read in Digital Editions' instruction manual.

Adobe’s Digital Editions e-book and PDF reader—an application used by thousands of libraries to give patrons access to electronic lending libraries—actively logs and reports every document readers add to their local “library” along with what users do with those files. Even worse, the logs are transmitted over the Internet in the clear, allowing anyone who can monitor network traffic (such as the National Security Agency, Internet service providers and cable companies, or others sharing a public Wi-Fi network) to follow along over readers’ shoulders.

Ars has independently verified the logging of e-reader activity with the use of a packet capture tool. The exposure of data was first discovered by Nate Hoffelder of The Digital Reader, who reported the issue to Adobe but received no reply.

Digital Editions (DE) has been used by many public libraries as a recommended application for patrons wanting to borrow electronic books (particularly with the Overdrive e-book lending system), because it can enforce digital rights management rules on how long a book may be read for. But DE also reports back data on e-books that have been purchased or self-published. Those logs are transmitted over an unencrypted HTTP connection back to a server at Adobe—a server with the Domain Name Service hostname “adelogs.adobe.com”—as an unencrypted file (the data format of which appears to be JSON).

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Weeks after Facebook deactivated "several hundred" accounts belonging to drag queens and other LGBTQ users, the company has faced continued scrutiny over the reason for those delistings: the site's real name policy, which requires users to identify themselves on the site by using a name on a driver's license or credit card. Last week, the company's course-reversal and lengthy apology over the matter hinted at bigger changes to come, and a report on Tuesday pointed to that change coming in the form of an entirely new app.

According to sources close to The New York Times, Facebook has been developing a "stand-alone mobile application" for "the past year" that doesn't require logging in or interacting with a real name. Those sources claimed the app would launch "in the coming weeks," and its development has been led by a team that joined Facebook in January after the company acquired Branch, whose apps and software revolved around community and conversation services.

The Times' report was unable to clarify how the app would connect to Facebook's services, going so far as to imply that it may not be part of Facebook's content ecosystem at all (though it's hard to imagine Facebook launching an entirely new, anonymous social network that mimics the likes of 4chan). The report's sources hinted that the app may connect specifically to health-community offerings, as well. Ultimately, any such product would have to balance the positives of Facebook's real-name policies, particularly cutting down on anonymous spam and abuse, while still somehow allowing users to engage in "topics of discussion which they may not be comfortable connecting to their real names."

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Brian Bilek

Infotainment systems are often marketed as being distinctly safer to use than picking up a cellphone while you're driving. But two studies released on Tuesday have shown that's just not the case. A handful of in-vehicle systems, as well as Apple's Siri, were tested for cognitive distraction, and the majority of systems were found to be incredibly distracting—more so than having a conversation on a handheld phone.

In one of the studies (PDF), the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety and the University of Utah rated six infotainment systems from Ford, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Toyota, Mercedes, and Hyundai (using the MyFordTouch, MyLink, Uconnect, Entune, COMAND, and Blue Link systems, respectively). Five of the cars were 2013 models, and one was a 2012 model.

Study participants drove six different cars on a seven- to nine-minute loop throughout a residential area in Salt Lake City. Participants were allowed to complete a test loop to familiarize themselves with the area, and they were given time to practice using each car's infotainment system while parked until they were ready to begin the test. The participants were periodically instructed to “dial a 10-digit number, call a contact, change the radio station, or play a CD,” according to the paper. “All interactions took place using 'hands-free' voice systems which were activated with the touch of a button on the steering wheel.”

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Criminals are installing fairly sophisticated malicious programs on banks' ATMs, allowing them to control access to the machines and easily steal cash, security firms Kaspersky and Interpol said in a joint statement released on Tuesday.

The malware, which Kaspersky dubbed 'Tyupkin,' allows low-level thieves, known as money mules, access to the machines at certain times of day using an intermittently changing code, similar to the six-digit electronic tokens used for security in the financial industry. More than 50 ATMs in Eastern Europe and Russia were found to have been infected with the malware to date, leading to the theft of currency equivalent to millions of dollars, according to the statement.

The attack shows that criminals are improving their tactics and appear to be able to gain enough access to ATMs to install code, Vicente Diaz, principal security researcher at Kaspersky Lab, said.

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Rosaura Ochoa

Twitter sued the Justice Department on Tuesday, saying the agency's virtual ban of detailing the scope of US surveillance on the microblogging site is an unconstitutional "prior restraint" of speech protected by the First Amendment.

The San Francisco-based company's federal lawsuit concerns the broad limits the government has placed on Twitter over how it may characterize national security surveillance of Twitter's users—like National Security Letters and FISA court orders. The same is true for other companies, too.

Twitter attorney Eric Miller wrote: [PDF]

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A CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth profiler) is lowered into the water. This is the standard tool for oceanographers making measurements from a ship. Andrew Meijers/BAS

Of the energy added to the climate system by rising concentrations of greenhouse gases, more than 90 percent has gone into the ocean. The monitoring of ocean temperatures has improved drastically over the last decade with the deployment of a vast fleet of Argo floats that drift around being our eyes and thermometers. Even so, they don’t yet cover depths greater than 2,000 meters, and their presence today doesn’t make up for their absence in decades past.

Fortunately, time travel with gadgets from the future isn’t the only way to improve our knowledge of what’s gone on in the deeps. Ocean warming also manifests itself in another way—as rising sea level. Seawater expands ever so slightly with increasing temperature. And given how absolutely massive the world ocean is, “ever so slightly” adds up. In fact, thermal expansion and melting ice have made roughly equal contributions to sea level rise so far.

Going deep

There’s been a lot of interest in recent years in quantifying the warming of the deep ocean, but not much is currently known about what's going on below 2,000 meters. In a new study published in Nature Climate Change, a group led by William Llovel at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory combines sea level rise measurements with Argo data to look for the effect of warming in the deeps.

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GT's stock rode high on the iPhone rumors for months, but it dropped when the new iPhones launched without sapphire and fell down a hole when it announced the bankruptcy filing.

GT Advanced Technologies, the company Apple currently relies on for sapphire in its iOS devices, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy yesterday. The filing came just a few weeks after Apple announced its new iPhones on September 10—both the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were widely expected to use sapphire instead of glass to protect their screens from scratches. This didn't happen, though, and it sent GT's stock price sliding downward even before yesterday's bankruptcy filing pushed it off a cliff.

Now The Wall Street Journal reports that GT CEO Thomas Gutierrez has sold over $10 million in stock since February of 2014, including 9,000 shares worth about $160,000 on September 8. This was two days before the iPhone announcement. The stock closed at $17.15 on the 8th, but had fallen to $12.78 on the 10th following Apple's event.

A GT filing says that the stock sale was merely coincidental, and that the stocks were being sold according to a schedule set in March of 2014. The WSJ reports "no obvious pattern to his sales."

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