Новости за 28.01.2022

Neil Young's frustrations with Spotify go far beyond COVID-19 vaccine misinformation. A day after his music was removed from the platform, he said he "felt better" after leaving and slammed Spotify for its sound quality compared with other streaming services.

The pandemic pushed US lawmakers to provide provisions to expand medical coverage for telehealth in 2020, speeding up a process that would otherwise have taken years. Since then, there have been efforts to make the change permanent, through things like the Telehealth Expansion Act of 2021. But there is an interim period that could present some uncertainty over whether people can get crucial telehealth services while permanent legislation is drawn up. Today, a bipartisan group of 45 lawmakers,... Читать дальше...

Waymo has sued the California Department of Motor Vehicles. In a case first reported by The Los Angeles Times, the Alphabet subsidiary filed a complaint with the Sacramento County Superior Court on January 21st to prevent the agency from disclosing what it believes to be trade secrets.

Despite an already crowded market featuring big names like Airbnb and Vrbo, travel app Hopper is now expanding its services to include short-term home rentals.

The Federal Aviation Administration says it has reached an agreement with AT&T and Verizon (Engadget's former parent company) regarding the rollout of their C-Band 5G networks at and around airports. The agency said the three sides have found common ground "on steps that will enable more aircraft to safely use key airports while also enabling more towers to deploy 5G service."

A week before the Winter Olympics get underway, EA has added women's teams to its NHL games for the first time. You can now select one of 10 women's International Ice Hockey Federation national squads in NHL 22: Canada, Czech Republic (Czechia), Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Russia, Switzerland and, of course, Team USA.

For the first time in its storied history, New York City’s annual Obie Awards will consider virtual, digital and audio productions, the event’s organizer, the American Theater Wing, announced on Friday. The move comes in response to the challenges Off- and Off-Off-Broadway artists and groups have had to face through the coronavirus pandemic. Due to some of the strictest lockdown restrictions in the country, many New York theater companies turned to online streaming to survive.

Tesla is selling a new accessory: a microphone for in-car karaoke. The TeslaMic is only available in China for the time being. The company introduced it amid the rollout of a Chinese New Year software update, which adds a karaoke platform called Leishi KTV to infotainment systems.

Ahead of being able to actually drive it, Ford offered us a chance to check out a prototype of the fleet version of the upcoming F-150 Lightning. While we don’t know what it’s like to be behind the wheel, we did have a chance to check out the truck, some of its features and experience the EV torque as it blasted up a hill.

This week was a good one for those holding out for discounts on Apple gadgets. Most AirPods models remain on sale at Amazon, so you can grab the second-gen earbuds for only $100 or the latest AirPods Pro for $180. The 2021 Apple TV 4K is also on sale for $160, or $20 off its normal price. Elsewhere, GOG.com's New Year sale has discounted hundreds of titles and you can still pick up a few Roomba robot vacuums for hundreds of dollars less than usual. Here are the best tech deals from this week that you can still get today. Читать дальше...

A standard 2021 Porsche Taycan has broken the Guinness World Record for the shortest charging time to cross the United States in an electric vehicle. It only needed a cumulative charge time of 2 hours, 26 minutes and 48 seconds to cover a 2,834.5-mile drive from Los Angeles to New York. While the record it broke is highly specific, there was a previous holder: A Kia EV6, which had to be charged for 7 hours, 10 minutes and 1 second to make a similar, but just slightly longer, trip from New York to LA. Читать дальше...

An Ubisoft executive has responded to the backlash against the company's push to add NFTs (non-fungible tokens) to its games. In December, the publisher announced Quartz, an NFT platform that lets people buy and sell unique digital items, which it called Digits. Both employees and consumers criticized the move, with many expressing concern about the environmental impact of NFTs and one Ubisoft developer saying they're "just another way to milk money."

When Jabra debuted its latest flagship true wireless earbuds in August, both models were packed with premium features like adjustable active noise cancellation (ANC) and ambient sound alongside a customizable EQ and in-app fit test. Now the company has added another key feature to both the Elite 7 Pro and Elite 7 Active that may not be as flashy, but it will offer a lot more convenience. Via a firmware update, Jabra has equipped those models with multipoint Bluetooth connectivity. 

There are plenty of ways to update your home's WiFi today, but many of them are on the expensive side. And if you have a big home, outfitting every corner with a decent connection will cost you. However, you can get a good deal on Amazon's Eero 6 mesh WiFi systems right now. All of the packs have been discounted, so you can get just the router for $90, which is 30 percent off, or up to three routers for $244, which is 37 percent off its normal price. The three-pack with one router and two extenders... Читать дальше...

This week, Cherlynn and Devindra bring you the best and worst of Sundance 2022’s tech-related projects. What films coming out of the show will be worth watching when they’re released? Are VR projects easily viewable? What, if anything, did they say about the metaverse? Then, our hosts go over Samsung’s news on this year's first Unpacked launch event, Neil Young's fight against Spotify and what went down at the Antiwork subreddit.

Following the release of Unicode 14, Apple is finally starting to include the new emojis on iOS with the release of the 15.4 developer beta, Apple Insider has reported. As we detailed last summer, some of the new emojis available are "heart hands," "troll," "biting lip" and "melting face." The latter could be a popular option for our troubled times, smiling as your face literally melts while a pandemic and other strife rages on.

After investing $4.5 billion in India's largest carrier Jio, Google is now putting up to $1 billion in Airtel, the second largest mobile operator, Airtel announced. The partnership is focusing on "affordable access to smartphones" and is part of Google's promised $10 billion investment in the country. "Our commercial and equity investment in Airtel is a continuation of our Google for India Digitization Fund's efforts to increase access to smartphones," Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a statement. Читать дальше...

Using your face to unlock your phone is great in normal times, but less than ideal when you’re masked up and avoiding germs. Apple already has a workaround in place if you own a new enough Apple Watch, and now it’s working on a fix for the rest of us. The most recent iOS developer beta enables users to open their device with just the geography of their eyes. The feature, which is currently being tested, will work with glasses users, although if you’re wearing sunglasses, you might have to take them off first. Читать дальше...

Guerilla Games has shared some short video clips of Horizon Forbidden West gameplay captured on a PS4 Pro. Unfortunately, the developer didn't include lengthy trailers or teaser videos — and gameplay footage captured on a standard PS4 — with its post on the PlayStation blog. But this is at least some form of assurance from Guerilla that the game works on a previous-gen console a couple of weeks before it's released.

A robot has successfully performed "keyhole" intestinal surgery on pigs without any aid from humans, according to a study from John Hopkins University (published in Science Robotics). What's more, the Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot (STAR) handled the tricky procedure "significantly better" than human doctors. The breakthrough marks a significant step towards automated surgery that could one day help "democratize" patient care, the researchers said. 

Google has launched an Offers tab for the Play Store featuring deals on apps, games, movies, books and other purchases, Android Police has reported. It appears at the bottom of the Play screen, along with Games, Apps, Movies & TV and Books, separate from the existing "Offers and notifications" section. 

Fitness trackers and smartwatches can help keep you honest as you try to get more active and healthier in the new year. If you or someone you live is looking for a new one, Fitbit's latest sale has discounted a bunch of its latest wearables. Key among them is the Charge 5 fitness tracker, which is $60 off and down to a new record low of $120. The Versa 2 and Sense smartwatches are also on sale for $130 and $200, respectively.

The National Labor Relations Board has accused Amazon of threatening, surveilling and interrogating workers at its JFK8 warehouse in New York to discourage them from unionizing. According to the board's complaint as seen by Motherboard, Amazon brought a union avoidance consultant to the facility and told employees that it "would be futile for them to select the Union as their bargaining representative." The consultant reportedly said that union organizing at the warehouse would fail anyway, because... Читать дальше...

Uber's rise to prominence might have been difficult to believe even as fiction, had it not been documented at every turn by ever-more concerning reports of overreach. The quasi-legal taxi business (that likely still misclassifies an enormous number of drivers) belied a toxic boys club workplace culture where just about any avenue to get ahead— including actively deceiving cops — was the norm. We're led to believe some of those things have since changed.

Moderna has begun early-stage clinical trials of an HIV mRNA vaccine, the company announced this week. On Thursday, it administered the first doses of a shot it co-developed with the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative to volunteers at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences.