Новости за 17.02.2022

As soon as Spotify struck a deal with Joe Rogan in 2020 to become the exclusive distributor of his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, it was evident that the company was paying him a pretty penny. Initial reports pegged the value of the deal at around $100 million. However, in the wake of a firestorm over claims that Rogan was enabling the spread of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, a new report suggests Spotify is paying much more than that.

YouTube is eyeing new measures to tackle misinformation on its platform. Among the changes being considered, according to Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan, are updates that would effectively “break” sharing features for videos with “borderline content.”

Tesla's Model 3 has been Consumer Reports' top EV choice for the past two years, but the publication is ready to declare a new champion. CR has revealed that Ford's Mustang Mach-E has ousted the Model 3 as its EV Top Pick. The Mustang crossover is not only "more practical," according to editors, but has better first-year reliability and a "far easier" infotainment system that doesn't require multiple steps for basic tasks. A better ride and reduced noise help, too.

Intel has shed more light on the roadmap for its Arc gaming GPUs, including more clarity about when consumers can expect to get their hands on them. As previously announced, the GPUs will debut in laptops from Intel's OEM partners this quarter, presumably alongside 12th-gen Alder Lake CPUs.

Tandem Diabetes Care says the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared its smartphone app to program and cancel insulin doses from the t:slim X2 insulin pump. The company claims it's the first time the FDA has cleared a phone app for such a purpose.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced the start of a new investigation into Tesla on Thursday — this time, in response to a flurry of complaints by owners that their vehicles would randomly and dangerously decelerate while at freeway speeds, which they've come to call "phantom braking."  

Twitter hasn't been having a good day. As The Vergereports, code sleuth Jane Manchun Wong and other users have noticed a partial Twitter outage today (February 17th) that has led to missing tweets, including on profile pages. The social network's status page shows nothing wrong, but Downdetector indicated a surge in user-reported problems around 11AM Eastern. Most of the alerts came from people in the Easter US.

It took three years, but Netflix is finally ready to set a release date for Stranger Things season 4 — or rather, release dates. The streaming service has revealed that Stranger Things season 4 will debut in two parts, with Volume 1 arriving on May 27th and Volume 2 appearing July 1st. This split doesn't just exist keep you subscribed to Netflix, either. The Duffer Brothers noted the fourth run is "nearly twice the length" of any past season, so you may have plenty to watch in that five-week span. Читать дальше...

OtterBox says it has detected an issue with early units of its OtterSpot system. The company released the wireless charging batteries back in August 2019. It says that units that were manufactured between July and August that year may swell “under multi-stack and higher temperature conditions.”

The S22 Ultra is, for all intents and purposes, a new Galaxy Note. It has the same rectangular silhouette, the same onboard S Pen and the same list of top-tier specs. With the S22 Ultra, Samsung is introducing a more mainstream audience to the S Pen that’s long been the hallmark of the Note series. By merging the two lines, Samsung is consolidating its top-tier products, bringing together the most popular features across its portfolio. That’s not to say there’s nothing new about the S22 Ultra ... Читать дальше...

The 2021 Formula 1 season ended messily, to put it lightly, and the FIA is hoping technology will prevent a repeat. As part of a string of changes, Formula 1 is implementing a "Virtual Race Control Room" akin to the Video Assistance Referee (VAR) you see in soccer. The "backup" will sit outside the circuit and use a real-time link with the race director to enforce rules using the "most modern technological tools."

Snap says it will soon roll out a much-requested and long-awaited feature to all users: a way to change their Snapchat username. The company started testing the option recently, and it will be available for everyone on iOS and Android as of February 23rd.

If you thought Elon Musk was upset about frequent attention from the SEC... you guessed correctly. Musk and Tesla have written to a Southern District of New York court accusing the SEC of conducting a "harassment campaign." The regulator allegedly broke a promise to pay Tesla shareholders $40 million as part of its 2018 settlement with Musk over his tweets about taking the EV maker private, and instead devoted its resources to "endless, unfounded investigations" into the CEO and his company.

It's no secret that the built-in speakers in most TVs are trash. They don't project enough sound out to the front so you can hear well — especially subtle details. Thankfully, you don't have to splurge for a five-speaker (or more) surround-sound setup to fix the problem. In most living rooms, a single soundbar and maybe a subwoofer will suffice. To help guide your shopping spree, we've compiled a list of everything you need to look for when searching for the best soundbar for you, along with a list of the top picks for a range of budgets. Читать дальше...

The following contains spoilers for season four, episodes eight and nine of 'Star Trek: Discovery' and season one of 'Star Trek: Prodigy.'

It's clear that AMD is taking some big swings with its new Ryzen 6000 mobile chips. At CES, the company announced that they would sport integrated RDNA2 graphics for the first time, offering enough power to play modern games in 1080p. But while AMD was quick to show off its top-end model, the Ryzen 9 6980HX, it had little to say about its U-series hardware for ultraportables. It turns out, the chip giant was saving some of the most intriguing details for last.

You have about one more week to pre-order Samsung's latest smartphones before they come out on February 25th. Samsung has a number of offers available to those who pre-order, but now Amazon is matching one of the discounts. The online retailer has knocked up to $100 off the higher-storage variants, so you can essentially get extra onboard space at no additional cost. The 256GB Galaxy S22 Ultra is $1,200 and $100 off, while the 512GB version is also $100 off and down to $1,300. As for the Galaxy S22+ and S22... Читать дальше...

Guerrilla Games set itself up with an unusual challenge when developing Horizon Forbidden West, which comes out on Friday, February 18th. According to the game’s director and technical director, Guerrilla was well aware of the PS5 and much of its capabilities when it started working on Forbidden West in 2018. But, the company also planned to make the game work on the PS4, a console that turns nine years old this fall.

Four Wordle puzzles at once? That was so five hours ago. Now, a site called Sedecordle has come up with a version that lets you do no less than 16 Wordle-style puzzles at a time, following the path of Octordle (eight), Quardle (four) and Dordle (two). 

According to Deadline, Forbes Entertainment and EOne are teaming up to produce two projects — a scripted series and a documentary — around bitcoin money launderers Heather "Razzlekhan" Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein. Both projects will lean on Forbes' reporting, but the twist is that Morgan was also a Forbes contributor for several years. It won’t be the only studio working on the story, either. Netflix is already making its documentary on the billion-dollar bitcoin launderers. I look forward to the rap segments. Читать дальше...

Amazon and Visa have resolved their simmering dispute over payment fees in the UK and elsewhere, Reuters has reported. "We've recently reached a global agreement with Visa that allows all customers to continue using their Visa credit cards in our stores," a spokesperson told Reuters. 

As both the Chrome and Firefox browsers approach their 100th versions, what should be a reason for the developers to celebrate could turn into a bit of a mess. It turns out that much like the Y2K bug, the triple-digit release numbers coded in the browsers' User-Agents (UAs) could cause issues with a small number of sites, Bleeping Computer reported. 

An Amazon union avoidance officer has reportedly told workers at the company's JFK8 warehouse that there's a possibility they could get lower pay than what they're currently getting if they unionize. Motherboard has obtained an audio recording of a mandatory anti-union meeting that happened on Wednesday, wherein the officer could be heard describing the collective bargaining process. "The negotiation phase of the process is called collective bargaining, and in the negotiation, there are no guarantees. Читать дальше...

Spotify announced today that it is acquiring two major podcast ad tech firms, Chartable and Podsights, in a move to expand its offerings to advertisers. Both companies offer popular tools that help brands and agencies better understand the effectiveness of their podcast ads.

Samsung's next hardware event will coincide with Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The company announced today it will host a fully virtual keynote on Sunday, February 27th at 1PM ET. You'll be able to watch the event on Samsung's website and the company's YouTube channel. You'll also find full coverage here at Engadget.