Новости за 18.08.2022

The union of HBO Max and Discovery+ is already causing pain through layoffs, and now the move is affecting some shows. Warner Bros. Discovery has confirmed to Variety that it's removing 36 titles from HBO Max as soon as this week while it prepares for the Discovery+ platform merger. Most of the productions aren't huge, but they do include recognizable HBO work like the Sesame Street spinoff The Not-too-Late-Show with Elmo and the Peter Dinklage movie My Dinner with Hervé. A handful of Cartoon Network shows are leaving. Читать дальше...

Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed, a four vs. one multiplayer game, will arrive in the midst of spooky season. The game will hit the Epic Games Store, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S on October 18th.

A firm contracted by Meta recently told dozens of its workers that their work for Facebook “was soon being taken away,” according to a new report from Insider. The cuts affect about 60 employees of Accenture, a firm that oversees teams of Facebook moderators and other contractors.

Apple Podcasts has offered paid subscriptions for a while, but how are you supposed to find shows worth a monthly outlay? You now have some help. Apple has introduced charts for both the top 100 subscriber shows and top 100 subscriber channels, making it clearer which shows and providers are interesting enough for people to spend their hard-earned money.

HBO Max is looking to beef up its subscriber numbers with a solid discount on the annual plan. You can save 30 percent if you sign up for a year (or over 40 percent compared with a monthly plan). If you don't mind dealing with ads, the service will cost $70 for 12 months, down from the usual $100. If you prefer not to see ads on HBO Max, you can pay $105, which is $45 off the regular price.

It's been less than four months since Snap unveiled a selfie drone called Pixy, but it seems the company is already giving up on the device. CEO Evan Spiegel told employees that Snap is halting further work on Pixy amid a reprioritization of resources, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Blizzard has published a long-awaited update on its monetization plans for Diablo IV. The short version of the blog post is that Diablo IV will be a full-priced title with an in-game shop and optional seasonal passes. However, the only way to make your characters more powerful will be by playing the game. Here's how monetization will work. 

It was seemingly just a matter of time before streaming overtook at least one form of conventional TV, and now that moment has arrived. Nielsen data indicates that streaming TV viewership in the US surpassed cable for the first time this July. About 34.8 percent of viewing time went to shows on internet services, or slightly more than the 34.4 percent for cable. Streams haven't yet overtaken traditional TV as a whole (broadcasts still represented 21.6 percent), but it's clear online video is capturing more attention. Читать дальше...

Honda's Acura division has pulled back the curtain on a sleek Precision EV concept at Monterey Car Week. Acura took inspiration from Italian power boats for the design, which it says shows "a future vision of electrified vehicles with distinct manual and full driving automation experiences."

Google says it's doing more to downrank low-quality content that's designed primarily to generate traffic through search engine optimization. Over the coming months, it will roll out several updates to Search aimed at making it easier for people to find helpful content created primarily for humans rather than the attention of algorithms.

Numerous third-party iPad styluses magnetically attach to your tablet, but they typically recharge through USB — not much help if you forget to top up before a writing session. Adonit may have addressed that flaw with its $45 Neo Pro, however. From what we've seen, it's the first unofficial pen to wirelessly charge on the side of an iPad Air, iPad mini or iPad Pro. You can pay less than half the price of a $129 Apple Pencil without giving up a major convenience.

There's a good chance you want an external SSD you can take anywhere, whether it's extra storage for your school projects or backup for your can't-lose work files. Thankfully, you won't have to pay a lot for that extra space. Amazon is selling SanDisk's 1TB Extreme Portable SSD at a new all-time low price of $109, or less than half its official $250 sticker. There are steep discounts for 2TB (now $234) and 4TB ($460) models, too. At those prices, they may be easy choices if you want a speedy yet durable drive. Читать дальше...

Nexus Mods, a popular mod database, has posted a strongly worded update about the Spider-Man Remastered patch that was created to remove Pride flags in-game. The website's administrator, Dark0ne, has revealed that the mod was uploaded by a sock puppet under the name "Mike Hawk." They said the fact that it was added to the database by a secondary account shows the uploader's intent to troll and demonstrates their understanding that it would not be allowed on the database. As such, the website has... Читать дальше...

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in June, Alphabet was one of several major tech companies that attempted to extend some flexibility to its workers seeking care, including those who potentially would need to travel out of state. It likewise made the narrow decision to delete users' location data when they visited abortion providing clinics, albeit only in response to legislative pressure. Since then, however, Alphabet has been effectively silent on the issue, and a group of its own... Читать дальше...

NVIDIA is adding a new perk to GeForce Now’s most expensive tier. Starting today, you can stream games at 1440p and 120 frames per second through a browser. At the moment, the new performance setting is available exclusively through GeForce Now’s $20 per month RTX 3080 membership and only Google Chrome on PC. The more affordable $10 per month Priority tier will continue to max out at 1080p and 60fps for the time being.

Cameo is now offering users a way to chat with celebrities via longer video calls. Last year, the company started offering virtual meet and greets that last two minutes. It's expanding on that with Cameo Live, a feature that enables fans to speak with stars for 10 minutes. What’s more, they can invite up to nine friends and family members to join the call.

I’ve been rather critical of Motorola’s recent phones. But it seems like the company may have taken that criticism to heart because with the new Edge 2022 (not to be confused with the Edge+ from earlier this year) it feels like we’re finally getting a phone with good specs for a decent price and significantly better software support.

Embracer, the mega game publisher that's been snapping up new properties left and right, has made a deal to acquire the intellectual property catalogue and worldwide rights to various JRR Tolkien-related media and merch. To be precise, it will own the rights to "motion pictures, video games, board games, merchandising, theme parks and stage productions" based on the The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit if the deal pushes through. It will also own the rights tied to any future literary... Читать дальше...

Airbnb, which announced a permanent ban on parties at host properties back in June, is testing anti-party technology in the US and Canada. Not that these tools are real-world party crashing gadgets. The tools focus on when the customer books a property, looking at several factors to detect "potentially high-risk reservations." They consider elements such as how long the prospective guest has had an Airbnb account, how far away the listing is from where they're based and their history of positive reviews. Читать дальше...

When Dodge CEO Tim Kuniskis first talked about releasing an "American eMuscle" last year, he said the company's vehicle will "tear up the streets, not the planet." Now, the Stellantis brand has revealed what Kuniskis meant by that. It has introduced the Dodge Charger Daytona SRT concept, which looks like a futuristic take on its gas-powered Challenger and Charger muscle cars. While it's still just a concept at this point and could change tremendously by the time it's released, a spokesperson told... Читать дальше...

Netflix's upcoming ad-supported tier might not be the best streaming option for commuters and other viewers who frequently watch on the go. Developer Steve Moser has discovered text within the code of the service's iPhone app that says "Downloads available on all plans except Netflix with ads." If viewers can't download content to their devices on the tier, that means they won't be able to watch their shows or movies while offline. Netflix neither confirmed nor denied the absence of offline viewing with the offering... Читать дальше...