Новости за 26.06.2019

I know you come to this site for deep, contemplative thought on the technological issues of the day, but sod it: the Microsoft Pro Intellimouse is really bloody lovely, and if you need a new mouse, you should buy this one. Job done. Time to go to the pub? Not quite. I suppose I should delve into why I think the Microsoft Pro Intellimouse is such a stellar peripheral worthy of your hard-earned cash. It’s simple: Microsoft got the fundamentals spot-on It’s time to party like it’s 1996 Microsoft has... Читать дальше...

Duolingo’s stable of languages expanded today to include Arabic — both the spoken and written word. With this, Duolingo now teaches five of the world’s most common tongues, and TNW got the chance to look at the course a few days early. We also spoke with some of the people behind the course, who revealed what kinds of stumbling blocks they faced bringing the language to the West. Arabic can be difficult for non-native speakers — I’m not shy to admit I struggle with any language that doesn’t use the Roman alphabet. Читать дальше...

Robot vacuum cleaners were, a long time ago, the preserve of the cashed-up early adopter. Back in 2002, if you had deep pockets and wanted to make your gaff look like the set of The Jetsons, you could spend an ungodly amount of money on an iRobot Roomba. Flash forward to 2019, and the robot vacuum cleaner is a lot more competitive – and dare I say, exciting? There’s a lot of competition from upstart brands like Eufy, Neato, and DEEBOT, as well as legacy players like Shark and iRobot. Moreover, robot vacuum cleaners are more capable than ever... Читать дальше...

Welcome to TNW Basics, a collection of tips, guides, and advice on how to easily get the most out of your gadgets, apps, and other stuff. Transcribing interviews is a pain, there’s no doubt about it. Listening back to the conversation, it becomes painfully obvious how often people sniff, how incoherent their sentences are, and how awful your own voice sounds. Add on top of that hours of manually transcribing each word and you’ve got yourself a hellish day. Luckily, we’re here to help. First up, what do we want from a transcribing experience? Читать дальше...

It used to be that a mid-range phone would give you, well, a middling performance, but now? Devices like the $599 Meizu 16s show that you can have your cake and eat it. Take that, Marie Antoinette. I’ve been using the Meizu 16s for the past couple of weeks and found it to be a rock solid, feature-rich phone — especially for the price. Is it perfect? No, but it comes pretty close. Let’s start with the basics, what specs does the Meizu 16s have? For the cost (around $600), they’re incredibly impressive... Читать дальше...

Wanna feel old? It’s been seven years since Doom-creator John Carmack first unveiled his ski-goggles contraption that would eventually become the Oculus Rift. A lot has happened in the years that have since passed, including Oculus’ 2 billion dollar acquisition by Facebook. What was then only a finicky but promising prototype, is now a multi-billion dollar industry.  However, virtual reality still isn’t very accessible or mainstream. Sure you can get a PlayStation VR headset for like 250 bucks, but... Читать дальше...

A second town in Florida has paid over $500,000 in Bitcoin to hackers following a ransomware attack. Officials in Lake City paid the hackers after their computer systems were down for two weeks. IT staff are thought to have disconnected their computers within minutes of the attack beginning, but their efforts proved too little, too late. As a result of the attack, employees lost access to email accounts and citizens were unable to make municipal payments online.  The hackers contacted the town’s... Читать дальше...

With cybercrime an ever-expanding global threat, the need for ethical hackers -- men and women who spot network weaknesses and help stop illegal incursions -- has never been greater.

Patrik Markström, an administrator of the Facebook group “Stå Upp För Sverige” (Stand Up For Sweden), has been fined by a Swedish court for not regulating and deleting eight “grossly offensive comments” that other people had posted on the Facebook page.  Markström denied responsibility claiming he had not seen the comments on the group before. Despite this, yesterday the Eskilstuna District Court found him guilty after agreeing with the prosecutor that the comments were clearly discriminatory against ethnic minority groups. Читать дальше...

Welcome to CHEAP, our series about things that are good, but most of all, cheap. CHEAP! Having an Alexa-powered speaker in your home is cool. But you know what’s cooler? A super system of Echo speakers with a sub-woofer. Right now, you can get a bundle of two 2nd-gen Echo speakers and an Echo Sub for just $229, down from $329. Buying this trio means you’ll get the perfect 2.1 wireless speaker system you always wanted. Echo speakers will deliver a room-filling sound with a 0.6-inch tweeter and a 2.5-inch woofer. Plus... Читать дальше...

Disgraced football coach Mark “Bomber” Thompson has admitted to abusing crystal meth and obsessively trading cryptocurrency for 12 hours a day in the lead-up to his arrest, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. Today, Thompson (53) told Melbourne Magistrates Court that cryptocurrency was something he’d “been looking for” since the end of his career, and that he’d been consumed by watching YouTube tutorials. This, combined with methamphetamine intake, is said to have led the renowned footballer to trade... Читать дальше...

Why not save depreciation cash by buying an almost new computer at a used price?You can do just that right now with this deal on a refurbished Samsung Chromebook. It’s a $599 value priced for the budget-conscious (read: everybody) at just $99.99 right now from TNW Deals.

Facebook has agreed to hand over identifying information on French users suspected of using hate speech on its platform, making it the first deal of its kind between the social media giant and a government. According to Reuters, the decision appears to have been a result of successive meetings between Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg and French President Emmanuel Macron. “This is huge news, it means that the judicial process will be able to run normally,” Cédric O, France’s Minister for Digital Affairs, told Reuters in an interview. Читать дальше...

Serial entrepreneur Jed McCaleb, and creator of the now-defunct Mt. Gox, is facing a lawsuit over his handling of the failed cryptocurrency exchange.  Former Mt. Gox traders Joseph Jones and Peter Steinmetz allege McCaleb was “fraudulent” and “negligent” in his representation of the exchange, partly leading to the loss of their Bitcoin when it was hacked in the notorious hacking incident from 2014, CoinDesk reports. The complaint, submitted on May 19, claims Mt Gox was already suffering from safety issues in January 2011. Читать дальше...

Vivo said it just showed off its new charging tech at Mobile World Congress Shangai that can juice up your phone in just 13 minutes. The Chinese phone maker said that phones with this technology can support charging at 120W.  The new method, called Super FlashCharge 120W, uses Vivo‘s custom USB-C cable and travel charger. The company tested this method with a 4,000 mAh battery in the lab and was able to charge from 0 to 50 percent in just five minutes – and subsequently 100 percent in another eight minutes. Читать дальше...

Welcome to TNW Basics, a collection of tips, guides, and advice on how to easily get the most out of your gadgets, apps, and other stuff. Apple’s latest mobile operating system doesn’t officially drop until September. But, if you’re willing to deal with a few bugs in a Public Beta offering, you can get iOS 13 now. It’s worth noting that the bugs range from minor inconveniences to things that could significantly alter the way you use certain apps, or the device itself. But by the time Apple launches its first Public Beta... Читать дальше...

Ever wonder what happened to the iPhone games that you can no longer find, that one day just disappeared from the App Store with no explanation? While mobile gaming in recent years has blown up, and the more popular games have spawned bonafide franchises — Candy Crush, Angry Birds, Monument Valley — the early years of App Store game development were a bit more Wild West than Hollywood, and, like the former, traces of its existence have vanished into the ether. A developer called GameClub is trying to bring back some of those early... Читать дальше...

The wild and wacky world of physics just keeps getting stranger. A UC Davis physicist recently published research demonstrating the possibility for complex lifeforms to exist in a two-dimensional universe. Philosophers and scientists have long dealt with a lack of information about our universe by viewing it through the prism of us, the observers. This is called the Anthropic Principle. The argument is that the basic framework of our universe – the existence of three dimensions of space and one dimension of time (called a 3+1 dimension) ... Читать дальше...