Новости за 02.02.2018

Something we don’t talk about enough is American football.

Just kidding! Something we don’t talk about enough is that period of time between September 2016 and December 2017 when Dutch police were training eagles to hunt drones. They had to stop doing it because the eagles didn’t really always feel like hunting drones, and they definitely didn’t feel like following orders from cops. It never really seemed like a great idea, and falconer Robert Muster told the NL Times at the outset: ”If an eagle can not catch his prey... Читать дальше...

The 2018 Mercedes-Benz A-Class is a sign that the automaker — known for its large, luxurious, and expensive cars — is starting to send its most advanced technology into more attainable vehicles.

Animal ears may not get as much attention as cool eyes or weird noses, but the glorious cheetah owes its running prowess in part to its inner ear.

Voice assistants are all the rage right now — Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant are popping up in every connected gadget you can think of, from thermostats to refrigerators to headphones. This week, HP announced that it plans to bring voice assistant compatibility to its line of printers. They will work with Alexa, Google Assistant, and Microsoft’s Cortana (cute that HP is throwing Microsoft a bone here).

Amazon’s Super Bowl ad will air this Sunday in millions of homes across the country. But no matter how many times Jeff Bezos bewilderedly mutters “Alexa’s lost her voice?,” no Alexa devices should turn on during the commercial, according to Bloomberg.

Mild spoilers ahead for The CW’s Black Lightning.

Black Lightning is one of broadcast television’s few black superhero shows. Based on the DC comics of the same name, Black Lightning follows Jefferson Pierce (Cress Williams), a school principal and family man in his 40s, who’s conflicted between returning to the superhero life and ignoring crime on the streets.

But Black Lightning’s standout character is his eldest daughter, Anissa Pierce (Nafessa Williams). Anissa is a social justice... Читать дальше...

Every week, a slew of new music videos hits the web. Watching them at your desk is not time theft because you deserve it; think of it as a nice reward for surviving another work week. But what if you don’t have time to watch every video — maybe you have a deadline, a hungry pet, or other grown-up concerns. In consideration of your schedule, Lizzie and Kaitlyn bring you a series called One Video. Each week we’ll tell you “one video” you need to watch, why, and for how long.

It’s been a few weeks since FCC chairman Ajit Pai’s “Restoring Internet Freedom” order to reverse net neutrality passed at the commission, and in that time, various companies have put together protests and videos trying to illustrate the issue (including a rather clever ad from Burger King).

YouTube will start labeling videos it identifies as coming from state-funded broadcasters starting today. Under the changes, PBS, for example, would carry a label that states it’s a “publicly funded American broadcaster.” The move will affect a variety of sources and is designed to curb the spread of misinformation. The label will also link to the news publisher’s Wikipedia page. “We’re rolling out this feature to viewers in the US for now, and we don’t expect it to be perfect,” YouTube said in a blog post. Читать дальше...

How a badly scrawled Sonic character became an ascendant racist meme

Continue reading…

Yesterday, GoPro released its final financial figures for the last quarter of 2017, giving us a wholesale look at how the company performed across the year, including how it finished during the holiday stretch. The results aren’t as bad as they were during the company’s awful 2016, but they’re not great either.

Facebook has reportedly removed a group that claimed to have sabotaged the score of The Last Jedi on Rotten Tomatoes, and also planned to review-bomb Disney’s upcoming film Black Panther, according to Marvel Studio News.

Once upon a time, a person who wanted to get across town had only a handful of options: car, bus, subway, or walking. Today, there are dozens of ways to get from point A to point B, and not all of them equal (or equally priced). The proliferation of “mobility” services, like ride-sharing, bike-sharing, and car-sharing, is giving many city residents anxiety about what were previously fairly simple travel decisions. Aiming to cut through this clutter, Google’s urban innovation spinoff Sidewalk Labs... Читать дальше...

YouTube may soon have stronger punishments for creators who damage the platform’s reputation. CEO Susan Wojcicki outlined the company’s goals for 2018 in a blog post last night, the most notable of which is the promise of new policies intended to punish creators who do “something egregious that causes significant harm” to the community at large. “While these instances are rare, they can damage the reputation and revenue of your fellow creators, so we want to make sure we have policies in place... Читать дальше...

In an effort to make its solar power products more visible to mainstream customers, Tesla will be setting up a designated retail space inside Home Depot stores across the US to promote and sell its solar panels and Powerwall batteries. The spaces will include 12-by-7-foot displays, and some shops will offer demonstrations of the products, Bloomberg reports.

When research historian Joanna Nowak comes running down the halls of game developer Warhorse Studios in Prague, her co-workers have reason to be worried. Something in their game probably needs to change. As Warhorse’s in-house historical consultant, it’s Nowak’s job to ensure that the studio’s new medieval role-playing title, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, is as historically accurate as possible. The game is set in Bohemia — the modern-day Czech Republic — in 1403, and it painstakingly re-creates period-specific details... Читать дальше...

The Vergecast is here once again! Nilay, Paul, and Dieter run through the news that hit the site this week to fill you in case you missed it. We talk about the Boring Company’s flamethrower, some Samsung leaks and previews, a bit of 5G wireless network talk, and wow — now that I’m looking at it — a lot more topics.

At the beginning of January, wildlife biologist Allen Foley had a problem: the water was so cold that green sea turtles in St. Joseph Bay in Northwestern Florida were stunned. They’d stopped moving, putting them at risk for dying. So he did the only thing he could do: he began picking the cold turtles up, by foot and by kayak.

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket will launch for the first time next week. It might be the company’s most anticipated mission yet, and it could open up a new line of business — one that might interest NASA.

Microsoft introduced a new Surface Laptop model earlier today to bring its pricing down, and now the company is doing the same to its new Surface Book 2. While the Surface Book 2 only launched in November, the new base model price is $1,199 for the 13.5-inch version. That includes an Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage. The previous cheapest Surface Book 2 was $1,499 with more storage (256GB), so Microsoft has cut some space to bring the price down by $300.

2018 is the Year of the Dog on the Chinese calendar, and Razer is celebrating the Spring Festival by greeting it with a special edition of the Razer Phone. Once you get past the fancier red packaging, however, you’ll have to look really closely to recognize what’s different about this phone. It’s supposed to be a “gold” Razer Phone, but the only thing that’s changed is the outline of Razer’s three-headed snake logo on the back of the device. You do also get some rather exclusive gold-tinted Razer stickers in the package... Читать дальше...

Bitcoin has had a disastrous week, falling below $8,500 today as investors remain spooked about the future of cryptocurrencies. According to CoinDesk, Bitcoin opened at $9,052 today and hit a low of $7,695. At the time of writing, it had recovered slightly and was trading at $8,403, its lowest price since late November. Bitcoin is extremely volatile and has been declining for the past month.

Microsoft has launched a new version of its Surface Laptop today, bringing the base unit price down to $799. The software giant quietly unveiled the cheaper Surface Laptop over at the Microsoft Store, and the new $799 variant ships with Intel’s Core m3 processor, 4GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage. That makes the new base model slower and cheaper than the previous version at $999 that shipped with a Core i5 processor and the same low amount of RAM.

#instatravel, #passportlife, #wanderlust. We’ve all seen these travel hashtags permeate our Instagram feeds, usually used for glamorous shots of people doing enviable things in exotic places. Now a perspicacious person named Oliver has created a video aptly titled “Instravel — A Photogenic Mass Tourism Experience,” which is a Black Mirror-esque look into how our fixation with capturing the perfect image has homogenized our creativity.

After a degree of confusion over the possible ways to play music on its new HomePod speaker, Apple has cleared things up by posting more information on compatible audio sources. The HomePod does indeed work with iTunes Match and purchased iTunes tracks as well as Apple Music, according to Apple’s website, which also mentions Beats 1, podcasts, and the ability to AirPlay “other content” from various Apple products. You should be able to beam songs from apps like Spotify, then, though you won't be able to play them with spoken commands. Читать дальше...