Новости за 02.07.2018

Bad news for Samsung phone owners: some devices are randomly sending your camera roll photos to your contacts without permission. As first spotted by Gizmodo, users are complaining about the issue on Reddit and the company’s official forums. One user says his phone sent all his photos to his girlfriend. The messages are being sent through Samsung’s default texting app Samsung Messages. According to reports, the Messages app does not even show users that files have been sent; many just find out... Читать дальше...

Images of the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 have leaked, giving us a first look at the new tablet, which is rumored for a release later this year. What appears to be official press renders have leaked from an anonymous source to Android Headlines, showing a lack of a home button and a larger display.

Spoiler warning: this piece discusses the biggest reveals from the Westworld season 2 finale. Proceed at your own risk.

Around 370 light years away from Earth, a big, cloudy planet is in the middle of being born — and astronomers have snapped an incredibly detailed image of its birthing process. The picture is one of the most robust we have of a planet forming, and it could help us learn more about how worlds outside our Solar System came to be.

In over 700 pages of responses sent to Congress over the weekend, Facebook acknowledged that it shared user data with 52 hardware and software companies, many of which were previously undisclosed.

Facebook disclosed a bug this morning that affected about 800,000 users by unblocking at least one person on that user’s block list for around one week. Writing in a blog post, Erin Egan, the company’s chief privacy officer, said the bug was active between May 29th and June 5th. It did not re-establish friend connections between any of the affected users and the blocked individuals, Egan says, but it did allow those previously blocked users to see posts shared to a wider audience, like photos shared with friends of friends. Читать дальше...

Google has released the third beta of Android P, which is supposed to be a “near-final” look at the OS before it’s completed later this summer. Google engineering VP Dave Burke calls the latest beta an “early release candidate build” that “takes us very close to what you’ll see in the final version of Android P.”

Huawei has patented a smartwatch that comes with a set of built-in Bluetooth earbuds, as spotted by LetsGoDigital. While we don’t know many details about the Huawei Watch 3, including a release date, the patent indicates that the company is considering different ways to store a pair of wireless earbuds inside a smartwatch.

Since Instagram’s algorithmic, out-of-order timeline is a mystery to all humankind, the company has rolled out a new feature that will let you know when you’ve scrolled through all new posts from the last 48 hours. When you come across it, you’ll see a big green checkmark and a message saying “you’re all caught up.” Beyond the line break will be posts that have been up for longer than two days mixed with more recent ones you’ve already seen and scrolled past.

Lyft has acquired Motivate, the bike-sharing company that operates Citi Bike in New York City and Ford’s GoBike program in San Francisco. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, though it was reported in June to be around $250 million.

Spotify is testing an alternate version of the app called Spotify Lite that reduces the app’s size significantly, but at the expense of including many key features, as spotted by Android Police. The app is only available on Android in Brazil.

Xfinity Mobile is set to place limitations on the maximum video quality and hotspot speeds that customers can get when using cellular data. In case you’re not familiar, Xfinity Mobile is Comcast’s MVNO that’s available exclusively to the company’s home internet customers and runs on the Verizon network. In an email to customers, Comcast said that video quality will soon be restricted to 480p.

I couldn’t name a single character in Fortnite. I’m not able to tell you anything about the lore or the plot, or even really explain where the game takes place. Yet somehow Epic’s multiplayer shooter has produced the most arresting video game narrative I’ve experienced in some time — and it’s only getting stronger as Fortnite evolves.

Saturday’s rocket launch seems to be the start of a larger mystery unfolding in Fortnite. After the events of the weekend, dimensional rifts have appeared all across the map — including a larger tear overlooking everything down below. Not only are these rifts getting bigger, they’re also starting to have an effect on the island.

Are we focusing too much on analyzing exactly how many jobs could be destroyed by the coming wave of automation, and not enough on how to actually fix the problem? That’s one conclusion in a new paper on the potential affects of robotics and AI on global labor markets from US think tank, the Center for Global Development (CGD).

Dell is returning to the public market in a $22 billion stock buyout that will still leave CEO/founder Michael Dell and investment firm Silver Lake firmly in charge, as reported by The Financial Times. The company went private in 2013 following a $25 billion buyout by Dell and Silver Lake. Since then, Dell has seen success both in the enterprise market and with its consumer-focused PCs.

Samsung announced the next generation of its design-focused Frame TV, which now comes with additional customization features and a much bigger array of art to choose from.

DirecTV Now is raising its prices, following price hikes from rivals Sling TV and YouTube TV within the last few months, as spotted by Cord Cutters. Later this month, DirecTV Now will raise its prices by $5 on all packages, bringing basic service to $40 a month and the premium package with all the works to $75 a month.

The way it should be done

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DJI’s only real competitor misses the mark

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HTC is laying off 1,500 workers from its Taiwan manufacturing division in an effort to recover from months of poor quarterly results and try to return the long-struggling smartphone manufacturer to profitability, via Engadget.

The Verge revealed last week that Microsoft wants to create a “new and disruptive” dual-screen device category to influence the overall Surface roadmap and blur the lines between what’s considered PC and mobile. Codenamed Andromeda, Microsoft’s project has been in development for at least two years and is designed to be a pocketable Surface device. Last week, Microsoft’s Surface chief, Panos Panay, appeared to tease just such a machine, built in collaboration with LG Display. We’re on the cusp of seeing the release of a folding... Читать дальше...

Last week Vivo announced its latest innovation in the field of cramming innovative components into phone-sized devices: a time-of-flight 3D scanner with 300,000 sensor points. I had a chance to test the tech out when I dropped in on MWC Shanghai this week, and it’s clear that while things are still very early, we are rapidly approaching the point where your phone is just straight-up going to be able to capture a 3D representation of your head.

Late last year HTC announced the Vive Focus, a standalone VR headset for China. The Focus signalled the end of HTC’s plans to bring a standalone Daydream headset to the rest of the world, instead seeing the company focus on its more vibrant Chinese market. That’s a shame, because I got the chance to use the Focus last week at MWC Shanghai, and it’s actually pretty great.

Nvidia launched its current generation of GeForce gaming GPUs more than two years ago, and we might just see the next generation, rumored to be named the GeForce GTX 11 Series, in August. While Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the next GeForce GPUs would be “a long time from now” recently, all signs now point towards next month for the launch of the GeForce GTX 1180. Nvidia was supposed to be presenting at the annual Hot Chips conference in August, with a talk entitled “NVIDIA’s Next Generation Mainstream... Читать дальше...