Новости за 02.03.2017

Netflix wants to be the go-to destination for stand-up comedy specials. In the last couple of months, the company has inked deals with a number of high-profile performers such as Dave Chappelle, Louis CK, Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld, and Amy Schumer. The result? The streaming giant plans to stream a new special each week.

Vizio’s first TVs of 2017 are a refresh of the company’s E-Series line. They remain Vizio’s cheapest entry into 4K, and this year all models with a screen size of 55 inches and above are gaining HDR. Vizio supports both Dolby Vision and HDR10 in its more premium P- and M-Series TVs, but the new E-Series lineup only works with the latter. That’s not necessarily a problem, as most of the big streaming services — Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube — also support HDR10.

Every Friday, 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 present a new series called One Video. Each week we’ll tell you “one video” you need to watch, why, and for how long.

Apple has escalated its legal war against Qualcomm with a fourth lawsuit, this time in the UK. Apple says the lawsuit was actually filed back in January, alongside the other three, but it’s only now being noticed due to a refiling.

Nintendo Switch’s day one patch has arrived, ushering the return of the dreaded Friend Code system (or at least a softer variation of it). But Nintendo also promised the patch would include a way to connect to public hotspots, which seemed to run counter to the claim that the Switch won’t have a browser given so many public hotspots require you to log in to a captive portal. So how does Nintendo reconcile this paradox? Simply put, by having a browser that can only be used in very limited situations. Читать дальше...

American Express is adding several new perks to its flagship Platinum Card, including $200 in yearly Uber credits, automatic Uber VIP status, and a new stainless steel (as in, actual metal) card design. But the Uber credit isn’t quite as useful as it could be.

This morning, a bizarre video went viral on Twitter: it showed over a dozen turkeys endlessly circling a dead cat in the middle of the road. “This is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen,” says the guy who posted the video, @TheReal_JDavis, who’s from Boston.

Transcription gadgets seem to be having a bit of a moment right now. We’ve seen a couple devices in the last few months that promise to make your life easier by seamlessly transcribing phone calls, meetings, and lectures, and then syncing the results to mobile and desktop devices.

The Google Assistant is the one truly unique feature that Allo — one of Google’s many chat apps — has going for it, and today Google is making the feature even more prominent.

After making a move into streaming traditional sports, Twitter will now start streaming e-sports. The company announced a partnership with ESL and Dreamhack — two of the biggest organizations in the pro-gaming world — to broadcast tournaments and other e-sports events live on Twitter.

In the fall of 2015, a new wave of violence hit Israel. It began with a vehicle attack in October, followed by a wave of shootings and stabbings. The wave also broke on social media, where some Palestinian groups shared cartoons and memes encouraging violence against Jews, many from accounts linked to Hamas. Over the following 15 months, 47 people were killed and 675 wounded in related violence, according to a tally by the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The European Parliament on Thursday voted to strip French far-right leader Marine Le Pen of her parliamentary immunity, in a decision that clears the way for investigators to prosecute the presidential candidate over violent ISIS-related images she posted on Twitter in 2015.

As of this week, after the better part of a decade, I’m no longer an Evernote user. There are many reasons why — its ever-bloating feature set, its rising prices, its privacy gaffes — but the biggest reason why is named Bear. It’s another cloud-based note-taking app, and it doesn’t have half the features Evernote does. It is also exponentially faster and more pleasant to use. As it turns out, these things are related.

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, the concept of 5G feels almost like a cult. Everywhere you look, companies are talking about the “transformative power” of a technology that hasn’t even been standardized yet. Industry reps preach about 5G’s greatness; booths are dedicated to showcasing its miracles; and visitors attend talks with titles like “The Future of All Things and The Creation of Time.” Mobile data has never felt so religious.

Link’s latest adventure is a bold and much-needed reinvention of the beloved franchise

Microsoft is planning to support mixed reality headsets on Xbox One and the upcoming Project Scorpio console in 2018. The software giant revealed the launch timing at the Games Developers Conference this week, while shipping Windows Mixed Reality (previously Windows Holographic) headsets to developers. “Our plan is to bring mixed reality content to the Xbox One family of devices, including Project Scorpio, in 2018,” says a Microsoft spokesperson.

Blizzard’s multiplayer shooter Overwatch was the big winner at last night’s Game Developers Choice Awards, taking home the prizes for Best Game and Best Design. Also rewarded were indie studios Campo Santo — whose first game Firewatch won the awards for Best Narrative and Best Debut — and Playdead, who scooped awards for Best Audio and Best Visual Art for unsettling platformer Inside.

Microsoft is adding Google Calendar and Contacts support to the Mac version of Outlook 2016, the company announced yesterday. The change means that Outlook users will be able to synchronize and track their Google Calendars across a range of devices, from Mac, to Android phone, to Windows PC.

It’s not just big carriers offering unlimited data plans these days — car maker Chevrolet has now got in on the act, announcing today that it would offer an unlimited 4G LTE plan for drivers to use inside their cars. The plan is available from March 3rd, and will cost $20 a month. For that price, subscribers will be able to have access to a prepaid OnStar 4G LTE Wi-Fi hotspot, enabled by AT&T, that offers unlimited data on the move.

Microsoft today announced a new initiative to let any game developer create and sell games on its Xbox platform without having to go through any of the company’s preexisting channels. The Xbox Live Creators Program, as it’s called, is designed to let an indie team or solo developer take a retail Xbox, which doubles as a dev kit, and use it to create and self-publish the title to the Xbox marketplace. Prior to today, developers had to part of an established game development or media company, or... Читать дальше...

Marissa Mayer announced today in a note posted to her personal Tumblr page that she will be redistributing her annual bonus and equity stock grant to Yahoo employees. The chief exec is doing so as a tacit admission of failure following Yahoo’s two separate security breaches revealed last year that collectively compromised the personal information of more than 1.5 billion users. The move, a rather unprecedented act in the tech industry, signals just how severe a mistake it was to allow Yahoo’s vulnerabilities to be exploited. Читать дальше...

In Stranger Things and The OA, Netflix has found success with shows about missing children with possible supernatural connections. Now, it’s adding a third show to that roster, Dark.

Before every episode of The Vergecast I sit down, read through a bunch of news, and take a bunch of notes. It’s one of the most enjoyable parts of my week, and I started thinking it might be fun to do every day on the site. So, every day this week I’m sitting down and writing some notes on the news as though I’ll be talking about it later. Are you into this? Am I into this? I don’t know. But it’s fun to do! Give me some feedback and we’ll keep mutating this into something good.

The Game Developers Choice Awards are basically the Oscars of gaming, when the industry comes together and a group of specially selected members vote on the best video games of the year. It’s a night when the entire gaming community comes to celebrate the developers, designers, and companies that make the entertainment we enjoy.

Apple shareholders rejected a proposal yesterday that would have required the company to improve the diversity of its top ranks. This is the second year in a row that Apple shareholders have shot down the proposal, with just over 95 percent of the vote opposing it this time around — slightly more than last year.