Новости за 07.03.2017

The future of net neutrality is in jeopardy again, so advocates are getting back to the fight. In a letter sent today to FCC chairman Ajit Pai, as well as Senators John Thune and Bill Nelson, over 170 groups ask Congress and the Federal Communications Commission to continue to support and protect the net neutrality rules put into place in 2015.

A year ago, a pair of New York entrepreneurs released Anchor, an app for recording short-form audio snippets that they hoped would “democratize radio.” “As popular as this medium is we feel it’s really hard for regular people to contribute to it,” co-founder Nir Zicherman told TechCrunch. The initial version of Anchor let you record “waves” of up to two minutes, and anyone could add on with a minute of their own. I appreciated the democratic impulse, but the results sounded less like radio and more like extremely long voicemails. Читать дальше...

The Ferrari 812 Superfast is making it clear that speed is still a theme that’s paramount to the luxury Italian automaker’s DNA. Seeing Ferrari’s fastest production car up close at the Geneva Motor Show in alarm-red Rosso Settanta hue is believing. All those luscious curves created at the Ferrari Styling Centre are not for looks — the design is part of the aerodynamic sauce that propels this supercar to its superfast name that harkens back to the namesake 1964 500 Superfast and the lore of the 1969 365 GTB4 Daytona. Читать дальше...

Taking yet another cue from the Snapchat playbook, Instagram now offers geostickers in its ephemeral Stories feature. It’s currently only live in two cities — Jakarta and New York City — and offers visual accessories that represent your present location, down to the neighborhood.

Doppler Labs, the startup behind the Here One earbuds, has filed a lawsuit against Bose, per a report from TechCrunch. The suit alleges that Bose’s Hearphones, which offer a similar augmented pass-through listening feature as the Here One’s, are based on Doppler’s own earbuds.

Microsoft is planning to make its Slack competitor, Microsoft Teams, available to Office 365 customers next week. The software giant is planning a launch event for March 14th to make Microsoft Teams live around the world.

March is objectively the worst month in New York City for several reasons, mostly involving weather. But there’s one bright spot for brooding New Yorkers this month, and that’s The Metrograph’s latest film series, The Singularity.

Beautiful, exotic super cars always seem to steal the stage at the Geneva Motor Show. A cadre of irresistible sports cars keep that tradition alive at the 2017 edition. While many automakers teased us with pictures in advance of the press previews, there's nothing like an exclusive personal glance at these works of technological art.

This morning, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) suggested that the Republicans’ proposed Affordable Care Act replacement would require Americans to “make a choice” in order to pay for health care. “Maybe, rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and they want to spend hundreds of dollars on, maybe they should invest in their own health care,” he told CNN. There are a lot of things wrong with this statement, including the fact that average health care spending per capita is thousands, not hundreds, of dollars annually. Читать дальше...

Razer today announced the official launch of zVault, a new digital wallet system its been testing since January. The service is designed to work both as a way to pay for digital goods like full-game purchases and downloadable content and as a rewards system to earn free Razer products. This involves two components: zGold, a digital currency, and zSilver, a rewards currency. The purpose, for Razer at least, is to drive players to spend their money through its own service and those of the company’s partners... Читать дальше...

“Zelda machine” has become a flippant nickname for Nintendo’s latest handheld, the console / tablet hybrid known as Switch. The idea is that, aside from the excellent Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the console launched without many games to play. And in some ways, it’s true. The Switch’s launch lineup isn’t particularly huge, and with the exception of Zelda, it’s missing big-name titles to get new owners excited. Compared to systems like the Xbox One and PS4, both of which launched with over a dozen games each... Читать дальше...

Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) says that Americans would have an easier time with health care costs if they stopped buying iPhones.

Love’s a game and this year we’re playing. For the full rules and intellectual justification of The Verge Bachelor Fantasy League please see this explanatory post. For a little background on why this is poised to be the best-ever season of The Bachelor, see this essay by culture editor Chris Plante:

Airbus just announced a new conceptual car-and-drone project called Pop.Up. And I know. I know! This feels like the 100th car-drone concept we’ve shown you in the last few years. (Hell, it’s not even the first one announced at the Geneva Motor Show.) But this time, the car is the drone. The drone is the car. And, in Airbus’ fantastic future world, you can seamlessly transition from car to flying car to train all without lifting your butt off the seat. Okay, I’m listening.

Apart from the crack in the ceiling above my bed, the eyes of my beloved, and my own sorry reflection, there’s probably nothing in the universe I spend more time looking at than my phone. It’s first thing I see in the morning, and the last thing I glimpse at night. It lives in my pocket and appears, like a phantom, in my hand, at least 100 times a day. Which is why I was so damned happy the other day when I remembered I could change my phone’s wallpaper.

A BBC investigation has revealed that Facebook users are continuing to exchange sexualized images of children through online groups, and the social network has come under criticism for failing to remove the obscene content. Of the 100 images that the BBC reported, Facebook removed only 18, saying that the remaining 82 did not violate its community standards. After the news organization alerted Facebook to the content, the company reported the journalists to police and cancelled an interview scheduled for last week, the BBC reports. Читать дальше...

Land Rover has created an unusual version of its Discovery, featuring a quadcopter drone that launches from the top of the SUV. The drone even takes off and lands while the vehicle is moving, and it’s designed primarily for search and rescue missions. The Austrian Red Cross is actively deploying the new Land Rover “Project Hero” vehicles, and trialing the drone.

Mercedes has AMG. BMW has M. They’re special brands within brands that create high-performance versions of standard cars — and these days, among aficionados at least, the names carry nearly as much significance as the parent brands.

Hyperloop still feels a little more like science fiction than an actual project, but as new pictures from superfast transportation company Hyperloop One show, the technology is slowly making its way into the real world. The new images give an insight into how construction is progressing on Hyperloop One’s very own hyperloop in the Nevada desert, showing suspended track that could one day carry (possibly screaming) passengers at ridiculous speeds across the United States.

This is the Mercedes AMG GT Concept. It’s a four-door version of the AMG GT sports car, and Mercedes-AMG says it’s a preview of a real car it’ll release down the road. And damn, does it look good.

If you love e-sports, Logitech may have just announced the keyboard for you. The company has designed a new mechanical keyboard called the G Pro, in collaboration with some of the top e-sports competitors.

Amazon has abandoned its legal battle to protect its Alexa assistant with First Amendment rights — for now at least. The company filed a motion against a police search warrant in an Arkansas murder case earlier this month, but has now dropped the case after the defendant agreed to hand over the data contained on his Echo speaker to police.

Sonos has a brand new speaker for the first time since 2013. The company has redesigned and refreshed some existing products in its popular lineup of multi-room audio speakers since then, but today marks the introduction of Sonos’ first wholly-new device since the Playbar. Yes, it’s called the Playbase, and yes, it’s another speaker meant to be paired with your television. The $699 Playbase, which starts shipping April 4th, has a relatively simple reason for existing: most TVs — Sonos says roughly 70 percent — aren’t wall-mounted. Читать дальше...

The Lamborghini Huracan is a fantastic supercar. But, like many great things, it can be made better — and that’s what the engineers at Lamborghini have done with the new Huracan Performante.

Whenever I wonder what will eventually happen to Twitter, which is something I think about literally every day, I remember this Jessica Livingston tweet from September.