Новости за 07.04.2017

Vermont senator and former presidential nominee Bernie Sanders’ talk show, The Bernie Sanders Show, is now available to stream as a podcast on iTunes. There are three available episodes, dated March 27th, 28th, and 29th. Episodes are also available on the senator’s site.

“Rensenware” is a new kind of ransomware — typically malicious software that locks your files until a fee has been paid to recover them — but, as Ars Techinca reports, it’s a bit different from the usual sort of malware. Instead of requiring infected users to pay a sum of money to regain access to their locked files, Rensenware instead requires them to reach a high score of 200 million points in the anime bullet hell shooter TH12 - Undefined Fantastic Object (a game in the Touhou Project series) on the “Lunatic” difficulty level. Читать дальше...

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly on Wednesday, the co-directors of the 1999 classic found footage horror film The Blair Witch Project revealed that they filmed several alternate endings.

There’s something about long car rides that make it so easy to fall asleep — the repetitive passing patterns, subtle vibrations, the hum of the engine. Inspired by this notion, Ford has designed a bed that can simulate all those experiences. The only problem? It’s made for infant-sized humans.

Retro is cool again. Vinyl is making a comeback, film cameras are back in production, and old-school wooden radios are getting new, tech-infused versions.

The Expanse is a television show based on the novels by James S.A. Corey. Every week, I’ll be taking a look at one moment in each episode of the show’s second season, and chatting with the creators about how it was created and what it means for the larger story.

Once, I followed a first date into a busy subway station. I lost track of him for a second, then found him again and followed him halfway down the platform before I heard someone calling my name. As it turns out, that minute of confusion was enough for me to identify the wrong guy as my date and almost get on a train with him. (There was no second date.)

The smell of someone else's poop is definitely something we try to steer clear of — for obvious reasons. But it turns out, poop smells can provide valuable intel for certain animals. Mandrills, a type of monkey found only in rain forests in Africa, sniff dung to figure out if another mandrill has parasites; if the smell test is positive, the monkeys avoid contact with the infected members of their group, according to a new study. This type of behavior might seem really mean, but it can actually save lives. Читать дальше...

Logan Olson, developer of awesome virtual reality music creation tool SoundStage, is joining Clay Bavor’s VR team at Google. SoundStage lets you assemble and operate a music studio in the virtual space around you using the HTC Vive headset and wireless controllers — it’s like Tilt Brush for techno. I said it “feels like a visionary application” after spending time with it last year.

If there were a gambling site where you could go to make bets on how people are bound to react to individual movies, the money-making gambit of the season would be slapping your life savings on “Colossal is really going to piss people off.” How many people, and how pissed off they’re going to get, will probably depend on whether the advertising gets more specific and transparent about what the movie actually is. From the currently available teaser, Nacho Vigalondo’s latest movie (after 2014’s... Читать дальше...

What if virtual reality wasn’t just a new way to play games or watch movies? What if the technology wasn’t just creating new methods of communication, of medical treatment, of military training?

Reality has a way of confounding expectations. For all we’re told about actions and equal reactions, things have a tendency to make unexpected bounces. Zigging when they should be zagging, despite what we are secretly predicting or hoping for.

Waterfield Designs is one of the legions of San Francisco boutiques catering to the personal tech transportation needs of the city’s wealthy hipsters. Think Peak Design before Peak Design existed. For the past few months, I have been testing two of Waterfield’s backpacks, both costing $329: the svelte and minimalist Staad and the fit-your-entire-life-in-it Bolt. It’s good that I’ve had them for so long, because it took me a while to get accustomed to their peculiarities, and another while longer... Читать дальше...

Microsoft is making some significant changes to the way the setup process works in Windows 10. For years, setting up a Windows machine has gradually been getting easier thanks to Microsoft’s simplifications, but with the Windows 10 Creators Update you can now sit back and use your voice to configure a PC.

Yesterday we got a sneak peak at the CPU, GPU, and other tech nerdery that’ll be found inside Project Scorpio, Microsoft’s turbocharged Xbox One expected to ship in the fall. The details posted by Digital Foundry paint a picture of a console that should dramatically improve graphical performance for Xbox One games, power that would benefit Xbox 360 titles as well.

Everyone knows that a true smile involves not only the mouth but also the eyes, but did you know that your ear canals also get in on the action, contorting along with the rest of your face? This bit of information seems trivial, but it’s what allowed computer interaction researcher Denys Matthies to create prototype earbuds that can detect the wearer’s facial expressions — and turn those into commands for your phone.

While we’ve heard some rumors around Microsoft’s Surface Book 2 plans, very little has emerged about the Surface Pro 5. Paul Thurrott has now revealed that the Surface Pro 5 will not change the proprietary Surface power connector, and that Microsoft’s next laptop / tablet hybrid will switch to Intel’s latest Kaby Lake processors. Thurrott claims there’s “nothing dramatic” about the Surface Pro 5, which could mean the device is simply a refreshed design with upgraded components.

The researchers behind Microsoft’s mind-blowing IllumiRoom concept and the Box projection art performance are teaming up to try and make projection mapping a reality inside homes. Lightform is a new device that’s aiming to transform living rooms into screens thanks to projectors and intelligent mapping technology. Lightform, co-founded by Microsoft IllumiRoom lead researcher Brett Jones, is a simple small computer that connects to any projector through a HDMI cable.

Google's chief game designer has stepped down from his position, suggesting that the company currently has little interest in making its own video games. Noah Falstein announced his resignation in a post on his own blog, stating that the "opportunity to actually build the big, consequential games" that he had been hired to help create had "failed to materialize."

Adidas has been playing around with 3D printing as a manufacturing method for a while now, but its latest sneaker — the Futurecraft 4D — might be its most ambitious creation yet. The mid-sole of the shoe is created using a process known as Continuous Liquid Interface Production, in which the design is essentially pulled out of a vat of liquid polymer resin, and fixed into its desired shape using ultraviolet light.

Much like Facebook, Google is calling on fact-checking organizations to help it bust fake news. But it’s starting in a pretty small way.

FCC chairman Ajit Pai has briefed telecom trade associations on his plans to scale back net neutrality rules, The Wall Street Journal reports. Pai’s plans will apparently maintain the basic concept of net neutrality, but will move the enforcement of the rules back to the Federal Trade Commission, rather than the FCC.

Samsung Electronics’ Q1 2017 earnings guidance is out, and the company is predicting an operating profit of around 9.9 trillion won (about $8.7 billion) off 50 trillion won (about $44 billion) in revenue. That would beat its previous profit record set in Q3 2013 and represent a roughly 50 percent increase on the same period last year, when Samsung made 6.68 trillion won.

DJI may soon announce its smallest drone yet. Leaked images of a new device, apparently called the Spark, popped up today on Chinese DJI forums (the webpage has since gone down). The reveal has led to heavy speculation on whether the device shares in the foldable design of DJI’s Mavic Pro and when the company might officially unveil it. The originator of the leaked images is currently unknown, but TechCrunch managed to snag quite a few of the photos before the post was taken down, so check out the full gallery there. Читать дальше...

It began quietly. This morning, Carter Wilkerson‏ asked Wendy’s Twitter account how many retweets he would need to earn a free year’s supply of chicken nuggets.