Новости за 15.04.2017

While we got the first trailer for Battlefront II today at Star Wars Celebration, EA Games dropped another bit of news: Christie Golden’s previously announced novel Inferno Squad is a tie-in for the game.

When Star Wars: Battlefront was released two years ago, it received a lot of praise for the way in which it faithfully recreated props, vehicles, and worlds from the original film trilogy, but it took a hit when it came to the lack of a single-player campaign. With the sequel, EA hopes to change that, and this morning it offered a glimpse at what players can expect when Battlefront II arrives on November 17th. The single-player mode certainly looks like it will be heavy on narrative and world-building... Читать дальше...

Earlier this week a teaser trailer for the upcoming Star Wars: Battlefront II leaked online, but here at Star Wars Celebration EA has revealed the real thing — and it includes quite a bit more than the leaked version. The centerpiece of the trailer is the single-player campaign, which focuses on an elite TIE Fighter pilot who is spurred to vengeance against the Rebellion after she sees the second Death Star blown to smithereens while on the forest moon of Endor.

Over the next few years, NASA plans to get back to launching its own rockets again, with two deep-space missions that will take new hardware and people in the vicinity of the Moon. Those launches are tentatively scheduled for 2018 and 2021, but most likely they won’t get off the ground on time, thanks to high costs and technical challenges. That’s the conclusion of a new report from NASA’s Office of Inspector General.

There are several huge awards in the speculative-fiction community: science fiction has the Hugos and Nebulas, and fantasy literature has the World Fantasy Award. The WFAs have been handed out at the World Fantasy Convention since 1975, but this year, there’ll be a big change. From its inception in 1975, the award has been a bust of horror author H.P. Lovecraft, designed by cartoonist Gahan Wilson. But this year, the award has been replaced in favor of a design featuring a twisted tree.

During today’s Star Wars Rebels panel at Star Wars Celebration, the show’s creator, Dave Filoni announced that the will be coming to an end at the end of its fourth season, but dropped an interesting tidbit: there will be another character transplanted from the Expanded Universe, one who will be voiced by veteran Star Wars actor Warwick Davis.

During the Star Wars Rebels panel at Star Wars Celebration in Orlando Florida, show creator Dave Filoni announced that the show would be coming to an end at the end of the upcoming fourth season.

Last weekend I watched Eight Days a Week, Ron Howard's documentary about The Beatles' touring years. It's a really enjoyable film with some great performance footage (turns out The Beatles were very good musicians), but what I really loved about it was the insight into ’60s culture on the periphery of it all.

Apple customers who bring their fourth generation iPad in for servicing at Apple Stores and authorized service providers might soon get their unit replaced with an iPad Air 2, according to 9to5Mac.

While this weekend is all about Star Wars — and we have a fun deal to help you celebrate — the most notable deals are ending soon, including Microsoft’s big Spring Sale; highlights include a free Surface dock when you buy the Surface Pro 4, and $250 off Dell Inspiron 13 Signature Edition 2 in 1.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 is back, and the first thing on its hit list is Stranger Things. Netflix has released a short MST3K crossover teaser that features the cast of the revival version of the show taking a break from their movie-centric entertainment to riff on the opening of Netflix’s breakout science-fiction thriller. Although the actual show is focused on questionable movies rather than viral-hit TV, the clip is still a brilliant bit of marketing.

Rumors have been flying around about the possibility of a North Korean nuclear test, thanks in part to activity at North Korea’s nuclear test site. If it is, this will be the sixth known nuclear test in 11 years — and a clear sign that North Korean arms development is continuing.

Microsoft says it has already patched the Windows exploits released by the Shadow Brokers group. The hacking tools, likely originating from the NSA, were released online yesterday, and Microsoft was able to test and confirm patches are already available for all currently supported versions of Windows. That does mean that older Windows XP or Windows Vista systems could still be vulnerable to three of the exploits released, but it’s unlikely that Microsoft will supply patches for these older versions of Windows as they’re already unsupported. Читать дальше...

The Light L16, a DSLR-quality device that crams 16 cameras into one body, is nearing its ship date and today we’re getting a look at some final production photos, via Petapixel. The 52-megapixel camera looks mostly similar to when we last saw it in 2015, but it appears the lens moved around a bit to fit in the flash.

After widespread reports last weekend that Carrie Fisher’s family gave Lucasfilm the go-ahead for the late actress to appear in 2019’s Episode IX, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy has told ABC News that Fisher will not be part of the film.

Before The Force Awakens hit theaters, Lucasfilm prepared fans with a steady drip of books and comics under the Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens banner, telling some of the stories of events between Episodes VI and VII. During Star Wars Celebration Del Rey announced that it would be running a similar campaign to lead up to The Last Jedi with a series of “Journey to Star Wars: The Last Jedi” titles.

First there was the Segway, which promised to revolutionize cities but mostly changed the life of mall cops and tour guides. Then the hoverboards arrived, which were great except for how sometimes they explode. And then there was nothing new for a little bit.

Airbnb today announced a new set of mandatory security measures, including multi-factor authentication, it’s implementing to prevent account takeovers. Now, for the first time, Airbnb will require both hosts and guests logging in from new devices to verify their identity with a second account, either via SMS or email. A vast majority of other social and communication apps use multi-factor authentication, including Facebook, Google, and Twitter, making Airbnb a bit of an outlier to have gone so long before enabling it by default. Читать дальше...

A company called Catalyst is launching a bunch of AirPods cases today. They’re cases for cases called Catalyst Case for AirPods. Creative naming, I know, but at least you’ll never forget what they’re designed to do.

Google is ending support for a widely used browser benchmark after determining that the test had actually become detrimental to web performance.