Новости за 10.05.2017

Snap reported its earnings for the first time since becoming a public company in March of this year. Its daily active user count clicked up to 166 million, a 5 percent increase over last quarter, up 36 percent from this time a year ago. That puts it behind Instagram Stories, a competitor launched by Facebook that copied heavily from Snapchat and has already passed 200 million users. It also means Snap hasn’t found a way back to the rapid growth it saw in years past.

Google announced today that it’s acquiring Owlchemy Labs, the VR-focused studio that created Job Simulator and Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality. Owlchemy will keep releasing VR games for multiple platforms, but with backing from Google — similar to Tilt Brush studio Skillman & Hackett, which Google acquired in 2015. “We have a slate of original games that we have in [the] production and prototyping phase, and we're going to continue to do that,” says Owlchemy co-founder Alex Schwartz. “We're... Читать дальше...

Tesla has started taking preorders for its “solar roof,” the tile-sized solar panels that the company announced back in October 2016. According to the company, the “typical” customer in the US can expect to pay $21.85 per square foot of solar panels.

UK police in the city of Durham, England, are prepared to go live with a predictive artificial intelligence system that will determine whether a suspect should be kept in custody, according to the BBC. Called Hart, which stands for Harm Assessment Risk Tool, the system is designed to classify individuals based on a low, medium, or high risk of committing a future offense. Police plan to put it live in the next few months to test its effectiveness against cases in which custody specialists do not rely on the system’s judgement. Читать дальше...

Uber will now let you save places other than your home or work for quick access in the app. You can assign names to your favorite Saved Places, as Uber calls them, so you could label your best friend’s apartment or the airport, for example. Riders can save a place once they’re en route. From then on, they can access that saved address by tapping the “Where to?” bar and choosing Saved Places.

Add New York to the list of states where autonomous cars will soon be navigating the streets. Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced that NY is now accepting applications from companies that want to test their self-driving vehicles on public roads.

Ticketmaster has added a new feature to its website and mobile apps, offering users a preview of the exact view from their seats. The sneak peek was made possible through a partnership with IOMedia and its 3D Virtual Venue technology. Users can get a sense of how they’ll see the game at over 110 venues across North America and Australia, including Madison Square Garden, AT&T Stadium, and the LA Coliseum.

Starting today, CBS is offering a combined digital subscription that includes both CBS All Access and Showtime. The package costs either $14.99 with limited commercials for CBS content or $18.99 for no CBS ads at all. The Showtime side of things is commercial-free in both cases.

To participate in the Bow Wow Challenge, you need only to understand the unspoken rules of Instagram. Take a photo that, whether by a clever trick of framing, perspective, or just a nice filter, gives your followers the impression that the life you live is far more glamorous than it is. Post the final image vs. the full view, and you’re done.

At today’s GPU Technology Conference keynote, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang showed off a project known as Holodeck — a shared virtual space where people can examine photorealistic objects. In this case, carmaker Christian Koenigsegg and three other people entered the Holodeck to see a model of Koenigsegg’s new $1.9 million luxury car.

Microsoft is experimenting with a new PowerPoint add-in that will allow users to present slides in a foreign language. Microsoft executive Harry Shum demonstrated the new add-in on stage at the company's Build developers conference today. Presenters can download Microsoft's Translator app and sync it to a PowerPoint presentation. This link will then provide closed captioning on top of PowerPoint slides automatically.

Scientists have developed a new system that allows people with no coding experience to teach robots simple tasks, such as grabbing an object and dropping it into a bucket. The system aims to mimic how humans learn, and even allows robots to teach what they’ve learned to other robots. That could allow machines to one day be trained more quickly and cheaply.

Sprint announced plans today to develop and launch a 5G network and devices by the end of 2019, in partnership with Qualcomm and SoftBank.

Netflix is taking two buzzy features to the Cannes Film Festival this year for the first time — The Meyerowitz Stories, the latest from indie darling Noah Baumbach, and Okja, the second English-language film from Snowpiercer director Bong Joon-Ho. But a newly announced Cannes rule might make competition difficult for the platform in years to come.

The IEEE Standards Association is working on a series of standards for virtual and augmented reality. It announced the news ahead of this year’s Augmented World Expo, listing eight initial areas to work on. A working group will establish definitions and categories of VR and AR devices, as well as standards for video quality, user interfaces, and file formats.

For Microsoft and Sony, the future of the console game business just might involve catering to a more enthusiast market, according to research published today by Nielsen Games. While Nintendo seems content banking on its portable Switch device, the owners of the Xbox and PlayStation brands are hoping mid-cycle console upgrades will convince consumers to shell out hundreds of dollars for only incrementally better devices. That could mean fewer consumers buy the latest devices, as the upper end of console market starts to resemble the PC. Читать дальше...

I freely admit that I perhaps have an excessive amount of fitness gadgets. There’s the Withings smart scale that connects to the HappyScale app that connects to Apple Health that connects to MyFitnessPal that connects to Fitbit that connects to Strava that connects to my TomTom running watch.

PBS Kids is releasing an HDMI TV streaming stick that promises to deliver kid friendly content without a Wi-Fi connection, meaning the stick can be taken anywhere. In addition to more than 100 hours’ worth of content that’s stored locally with its 16GB of storage, the stick features offline games that kids can access through an included remote. When connected to Wi-Fi, the Plug & Play offers access to a 24 / 7 PBS Kids channel / live stream that was developed in partnership with local PBS stations. Читать дальше...

Multiple powerful rockets are coming online soon — but how do they stack up next to each other?

Google this week announced a certification program for a new line of “Street View ready” 360-degree cameras. In a blog post published Tuesday, the company said that 20 certified cameras launching this year will make it easier for users to capture and upload Street View imagery.

Opera may be the underdog of the browser world, but it continues to fight hard, adding interesting new features to try and win over users. The latest addition is a messaging sidebar built directly into the browser interface. From the sidebar, users can log into their WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram accounts, and chat with friends and family without ever leaving Opera itself.

Steve McQueen is set to direct a new documentary exploring the life of Tupac Shakur, after the late rapper’s estate agreed a deal to bring his story to the big screen. McQueen, whose 12 Years a Slave won the 2014 Oscar for best picture, will work with producers including Jayson Jackson and White Horse Pictures’ Nigel Sinclair on the movie, which doesn’t yet have a set title.

Apple has acquired Beddit, a Finnish company that makes sleep-tracking devices that work with apps for iOS and the Apple Watch. As first reported by CNBC, Beddit has updated the privacy section of its website to note the acquisition and confirm that consumer data is now subject to Apple’s own privacy policy.

President Trump has dismissed FBI Director James Comey, according to a statement today by the White House. According to press secretary Sean Spicer, the move came at the request of Department of Justice, although the timing of the move is unclear. Comey had recently come under fire in the press for making inaccurate statements to the Senate Judiciary Committee, although it’s unclear whether today’s news is related to those concerns.