Новости за 19.05.2017

I went to college at a strange time for the music industry. Napster had already come and gone, digital music stores like iTunes and Amazon Music were growing quickly, and the big streaming sites were just getting popular. While there were file sharing options out there for acquiring new music, there was one site that I turned to anytime I was looking for something new and interesting: Hype Machine. Unfortunately, the site recently announced that it’s turning to crowdfunding to survive, and is... Читать дальше...

Scientists on Twitter are introducing themselves to the famous TV host Bill Nye (of Bill Nye the Science Guy fame), using the hashtag #BillMeetScienceTwitter. Their aim is to spark more collaboration between science celebrities with massive Twitter followings, like Nye or Neil deGrasse Tyson, and the scientists doing their best to communicate their research to the public.

In April, the Senate voted to roll back the FCC’s internet privacy rules, clearing the way for internet service providers to share browsing histories with third-party advertisers — and provoking a significant backlash along the way. Now, one of the leading forces for the April push has introduced a new bill that could restore some of those restrictions, while adding new ones for web services like Facebook and Google.

The woman whose headphones caught fire during a February flight from Beijing, China to Melbourne, Australia was wearing a pair of AAA-powered Beats, according to the Australian Associated Press. What’s more, the report states that a representative for Apple, which bought Beats in 2014, told the woman’s lawyer that the company’s investigation into the incident blames the use of a “third-party battery" for the cause of the explosion, though it’s unclear what that means. Apple has not responded to a request for comment. Читать дальше...

When Microsoft announced Windows 10 S, one of the main distinctions from vanilla Windows 10 was that only Windows Store applications would run on the education-focused OS. But it turns out when Microsoft said that “applications are delivered via the Windows Store,” it didn’t mean that all Windows Store applications would work on 10 S, as noted by Lilliputing.

Shooting professional quality video with a drone is not an easy task, and often requires multiple human operators. Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) think they’ve found a way to take humans out of the operation part of the equation altogether. The team teased a system this week that they plan to unveil at a conference later this month in which filmmakers can set certain parameters and then let the drone do all the work.

Fresh out of my export folder is a brand new episode of The Vergecast. This week, because of the business that is Google I/O, we recorded our episode Friday morning. This resulted in Nilay’s attempt to bring a morning show vibe to episode 257, despite Dieter, Adi, Natt, and Paul’s (and my) disapproval of sound effects. There was a lot to discuss thanks to Google’s developer conference, so here it is! Enjoy!

Vine as we once knew it has already been shut down, but unfortunately that doesn’t mean the information you provided to the Twitter-owned company is secure. Twitter just sent out a mass email to Vine users alerting them of a “bug” that briefly allowed third parties to view email addresses and phone numbers associated with Vine accounts. If you get the email, your information was likely exposed — though that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s being misused by anyone. The company makes no mention of... Читать дальше...

One week after it first hit, researchers are getting a better handle on how the WannaCry ransomware spread so quickly — and judging from the early figures, the story seems to be almost entirely about Windows 7.

Late last year, we showed you the Arc Hub, a circular USB-C hub we hoped would help improve the pitiful plight of third-party USB-C hubs currently on the market. After owning a 12-inch MacBook for two years now, I can tell you the only reliable option for a USB-C hub has been Apple’s $69 USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter, which only comes with a HDMI and USB-A port, alongside the pass through USB-C port for charging. It’s not ideal.

The seed bank designed to preserve the world’s crops and plants in the event of global disaster isn’t prepared to withstand the greatest global disaster facing our planet: global warming. Melting permafrost on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, where the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is located, has seeped into the seed bank, raising questions of how the structure will be able to survive in the future as the Earth keeps warming.

Few apps have made a more valiant effort to rescue us from indolence than Things, the to-do list app for Mac and iOS from German software developer Cultured Code. When it debuted as one of the original iPhone apps in 2008, Things was notable for its strong compatibility with Getting Things Done, the popular productivity system. Its original incarnation won an Apple Design Award, and by 2014 Things had sold 3 million copies of its iPhone app alone.

Design showcase Sight Unseen Offsite kicks off today in New York City, and among the featured exhibitors was Austin-based startup Twyla, an online marketplace selling specializing in licensed art prints. For first-time buyers who are intimidated by art auctions, or put off by dropping an insane amount of cash for an original painting, Twyla offers limited-edition prints individually numbered and signed by artists.

Some of the biggest news to come out of Google I/O this week was that Google Assistant is coming to iOS, looking to take a shot at Siri, Apple’s own entrenched AI assistant. While Assistant has been available on Android for a while now, how does the AI assistant stack up against Siri when its forced to go head-to-head on Apple’s far more limited playing field? We put the two head-to-head.

Let’s get one thing out of the way: no matter what movies like Limitless claim, humans use more than 10 percent of our brains. This isn’t a surprise to a lot of people, but there’s more to the science of our cognitive potential than knowing that it can’t be true that 90 percent of our gray matter is inactive.

Back in 1991, when David Lynch and Mark Frost’s groundbreaking TV melodrama Twin Peaks was cancelled, it left viewers with a lot of unanswered questions. Some of them were central to the series’ dreamy, surreal mysteries. Others were more immediate, and were deliberately left dramatically hanging in the series finale, which left so many characters apparently dead, and protagonist Dale Cooper possessed or outright replaced by an evil spirit. Fans hoped to see Cooper’s story resolved in the subsequent movie... Читать дальше...

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

At first glance, Panasonic’s latest Toughbook — the Toughbook 33 — looks a lot like every other Toughbook model out there. Rugged exterior, covered ports, bulky plastic design clearly meant more for durability than aesthetics.

Ah, Friday! The most wonderful day of the week, for today we escape our work prisons to sit on our couches and avoid showering for the next two days. If you’re flipping through your Netflix queue looking for some new show to binge, look no further than the CW’s Riverdale. The first season, an easy-to-digest 13-episode drama, just joined the streaming service.

Back in November, Google released artificial intelligence experiment that asks you to draw a random object and see if the neural network can identify your doodle. Quick, Draw! was eventually turned into a tool that transformed drawings into clip art based on the best results it got, helping people add a visual icon to their work without requiring any particular artistic talent.

Another dwarf planet at the edge of the Solar System has been found to have a small companion moon. The world, named 2007 OR10, is the third largest dwarf planet that we know about — around 955 miles wide. The discovery was made possible by three NASA space telescopes, and it means we have found moons around practically every large dwarf planet more than 600 miles across in our cosmic neighborhood.

Medium’s subscription service didn’t start off with all that many (any, really) features, but the company has just added a big one: audio recordings of some of the site’s top stories.

Evolutionary biology tells us this story: everything evolved to make us better at reproducing. Everything has a function — and decoration is no exception. The peacock’s elaborate tail seems useless, but actually it tells us how genetically superior the bird must be if it can survive even with that unwieldy mass of feathers.

Ford today is releasing a software update to its model-year 2016 vehicles so that the entire fleet will be able to use Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. Which is awesome news, because I still haven’t forgiven SYNC 3 for butchering Nilay’s name.

Netflix’s first Cannes Film Festival was off to a rocky start last night, when audiences at Bong Joon-ho’s Okja premiere booed the Netflix title card.