Новости за 03.06.2017

Essential hasn’t yet shipped its first smartphone, but Andy Rubin’s new company has already come upon its first trademark dispute. Spigen, a fairly well-known smartphone case and accessory maker, has sent Essential a cease and desist letter demanding that Rubin’s latest business stop using the “Essential” mark. Spigen holds a trademark for the Essential mark that covers a slew of consumer products — though not smartphones directly. Android Police has a good writeup on the situation.

If you live in Canada, you can now preorder a Google Home device. In an ironic twist, Google has beaten Amazon to Canada when it comes to smart assistants — the Echo still isn’t available in the country, despite being available for two years in the US.

Last week, after the Alamo Drafthouse theater in Austin, Texas announced that it would host a screening of Wonder Woman limited to women (with proceeds benefiting Planned Parenthood), the men’s-rights types of the world lost it. The screening, just one of dozens of Wonder Woman screenings scheduled at the Drafthouse, was deemed “sexist,” “illegal,” “tacky,” and “bigoted.” After New York City’s Drafthouse location announced similar screenings, one man filed a civil rights complaint against Alamo Drafthouse. Читать дальше...

When it comes to school projects, some parents go all out. One father did just that recently when he constructed an amazing snowspeeder from The Empire Strikes Back out of cardboard for his daughter to take to school.

"Don't see an Alien sequel" is some of the most reliable moviegoing advice you can get, but Covenant looked gorgeous — and its reviews have been pretty good, too — so I went to check it out last weekend.

You now have another opportunity to save on the Echo Dot if you missed out on Amazon’s flash deal last week. For a few days only, Amazon is offering a targeted sale on the Echo Dot, and it’s adding the Echo to the mix (restrictions listed below).

Science fiction is a genre that’s uniquely suited for making the internal into the external. Authors can take an intangible issue, whether it’s a relationship problem, a philosophical belief, or a scientific quandary, and make it material. John Kessel’s new novel The Moon and the Other does just that, playing out a complex, but relevant story about politics, gender identity, and social conflict through a series of characters living on Earth’s inhabited Moon. A wonderful, complicated, and beautiful novel... Читать дальше...

It’s been an eventful two years since Neill Blomkamp’s last film, Chappie, hit theaters. He spent part of that time working to develop a fifth installment of the Alien franchise, only to have it overtaken by Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant. At the same time, he directed an installment of BMW’s The Hire series, starring Clive Owen, and signed on to help write and direct an adaptation of Thomas Sweterlitsch’s upcoming novel The Gone World.

If you were at a Disney park over the Memorial Day weekend, the crushing lines were likely even more intense than expected. On one coast, the company’s Animal Kingdom park officially opened Pandora, its immersive land inspired by James Cameron’s Avatar, while in California the public began riding the new attraction Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout! It was a one-two punch that underscored the company’s brand-focused strategy under the stewardship of CEO Bob Iger: our theme parks are movies, and movies are our theme parks. Читать дальше...

Flipp is a Kickstarter project with a single goal: enable you to easily control your music. As the enthusiastic pitch video points out, there are plenty of smart home remotes that are packed with tons of features for controlling all sorts of things in your home — but sometimes, you just want a simple way to listen to music.

Minnesota is grappling with 73 cases of measles right now — more cases than the entire country had last year. The outbreak is thanks to people who don’t vaccinate their children, according to the Minnesota Department of Health. These people wrongly believe a debunked theory that vaccination causes autism.