Новости за 09.06.2017

Cortana might be getting a makeover. Two separate reports today from Thurrott and Windows Central mention the possibility of a changed UI for Cortana that’ll make it more conversational. Generally, both stories allude to the idea that Microsoft is trying to make it easier to both discover and regularly interact with its virtual assistant.

One of the key features of iOS 11, which Apple announced earlier this week, is augmented reality. But Apple’s ho-hum demo during the event — a tabletop game, similar to what we’ve seen from other AR projects like Google’s Tango — still left a lot of us wondering how iOS developers would use AR once they got their hands on the tool that powers it. Thankfully, they’re already sharing their first results, and many of them are wonderfully weird.

Apple’s next iPhones, due out some time in the fall, won’t be capable of gigabit cellular connections due to the company’s contentious legal battle with smartphone modem supplier Qualcomm, according to a report today from Bloomberg.

At the wrap of Apple’s WWDC keynote, we learned that the company was set to announce Business Chat, a new tool that will allow businesses to add a live chat / customer support feature. But unlike what currently exists with Twitter’s DM feature or Facebook’s Messenger for Business, Apple’s platform won’t require businesses to have a social media presence, as customers can simply search for them on Spotlight, Siri, or Maps.

Being aboard the International Space Station gives astronaut Jack Fischer an excuse to play with his food — making mundane drinks like coffee much more fun.

This week, NASA announced its newest class of astronauts: 12 extremely qualified individuals who will train for the next two years to fly to space. While many of these new hires have a few shared traits — such as degrees in STEM or flight experience — they all have extremely diverse interests and backgrounds. The new group includes former military personnel, doctors, marine biologists, engineers, and a geologist who worked on the Mars Curiosity rover.

Dan Scavino, the White House social media director, broke the law when he lambasted a Congressman on social media, the Office of Special Counsel said in a letter today.

We recently celebrated that Apple at long last made the decision to change its volume control in iOS 11 to something less intrusive (which, to be fair, would be almost anything but what it currently is). Coincidentally, at the same time, Redditors were having a field day over in r/ProgrammerHumor in a thread that begs the question, “Who can make the best volume slider?” The results have been pouring in since. Some are the volume slider equivalent of chindogu — not useful, but also, not useless ... 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.

Horror movies are never really about the terror they put on display. Even when monster movies are marketed and sold around a creature, they’re often just using those monsters as stand-ins. Instead, horror is a way to address larger societal concerns and fears, whether it’s the critique of white privilege in Jordan Peele’s Get Out or the anxieties of modern sexuality in It Follows.

I was really excited to see Apple talk about VR at WWDC this year. It's a sign that Apple can embrace a market it doesn't entirely control, or possibly even fully understand.

Taylor Swift’s entire catalogue is back on Spotify. Her first three albums haven’t been available since November 2014, and her October 2014 release 1989 has never been on the service before today. It’s the end of what has inarguably been the biggest, messiest controversy of the paid streaming era, and my colleague Micah Singleton has plenty of thoughts on how it happened and what it means for the music industry.

Let’s answer the main question right out of the gate: the reason Taylor Swift brought her albums back onto Spotify and to platforms she’s overlooked in the past few years, like Amazon Music and Pandora Premium, isn’t because Katy Perry released Witness (although it may have something to do with the timing) or because Swift’s last album, 1989, sold 10 million copies (this is the official reasoning for the release) — it’s because of the new licensing deal between her distributor Universal Music Group and Spotify... Читать дальше...

For years, the Syfy Channel was home to a range of space-opera TV serials like Andromeda, Battlestar Galactica, Farscape, and Stargate SG-1. But after a 2009 rebranding, Syfy moved away from space shows. Three years ago, the network’s programming returned to space with three new shows: Dark Matter, Killjoys, and The Expanse.

The two-volume soundtrack for Netflix’s Stranger Things makes for some good ambient listening, but until now, it’s only been available as a digital download or on CD. If you really want to get your nostalgia kick on, you’re in luck: Lakeshore Records is releasing both volumes in vinyl and cassette form later this summer.

SiriusXM has agreed to invest $480 million in Pandora, giving it a 19 percent stake in the streaming music company.

A silly gimmick doesn’t get in the way of the U11’s strengths

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Activists from Venezuela to Bahrain are falling victim to a devious new account hack, according to a report from the digital rights group Access Now. Called a “DoubleSwitch” attack, the hack begins with a simple account takeover, but is followed by a number of name changes designed to cover the attacker’s tracks and bewilder followers.

Curved ultrawide monitors are having a bit of a moment these days in the desktop computer world, and the Samsung CHG90, at an eye-dropping 49-inches wide, might just be the wildest one yet.

Nintendo’s latest venture is something of a hybrid game. Called Arms, it stars a cast of near-future fighters with Slinkies for arms, who duel in stadium-like arenas packed with adoring crowds. It’s a fighting game, yes, but it’s not exactly a traditional one like Street Fighter or Tekken. At the same time, it’s also not as immediately intuitive in the way that boxing in Wii Sports was. It straddles the line between depth and accessibility, and that can make it unclear who the target audience of Arms actually is. Читать дальше...

Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella plan to visit the White House this month, Bloomberg reports, for the first meeting of a Jared Kushner-led council that aims to “transform and modernize” government digital services. Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt will also attend the meeting of the American Technology Council on June 19th, according to Bloomberg, along with executives from IBM and Oracle.

Taylor Swift is making her albums available on all music streaming services tonight, including Spotify, Google Play, and Amazon Music, three years after she pulled her back catalog from Spotify. The pop star’s management team confirmed the news via Twitter, saying that the move to make Swift’s catalog available came in celebration of 1989 selling more than 10 million copies worldwide.

Google-owner Alphabet Inc. has agreed to sell robotics firm Boston Dynamics to SoftBank, the Japanese telecommunications and technology company. Terms of the deal remain undisclosed, but news of Alphabet’s intentions to sell Boston Dynamics first surfaced back in March 2016. That was roughly two years after Android co-founder Andy Rubin left Google, where he spearheaded a series of prominent robotics acquisitions, most prominently Boston Dynamics. That division, known internally as Replicant, was disbanded after Rubin’s departure... Читать дальше...

Microsoft is releasing a new test version of Windows 10, build number 16215, today and there’s a lot of changes on the way. If you’re a Windows Insider on the Fast Ring then it’s available immediately, for everyone else all of the new features will arrive in the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update later this year.

It really feels like 2017 is the year of the drone. We got news that Drone Racing League is returning to ESPN in June, the DJI Spark wowed us as “the best starter drone on the market right now,” and there’s even a Kickstarter for a water-friendly drone from SwellPro that floats. Now, Voliro’s concept hexacopter is here — an acrobatic wonder drone that can stably fly in an array of arial configurations, thanks to individually tiltable axes.