Новости за 12.06.2017

Ubisoft announced a new pirate game called Skull and Bones at its E3 keynote: a shared world where you can team up with friends to sail and loot your way to pirate supremacy.

President Trump’s twitter habit has been a force for chaos since the early days of the campaign — but now, Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) has a plan to make sure those tweets end up in a permanent archive. Named after one of Trump’s most bewildering tweets, the COVFEFE Act (short for Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement) would amend the Presidential Records Act to include social media as a documentary material. The proposal has a long way to go, but if it passes, it would... Читать дальше...

Ubisoft Montreal and Elijah Wood’s film studio SpectreVision are working on a virtual reality “psychological thriller” called Transference. We don’t know much about the game, but its trailer combines modern VR imagery with shades of ‘80s techno-horror. It’s apparently about a world where human memories can be digitally recreated, and players navigate “the maze-like puzzle of an impossible home” in a branching narrative about a man and his troubled family. It will star Macon Blair, who starred... Читать дальше...

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, a game that combines Nintendo’s iconic franchise with Ubisoft’s Raving Rabbids in a tactical, turn-based RPG. The game was confirmed today, and will release on August 29th for the Nintendo Switch. Oh, and for some reason, everyone has giant Mega Man-style cannons on their arms.

Adam West died on June 9th, and for Batman fans, his passing stings. West made a tremendous impact on comics and pop culture, embodying a character who’s so ubiquitous, he’s arguably the most important superhero of the modern era. In 2017, it’d be a struggle to find younger fans who’d claim him as their Batman. Comics culture has spent the last few decades running away from the camp that defined the Caped Crusader in West’s 1968 TV show. But as Bob Chipman argues in his latest video essay, it’s... Читать дальше...

Atari has begun teasing a new product called the Ataribox, but right now, the company is being so vague that we have next to no idea what it is.

In a first in the country, a Pakistani man has been sentenced to death for making “blasphemous” remarks on Facebook, according to prosecutors’ comments reported on by The Washington Post.

The Tuesday after Memorial Day weekend, Roambee co-founder Vidya Subramanian got to work at 7AM to find his company’s office in Santa Clara, California, ransacked. The burglars had made such a mess that it was hard to tell at first what was missing. There were monitors and other computer equipment gone, and the entire operations room had been tossed for anything that might fetch a good resale price.

Samsung just announced that the unlocked North American version of the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus are now available through more retailers, including Amazon and Target, along with some enterprise distributers. The best part, though, is that some retailers are offering steep discounts on the unlocked phone out of the gate.

Over the last few years, Facebook has developed a well-deserved reputation as a copycat. Last August, Instagram introduced its take on Snapchat Stories, and the feature was then introduced throughout Facebook’s family of products. The company has previously “adopted” features from competitors — the like from Tumblr, the check-in from Foursquare, the marketplace from Craigslist, and live-streaming video from Meerkat and Twitter. What other services might the company copy within its own family of apps? Читать дальше...

Sony might not have a new console to unveil at E3 2017 this year (unlike Microsoft), but that doesn’t mean that its going to be a quiet year for PlayStation. Sony has announced tons of upcoming games for the PlayStation 4 over the last year, but we’ve yet to really see any gameplay footage or get some concrete information on any of them.

Official Police Business is a column and newsletter by reporter Matt Stroud about new developments in police technology and the way it’s changing law enforcement — think body cameras, cell-site simulators, surveillance systems, and electroshock weapons. Sign up to receive OPB in your email at officialpolicebusiness.com, or check for it here at The Verge.

There are countless peer-to-peer mobile payment processing services nowadays, but few are as “instant” as they appear. Even though your Venmo app might say you’ve sent a friend the $15 you owe for that shared cab ride, it will take a day or two for the friend to withdraw and process the cash out to their bank account.

Microsoft has finally taken the lid off the Xbox One X — formerly known as Project Scorpio — and the company isn't shy about calling its new game machine “the world’s most powerful console.”

Five of the most interesting things in Walt’s personal tech collection

While Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo will all be holding press conferences for their consoles, PC gamers aren’t missing out on the fun at E3 this year. The PC Gaming Show, returning for the third year and hosted by PC Gamer, is designed to give computer-bound gamers a place of their own at the show.

From Microsoft’s perspective, the Xbox One X, the new console built to take advantage of the rapid growth of 4K televisions, is a luxury item. Its diminutive shell contains an abundance of RAM, teraflops, and other expensive bits. For that reason, $499 is a logical price for Microsoft to go with, but it isn’t a competitive one.

USA Today is reporting that Andy Rubin’s Essential Phone has a launch partner in the US: Sprint. That’s not exactly a surprise, when we asked the four major US carriers whether they’d support the Essential phone, three of them offered tepid statements saying it would operate just fine on their network, but Sprint said that “More specific information will be provided at a later date.” That was a hint, it turns out.

It's 2017, so I doubt OnePlus needs an introduction anymore, but let's do it one more time just for fun. OnePlus, an offshoot of big Chinese phone maker Oppo, has been garnering global hype and adulation for its "flagship killer" phones since its first device launched in 2014. Taking a minimalist approach to both price and Android augmentations, the company has been delivering some of the best-value smartphones in recent times, and last year's OnePus 3 and 3T models were easily among my top recommendations. Читать дальше...

Apple extends its tablet lead, but iOS 11 might end up being a bigger deal

It's hard out there for a new pair of wired earphones. It's harder still if they're on Kickstarter instead of a Best Buy retail shelf, and it's hardest of all if they're produced from a complete neophyte of a company. That's the challenge ahead for the StarBrick Be4 in-ear headphones that I've been listening to for the past few days, but I'm encouraged to say they have what it takes to overcome their humble beginnings.

Microsoft unveiled its new Xbox One X game console last night, and the company is using a variety of logos so consumers can tell which games are enhanced for the new system. A new “Xbox One X Enhanced” logo will be visible on retail games and in the Xbox Store, and Microsoft says it lets gamers know “when a developer has done special work to take advantage of Xbox One X’s 6 teraflops of performance, and to distinguish it from existing Xbox One titles.”

Bethesda has clarified its new Creation Club system — the program that will sell additional content to both The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim and Fallout 4 — specifying that the service will not be used to sell existing mods. Creation Club, which was announced during the publisher’s E3 keynote last night, will instead allow players to buy officially sanctioned characters, weapons, and other add-ons created by Bethesda’s own studios and selected third-party developers.

Sony has a new version of the FES Watch, its E Ink watch that can display a variety of faces and band designs at the touch of a button. The FES Watch U adds a metal bezel to the original’s minimalist design, which may or may not to be your taste — it kind of isn’t to mine, though the product does look more refined overall.

It takes a lot to surprise me these days, but Logitech has done it. The PC gear company has just revealed a new Powerplay technology that builds wireless charging directly into its mouse pad, allowing compatible wireless mice to charge constantly while on the pad. As someone with bitter memories of being let down by the feeble batteries of wireless gaming peripherals, I've developed something of a phobia for anything untethered, but this Powerplay action sounds like exactly the thing I've been waiting for. Читать дальше...