Новости за 15.06.2017

Last E3, Cory Barlog revealed a wildly ambitious plan for his update on God of War: the game would take place in a single, uninterrupted shot. This year, the director shared that, in the early days of production, some members of the development team were hesitant to take on the ambitious plan. So, to show the power of the film technique when done well, he screened the hospital scene from John Woo’s action movie masterpiece, Hard Boiled.

Netflix has renewed Bill Nye’s talk show, Bill Nye Saves the World, for a second season. The series, which blended comedy and science, premiered back in April with 13 episodes. A premiere date for the new season will be announced later this year.

An area larger than the state of Texas in West Antarctica melted to an unusual degree last year, with pools of the meltwater remaining on the surface for as long as 15 days. That’s trouble, since meltwater can accelerate the thawing already occurring from warming ocean temperatures. West Antarctica alone could contribute 10 feet of sea level rise, according to a 2009 paper published in Science.

Lyft likes to set lofty goals for itself. Last year, one of the ride-hail company’s founders went on record predicting that “a majority” of Lyft’s trips will be in self-driving cars by 2021. Now Lyft says it wants to be less of a pollutant, too. The company is setting a goal for itself that all of the electric, autonomous vehicles on its platform will be powered by “100% renewable energy.”

When Ubisoft showed off the new sequel to its open-world racer The Crew on Monday, the publisher wanted to keep a big secret under wraps until players could try the game here on the E3 show floor. Considering The Crew 2 will let you switch with ease between cars, bikes, boats, and planes of all shapes and sizes, it’s worth asking how exactly you’ll be able to move from one vehicle type to another.

Sony’s new God of War on PS4 will be the first game in the series to ditch quick time events, according to its director Cory Barlog. The franchise is arguably most responsible for popularizing the quick time event design, which allows players to have minimal input into elaborate and cinematic action sequences.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is rethinking his approach to philanthropy in hopes of better assisting people who need help right now. Earlier this afternoon, Bezos asked Twitter users for suggestions on where his money and efforts would be best directed. “This tweet is a request for ideas,” Bezos said, explaining that he wants his philanthropic work to be less focused on the long term and more “at the intersection of urgent need and lasting impact.”

If DirectTV Now hasn’t been able to tempt you yet with a free Apple TV set-top box, a free year of HBO, or its limited time launch offer, AT&T still isn’t done trying. In its latest promotion, AT&T is offering up to two Roku Premiere boxes for any new DirecTV Now, AT&T Unlimited Choice, or Unlimited Plus customer that prepays for two months of service.

After a few months of wishy-washy statements on net neutrality indicating that the company had largely given up on it, Netflix is changing course. In a tweet today, the company wrote: “Netflix will never outgrow the fight for #NetNeutrality. Everyone deserves an open Internet.” It also linked to the Battle for the Net campaign, indicating that Netflix had signed on to take action.

Scientists on Twitter have been working long and hard to answer one of the universe’s million-dollar questions: what is the worst smell in the world?

To try and edge the United States ahead of other countries in the arms race of building supercomputers, the Department of Energy today awarded a total of $258 million in funding to HPE, Cray, AMD, Intel, IBM, and Nvidia. The money will be put toward developing exascale computers, which are capable of a billion calculations per second.

Recently 8Bitdo added Switch support for its assortment of Nintendo-inspired Bluetooth game controllers, via a firmware update. Now 8Bitdo is adding some more Bluetooth controllers to the family, again with obvious design cues from Nintendo's classic hardware.

This weekend is Father’s Day. A fake holiday, some might say, but an opportunity to do something nice for your dad, nonetheless. So long as he is a dad who deserves anything nice, I think you should take this opportunity.

An extended demonstration of Days Gone came a few announcements into PlayStation’s E3 press event, surrounded by the rest of the console’s upcoming releases. This is fitting placement for a game that, as it’s being presented in behind-closed-doors sessions, feels buried beneath the features of its contemporaries, never elucidating how or if it will be ready to break loose and establish its own identity.

When faced with an order from the US government to hand over records under a controversial surveillance law, an American tech company fought back in court, according to a previously secret 2014 ruling contained in records that was obtained through lawsuits from the ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Sega is releasing two new Sonic the Hedgehog games this year that represent polar opposites of the sides of the franchise. On one hand, there's Sonic Mania. Due to release this summer, it’s a retro, 16-bit-styled 2D platformer that appears to ignore any Sonic games released after Sonic and Knuckles in 1994. And on the other end of the spectrum is Sonic Forces, the latest entry in the ongoing 3D Sonic series. The two Sonics were set back-to-back at Sega's booth — stand on one side of a wall, and... Читать дальше...

It took him over two years of development, but this daring Swede was recently propelled aloft for around eight minutes of flight in his homemade electric multirotor. And what a glorious eight minutes it was.

In Western fiction, dystopic stories often ask, "What if this atrocity had happened to white people instead?"

We’re doing two episodes of The Vergecast this week: the usual one on Friday, and this very special edition with Brian Merchant, author of The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone.

This is the Green4U Panoz Racing GT-EV, and while it might look like a giant BattleBot, it’s actually a new all-electric racecar that could run in the 24 Hours of Le Mans — next year, that is.

Earlier this week, Penguin Random House announced that it will be adapting Charlie Booker’s anthology television series Black Mirror as a series of books. This is a fun change of pace: usually, it’s a novel or short story that gets adapted for film or television, not the other way around.

Toy robotics company Sphero is building its business around connected play, or the idea of toys that theoretically never age because they’re frequent refreshed by software updates. We’ve seen this idea realized in the company’s BB-8 and Lightning McQueen toys, both of which were designed to accompany Disney movies. Now, Sphero is releasing yet another toy — a talking Spider-Man — that continues to expand its connected toy line.

Dear Silicon Valley,

I need your expertise. Can you find my refrigerator?

Maybe it’s you, Amazon, with your visionary fleet of robotic drones? Or perhaps Uber, you will begin to operate as a problem solver rather than a problem child? Or Apple, maybe you can build a find-my-fridge app. New York City — and maybe all cities — needs a smart delivery service to help save local businesses from themselves.

The refrigerator I ordered is somewhere in a delivery truck in the tri-state area. Читать дальше...

Microsoft unveiled a radical redesign for Skype earlier this month, with a new look that has Snapchat-like features. While the company has overhauled its Skype apps, there’s also a new Skype logo that ditches the fluffy cloud aspects of the past. Brand New has a closer look at the new logo, and a comparison to the old one that everyone knows.

Microsoft first revealed it would allow Xbox gamers to play against PS4 and PC players at E3 last year, and Sony’s initial reaction seemed like it would be open to the idea. "We would be happy to have the conversation with any publishers or developers who are interested in cross platform play,” said a Sony spokesperson at the time. This week at E3, both Rocket League and Minecraft are going cross-platform play, allowing players on Nintendo’s Switch, a Windows PC, Mac, or Xbox One to play against each other. Читать дальше...