Новости за 16.06.2017

Kim Kardashian is jumping on the hype wave and releasing a fidget spinner. The spinner is a gold money symbol and it says “daddy,” which is apt since it’s called the Daddy Money Fidget Spinner. It can be yours — with a seven-day shipping delay because these things take time — for the low price of $15, plus $4 for shipping

Whenever a product is updated, there inevitably are people who grumble about change and wish things had stayed the same. Yesterday, Twitter rolled out a hefty redesign that includes a new side tab, generous amounts of white space, and most importantly to the internet writ large, rounded corners everywhere.

Released through 2015, Life is Strange was a successful experiment in episodic gaming, thanks largely to its focus on narrative storytelling that pulled players from one segment to the next. The final, collected story digs into the secrets and trials of Max, a high school student who discovers she has the ability to rewind time.

The YotaPhone 3 has apparently been announced at a conference in Northern China. The successor to the YotaPhone 2, which made some waves when it came with an E Ink display on its back, will also feature a rear E Ink display, with an AMOLED screen on the front.

Lorde’s sophomore album Melodrama is out today, marking the 20-year-old pop star’s first release since September 2013. That feels like a very long time ago, and that’s because it was. But at the risk of stretching your brain farther than it wants to go on a Friday afternoon, I’d like to take us back for a minute to the year 2008.

Samsara luggage is betting that the current crop of smart suitcase buyers are more interested in design upgrades than additional (and sometimes unneeded) integrated tech features. Its premiere design is currently 5x overfunded on Kickstarter, and is primarily hype-worthy not for its tech, but for its design and what it’s made of: aluminum alloy.

Bungie’s upcoming Destiny 2 is going to be more than just a fresh start when it comes to the game’s quests, multiplayer structure, and expansive list of guns, armor, and other collectibles. In a brutally honest interview with Kotaku’s Jason Schreier this week at E3, game director Luke Smith says the development team is effectively rebooting the core narrative pillar of the Destiny universe. It’s all starting with a complete scrubbing of any mention of The Darkness, the ominous yet vague unifying... Читать дальше...

Amazon announced what is by far its largest acquisition ever today: a $13.7 billion deal to buy Whole Foods, the popular, pricey, and frequently organic grocery chain. That’s more than 10 times what Amazon paid for Zappos, its prior top acquisition, in 2009. It underscores just to how seriously Amazon values its future role in the grocery business.

It’s rare that a game becomes one of the biggest wins and the biggest losses of E3 at the same time, but The Last Night — a cyberpunk side-scroller made by indie studio Odd Tales — may have done it. The Last Night’s stylish, neon-drenched trailer was a highlight of Microsoft’s annual press conference, overshadowing much bigger games from much larger teams. But not long after the show, a series of controversial tweets surfaced from co-creator Tim Soret, suggesting that the game would reflect the... Читать дальше...

SeaBubbles, the startup that wants to be the Uber of water taxis, was in Paris this week for the Viva Tech conference to show off its prototype and woo regulators and investors. It also released a slickly produced concept video that shows what it would be like to ride in one of the company’s speedy, egg-shaped vessels.

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The CRTC, Canada’s wireless regulator, has ruled that every cellphone sold in the country must be unlocked, and carriers can no longer charge their customers to unlock their current devices, according to the CBC. The rules will take effect on December 1st, allowing customers to move to different carriers with their device as they wish.

Nearly two months after the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus’ launch, users might finally be getting access to one of the phones’ main selling points: a new virtual assistant called Bixby. Today Samsung announced an assistant preview in which some S8 and S8 Plus owners can test Bixby’s voice features before anyone else.

This week, Verizon released a new, dumb flip phone. Called the LG Exalt LTE, it only connects to Verizon’s 4G LTE network — that means no 3G network option for phone calls. This is a first for the company across all its devices, not just flip phones. I’m not entirely sure who the modern market is for this phone, or for dumb flip phones in general. Maybe people who are tired of the internet constantly feeding them bad news and negatively impacting their mental health?

E3 felt different this year, and not in a subtle way. For the first time, the Entertainment Software Association sold 15,000 tickets to a video game trade show that had previously been accessible only to industry insiders and the press. And E3 transformed to meet them, building physical spaces that served as temples for the digital worlds they represent. Game developers have always built massive structures for E3, but these served a different purpose. The result was an event that felt less like... Читать дальше...

Today, Cars 3 becomes the first Pixar film to be distributed in 4DX, the motion-based “immersive” film format from Seoul’s CJ 4DPlex. 4DX is one of a handful of formats that attempt to turn traditional, passive filmgoing into something more experiential: seats shake, tilt, and pivot, while environmental effects like air blasts, scents, sprays of water, and in-theater fog and strobe lighting echo what’s happening on the screen. Imagine Star Tours, only while you’re watching a movie, and you’ll get the idea. Читать дальше...

Day two of The Vergecast this week! Yesterday, Nilay interviewed Brian Merchant, author of The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone. Today, we have another full episode with a lot going on.

When people ask me about gaming headphones, I respond with the exasperated sigh and bitter look of Marcus Fenix. The atrocities I've heard under the banner of capital-G Gaming have almost completely put me off from the category, however 2017 is doing a lot to draw me back. First there was Logitech's excellent wireless G533 in January, and shortly thereafter I got ahold of — deep breath — the Turtle Beach Elite Pro Tournament Gaming Headset. The promises surrounding this $170 pair of gaming cans... Читать дальше...

Samsung showed off The Frame, a TV made to resemble a piece of artwork on your wall, back at CES this year, and now it’s finally making it available to purchase. The Frame will start at $1,999 for the 55-inch version, while the 65-inch model will retail for $2,799.

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a new allergy shot medication that will directly compete with Mylan’s EpiPen, the allergy medicine that’s been heavily criticized for being unaffordable. It’s not clear how much the new medication will cost, but manufacturer Adamis Pharmaceuticals Corporation says it’ll be a cheaper alternative to the EpiPen.

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.

Amazon is buying American supermarket chain Whole Foods for $13.7 billion, the online retail giant announced today. The acquisition is technically happening as part of a merger agreement that will see Amazon pick up the supermarket’s net debt and purchase its stock at $42 per share. The brick-and-mortar stores will continue to operate under the Whole Foods brand once the deal is complete, which is expected to happen later this year, but is subject to approval by regulators and the supermarket’s shareholders. Читать дальше...

France’s national railway operator aims to have autonomous high-speed TGV trains running by 2023, according to a report from FranceInfo. The train operator, known by the French acronym SNCF, will begin testing a prototype of its so-called “drone train” in 2019, FranceInfo reports.

Microsoft has quietly unveiled a new “Modern Keyboard” with an integrated fingerprint reader. The Modern Keyboard is the successor to the Surface Keyboard, and looks identical. The only changes are a new fingerprint reader and the ability to use a cable for a wired connection instead of wireless.

Amazon’s long been a go-to for people to online price compare while shopping at brick-and-mortars. Now, a new patent granted to the company could prevent people from doing just that inside Amazon’s own stores.