Новости за 04.07.2017

An early wave of modern human ancestors interbred with Neanderthals between 470,000 and 220,000 years ago, a new DNA discovery from an ancient Neanderthal thigh bone suggests. That’s much earlier than experts had thought, and it could help explain why human DNA seems to be appearing in Neanderthal genomes much earlier than it should.

Thousands of listings from online marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy are now filled with unsightly error images by Photobucket after the photo hosting site quietly introduced a $399 annual fee to users who want to embed images on third party websites. Users are now accusing Photobucket of extortion, as the service failed to make the update to its terms of service abundantly clear.

A new leaked photo of Lenovo’s new Moto device has surfaced, coupled with a report on detailed specs and a more exact release date from VentureBeat.

For most people, self-driving cars are just an abstraction, something they read about occasionally in the press but still consider a far-off, futuristic fantasy. They read the headlines and scoff, “Not in my lifetime.” But the events of this past month may help put a lot of that skepticism to rest. There was a flurry of activity in both Congress and the private sector over the past few weeks, signaling a key shift in the trajectory of self-driving cars and proving that these vehicles are much closer to reality than most people think. Читать дальше...

Ticketmaster is launching a new ticketing system that can passively check attendees into events using audio data from smartphones to reduce entry wait time. Rather than manually scanning a QR code or a barcode from a paper ticket, a “smart tone” technology can receive attendee’s data over their smartphone’s ultrasonic sound transmission to verify their mobile ticket and ID, allowing people to cruise in simply by showing a green approved screen on their phones.

Like so many of us, Snoop Dogg seems a little put off by having to sign up for Tidal for exclusive albums. The rapper admitted online that he doesn’t use Jay-Z’s premier streaming service, and had to get a pirated copy of the Tidal-exclusive new album 4:44 through a friend.

A few days ago, a Twitter user by the name Makenna posted a photo of herself cleaning President Donald Trump’s Hollywood Walk of Fame star, which had been defaced numerous times since the election (most notably with a swastika). “Nothing but respect for MY president,” she declared, adding the hashtag “#RaisedRight.”

Samsung has already missed its deadline to launch a full version of Bixby’s voice features in the US by spring. But according to a new report by The Korea Herald, the delay wasn’t caused by just linguistic issues of Bixby struggling to understand English. Samsung also lacks enough data needed to develop Bixby’s deep learning technology.

The BBC announced today that it plans to spend about $44 million (£34 million) in online children’s content across the next three years, responding to the rise of Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon. The plan goes into effect immediately.

In pursuit of a better bang, two unlikely industries are working to develop greener, cleaner-burning pyrotechnics. Hollywood wants less smoke — and the military doesn't want to contaminate its training sites.

It’s just a ruin in a field now, but in 15th-century England, Boxley Abbey was a hotspot for the faithful. Pilgrims would travel from across the land to see a statue of Christ on the cross that was housed in the monastery and was known as the Rood of Grace. On holy days, the Christ would come alive, with a contemporary account describing how the figure hypnotized crowds with its ability to:

One of the many things that gaming company Valve is famous for is its flat internal hierarchy, which is devoid of managers. This week Valve is expanding that democratic philosophy to the professional aspect of its most lucrative game, Dota 2, by announcing a new tournament structure for the 2017-2018 season, which will commence after the conclusion of The International (TI) 7 in August, Dota's centerpiece event every year.

Tencent announced this week that it will limit the amount of time children can play the role-playing mobile game Honor of Kings, amid concerns that some kids were becoming addicted.

Samsung is working on a smart speaker powered by its new Bixby voice assistant, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. The project is said to be codenamed Vega, but little more is known about the device; its features and specifications are apparently yet to be decided, much less a release date.

An unexplained stock market data error this evening appears to have set some companies listed on the Nasdaq exchange to a share price of $123.47, sending some tech companies’ stock prices crashing and others’ soaring.

Microsoft reorganized its global sales force today to heighten its focus on selling cloud services instead of standalone pieces of software, according to The Wall Street Journal. The reorganization, just the latest in a series of structural changes the company has undergone since former CEO Steve Ballmer resigned and Satya Nadella took over in 2014, won’t immediately result in layoffs. Yet the WSJ reports that thousands of jobs could be cut down the line as a result of the sales shuffle.