Новости за 14.07.2017

Game of Thrones has never been about giving readers or viewers what they most want. It’s more about creating fan expectations, then overturning them for narrative impact — and sometimes for pure shock value. But as long as the series is running, we can all live in hope that at least a few of the characters will come to a satisfying, well-deserved ending. That’s why there’s Game of Thrones Hope Chest, a new weekly poll where we put all our hopes together in one place. We aren’t asking what you think is going to happen on Game of Thrones... Читать дальше...

Planet of the Apes movement choreographer and actor Terry Notary says playing an ape takes strong legs and an ability to reach a kind of effortless, meditative state. If performers consciously try too hard to take on ape-like qualities, Notary says, it “makes the performance look crappy.”

Spider-Man: Homecoming is a great little movie, thanks to its small focus and deeply personal stakes. Peter Parker is one of the greatest comic book characters ever created, because where heroes like Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne face huge conflicts, Peter’s a regular teenager with everyday problems, and he strains to be worthy of the title “superhero.”

Game of Thrones returns on Sunday, and oh dear has a lot happened since the show first aired in 2011. If you haven’t made time or had the emotional fortitude to sit through six seasons of gut-wrenching deaths, shocks, and scheming, again, HBO has you covered. The show’s official YouTube channel has released a handy, five-minute video that recaps the last six seasons of the show in regards to the its major (remaining) players.

Google’s latest artificial intelligence experiment is taking in Street View imagery from Google Maps and transforming it into professional-grade photography through post-processing — all without a human touch. Hui Fang, a software engineer on Google’s Machine Perception team, says the project uses machine learning techniques to train a deep neural network to scan thousands of Street View images in California for shots with impressive landscape potential. The software then “mimics the workflow... Читать дальше...

Google is adding a new feature to Google Maps that not only tells you how to get somewhere or how long the trip should take, but when the best time to leave is (via Android Police).

Juicero, the Silicon Valley equivalent of an overturned truck full of slime eels, has apparently started to recognize its mistakes. According to Fortune, Juicero’s newish CEO, Jeff Dunn, emailed employees about making a “strategic shift” to lower-cost machines and juice packets. “The current prices of $399 for the Press and $5 - $7 for produce Packs are not a realistic way for us to fulfill our mission at the scale to which we aspire,” he reportedly wrote.

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.

Since the end of June, YouTube has been slowly rolling out GIF-like video thumbnails that play three seconds of the video. As of this writing, many already have this feature on their YouTube pages, although it has been available to a select few as early as February.

Indie hit Superhot, which introduced an ingenious time-bending feature to the first-person shooter genre, is coming to the PlayStation platform next week, including in virtual reality. Both the original and its VR counterpart will be available in Europe starting July 19th, while North American customers can access the games via PSN on July 21st. Each version will cost $24.99 separately, or in a bundle for $39.99. Superhot was confirmed for PS VR back at E3, but it didn’t have a concrete release date at the time. Читать дальше...

Welcome back to another week of The Vergecast. Nilay, Paul, and Dieter sit down in the studio to bring you the news that hit our site this week. First off, the net neutrality day of action was on Wednesday, as was Nilay’s piece on the matter. The gang debate the issue in this net neutrality “season” of news.

Recording phone calls on an iPhone can be a pain. You either have to pay for an app that probably only works through a custom dialer (or the phone app, which doesn’t help if you need to make a call through WhatsApp, Skype, or a different service), or you end up using a tape recorder or another phone to record the call over speaker. But PhotoFast is attempting to fix this problem with its Call Recorder adapter.

Today, Verily — formerly Google Life Sciences — began releasing bacteria-infected male mosquitoes in Fresno, California.

A Russian Soyuz rocket launched a whopping 73 satellites into space this morning, sending the spacecraft into three different orbits around Earth. The satellites — ranging from tiny probes the size of a shoebox to a half-ton satellite the size of a car — rode together into space, arranged in a tall tower stacked on top of the rocket. It’s the most amount of satellites a Soyuz has ever put into space at one time.

Samsung has a new app for its Android smartphones called Game Live, which lets users live stream games to Twitch, Facebook, or YouTube, as spotted via Android Police.

It’s hard to describe A Ghost Story without using words like “haunting” and “spectral,” terms that sound like bad puns. But they’re also accurate descriptions of how the film feels. The film, which opened on the coasts on July 7 and is now entering wide release, is one of the leading contenders for the best film of 2017. Its moody, melancholy story is like a melody that sneaks into your head and won’t go away. A Ghost Story is the latest from David Lowery, the writer-director of the grim 2013... Читать дальше...

If you like classic science fiction, one of the genre’s best magazines can now be found online for free. Archive.org is now home to a collection of Galaxy Science Fiction, which published some of the genre’s best works, such as an early version of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man.

On Thursday afternoon, a photograph of a car trailing a massive stream of snot and also possibly eels began appearing on Twitter. It was a horror show — and the people had questions. Like, what in the world happened? And does insurance cover slime damage?

The latest phone to hit AT&T Prepaid is probably the best deal on the service. The ZTE Blade Spark is a $99 Android device with pretty average specs for a $99 phone, with the exception of the fingerprint sensor on the back.

There are a lot of different startups trying to turn drone racing into a serious, professional sport and moneymaking league. So far, the folks at the Drone Racing League, or DRL for short, have gotten the most traction. The league has scored a lot of venture capital and big TV deals. We caught a race in London recently and came away impressed.

Windows Phone may be dying, but that doesn’t mean it’s dead yet. And, yes, while Microsoft did recently killed off support for Windows Phone 8.1, leaving just Windows 10 Mobile handsets as the company’s only supported smartphone devices, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t still Windows 10 phones coming out.

Yes, I know, you don’t need any more help getting excited for the Game of Thrones premiere this weekend. You’re good! You’re all set! Well, sorry, because this video is nice, and I think you’ll enjoy it. YouTube’s The Solomon Society has put together a five-minute montage of the most beautiful shots from the first six seasons of Game of Thrones. Watch it if you’ve read more than enough recaps and predictions and essays and think pieces and just want to remember how stunning the show’s cinematography and effects are. Читать дальше...

Google Play Music has offered New Release Radio exclusively on the Galaxy S8 as an “early access feature” since June. The station will work similarly to Spotify’s Release Radar, by offering you a personalized stream of music based on your tastes.

You can get an Oculus Rift with Touch controllers for $399 right now, a major saving of around $200. But Oculus just made an announcement that makes this summer sale look less dramatic — after it ends in around five weeks, the bundle will be newly priced at $499.

At two minutes after midnight on May 12th, the hyperloop became a little bit less of a pipe dream and little bit more of a reality. On that day, the Los Angeles-based startup Hyperloop One conducted the first full-system test of its technology in the desert north of Las Vegas. As several dozen of the company’s engineers and executives watched an array of monitors nervously, a metal sled accelerated to 70 mph (112 km/h), achieved levitation, and flew about 500 feet (152 meters) down the length... Читать дальше...