Новости за 24.07.2017

Justice League — the DC Extended Universe’s upcoming superhero team-up movie — has spent the last few weeks filming reshoots under the guidance of Joss Whedon (who replaced original director Zack Snyder, who stepped out for personal reasons).

Last week, Der Spiegel published an explosive report alleging that the major German automakers formed a secret cartel in the 1990s to collude on diesel emissions. These companies, including Volkswagen, Audi, BMW, Porsche, and Daimler, met in secret working groups to discuss “the technology, costs, suppliers, and even the exhaust gas purification of its diesel vehicles,” the German weekly reported. The meetings were disclosed to German competition officials in letters from VW and Daimler and viewed by Der Spiegel. Читать дальше...

Alphabet just reported its second quarter earnings for 2017, and the numbers were as expected. The advertising business built around Google, Android, and YouTube continues to account for the vast majority of the revenue and all the profit. The company, despite its massive size, continues to grow revenue at a double-digit rate on a year-over-year basis. And while it’s true that profit was down a bit this quarter, that’s only on account of a one-time, $2.7 billion fine levied by regulators in the European Union. Читать дальше...

Buried in the settings of Chrome OS has been an option to use an “OK, Google” prompt to start a verbal Google search. But according to a report from Chrome Unboxed, Google is deprecating that feature in an upcoming version of Chrome OS.

Mercedes-Benz will compete in Formula E, the all-electric racing series, starting in 2019. The news was announced today after months of speculation over whether the German automaker would exercise an option it had purchased to join the series back in October.

The official release of Android O must be getting close, as Google has just pushed out the latest version of its public beta — and it’s performing reliably enough to be considered a release candidate. Android O, which will be version 8.0 of the mobile operating system, doesn’t contain a ton of major new features for users. But there are a handful. They include notification channels and dots on app icons to alert you of notifications, picture-in-picture video playback, a streamlined settings menu, and more. Читать дальше...

Contemporary car design is art, science, and technology. To parse through the marketing hype and sensory overload, I focus on fine bits of automotive design, to find just one thing that makes a vehicle look extraordinary.

The Moon has more water than previously thought, and it’s deep below the lunar surface. A new study suggests that water is widespread beyond the poles, where it was already known to exist, although scientists don’t know exactly how much water is there. The discovery has consequences for future missions to the Moon.

Sundar Pichai has another job to do: serve on the board of directors for Alphabet, the parent company for Google. Pichai has been the CEO of Google since the creation of Alphabet in October 2015 — a move that split out a bunch of somewhat random businesses into quasi-independent companies separate from Google proper.

Back in January, when Asus announced its upcoming home mesh Wi-Fi system (then called "HiveSpot"), the market was already flooded. Now the HiveSpot has been renamed to Lyra, but it's mid-2017 and there are seven aisles in every Best Buy dedicated to mesh Wi-Fi routers. What could Asus possibly add to this conversation?

I’m going to address something right now, and then we’re not going to talk about it again for the rest of our lives: it is strange to watch the men tasked with writing Game of Thrones attempt to write intimacy that is not twisted in some way. And so this week’s sex scene between Grey Worm and Missandei was both touching and embarrassing. Grey Worm comparing the feeling of being in love with Missandei with a child’s fear of snakes or the ocean was a clumsy rhetorical choice on his part, and Missandei’s “I want to see you... Читать дальше...

Buying a phone can be a chore, but we’ve done the work for you

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As my gang of adventurers made their way through the desolate landscape, the ragtag group — comprised of a human, a towering demon, a swamp witch, and an armor-clad wyrm — made camp at a small, moonlit grove. There they spent the night preparing for the challenge ahead. Each member had spent time, in some cases years, toiling away in this wasteland, banished from the comparatively luxurious world above. Now it was time to perform a sacred rite, which, if successful, would send one of my long-suffering crew members back home. Читать дальше...

NASA is postponing the launch of one of its communications satellites after an antenna on the vehicle was somehow damaged during mission preparations over a week ago. That satellite is the TDRS-M, for Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, and it was scheduled to launch on August 3rd from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on top of an Atlas V rocket made by the United Launch Alliance. But now, NASA, ULA, and Boeing — the manufacturer of the satellite — are trying to figure out a new time to launch the probe in August... Читать дальше...

Another year of San Diego Comic-Con is now in the books, and it brought everything you’d expect from a four-day celebration of geek culture. There were costumes, announcements, and incredible new trailers; there were exciting immersive experiences, and authors blending the worlds of film and gaming.

A throwback to the bad old days of Windows laptops

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Making hardware is hard, and making it sustainable is even harder. European mobile phone maker Fairphone is ending support for its first phone, the Fairphone 1, after the company announced it’s no longer able to afford making spare parts. This means it will no longer sell repair components for the model and will stop developing the software upgrade to Android 4.4.

As with the last several generations of Samsung’s Galaxy S phones, it appears that the S8 is getting a rugged “Active” variant, with a larger battery and a thicker, more durable design. Over the weekend, pictures of the upcoming smartphone leaked out on Reddit (via 9to5Google), giving us a look at what the S8 Active will look like.

I have a PlayStation 4 Pro and an Xbox One S attached to my oversized 65-inch 4K television. I haven’t touched either of them since I got my Nintendo Switch.

As part of our revamped tech reviews program, Verge Guidebook, we're introducing a new category: Editor's Choice. This award means something different at The Verge than other "best" badges you have probably seen elsewhere. We give the Editor's Choice to the devices that we think are special in some way, stuff that appeals to each of us personally.

What to buy, what you shouldn't, and how to use it all

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Back in March, T-Mobile introduced Scam ID and Scam Block, two features that help users avoid annoying robocalls, and now it’s bringing the service to MetroPCS. Starting tomorrow, all MetroPCS users will automatically get Scam ID, the feature that displays a “scam likely” tag above the caller ID when a scammer is spotted.

The era of Microsoft Paint appears to be coming to an end with the upcoming release of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. The image-editing application is officially being classified by Microsoft as a “deprecated feature,” as noted by The Guardian. That means that, come this fall, Paint will “not be in active development and might be removed in future releases.”

If for some cruel reason I was forced to rewrite that mid-‘90s viral essay / hit single “Wear Sunscreen,” I would replace the titular advice with a simple plea: use a password manager. Like sunscreen, it can be a hassle to apply, but it’s an easy way to stop yourself from getting burned.

The first job threatened by self-driving cars might not be the long-haul trucker, or even your Uber driver. No, the best place to start with autonomy is the parking garage, according to a new concept called “automated valet parking” that was unveiled by Daimler and Bosch today at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany.