Новости за 26.09.2017

The tweets in your timeline are about to get super-sized. Twitter said today that it has started testing 280-character tweets, doubling the previous character limit, in an effort to help users be more expressive. “Our research shows us that the character limit is a major cause of frustration for people tweeting in English,” the company said in a blog post. “When people don’t have to cram their thoughts into 140 characters and actually have some to spare, we see more people Tweeting — which is... Читать дальше...

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild modders have been busy adding Minecraft characters, Mario hats, and even Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas’ Carl Johnson as playable skins. But none of those hold a candle to “Breath of the Wah’ld,” a piece of perfection that turns Link into Waluigi.

Musician B.o.B has started a GoFundMe campaign that’s looking to raise $1 million to “launch one, if not multiple, satellites into space,” toward the goal of “finding the curve.”

According to Bloomberg, the Food and Drug Administration has announced the names of nine companies participating in a pilot program that could let them pre-clear products instead of going through the agency’s traditional application process.

Saudi Arabia announced today that it will end its long-standing prohibition on women drivers, according to The New York Times. The ban won’t be lifted immediately, though: the kingdom stated that it will need time to both educate women how to drive and men on how to interact with women on the road.

Hurricane Maria whirled through Puerto Rico almost a week ago, but we still don’t know the full extent of the devastation that the Category 4 storm left behind.

The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Loss for Words exhibit is part of its annual Next Wave art festival, a celebration of visual arts, theatrical works, music, dance, and film. The theme of this year’s exhibit is the emergence of visuals as the primary mode of communicating rather than the written word — or, as the exhibit’s guide puts it: “a basic shift in our culture, from text-based communication to one where images are the dominant tool of expression.” Going into the exhibit during its Monday night opening reception... Читать дальше...

STDs are on the rise in the US, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The highest-ever number of cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis were recorded in 2016.

Apple tends to be notoriously quiet about the internal specs of its phones, particularly when it comes to things like battery size or RAM. But Tenaa — China’s telecommunication authority, similar to the FCC in the US — has confirmed that the iPhone X will come with 3GB of RAM and a 2,716mAh battery, as reported by Steve Hemmerstoffer (also known as OnLeaks) on Twitter.

The Apple TV has made a return to Amazon after a nearly two-year absence that began in October 2015. There’s now an order page for the new 64GB Apple TV 4K that’s listed as “ships from and sold by Amazon.com,” signifying that the online retail giant will once again be offering Apple’s set-top box — once it’s in stock, that is. 9to5Mac first reported on the new listing.

Between 2008 and 2012, warmer than usual waters caused four glaciers in Western Antarctica to flow toward the sea faster than any other glacier on the continent. The glaciers also lost more than three times the amount of ice than usual, according to new research. All these changes are bad news for Antarctica — and us. As grounded glaciers melt, sea levels around the world rise.

Today, Uber said it will cease operations in Quebec next month after the Canadian province passed new regulations that the company opposed, Reuters is reporting. The decision to pull out of Canada’s second most populous province comes as Uber is battling a decision by London officials to revoke its license, dealing a blow to new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi’s effort to rebuild the company’s image.

A few new details on Atari’s upcoming Ataribox console have leaked out today. The company has revealed that it’s planning on selling the Ataribox through an Indiegogo campaign this fall for a vague $250 to $300 price range ahead of a spring 2018 release date, according to a report by VentureBeat.

Google is reportedly spinning off its comparison shopping service into a “standalone unit” after it was the subject of a record €2.42 billion fine ($2.7 billion) from the European Union. According to a report from Bloomberg, the tech giant will comply with the EU’s ruling by separating Google Shopping from the rest of its search business. The service will remain part of Google itself, but will “operate separately and use its own revenues to bid for ads.”

Cowboy Bebop director Shinichiro Watanabe has a new project out today: an anime prequel to the upcoming movie Blade Runner 2049. The 15-minute short, Blade Runner Black Out 2022, can be watched in its entirety on Crunchyroll.

Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas.

One of the most useful tricks in Apple’s iOS 11 update is found inside the Notes app: it’s a document scanner. If there’s a business card, receipt, or any other document you want to save or mark up, this tool makes getting it on your iPhone or iPad dead simple. If you’ve been using a third-party app for this purpose until now — and there are several great ones — you can probably uninstall it in favor of Apple’s own solution. That’s what I did, anyway.

We live in a world where formerly unattainable futuristic touchstones like “flying cars” and autonomous vehicles are being treated with straight-faced sincerity by some of the biggest companies in world. So I guess it was only a matter of time before we had to start taking jetpacks seriously, too.

The US Department of Homeland Security has amended its rules to require immigrants to disclose their social media accounts. The agency will now collect information including “social media handles, aliases, associated identifiable information, and search results” on immigrants, including permanent residents and naturalized citizens.

This past weekend, Showtime websites were found to be running a script that allows the sites to mine visitors’ extra CPU power for cryptocurrency, as pointed out by users on Twitter. The afflicted sites included showtime.com and showtimeanytime.com, but the script has since been removed following reports from Gizmodo and other sites.

Dyson, the UK company best known for its pricey vacuum cleaners, is building an electric car. The vehicle will be unveiled in 2020, and Dyson says it already has a team “over 400 strong” working on the project. The company plans to invest over £2 billion ($2.6 billion) in the endeavor, drawing on its battery and digital motor expertise to further the vehicle’s development.

Uber is announcing a few notable changes today, starting with a new feature that allows drivers to offer an additional layer of feedback to unruly riders. Working off the assumption that no one likes IRL confrontation, drivers can now choose from a preselected list of reasons to explain why they rated a passenger as less than five stars. So the next time you take too long getting in the car, or you have a loud phone conversation in the back seat, you’ll be hearing about it from your Uber driver.

Solar and wind power get all the attention, but harvesting energy from evaporation could go a long way toward solving our power problems — at least in theory.

The Yomee is a new gadget on Kickstarter designed to make you yogurt. It's essentially an automated milk heating and cooling system that also happens to rely on pods. Pods! As you can always expect from a proprietary pod-related gadget, the device relies on individual yogurt culture packs that you can only buy from Yomee. The pods themselves don't have a barcode or even wrapping. They're just dusty compressed milk and yogurt culture in the shape of a pod.

Microsoft is unveiling future changes to its OneDrive cloud storage service today at the company’s Ignite conference in Orlando. The software giant is improving the web interface of OneDrive, with a cleaner UI and the ability to easily see what content has been shared with others with a new people card and information pane. The interface also includes tweaks to the folder interface.