Новости за 07.10.2017

The Federal Communications Commission yesterday granted Alphabet-owned Project Loon an experimental license to operate in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands for the purpose of helping the islands regain connectivity. The license extends from October 6th until April 4th, 2018, and it was granted to Ben Wojtowicz, a software engineer and member of Alphabet’s X lab who works on Project Loon.

Writer-director S. Craig Zahler seems to think it’s pretty funny that people don’t know how to categorize his new film, Brawl in Cell Block 99. “All these reviews say, ‘It’s hard to classify it between the grindhouse and the arthouse,’” he chuckles. And he’s right, it is. But that isn’t a problem. For people who love to see some sophistication in their cinematic mayhem, it’s a major thrill.

By now, it’s hard not to come across some new car with a suite of technologies that force you to stay in your lane or not crash into the car you’re following.

A big push for Nintendo of late has involved creating all-new franchises, like the colorful team shooter Splatoon or the wild fighter Arms. These games allow Nintendo to test out new genres, but also introduce brand-new worlds and characters, ones that are pretty far removed from Mario and Zelda. Arms, in particular, is a fascinating detour for the company, featuring a diverse lineup of surprisingly stylish fighters. And now the company is expanding on that world through a just-announced series of graphic novels. Читать дальше...

Millions of years ago during the early Jurassic period, a baby marine reptile called an ichthyosaur gorged itself on prehistoric calamari. Then, it died abruptly — its belly full of squid.

If you really care about frequent flier miles, you end up doing all sorts of crazy things. The simple stuff is buying special credit cards or organizing your flight schedule around high-mileage promotions — but soon you’re using dummy transactions to pump even more miles out of the card or buying an empty seat on a flight just because the miles are worth more than the cash. Once you get a taste for it, you spend an alarming portion of your time concocting more of these schemes, and scouring forums... Читать дальше...

I've been pretty skeptical while writing about trailers for the second Kingsman movie — I know the film's a satire, but its trailers always make the film seem to strike such a strange balance between buying into spy tropes and actually critiquing them. But I ended up watching the original Kingsman for the first time the other week, and suddenly I see why that is: that's exactly what the film is like, and it somehow pulls it off.

With Google’s recent decision to remove the 3.5mm jack on its Pixel 2 devices, we’re going to have to all come to terms with the fact that most phones in the future will not have a standard headphone port. That means buying dongles, and buying dongles means shelling out exorbitant prices for tiny pieces of plastic just to make sure your gadgets work like they used to. Luckily, Amazon’s Basics line has a deal today that makes that slightly less painful for iPhone users, as pointed out by KinjaDeals. Читать дальше...

There was an array of new hardware announced this week, such as the Google Pixel 2, the Sonos One speaker, and the Samsung Odyssey headset. While you can pre-order those today, you might be looking for deals on some other great tech that’s available right now.

After a demonstration of the Oculus Dev Kit 1 in 2013, game developer and comic publisher Square Enix started work on a research project dubbed “Project Hikari.” The project was an attempt to adapt comics into virtual reality, by not just making something that look like it was a comic come to life, but also to explore what a VR comic means.

Google on Wednesday took the wraps off its new Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL phones, the sequels to the first-ever Google-designed Android handsets. Both devices look sharp, minimal, and sport what the company says is one of the best mobile cameras on the market, with original Pixel buyers able to testify the device line’s prowess in the picture-taking department.

Major League Baseball has fined Arizona Diamondbacks after a coach was spotted wearing an Apple Watch in the team’s dugout on Wednesday night’s game against the Colorado Rockies. However, the organization has concluded that the device wasn’t used to cheat.

After Irma and Harvey and Maria, there’s another hurricane on the horizon: Hurricane Nate, which is expected to make landfall this weekend.

At New York City Comic Con yesterday, Hulu unveiled the first trailer for its upcoming Marvel Universe show, Runaways, as well as a release date: November 21st, 2017.

The vast sci-fi universe of EVE Online is coming to your smartphone. This evening EVE developer CCP Games announced a new spinoff of the massively multiplayer game, that will be released in a handful of countries in “the near future,” before getting a full global launch sometime next year. The free-to-play game is called Project Aurora, and is being developed by Finnish mobile studio PlayRaven.

Audi claims the new A8, its flagship sedan, is the most technologically advanced car in its class. That’s a big boast for a crowded segment that includes the Tesla Model S, BMW 7-series, Mercedes-Benz S-Class, Jaguar XJ, the Lexus LS, and up-level versions of the surprisingly competent Cadillac CT6. But from its lights to its camera to its cockpit, it makes a compelling argument for best-in-class tech.

At Lucasfilm’s publishing panel at New York City Comic Con today, Timothy Zahn announced that he will be writing a sequel to this year’s Star Wars Rebels tie-in novel, Thrawn.

Tesla admittedly went into fall with a lot on the to-do list, but CEO Elon Musk, who also runs SpaceX and SolarCity, may be rearranging plans in order to keep everything in order. Musk tweeted Friday the Tesla Semi truck unveiling, once planned for October 26th, would now take place November 16th.