Новости за 31.10.2017

November is nearly upon us, and when this whole “dress up as scary monsters” business is over, it will be time for a new month of movies and television shows from your streaming service of choice. (That’s assuming you’ve already watched all of Stranger Things season 2. If you haven’t, you should probably just do that right now before the internet ruins every single secret about the show.)

Apple users are quickly growing accustomed to effortless wireless pairing between the iPhone (or Mac computers) and AirPods, but Google has been working on something that should remove at least some frustration from connecting Bluetooth gadgets to Android phones. Some speakers and headphones let you speed up the pairing process with NFC, which is pretty convenient, but now devices running Android 6.0 and above will get yet another, even better option: Fast Pair.

In season 1 of Stranger Things, we had #Justice4Barb. This season, we’ve got… dancing Hopper. Stranger Things season 2 got its first meme this week, as a Twitter account called @hopperdancingto started posting videos of Sheriff Jim Hopper dancing to K-pop, the Stranger Things theme song, the Bag Raiders, and Michael Jackson.

Vaginas are like self-cleaning ovens; an octopus’s wriggly appendages are called arms not tentacles; and there’s no biological basis for race. These are just a few of the facts that scientists on Twitter want you to know, so they’re sharing them with the hashtag #MyOneScienceTweet.

Microsoft became the official publisher of the popular survival shooter PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) earlier this year. While the promise has always been a 2017 release on the Xbox, Microsoft is revealing today that PUBG will be available on December 12th, through the Xbox Game Preview program. That does mean this, like the PC version, won’t be a final edition of the game, but in an industry where a lot of games arrive before they’re really finished it shouldn’t matter.

In March 2017, a group of women marched into Texas’ state capitol building, dressed in the scarlet robes and puritanical white bonnets of the Handmaids from Hulu’s about-to-be-released show The Handmaid’s Tale. Based on the novel by Margaret Atwood, the show depicts a dystopian world where women are brutally stripped of their rights and exploited for reproduction. The theme was no accident; the women were there to protest a bill that would restrict abortions in the state. They sat silently in the balcony... Читать дальше...

Best Buy will now only sell the iPhone X and iPhone 8 through monthly carrier payment plans and has stopped offering customers the option of buying Apple’s latest smartphones outright in one lump sum. The move, reported by Bloomberg, comes after the retailer took criticism for charging an extra $100 on top of the already-expensive $999 iPhone X starting price listed by Apple and wireless carriers. The iPhone 8 was marked up in a similar way.

Netflix has decided to stop production on the upcoming sixth season of House of Cards in light of the recent sexual abuse allegations actor Anthony Rapp made against series star Kevin Spacey. Deadline reports that the streaming service, and its production partner Media Rights Capital, informed the cast and crew this morning in Maryland, where production had already begun.

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When author Jay Killzurfavesoff moved out of his parents’ house for the first time and into an old, two-bedroom house with his girlfriend, he was excited. It was cheap, close to his university, and even had a fireplace in master bedroom. Then things started to get a little weird. The house was full of abandoned belongings from the previous tenants, as though they had left in a hurry. Their dog barked at nothing. Their keys moved around with no explanation. One night, his girlfriend saw a woman with long... Читать дальше...

Apple has issued an internal memo to Genius Bars and Apple Authorized Service Providers confirming that some Apple Watch Series 3s are experiencing an issue where "edge strips" show up on the display, MacRumors reports. The internal memo instructs repairers to fix the device for free under Apple's standard one-year limited warranty.

Instagram today added support for languages that are written and read from right to left, starting with Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew. It’s been a long time coming for such a software update, considering Instagram has up until today supported 33 languages, including everything from Tagalog to Romanian to Bahasa Melayu. Instagram says it had to reformat its entire app to support an opposite text flow, according to TechCrunch.

Apple just released iOS 11.1, the first major update to iOS 11 since its release in September. Included in the changes are over 70 new emoji, along with some other minor updates, like the return of the 3D Touch option to open up the app switcher by pressing down on the left side of the screen that Apple mystifyingly took out in the original iOS 11 release.

One of the early promises of an Apple Watch with phone-free, LTE service was the ability to stream music directly from the watch itself — only the Apple Watch Series 3 didn’t launch with that promised feature. Now, more than a month after launch, it’s arrived.

Earlier this month, drawing app developer Astro HQ released a video of a really clever new idea for its apps: it turned the iPad’s front camera into a button, letting you tap on the lens to activate things on screen. It was a smart way to free up screen space, but as it turns out, Apple doesn’t agree. Astro said today that its app was rejected from the App Store for violating Apple’s guidelines.

This past Friday, Netflix released the second season of its hit series Stranger Things. Last year, the show appeared out of nowhere, catching pretty much everyone by surprise with its combination of retro-‘80s nostalgia and Steven Spielberg-meets-Stephen King storytelling. But this year, it was all about the expectations, with the streaming service creating a wave of hype that framed the show’s return as one of the must-watch entertainment events of the year.

After years of ambiguous signals, Russian president Vladimir Putin finally clarified Russia’s stance on cryptocurrencies last week with five presidential orders demanding officials set up a legal framework to handle digital currencies. The orders include plans to tax crypto miners, regulate ICOs, sandbox legislation for newly developed blockchain technologies, and an order that outlines the “formation of a single payment space,” likely part of the digital ruble initiative that the Russian Central Bank has been pursuing. Читать дальше...

Razer will likely announce its first smartphone tomorrow, November 1st, but last-minute leaks keep coming. Phandroid spotted that UK phone dealer 3G leaked the phone's specs early, and apparently, the device will feature a display with a relatively unprecedented 120Hz refresh rate. This is the same rate as the iPad Pro 10.5, which people loved, and a new phone from Sharp called the Aquos R Compact, which will be released in December in Japan. A high refresh rate is valuable for gaming and reducing lag... Читать дальше...

Google is trying to make video conferencing less awful by designing its own speaker-mic and other hardware that works with Google Calendar. It’s bundled together a touchscreen controller, a speaker-mic, a camera, and an Asus Chromebox that work in sync to let offices coordinate meetings.

Scientists have created a new form of invisible ink, but it has one big hitch: it might be toxic.

Google has an internal platform called Google Issue Tracker that tracks a list of bugs and unpatched vulnerabilities, but that platform itself had a bug that allowed one security researcher to access anything on the list, reports Motherboard. This would have permitted someone to view all of Google’s requested features and unpatched bugs, potentially allowing hackers to exploit the information. Google has since patched the flaw.

Google Docs users are reporting various bugs today that result in them getting locked out of their documents. Most of the issues center on a mysterious Terms of Service violation.

Howling planets, whistling plasma waves, and pelting space rocks: the sounds of space are spooky — and NASA compiled a list of them to make your Halloween party a little bit more nerdy.

We’ve got our first review of the iPhone X on the site today, and we’re currently taking all your questions and updating with answers. And guess what? The iPhone X will be on Circuit Breaker Live, the show that we do every Tuesday at 4PM ET on Twitter. That’s today! If you’d like to ask us questions about it, just tweet at us with #CircuitBreakerLive, and we’ll get to it on-air.

In the early part of the 20th century, American Halloween costumes were DIY projects: homemade outfits for child-sized firemen, police officers, and clowns that looked quaint or even laughable by modern standards. Things started to change in the years after World War II, and today you can head to your local Walmart or to Amazon and find hundreds of sophisticated mass-produced outfits full of impressive features and accessories. So how did we get here?