Новости за 13.11.2017

Robot maker Boston Dynamics, now owned by Japanese telecom and tech giant SoftBank, just published a short YouTube clip featuring a new, more advanced version of its SpotMini robot. SpotMini, first unveiled in June 2016, started out as a giraffe-looking chore bot that was pretty terrible at performing tasks around the house, and, in one short clip, hilariously ate it on a cluster of banana peels like a character straight out of a slapstick cartoon.

The Walking Dead is back, and for us here at The Verge that’s an opportunity to examine just how effective the show can be in creating a complex villain. As played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, big bad Negan has always been violent. But thanks to his man-baby antics, he’s stubbornly remained a comic book thug, never becoming the nuanced character the show so sorely needs.

It’s been a long time since a Star Trek television show felt like it was really going where no one had gone before — or even to relatively infrequently visited places. Although the original 1966 series dared to feature an interracial kiss, the franchise as a whole missed the boat on LGBT representation until it was already mainstream. And between Star Trek: Enterprise and the reboot films, the Trek series has spent the last decade flailing around in lackluster retreads of its own tropes.

Protesters disrupted a US-sponsored presentation about fossil fuels as solutions to climate change at a United Nations global warming conference today. Singing and chanting, they registered their disdain for the official US message on climate.

Facebook Stories is getting quite the revamp today. According to TechCrunch, not only will Stories between Messenger Day and Facebook be consolidated as of today, but Facebook is also getting rid of Direct, an ephemeral messaging feature.

Facebook Stories is getting quite the revamp today. According to TechCrunch, not only will Stories between Messenger Day and Facebook be consolidated as of today, but Facebook is also getting rid of Direct, an ephemeral messaging feature.

T-Mobile is making another branded budget phone called the Revvl Plus as a sequel to the Revvl, which the carrier launched in August.

Nike announced today that it’s releasing a limited edition Midnight Fog Apple Watch Series 3 with LTE that’s designed to match its upcoming Air VaporMax running shoes. The Watch will be available tomorrow at nike.com and in retail stores for $399, while the Air VaporMax will sell for $190 starting on November 24th.

Earlier this month, news broke that Amazon was trying to close a deal to bring J.R.R. Tokien’s The Lord of the Rings to life as a television series, and now it looks like it’s actually going to happen. Amazon has announced that it has acquired the TV rights for the book series, with a multi-season commitment. But the twist is that this will apparently be a prequel to The Lord of the Rings, rather than the story audiences already know so well.

The first generation of HomePods, Apple’s intelligent speaker, isn’t shipping until December, but according to a report by Nikkei, Apple supplier Inventec Appliances is already making projections that future models might have facial and image recognition.

Last month, Google announced that users with Google Assistant would be able to broadcast messages via Google Home devices, and now that time is here. Google has begun rolling out an update that will allow you to use your Home devices as an intercom system within your apartment or house (or office, if you hate your co-workers).

The internet is filled with articles and Redditors pointing out the anachronisms of Netflix’s 1980s science fiction throwback series Stranger Things — from Barb’s Volkswagen car to the Demogorgon figurine. Now, scientists are joining the ranks of nitpicking nerdy fans.

eBay is trying to one-up other major retailers in an attempt to win over consumers on Black Friday by offering to price-match competitors’ deals that have already been announced ahead of the shopping event. From November 13th to the 17th, eBay will match prices on select deals from Walmart, Kohl’s, Macy’s, and JCPenney. eBay is also offering a coupon code PSHOPEARLY for 20 percent off your purchase from now through November 20th, including on computers and cell phones.

Lyft has officially gone international. The ride-hail company announced on Monday that, starting in December, it will begin operations in Toronto, marking the first time Lyft will be available outside the US. The news follows an earlier report that Lyft was poised to grab a third of the ride-hailing market in the US in the latest sign that the company was continuing to profit off Uber’s stumbles earlier in the year.

Amazon is working on a free, ad-supported version of its Prime video streaming service, according to sources that spoke with AdAge. Currently, Prime members pay $99 to access a variety of video streaming content, which is usually ad-free.

Now that the iPhone X has been out for a week, it’s time to get started on rumors for next year’s iPhones. KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, whose iPhone predictions have been fairly reliable over the last several years, says that he expects to see two new full-screen iPhones next year: one will have a 6.5-inch OLED display, essentially making it a Plus version of the iPhone X; and the other will have a 6.1-inch LCD display, likely making it more like a full-screen version of the current Plus-sized iPhone. Читать дальше...

AT&T and Verizon have partnered with a third company to build hundreds of cell towers, Verizon announced today. The third company, Tillman Infrastructure, is a private company that makes and owns towers, and it will construct the towers to suit AT&T and Verizon.

If you’re the owner of one of Google’s Pixel 2 XL devices, there’s more bad news: some users are reporting that the touchscreen is not responding to touches along the edge of the device, as reported by Phandroid. Users reported the issue on the Pixel User Community, and one user posted a video that showed the screen not responding when being tapped on the edge of the right-hand side. There was also some unresponsiveness on the left-hand side in the video.

In another huge confidence boost for the nascent “flying car” industry, Volvo’s Chinese parent company announced today that it has completed its acquisition of Terrafugia, a startup founded by MIT engineers and MBA students.

Tesla’s big year (the good and the bad) isn’t over yet. The company is set to unveil its Class 8 semi truck prototype Thursday night at its Hawthorne, California facility. While perhaps not as critical to the automaker as its new mass-market Model 3, the Tesla semi truck announcement will mark yet another turning point and big test for the company.

On Saturday, private spaceflight company Sierra Nevada announced that its Dream Chaser spaceplane had successfully glided and landed on a runway after being released from a helicopter. The stunt, done at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California, is known as a free-flight test and is meant to test out the vehicle’s landing capabilities. It’s an important milestone in the Dream Chaser’s development, as Sierra Nevada readies the plane for spaceflight.

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Women who are having a heart attack are less likely to get bystander CPR and more likely to die, according to a new study — and it may be because people are reluctant to touch women’s chests.

One of my favorite things about the tech industry is how quickly innovations from the big companies and premium products trickle down into more affordable devices. The rampant stealing of ideas isn't so awesome when it happens between small companies — or, as in the case of Facebook treating Snapchat like its incubation lab, when a big company copies a smaller one. But I don’t have a problem with the general flow of good ideas from giants like Apple and Google to more budget-friendly suppliers of hardware and software. Читать дальше...

Microsoft is unveiling its Black Friday discounts today, and there’s a number of deals if you’re interested in an Xbox, Windows laptop, or a Windows Mixed Reality headset. Microsoft is discounting the Xbox One S 500GB model down to just $189 with a free game. That’s $10 cheaper than Sony’s 1TB PS4 Slim deal (without a game), which isn’t a big gap but Microsoft’s console does include a 4K Blu-ray player if you’re interested in watching movies. Other deals include $50 off 1TB and 500GB Xbox One S bundles... Читать дальше...