Новости за 12.12.2017

Hisense today announced new Amazon Alexa integrations for two of its appliance products: its Wi-Fi-connected HiSmart air conditioner and HiSmart dehumidifier. The products, which are mainly controlled through iOS and Android mobile apps, can now change cooling settings, dehumidifying modes, and other features via voice, so long as you have an Echo device and sync your Alexa account to the account in Hisense’s mobile app.

You can’t watch YouTube on an Echo Show anymore, but you can watch Twitch now, with the popular streaming website releasing an Alexa skill to play and navigate through Twitch content, via TechCrunch.

Apple’s GymKit is here, so you can wirelessly sync fitness data between your watch and cardio machines at the gym — if you work out at Equinox or Life Time Athletic.

YouTube today announced that its YouTube TV subscription service is now available in 34 additional markets and covers 80 metro areas in total. The $35-per-month streaming TV service offers an unlimited cloud DVR and live programming from over 40 channels (including the “big four” networks of ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC).

The Last Guardian wasn’t the most technically accomplished game of last year, or the best designed. But it was one of the most memorable, thanks in large part to its star, a towering bird-cat-dog hybrid named Trico. Playing as a young boy, you built a powerful and lasting relationship with the creature, which felt more like a real living thing than anything I’d previously encountered in a virtual world. I still get chills thinking about the first time we met, and a little weepy when I remember the way the game ended. Читать дальше...

Storify, a service that let users create stories by compiling posts from Twitter, Facebook, and more into an embeddable package, is shutting down in May 2018. As of today, no new Storify.com accounts can be created. At its heyday a few years ago, Storify was popular with storytellers and journalists for being an easy way to create and embed a timeline of various social media content into their work — similar to what Twitter’s Moments is today.

There are lots of HDR standards out there. Some might even say there are too many. But those standards largely are for brightness and color levels of different types of content. So long as the hardware supports the requirements of, say, HDR10 or Dolby Vision, you’ve been good to go.

AT&T introduced two new plan updates for its customers traveling abroad. Through the company's Passport program, you can now choose between either $60 for 1GB of data or $120 for 3GB. The price is a one-time fee in both cases, and the package expires after 30 days, although you can set up a monthly recurring charge. Previously, Passport started at $40 a month for 200MB of data.

With the net neutrality debate raging at the FCC, it’s easy to forgot that net neutrality remains an issue inside of Congress, too — albeit a much, much quieter one. But at least one senator is still hoping to see some movement: on the Senate floor today, Sen. John Thune (R-SD) asked net neutrality supporters on “both sides of the aisle” to come work with him on a legislative solution.

We’re less than two months away from the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea, and the Olympic torch has been making its way across the country through the hands of athletes, boy-band members, and proud residents. On day 41 of the Olympic Torch Relay, HUBO the humanoid robot had the honor of passing the torch at its birthplace of the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Daejeon. It walked about 500 feet to a wooden wall (painted to look like bricks), used a drill to cut a hole... Читать дальше...

Beverage companies are continuing to drink Elon Musk’s Kool-Aid. A few days after Anheuser-Busch made the largest preorder of Tesla’s all-electric Semi trucks, PepsiCo swooped in with the new top order. According to Reuters, the soda and snack giant has reserved 100 Semi trucks in a bid to reduce fleet emissions and cut down on fuel costs.

Facebook today announced a new suite of augmented reality tools for Messenger the company is calling “world effects,” which basically let users drop real-time 3D objects into photos or videos within the camera frame. The technology builds on Facebook’s existing AR features, like the ability to add filters and masks to your face in a selfie, and it’s designed to make Messenger more interactive by leveraging the increasingly sophisticated computer vision capabilities of smartphones. The first set of world effects include a floating heart... Читать дальше...

French children won't be allowed to bring their phones into classrooms starting in September. The Guardian reports that while kids can still bring their phones into their schools, the devices have to stay locked away until the end of the day. This will apply to kids starting at the age of six and will last until they're around 15, or starting high school (aka secondary school).

If you’d asked me two weeks ago how I felt about the live trivia app HQ, I would’ve told you I loved it. I like trivia generally, because I like puzzles and I like to win. Before HQ launched in October, most of the trivia games I played took place at dark bars with big groups of friends, everyone trying whisper the answers just loud enough to be heard over 90 decibels of music, but not so loud that competing teams could eavesdrop. If we won, the prize was usually a gift card to the bar we were already sitting at, or a pitcher of beer. Читать дальше...

A few months after being spotted in tests, Twitter’s tool for creating tweestorms is now an official part of the app. Threads, as the company is calling them, let you string together tweets by tapping a new plus button in the tweet composer. “A few weeks ago, we expanded our character count to make it easier for people to fit what they’re thinking into a Tweet,” the company said in a blog post. “But we know people also may want to serialize a longer story or thought, or provide ongoing commentary on an event or topic. Читать дальше...

With nothing more than a few photographs and some free software, it’s now possible to quickly graft anyone’s face onto pornographic images, videos, and GIFs. The results are far from convincing, but they’ll get better fast — becoming another example of how machine learning will make the maxim “seeing is believing” laughably out-of-date.

Hybrid or electric? That’s the big question in current self-driving car development. Do you build your autonomous vehicles to run purely on battery technology, or can some hybrid of gasoline and electric suffice? Some automakers are already staking out their positions, and as self-driving cars move closer to reality, it’s quickly becoming a hotly debated question that doesn’t lend itself to an easy answer.

When Paul Nascimbene first spotted the tick preserved in a chunk of 99-million-year-old Burmese amber, he couldn’t believe his eyes. The prehistoric, blood-sucking parasite was tangled up in a dinosaur’s feather, and it shows for the first time that ticks pestered dinosaurs just like they pester birds, dogs, and deer today, according to new research. “It's like a minute in a day, 99 million years ago,” says Nascimbene, who runs the American Museum of Natural History’s Fossil Insect Lab.

Facebook has taken the unusual step of directly responding to a former employee who recently excoriated the biggest social networks for “ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.” And the company’s retort might surprise some people. Facebook isn’t outright dismissing or rejecting the claims of Chamath Palihapitiya, its former vice president of user growth. Instead, the underlining message seems to be that the Facebook of today is a far cry from the company he once worked for, and his perceptions are out-of-date. Читать дальше...

Net neutrality advocates are asking people to call members of Congress this week to demand action. It’s a good idea to contact your senators and representatives to let them know where you stand on any issue, and expressing yourself in your own words is more meaningful than signing your name on a form letter. I would know; I used to do this professionally to help protect the national parks (which also need your help right now).

The social network now lets you follow hashtags

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Life is Strange, Dontnod’s episodic adventure game about a teenager with the power to manipulate time, is coming to iOS on December 14th. The game is up for preorder now as part of Apple’s newly launched feature.

In 2015, when the Democrat-led FCC passed strong net neutrality regulations, one widely circulated photo became emblematic of the moment. In it, the three Democratic commissioners — Mignon Clyburn, Jessica Rosenworcel, and Tom Wheeler — linked hands and smiled from the dais, enjoying the moment before the vote. The two objecting Republicans on the Commission, including now-chairman Ajit Pai, are nowhere to be seen

Algoriddim’s next generation of its DJ software, Djay Pro 2, has just been released, available for macOS. The program, meant for both amateur and professional DJs, allows users to mix music entirely within the app, or use in conjunction with external hardware for performing, the way Traktor and other DJ apps are used.

Hey, you! Yes, you. Did you know we do a live gadget show on Twitter? It's called Circuit Breaker Live, and we've been doing the thing since October. Every Tuesday at 4PM we go live on Twitter right here. Today, we're doing that again. Your hosts Paul Miller and Ashley Carman, who's subbing in for Nilay Patel, will lead you through the world of gadgetry with whimsy and wonder.