Новости за 18.12.2017

Last week, Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz cryptically promised “fun and cool stuff” from the secretive augmented reality startup. Today, we learned what that is: an interactive music experience co-designed by the band Sigur Rós, which Magic Leap invited Pitchfork reporter Marc Hogan to try. Hogan’s resulting essay offers an interesting look at Magic Leap’s entertainment ambitions, as well as an evocative writeup of the experience. It is also deeply frustrating.

If you call 1-669-BAD-TIME, you’ll be greeted with a pre-recorded message asking you to “Leave your rants, screams, and exasperated sighs after the beep.” The hotline is part of a project called For A Bad Time Call, which encourages anyone who identifies as a woman to call up and anonymously vent in its “voice-rage-box” — and then uses those voicemails as fodder for a podcast. “Call us if you’re just getting your voice and call us if you’re tired of calmly explaining your rights to deaf ears and need to rage-it-out,” its website explains. Читать дальше...

Plex, a cloud media server, introduced its solution for desktop music playback today. Inspired by Winamp (throwback!), the company's Plexamp app features a single window. You can get it for free through Plex Labs, the company’s experimental division for employee “passion projects.” Plexamp runs on macOS or Windows and should support "any music format you could dream of throwing at it." Perhaps most exciting, though, is that it features playback visualizer, just like old media players.

Facebook today released its transparency report for the first half of 2017, in a regular disclosure from the company that provides data on when Facebook complies with legal requests.

Toyota is the latest automaker to announce a significant electrified push for the next decade as the global car market tries to embrace more plug-ins and fuel cells to meet increasingly stringent emissions standards.

You Must Be 18 or Older to Enter is a game about porn. To be clear, it is not actually porn, a rather important differentiation. In a landmark obscenity case, the threshold test for pornography was famously articulated by Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart as “I know it when I see it.” Unfortunately, it appears that the digital games distributor Valve has a harder time making the distinction between art and base titillation than a 50-year-old judge back in 1964.

Chinese automaker NIO (formerly NextEV) officially launched its first true production car, an all-electric dual-motor SUV called the ES8, over the weekend. The car debuted in concept form earlier this year at the Shanghai Motor Show, but NIO finally shared the key details about the car like price and range. The ES8, which will go into production next year, starts at 448,000 Chinese yuan ($68,000 USD), and the base model will have a range of 355 kilometers (about 220 miles).

I've always liked the idea of an anime body pillow, but there's never really been a character I've loved enough to snuggle up next to its full-sized replica. Until just now, when I laid my eyes on this massive Pikachu tail body pillow.

Online shoppers scrambling to grab a pair of Apple’s AirPods in time for the holiday gift-giving season are out of luck. Apple’s online store says buyers can expect delivery around the first and second weeks of January.

If your first reaction to porgs, the big-eyed animals that recently debuted in The Last Jedi, was that you want to eat their adorable little faces, you’re not alone—and not just because Chewbecca tries to have one for dinner in the new film.

Major spoilers ahead for Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The non-spoiler review is here.

The best part of any party, we can all agree, is the moment when one of your friends desperately begs for access to the aux cord or the Bluetooth connection so that they can play a specific track. They don’t want to explain the choice and they don’t care if no one else knows the song, but they do need everyone to hear it, as soon as you all get done with the tense, 40-second transitional period of hearing absolutely nothing.

Virgin Group founder Richard Branson has replaced Shervin Pishevar as chairman of Virgin Hyperloop One, according to Axios. The move to swap Pishevar, who recently stepped down from the company and his own venture capital firm following sexual assault allegations, for Branson was key to obtaining a crucial new round of funding, the site reports.

I can’t count how many times I’ve heard people speculate, joke, or jokingly speculate that their cellphone might be giving them cancer. It comes from a very reasonable place of discomfort — few people understand how radiation works, we put our phones right beside our brains all the time, and technology in general often feels like it ought to be causing some sort of societal ill.

Reddit today announced a number of changes to its iOS and Android apps designed to make its mobile software a more interactive and social way of exploring the site. The biggest addition is a new user-to-user chat function, which Reddit has been testing for a few months, that’s now going to be part of the company’s mobile products in a public beta program.

‘Alexa, are you watching me?’

Continue reading…

Microsoft is reportedly working on a foldable notepad-like mobile device, much like the company’s Courier concept. While there have been rumors of a Surface Phone for years, the software giant filed patents last week, which provided a very close look at some of the intricate hinge details for such a device. Designer David Breyer has now taken the detailed patent images and transformed them into impressive 3D concept artwork.

Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds developer PUBG Corp today announced a deal with South Korean game technology provider Minkonet that will bring 3D replay and killcam features to the competitive shooter. Minkonet, based in Seoul, will be building the custom replay settings so that players can get playback of a previous encounter or in-game feat, while the same technology will power a more robust spectating feature for viewers of e-sports contests and Twitch live streamers.

Young children will pay to watch a puppet being beaten, but only six-year-olds pay more to watch punishment inflicted on a puppet that personally offended them, according to scientists trying to figure out when our sense of fairness first develops.

There’s good news out there for anyone clinging to their BlackBerry Classic like a silicon security blanket: BlackBerry has announced that it will be supporting its BB10 operating system for at least another two years, giving yet another stay of execution to the long-defunct OS.

Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi roared to a triumphant box office success in its opening weekend, bringing in more than $220 million in America, and $450 million worldwide. It was the second-biggest opening weekend for a movie in history, following the previous installment in the film franchise The Force Awakens. But with great popularity comes great controversy, and audiences are predictably all over the internet, dissecting what the film does and whether it does it well. A handful of specific... Читать дальше...

Pandora has been updated on Comcast’s Xfinity X1, with a new design, an easier sign-in process, and access to both Pandora Premium and Plus features.

Uber is now available on BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) because apparently, there are still plenty of people in the world who use the service. The function means users can hail an Uber car straight from BBM without leaving the app. “With this partnership, BBM users can quickly request an Uber ride via BBM despite variations in quality of location, network speed, or device features,” said Chan Park, Uber’s general manager in Southeast Asia.

A version of run-and-gun game Cuphead unexpectedly showed up on iOS — but it’s a scam.

Twitter says it will now begin enforcing the new rules it announced last month to combat abuse and hateful conduct, including threats of violence and physical harm. The new rules expand policies to abusive or threatening content in usernames and profiles, and to accounts affiliated with hate groups both on and off platform.