Новости за 20.12.2017

How restaurants and agencies are working together to achieve Cronut-level fame

A mission to return a comet sample to Earth and one to explore different parts of Saturn’s moon Titan, to see if it hosts life were selected today by NASA as finalists in a competition for a future robotic mission in our Solar System, part of a program called New Frontiers.

Google has announced a new batch of updates for its Google Assistant SDK, which lets developers create their own Google Home-like devices powered by Google’s digital assistant that makes third-party and homemade devices closer to Google’s official smart speaker.

Litecoin founder Charlie Lee announced on Reddit today that he had divested most of his litecoins, which are an alternative to Bitcoin. He cited “a conflict of interest” for him to continue buying and selling Litecoin while tweeting about it because he has “so much influence.”

Earlier this year, Monica Idenfors stumbled upon a strange ad. It was a call for seniors interested in joining an e-sports team, with the goal of competing in a Counter Strike tournament at the Dreamhack digital festival in Sweden. As a recent retiree, Idenfors thought it sounded like an “exciting opportunity,” and a good way to spend her newfound free time. She signed up, and eventually joined as one of five members of a new squad cleverly named the Silver Snipers.

Americans who support denying service to gay couples don’t necessarily see the issue as a matter of religious freedom, according to the first national survey on this topic. The survey also found that about half of respondents supported denying service to gay couples, with many people framing the decision in terms of individual rights.

Amid Amazon and Google’s bitter and self-defeating feud over the right to stream videos from YouTube, Mozilla today announced that its Firefox browser is now available on Fire TV devices. The Firefox team, which just released the fastest ever version of the browser back in November, doesn’t explicitly say in the blog post announcing the news that you can use Firefox to access YouTube.

Scientists have successfully tweaked the DNA of mice with a specific genetic mutation to prevent them from going completely deaf. If the gene-editing technique is proven safe, it could one day be used to treat the same type of hearing loss in people.

‘We have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.’

The NFL’s cable and broadcast network partners aren’t wasting time taking advantage of Verizon’s big fumble of mobile streaming rights. Both ESPN and NBC have separately announced plans to stream their respective weekly shows, Monday Night Football and Sunday Night Football, to smartphones beginning with the 2018 NFL season. You’ll need to be a pay TV customer if you want to watch games, as authentication is required.

The Swift Life, Taylor Swift’s new social networking app, is founded entirely on two simple ideas. The first is that her fans go balls-to-the-wall bonkers whenever Taylor “notices” them on social media by blessing them with a like, share, or comment. As a hardcore devotee who has virtually interacted with the pop star a grand total of three times over the course of a decade, I can confirm this obsession as fact; a few years ago, when she retweeted my praise for Ryan Adams’ full-album cover of 1989... Читать дальше...

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has found his new right-hand man — emphasis on the “man.” Barney Harford has been named chief operating officer of Uber, making him the second most powerful person at the beleaguered ride-hailing business, according to Bloomberg.

This ain’t your grandpa’s Walmart.

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Coinbase has launched an internal probe to identify whether its employees engaged in insider trading of Bitcoin Cash shortly before the cryptocurrency was officially introduced to the exchange yesterday. Increased trading led to a spike in Bitcoin Cash’s valuation, and just four hours after its introduction, Coinbase suspended trading of the digital currency.

One of the NSA’s most important surveillance authorizations is set to expire on December 31st, and all year, reformers have been looking at the reauthorization as a way to pare back the agency’s powers. But after months of negotiating terms, Congress is now preparing a bill with none of the proposed limits, and a number of troubling new measures that say could greatly expand the agency’s power.

Tidal has launched its first TV apps today for the Apple TV and Android TV platforms, letting subscribers access both Tidal’s entire library of music along with video content like concerts, livestreams, and music videos directly on their TVs.

Magic Leap is finally releasing a developer version of its augmented reality system next year. The company has promised an SDK in early 2018 (three years later), to be followed by the actual hardware, called the Magic Leap One.

Cable companies are over people sharing logins with all their friends and family. As first spotted by Bloomberg, Charter CEO Tom Rutledge said at the annual UBS conference this month: “There’s lots of extra streams, there’s lots of extra passwords, there’s lots of people who could get free service."

The UK Government has announced that homes and businesses will have a legal right to high-speed broadband of at least 10 Mbps by 2020. Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, says that 10 Mbps is the minimum speed needed to meet the requirements of an average family. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport has plans for that to happen, and will set out the framework for a legal right to broadband in secondary legislation early next year.

2017: bad in general; pretty good for robots. That’s my summary anyway, and while I understand if you feel like I’m glossing over one or two important events, I would ask you to remember what those important events actually were. Not great, right? Best to concentrate on those bots, a least for a little while.

After releasing a pair of behind-the-scenes clips from Stargate: Origins, MGM has unveiled its first teaser for the upcoming digital-only show. While the franchise is known for its interstellar adventures, this prequel looks as though it’s remaining firmly grounded, and taking a bit of inspiration from the likes of Indiana Jones.

After more than three years, Magic Leap has unveiled what it describes as a “creator edition” of its augmented reality system. The Magic Leap One consists of a pair of oversized cyberpunk-y goggles, a puck-shaped external computer called a Lightpack, and a handheld controller. It’s supposed to accept “multiple input modes including voice, gesture, head pose and eye tracking,” and maps persistent objects onto the environment — “place a virtual TV on the wall over your fireplace and when you return later... Читать дальше...

Mornings are hard for a caffeine addict. The headaches and grumpiness are bad enough, but then you have to deal with the noise of the grinder before you get the anti-migraine juice you so desperately crave.

Last week, the next game in the acclaimed Portal series was announced — but it wasn’t exactly what fans were expecting. Instead of a third entry in the acclaimed first-person puzzle series, it was… a Portal-themed bridge building game. It sounds weird, but it also works, as it turns out that the confounding physics of Portal and the more serious strategy of the Bridge Constructor series are a great match.

Niantic Labs, the developer of mobile augment reality hit Pokémon Go, today announced that an update of its iOS version out later this week will optimize the game with Apple’s ARKit framework. The framework, part of iOS 11, will allow the developer to add an all-new AR+ mode with far more advanced augmented reality features.