Новости за 21.12.2017

It feels like it should have been here ages ago, but YouTube has finally updated its iOS app so that everyone can view vertical videos as they were meant to be seen: in full screen, rather than turned sideways with black bars on the sides. YouTube announced plans to introduce this feature back in August, and some users have already had it activated. But as of this week, it’s being enabled for everyone.

How well can machines interpret beautiful landscapes? After all, some sceneries are beautiful because they tug at human emotions, something that machines lack. Other landscapes, desert dunes in particular, look like nudes to robot eyes. To help, on Monday Google introduced a neural image assessment to figure out the most aesthetically pleasing images.

This morning, Long Island Iced Tea, a New York-based beverage maker, announced it was changing its name to Long Blockchain Corp. The company’s relation to cryptocurrency is dubious — it says it will “leverage the benefits of blockchain technology” — but it was quickly rewarded with a 200 percent jump in stock price at the opening of trading.

Apple yesterday confirmed that a long-held and controversial conspiracy theory actually contains some truth. The company says that, starting last year, it started slowing down older iPhones with lower-capacity batteries, mainly to prevent accidental shutdowns. The news set off a wide-ranging debate about smartphone reusability and longevity. But why does Apple need to do this in the first place?

What happened when the infosec community outed its own sexual predators

Google’s Pixelbook has been out since October, but at that time the company had only released the base and mid-range models of its flagship Chromebook. But now the most powerful Chromebook on the market — the Pixelbook with an i7 processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD — is finally available, via Phandroid.

Up in the Austrian Alps, inside two hydropower mills, a start-up called HydroMiner keeps high-power computers, CPUs, and servers running around the clock. These machines suck in a steady 600 Kilowatts of cheap hydroelectric power as they seek to mine new bitcoins — an energy-intensive process that involves solving mathematical problems by repeated trial and error. But unlike other bitcoin miners, HydroMiner says it’s minting cryptocurrencies without harming the environment or contributing to climate change. Читать дальше...

UK game room company Liberty Games has figured out a novel way for anyone to play one of its stand-alone games: it’s hooked up a crane machine to the internet for anyone to control, calling it Santa Claws. As a bonus, any toys caught translate into real dollars (or pounds, rather) that will be donated to St Mungo’s, a charity that provides support to the homeless.

Today hit battle royale game Playerunknown's Battlegrounds is finally leaving access with the 1.0 version of the game, but its creators also have a major milestone to celebrate. According to developer PUBG Corp., the game has 30 million players across both PC and the newly released Xbox One version. Sales are accelerating quickly, as just last month the company said the game, which debuted in March, had reached the 20 million sold milestone.

Future versions of the Apple Watch may contain an advanced form of heart-monitoring technology that would use electric signals to detect heart abnormalities, defects, and other potential indicators of cardiovascular illness, according to a report from Bloomberg. Known as electrocardiograms, or EKGs, the tests are typically performed using multiple electrodes placed directly on the skin, which monitor otherwise imperceptible electrical patterns in between heartbeats.

Picking the best television shows of any given year used to be relatively easy, back when the major networks and a few powerful cable channels dominated the cultural conversation. These days, though, making any list of must-see TV is a downright Sisyphean. It’s impossible to keep up with everything worthy of consideration in television, so best-of lists inevitably become idiosyncratic, determined in large part by whatever limited pool of series a critic regularly watches.

The latest Civilization game just went mobile. In a surprise launch, Civilization VI — which first came out on PC last year — is now available on Apple’s tablet. It looks to be a fully-featured version of the strategy game as well, complete with large-scale empires to build, the ability to research new technologies and cultures, and even a local multiplayer mode. The App Store description call it “the full, award-winning Civilization VI experience.”

Facebook has agreed to a multi-year licensing agreement with Universal Music Group to allow its users to upload music in their videos. The agreement, which also covers Instagram and Oculus, will allow users of those services to upload and share videos containing music from UMG’s artists without having the videos removed due to copyright violations as they have been in the past.

Netflix’s big blockbuster Bright doesn’t debut on the streaming service until December 22nd, but the company is already plotting out its next steps. Bloomberg reports that the company has ordered a sequel to the fantasy cop film, with Will Smith set to star again.

As Americans pack their bags for holiday travel, a new report is raising key questions about a pilot program that scans the faces of international travelers.

Apple is now requiring that any apps on the App Store that offer loot boxes must disclose the odds of the likelihood of players getting different types of items, according to a report from Polygon.

Uber announced today that it’s adding two new features to the Uber Freight app (iOS and Android), the service it launched for truckers back in May. Both are meant to make it easier for drivers to string together multiple jobs, which would make it more likely that they’ll keep booking with Uber instead of more traditional online cargo load boards or brokerages.

Apple has confirmed that processors used in the iPhone 6, 7, and SE are intentionally slowed down by newer iOS updates to address aging lithium-ion batteries. The change is meant to reduce random shutdowns by throttling the phone’s CPU, but that also leads to slower performance. While the slower performance might persuade some Apple users to switch over the latest iPhone, there’s a more affordable fix — simply switch out the battery.

For video game fans, the holidays can involve some compromise. They’re an opportunity to check in with friends, reunite with family, and take a much-needed break from the onslaught of work and the unrelenting news cycle. Yet traveling to a different time zone, or perhaps even a different country, also means putting down whatever games you’re playing and leaving them to collect dust for weeks. But this year is a bit different, because this year we have the Switch.

Over the last decade, fantasy author Naomi Novik has earned a reputation for her alternate Napoleonic era-set Temeraire series, in which soldiers fly atop dragons into battle. But in 2015, she shifted gears and wrote Uprooted, a novel inspired by classic fairy tales. The effort earned her the Nebula Award for Best Novel and the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel in 2016. Her next novel, Spinning Silver, takes her back to those fairy tale roots.

Life expectancy in the US is continuing to drop because of accidental deaths from the prescription and illicit opioids that are sweeping the country. This is the second year in a row that life expectancy declines in the US — to 78.6 years in 2016, down from 78.7 years in 2015 and 78.8 in 2014, according to a report by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).

If you’re someone who uses a first person view (FPV) headset for drone racing, chances are you’re using a Fat Shark headset. The company has become known in the racing world as the go-to place for FPV setups, and today it’s taking the next logical step by releasing its own racing drone, the Fat Shark 101.

iPhone X vs. Pixel 2 XL vs. Note 8 vs. HTC U11 vs. LG V30

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Gaming laptops are getting better by the year, but they still have some pretty fundamental problems. They’ll always be bulkier and heavier than regular laptops, battery life is never going to be that great, and you’ll still have to carry around a controller and mouse for serious play. What if you could fix all of these problems in a single, pocketable device?

A California burger company called CaliBurger has introduced AI-enabled Kiosks to its stores, as spotted by Business Insider. The kiosk can identify a customer, pulling up their loyalty account and order preferences after they look into the camera. As a customer approaches the kiosk, they’ll be given the option to access their account without entering any details or swiping a card. The loyalty account remembers what they’ve ordered in the past and allows customers to place orders in seconds, the company claims. Читать дальше...