Новости за 27.12.2017

Snap is working on a new feature that will let users share stories outside the Snapchat app, according to a report from live streaming news network Cheddar. The feature, to be called “Stories Everywhere,” is designed to boost Snapchat’s presence beyond the core mobile app as competition with Facebook and Instagram heats up.

The world’s third-largest smartphone brand remains relatively unknown in the United States, but next year, that could start to change. According to The Information, Chinese smartphone giant Huawei hopes to make a big splash in the US in 2018 by debuting a flagship phone on AT&T. It would mark the first time that a US carrier has pushed a high-end, Huawei-branded smartphone.

Instagram’s new “recommended for you” section is now rolling out to all users, according to a report from TechCrunch, which notes that the company has also added a new section to its help site documenting the recommendation feature.

Researchers at Trend Micro have found that certain models of Sonos and Bose speakers have vulnerabilities that leave them open to hijacking, as reported by Wired. The accessible speakers are being exploited by hackers that are using them to play spooky sounds, Alexa commands, and... Rick Astley tracks.

iPhone owners aren't happy with Apple, and they're letting the company know with lawsuits. Five iPhone users filed a lawsuit in New York yesterday and are seeking class-action status over Apple intentionally slowing down their phones as the devices' batteries aged. USA Today first reported the lawsuit, which follows others filed over the past week.

At the beginning of 2017, I wrote about what I thought might be the year’s most important virtual reality technology: tracking cameras that would work from inside, not outside, a VR headset. And the results weren’t great. Almost every inside-out tracking system I tried was uncomfortable, most of them were barely functional, and none of them seemed anywhere near as good as more traditional high-end headsets. It seemed like VR would have to take a step back before it could move forward. At the end of 2017... Читать дальше...

Microsoft started selling the LTE-equipped version of its Surface Pro at the beginning of the month, but the company only sold the LTE models to business customers, promising that consumers would be able to purchase them sometime in 2018.

So many things happened in 2017 that it's hard to know where to get started when sizing up a wide-reaching tech behemoth's past year. So for Amazon, maybe it's best to start with a simple statement: it lowered prices on avocados.

Garmin is still making lightweight activity trackers, ones that appeal more to the step-counting crowd than the mountain-climbing kind. The company just announced its new Vivofit 4 yesterday, which sounds pretty similar to the Vivofit 3.

A yearbook-on-wheels

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As we head into the final weeks of 2017, the inevitable nostalgia for six to 11 months ago is engulfing the pop culture universe. But amid all the best-of lists and greatest-moments roundups, we tend to forget the other side of the coin — the “how did this get made, and why did we suffer through it?” memes, moments, and movies that made our jobs harder and our lives sadder. Here, we asked our staff: what in the cultural world made you question humanity in 2017?

https://www.racked.com/2017/12/27/16307098/bachelor-instagram-influencers-ads

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Christmas is over — so now what do you do with that massive Fraser fir that’s been decorating your living room? Well, you could mulch it, or just toss it in a lake. Seriously.

Over the course of the year, Snap went public, and 2017 became all about its ability to prove its worth after a pricey IPO. Unfortunately for Snap, things didn’t turn out as well as last year. Its stock tanked. Instagram stole all its best and most recognizable features. The company’s head of HR was outed as deeply problematic, and, by the end of the year, the company unveiled its redesign as a last ditch effort to scrounge up ad revenue.

The iPhone X’s face-tracking capabilities range from supremely cute to oh, that might be useful. Now comes something truly terrifying. A Japanese app developer named Kazuya Noshiro has tweeted a preview of an app he’s working on that camouflages a user’s face with the background (first spotted by Design Taxi). The brief, ten-second video shows Noshiro moving his transparent face around to reveal the contents of his home through his head.

During the darkest days of the Wii U, some armchair analysts wondered whether Nintendo should even continue to compete in the ultra-competitive hardware space — but nobody thinks that any more.

2017 has been a tough year for most people, and tech companies were not spared. Most companies found themselves grappling with moral, cultural, and political responsibilities, such as fighting the spread of fake news and advertisements and correcting toxic corporate cultures. Others found runaway success with a viral release of a much needed, innovative product. So, how did giants like Facebook, Google, Nintendo, Uber, Tesla, Samsung, Apple, Microsoft, and more do compared to last year? Find out... Читать дальше...

Nintendo is delaying the delivery of 64GB Nintendo Switch cartridges to outside game developers until 2019, reports The Wall Street Journal, which cites several people familiar with the matter. The WSJ notes that Nintendo planned to make the 64GB cartridges available in the second half of 2018, but pushed the date back due to technical issues. The sources said the move has brought “slight disappointment” to some developers, especially US publishers who often need the larger capacity for their data-heavy games. Читать дальше...

Last Friday, SpaceX launched its 18th and final mission of 2017, sending a Falcon 9 rocket out of Vandenberg Air Force Base and into the California sky. The white tail of the rocket was an unusual sight, leaving many in Southern California who did not know a rocket launch was occurring confused, with some even speculating it was a UFO. Now, a spectacular 40-second time-lapse of the Falcon 9 has been posted by photographer Jesse Watson.