Новости за 29.12.2017

A feud between two Call of Duty players, who argued after an online wagered match reportedly worth just $1.50, led to the death of a 28-year-old Kansas man, who was shot and killed by police after a fraudulent SWAT team call sent a small army of police officers to the man’s private home. The news was first reported by local newspaper The Wichita Eagle, which cites numerous now-deleted tweets in which Call of Duty players take responsibility for participating in or observing the intended prank. Читать дальше...

Dangerously cold temperatures are hitting the eastern US this week, prompting President Donald Trump to tweet: “In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming.” But scientists say that the record-low temperatures and record-high snowfalls aren’t proof that global warming is a hoax: they’re precisely the weather you’d expect in a warming world.

Every week, a slew of new music videos hits the web. Watching them at your desk is not time theft because you deserve it; think of it as a nice reward for surviving another work week. But what if you don’t have time to watch every video — maybe you have a deadline, a hungry pet, or other grown-up concerns. In consideration of your schedule, Lizzie and Kaitlyn bring you a series called One Video. Each week we’ll tell you “one video” you need to watch, why, and for how long.

SpaceX started 2017 at one of its lowest points ever. The company hadn’t launched a single rocket since September 1st, 2016, when a Falcon 9 exploded on a Florida launch pad as it was being fueled. The mishap destroyed both the rocket and the satellite the vehicle was supposed to carry to space — prompting many to question the reliability of the company’s hardware. But in January, just four and a half months after the accident, SpaceX was ready to convince the world that it had figured out the... Читать дальше...

iFixit, the internet’s most popular repository of guides for repairing Apple devices, has announced that it’s cutting prices for all of its iPhone battery replacement kits down to $29 or less. They usually sell for between $39 to $49, depending on how recent your phone is.

2017 was a hard year for a lot of people. With climate change, haywire politics, and tech companies running amok, there are lots of reasons to put the year in the rearview mirror. But through it all, a run of great books shined a light in the darkness. They built off and commented on the issues that dominated the year, going beyond mere escapism to provide thoughtful, damning, and entertaining reads to keep us sane.

Following Apple’s apology for its lack of communication over how it manages iPhones with older batteries, Samsung and LG have come out to say that none of their phones employ similar practices. Both companies emailed Phone Arena to say that they don’t slow down their phones’ processors as their batteries age. LG said, “Never have, never will! We care what our customers think.” Samsung said, “We do not reduce CPU performance through software updates over the lifecycles of the phone.”

Apple is now offering the iMac Pro for in-store pickup at many of its locations in the US and other countries, as spotted by MacRumors. The high-end all-in-one went on sale earlier this month and initial orders began shipping last week. Now that those are out, Apple appears to have stocked many of its retail stores with the computer’s default configuration. I can’t imagine how many people want to walk into a store, drop $5,000 on an iMac, and walk out carrying it, but you now have that opportunity. Читать дальше...

It was supposed to be Tesla's year for delivering big on Elon Musk’s ambitious vision: the mainstream electric car known as the Model 3. And at the beginning of 2017, things looked great from the outside. But instead of delivering, 2017 was a year where Tesla stalled on that promise, and in the end was forced to buy itself more time with the strength of its brand and the promises of its CEO.

We saw a lot of wild stuff this year, from the future of electric cars, holograms, and our planet, to the future of... banana phones. As we take a (short) break before January’s Consumer Electronics Show, here’s a look back on Verge Video’s favorite projects of 2017. - Tom Connors

The fast and the frustrated

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Next year is already overflowing with exciting missions to space. NASA is launching a new lander to Mars, as well as a spacecraft that will get closer to the Sun than ever before. And two of NASA’s vehicles already in space will finally arrive at their intended targets: one will rendezvous with a nearby asteroid, while another will pass by a distant space rock billions of miles from Earth.

Has any other company had a more batshit year than Uber? In lieu of a traditional report card, I briefly considered just copying and pasting text from the Book of Revelation into this article. That’s how bad it was.

Kodi, the perfectly legal yet notorious media player, is now available to download on your Xbox One. Initial reports suggest availability is restricted by region with Europeans getting first dibs. So be patient if you don't see it yet.

Apple’s new flagship retail store in Chicago, the one with a MacBook-shaped rooftop, is nothing short of an architectural marvel. At least, that’s how some news reports put it when the store opened back in October. Beyond standing out among the less inspired buildings of the downtown Chicago area, the new Apple Store also happens to be very poorly thought through considering its thin roof now has dangerous icicles hanging perilously over public walkways.

In a press release today, Marvel announced Create Your Own, a new platform that allows fans to create original comic strips using Marvel characters and stock background illustrations. The tagline is “Your Own Marvel Universe.”

Before taking over as CEO of electric car startup Faraday Future earlier this month, LeEco founder Jia Yueting was known as the company’s main financial backer and majority shareholder. But Jia is no longer the largest shareholder, according to three people with knowledge of the company’s finances, because he transferred his controlling shares in Faraday Future’s holding company to his nephew, Jiawei Wang, earlier this year.

Apple just published a letter to customers apologizing for the “misunderstanding” around older iPhones being slowed down, following its recent admission that it was, in fact, slowing down older phones in order to compensate for degrading batteries. “We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down,” says the company. “We apologize.”