Новости за 31.12.2017

A team of reptile and amphibian enthusiasts is asking for the public’s help training artificial intelligence to spot snakes, frogs, and more from photos. The team wants to eventually create an app that can help people identify these creatures in their backyards — and prevent people from killing them. But first, their AI has to get better at making those photo IDs.

A court in Germany has told Amazon.com that it can no longer use search terms to lure in customers who misspell “Birkenstock,” according to Reuters.

Sometime in late March of next year, a Chinese space station named Tiangong-1 is going to fall back down to Earth — and some big pieces may survive the reentry. The module’s descent has caused a bit of concern about debris raining form the sky. But in reality, a falling space station is the last thing anyone should be worried about.

What’s the worst that could happen tonight, the most loaded night of the year? You could have no one to kiss or no one to get drunk with, or worse — you could have both and still not have a good time. It’s so much pressure and even the nicest things you can think of will likely involve so much “walking outside” and “being in a crowd” and “money,” that it couldn’t possibly be worth it. A new year? I’ve seen 940 of them already. An alternate plan that I believe is very good is to sit at home and watch a warm... Читать дальше...

The biggest story about apps in 2017 was, well, stories. Snapchat still deserves the credit for coming up with the concept, and Instagram shamelessly ripped it off back in 2016, but this year, everyone got on board. WhatsApp added stories (and then later made them less prominent after users complained). Facebook added stories (and tried to guilt users into using them with digital ghosts of friends.) Medium — a largely text based app — added stories! YouTube added stories! It’s stories all the way down as far as the eye can see. Читать дальше...

Earlier this month, hackers stole $63 million from crypto-currency mining site NiceHash, prompting the company’s founders to apologize on Facebook Live and to shut down operations for 24 hours. Now, the company’s co-founder, Marko Kobal, has stepped down as CEO.

Netflix recently began streaming its big blockbuster Bright, and it hasn’t been entirely well received by critics. The action film is set in a modern fantasy world where elves, humans, and orcs live alongside one another, but it only alluded to the larger world that drives much of the story. To help fill in those gaps, Netflix released a short video that highlights all of the history of the world that would have made the story a bit more comprehensible.

A club in Prague named Karlovy Lazne has recently introduced a robot DJ that alternates with a human to program music for the dance floor throughout the night, as reported by Reuters. Now in rotation for a few weeks, the robot has software that allows it to choose songs, select CDs from a rack, insert them into CDJs, and then play the songs. It also has some pretty sweet dance moves.

If 2016 was the year that streaming music became a necessity, 2017 is the year streaming music showed its clout. This couldn’t have been showcased any more clearly than at the Grammys, where Chance the Rapper won best new artist, best rap album, and best rap performance — an honor only made possible because nomination rules changed, allowing for streaming-only albums to be eligible for nomination. In his acceptance speech, Chance gave a shout out to SoundCloud.

It’s been emotional. Again.

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My best way to look back on 2017 in the world of headphones is to consider the things I wasn’t able to say a year ago.