Новости за 08.01.2021

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

According to CNBC’s analysis, Apple’s App Store made $64 billion in revenue in 2020, which is a 28 percent increase from the estimated $50 billion it made in 2019. This represents a good amount of growth for the App Store since the estimated increase between 2018 and 2019 was only 3.1 percent.

The A02S offers a 6.5-inch display and 5,000mAh battery. | Image: Samsung

Unlocked and carrier versions of the budget Samsung Galaxy A02S appear to be coming to the US, as spotted by SamMobile. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth certification documents appear to refer to unlocked as well as Verizon and AT&T carrier versions.

Illustration by Alex Castro

The Alphabet Workers Union (AWU) is calling on YouTube to permanently ban President Trump following a raid on the US Capitol on January 6th. The move shows the newly formed organization, comprised of employees and contractors at Google’s parent company, is dead set on influencing issues that go well beyond workers’ rights.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitch removed its popular PogChamp emote a couple of days ago after the person on which it was based — Ryan “Gootecks” Gutierrez — posted some tweets encouraging more mob violence after the riot at the Capitol. The spirit of PogChamp, however, will live on: today, Twitch announced that it would cycle through different versions of the emote every 24 hours, starting today.

Photo by John Moore/Getty Images

Reddit has banned r/donaldtrump for encouraging and glorifying violence after Wednesday’s mob attack on the US Capitol. Axios reporter Sara Fischer first reported the news, noting that the unofficial pro-Trump forum had been given multiple warnings. A Reddit splash page says the subreddit was “banned due to a violation of Reddit’s rules against inciting violence.”

The new phone has an extra rear camera compared to its predecessor. | Image: Steve Hemmerstoffer / Voice

Renders of what’s believed to be the Nokia 6.3 or 6.4 have leaked online, giving us our best look yet at HMD Global’s upcoming affordable handset. The renders come to us via Steve Hemmerstoffer over on Voice. New for this model is a side-mounted fingerprint sensor embedded in the power button, which replaces the rear-mounted sensor on 2019’s Nokia 6.2.

Sci-Hub’s homepage. | Sci-Hub

Twitter has suspended the account of Sci-Hub, a website that provides free access to paywalled academic papers. The account was being used by Sci-Hub’s founder to collect statements of support from the scientific community during an ongoing court case in India.

Madden now has a SpongeBob SquarePants-themed field so you can live out your dreams of playing football in a virtual Bikini Bottom. The SpongeBob Reef-Top, which will only be available in Madden’s arcade-style The Yard mode, will offer challenges that you can complete to unlock Nickelodeon-themed content as well as gear inspired by the famous yellow sponge himself.

Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images

Apple and Google are facing new pressure to deplatform Parler, a social network founded as a less moderated and more conservative-friendly alternative to Facebook and Twitter. Activist group Sleeping Giants has called on both companies to ban Parler from their app stores in response to posts calling for violence against elected officials.

Image: Substack

Substack is adding a long-awaited new feature today: the ability to change the look of newsletters. Writers will now be able to choose their background color and accent color and set different fonts for the title and body of posts. It’s a limited set of customizations, but it should allow Substack newsletters to stand out more from one another — right now, they’re basically the same, save for profile pictures and the color of links.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Roku has acquired defunct streaming service Quibi’s library of content, the company announced today. Content from the short-form service will appear on the Roku Channel for free at some point in 2021, though the company hasn’t announced an exact date for its arrival. Roku did not disclose how much it paid for the content in its announcement, but The Wall Street Journal reports it paid “significantly less” than $100 million for the shows. The deal... Читать дальше...

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

On October 15th, FCC chairman Ajit Pai promised that the FCC would “move forward with a rulemaking” to clarify the “meaning” of Section 230, the all-important internet law that protects free speech online.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

TikTok will remove videos of President Trump’s speech inciting supporters to mob the US Capitol on Wednesday, saying they violate the company’s misinformation policy. TikTok will still let people post “counter speech” videos that dispute incorrect claims, however, and will let videos remain on the platform if they condemn violence or if they’re posted by news organizations. TechCrunch was the first to report the news.

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Twitter has lifted its ban on President Donald Trump, and his latest tweet is very different than the ones we’ve seen for many months. Though he does not say he lost, his latest video feels like a concession speech. “Now that Congress has certified the results, a new administration will be inaugurated on January 20th,” he says. “My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power.” Trump had issued a similar statement about... Читать дальше...

Image: Intel

Intel launched RealSense ID yesterday, a facial recognition solution that relies on its RealSense depth-sensing technology (via Gizmodo). RealSense started as a Kinect-style camera for touch-free interaction, but RealSense ID seems like Intel’s attempt to reposition its camera business towards secure, on-device facial recognition first, while also potentially putting the company in the crossfire of controversy.

While Monster Hunter World was a huge success, becoming one of Capcom’s bestselling games in history and exposing far more people to a series that had only ever been truly popular in Japan, it came at a cost. The move to modern console hardware meant Monster Hunter looked and played better than ever before, but it also meant leaving the series’s portable roots behind.

Amelia Krales / The Verge

Just about any account you own on the internet is prone to being hacked. After numerous widespread breaches through the past few years, tech companies have been working together to develop a standard that would make passwords a thing of the past, replacing them with more secure methods like biometric or PIN-based logins that do not require transferring data over the internet.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The list of companies and agencies discovering that they’ve been affected by the SolarWinds hack is still growing, and they’re working with a big unknown: how far the hackers got into their systems. The federal judiciary system is likely now one of them (via The Wall Street Journal), and it isn’t taking any chances. It’s worried enough that court workers will now have to physically deliver sensitive documents, despite the ongoing pandemic.

Photo by Lev Radin / Pacific Press / LightRocket via Getty Images

For years, police have been warning about the dangers of crowdsourced detective work — but on Thursday morning, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) of Washington, DC decided to do just that. In the wake of an unprecedented mob attack on the Capitol building, the MPD has released an open call for help identifying subjects. The department has circulated a digital booklet featuring 26 pages of faces from the attack, with... Читать дальше...

Image: Simple

Online-only bank Simple is shutting down, its parent company announced in an email to customers Thursday. BBVA USA, which acquired Simple in 2014 for $117 million, said it would be transitioning Simple customers to BBVA accounts but did not provide details about when the change would occur. BBVA USA was acquired by Pittsburgh-based PNC Bank in November.

Tomb Raider: 10th Anniversary, a remake of the original Tomb Raider game for Sony’s PSP that was canceled in 2006, has recently resurfaced as a playable alpha, according to PC Gamer. The game was being developed by Core Design before it was shuttered in favor of Crystal Dynamics’ cross-platform Tomb Raider: Anniversary and Tomb Raider: Legend, a reimagining of the origin story of treasure-hunter Lara Croft.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitch experienced a partial outage on Thursday afternoon. During the outage, I was able to navigate to the site’s homepage, but often, the carousel of featured streams didn’t load. In a few instances, when I clicked into a stream, it briefly loaded before the site showed an error message.