Новости за 10.02.2021

Tianwen-1’s first image of Mars, captured Feb. 5 | China National Space Administration

China’s Tianwen-1 spacecraft successfully rolled into Mars orbit Wednesday morning, the China National Space Administration confirmed. The probe’s arrival makes China the sixth space-faring power to reach the planet. It’s also the second country this month to celebrate its first Mars mission, arriving a day after the UAE’s Hope orbiter entered Martian orbit Tuesday morning.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis receives the second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. | Photo by YANNIS KOLESIDIS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Vaccine selfies — vaxxies, if you will — abound as more people are vaccinated against COVID-19 every day. People are anxiously awaiting their turn to get the jab, perhaps so anxiously that they forget to think about what’s best to wear for the event.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

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Blocking is having a moment.

Last month, Tracy Chou announced that she had raised a little under $1.5 million to launch Block Party, an anti-harassment startup that helps people filter abuse out of their social media experiences. On Monday, Block the New York Times, a tool to block 800 Times reporters on Twitter at once, materialized via a satirical website.

Meanwhile, the unique blocking mechanics of the audio social network Clubhouse ... Читать дальше...

Ever since the open green fields of Super Mario 64, Nintendo has experimented with the best way to transport Mario into three dimensions. From the bite-sized planetoids of Galaxy to the hakoniwa-inspired worlds of Odyssey, the Kyoto game maker has never settled on just one formula. Mario’s side-scrolling adventures largely all worked the same, but in 3D, players never knew what to expect.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Facebook plans to test how people respond to seeing fewer posts about politics in the News Feed. Starting this week, Facebook will “temporarily reduce” political posts for a “small percentage” of people in Canada, Brazil, and Indonesia, with a test in the US following some weeks later. The tests will continue for the next few months.

Relax, Ikea’s wooden gamer hand is here to take care of your gaming gear. | Image: Ikea

In an ideal world, we’d always keep a hand free to protect our precious gaming gear. But for those times when you’re busy, Ikea has released a ¥129.00 (around $20) wooden hand to act as a caretaker — one of dozens of new gaming products just launched in China. As Ikea explains it, the Lånespelare accessories stand (or the Gaming Hand, as we’ll be calling it) “takes care of cables, headsets and other gadgets that you want tidied away... Читать дальше...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Apple is working with TSMC to develop ultra-thin and energy-efficient micro OLED displays for its upcoming augmented reality devices, Nikkei Asia is reporting. The R&D project is said to be in a trial production stage, focusing on displays that are smaller than one inch in size and “several years” away from commercialization. Apple is also said to be developing MicroLED displays at the same Apple lab in Taiwan.

Nintendo has announced the next SNES and NES games coming to its Switch Online service. Depending on your perspective, the selection shines a light on some underappreciated gems or demonstrates that you probably shouldn’t expect any more big-name third-party titles to appear in the library. Possibly both.

The new reporting interface in Apple Maps.

Apple is bringing accident, hazard, and speed check reporting to Apple Maps. The feature is currently only available to users with the iOS 14.5 beta, and is similar to user-reporting features found in Waze and Google Maps.

Apple has launched a new, free battery replacement program for 2016 and 2017 MacBook Pros that won’t charge past one percent. The issue affects “a very small number of customers,” according to Apple.

Image: Satechi

Satechi has launched a double-sided charger that can wirelessly charge an Apple Watch or AirPods — but not both at once — while hopefully saving you from the added clutter of extra cables. The Satechi USB-C Watch AirPods Charger features a Qi charging pad shaped like an AirPods Pro charging case on one side, and a charging “puck” for an Apple Watch on the other. The charger is available now, exclusively from Apple for $49.95.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey imagines a future where you get to choose what you see on social media by picking out your favorite recommendation algorithm, rather than relying on a single controlling company to get it exactly right.

The original Prepear logo, compared to Apple’s.

Last August, the routine story of a trademark opposition captured the world’s imagination, when Apple declared that Super Healthy Kids (yes, that’s the real name of a company) shouldn’t be allowed to trademark its pear logo because it might “cause dilution of the distinctiveness” of Apple’s own famous fruit-shaped intellectual property.

Hyundai

Who needs an Apple car when you’ve got one with four legs? Hyundai, which recently acquired a controlling stake in robot maker Boston Dynamics, rolled out a new version of its four-legged “walking car” concept that it first unveiled in 2019.

Tesla, led by Elon Musk, confirmed that it purchased about $ 1.5 billion in bitcoin in January and expects to start accepting it as a payment in the future.  | Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Tesla just gave bitcoin a big boost that’s likely to result in more greenhouse gas emissions from the energy-hungry cryptocurrency. After Tesla purchased $1.5 billion in bitcoin and announced that it will accept bitcoin as payment in the future, the price of bitcoin reached an all-time high. Читать дальше...

Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images

Cloud computing company Salesforce is joining other Silicon Valley tech giants in announcing a substantial shift in how it allows its employees to work. In a blog post published Tuesday, the company says the “9-to-5 workday is dead” and that it will allow employees to choose one of three categories that dictate how often, if ever, they return to the office once it’s safe to do so.

CBS All Access is set to transform into Paramount Plus on March 4th, but you won’t be able to watch it if you own a second- or third-generation Apple TV. The company announced that it won’t update its app for those devices when the streaming service relaunches next month, as spotted by MacRumors.

Photo by Karwai Tang/Getty Images

South Africa announced this week that it’s stopping the use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine after a small study found that it wasn’t effective against mild and moderate disease. Other vaccines are also less effective in South Africa, where a variant of the virus with mutations that can dodge antibodies is circulating widely. The AstraZeneca-Oxford product appears to be the worst of all, and it fell down to less than 50 percent effective (the... Читать дальше...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Twitter doesn’t need Donald Trump to keep growing. The company said today that it ended 2020 with 192 million daily users, and the figure continued to grow in January — the month when Trump was banned from the platform. Twitter didn’t offer a specific daily usage figure for January, but it said daily user growth was “above the historical average from the last four years.”

Illustrations by Alex Castro / The Verge

Nicolo Laurent, the Riot Games CEO, is under investigation following gender discrimination and sexual harassment allegations, a Riot Games spokesperson tells The Verge today. The investigation was announced after a legal suit was filed against the Valorant developer.

One of the first Android apps — ZXing Team’s Barcode Scanner, an app that predates the first official release of Android itself — is currently getting review-bombed on the Google Play Store. Hundreds of users are leaving 1-star reviews claiming a recent update spews unwanted ads, while nearly 200 more have come to the app’s defense with 5-star reviews of their own.

Image: Adobe

Adobe is making it easier for multiple people to work on the same file in Photoshop, Illustrator, or Fresco. The three apps are getting a new feature called “invite to edit,” which will let you type in a collaborator’s email address to send them access to the file you’re working on.