Новости за 03.05.2021

Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Robin Hood

Bill Gates and Melinda Gates have announced that they’ll be ending their marriage after 27 years together, explaining in a joint statement that they “no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives.”

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Both Apple and Epic have released their opening presentations on why they feel they should win this week’s trial, which is set to determine the future of the App Store. In the documents, which you can look through below, each company lays out its case.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

General Motors has finally revealed its plan to fix the issue at the center of last year’s Chevy Bolt recall, which the automaker issued in response to a handful of battery pack fires. Affected customers have to bring their Bolts to a dealer so the battery packs can be inspected, and GM says some of the modules that make up the pack may be replaced if any “anomalies” are found. But dealers will also install “advanced onboard diagnostic software” on all of the affected vehicles. Читать дальше...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

It’s no secret that Sony held back PS4 cross-platform play for years, but new confidential documents and emails reveal just how much Sony was against letting people play the same games with their friends on other platforms. Sony initially blocked cross-platform play for both Rocket League and Minecraft, despite Nintendo and Microsoft both enabling players to play across Xbox and Switch. The issue really blew up when Sony blocked Fortnite crossplay in 2018, and players were angry. Читать дальше...

An internal Epic document from June 2020 shows plans to “announce the first-ever sports event in Party Royale”

An internal presentation at Epic Games showed ambitious promotional plans for the game, including a basketball mini-game and a planned “Party Royale” featuring Zion Williamson and LeBron James. Made public as part of the ongoing Epic v. Apple trial, the document comes from a quarterly business review performed in June 2020.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

PlayStation is now partnering with Discord, the popular online communication service, with a promise to “bring the Discord and PlayStation experiences closer together on console and mobile starting early next year.”

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Follow the money, baby

Verizon has sold its AOL and Yahoo properties to Apollo Global Management in a deal said to be worth $5 billion, about half of the nearly $9 billion Verizon originally paid for the pair. Verizon will maintain a 10 percent stake in the company, now known as Yahoo and led by CEO Guru Gowrappan. The deal, which includes Verizon’s ad tech business, was heavily rumored over the last week and is still subject to closing conditions. Once complete, it’ll bring an end to Verizon’s troubled experiment with media production and advertising. Читать дальше...

Castlevania | Netflix

Just started watching season four of The Handmaid’s Tale and I remember why I prefer the weekly release schedule for this show: Bingeing it is utterly draining (Monica Hesse makes this point much more eloquently in her mostly spoiler-free review in the Washington Post). The show has a conundrum: it can’t kill off its main character (which would be an incredible plot twist) and it can’t take her out of Gilead because that’s where the action is. So June has to keep suffering over and over. Читать дальше...