Новости за 24.08.2021

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Google-owned YouTube is starting to crack down on Discord music bots. The search giant has sent a cease and desist to the owners of the popular Groovy Bot, which lets Discord users play music from YouTube videos and is installed on more than 16 million Discord servers. Google wants the service gone within seven days, and Groovy is complying by shutting down its bot on August 30th.

Image: Walmart

Walmart plans to offer its logistics and delivery services to other companies as part of a new last-mile delivery business, the company announced on Monday. The service, called Walmart GoLocal, hopes to serve as a white label delivery offering for businesses big and small, and yet another way for Walmart to try to edge out Amazon.

Paradox Games

Gamescom doesn’t officially start until Wednesday, but Xbox got a head start on the festivities with an announcement of all the new games coming to Xbox Game Pass.

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Looking back at a decade without Jobs — Apple’s biggest decade ever

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft revealed a colorful new custom Xbox Series X / S controller to celebrate Forza Horizon 5 during its Gamescom 2021 Xbox stream. Much of the controller is a translucent yellow, but it also features blue and pink as accent colors, with “paint splotches” splashed across the front, pink buttons with blue letters, and the blue and pink control sticks. The controller also has black grips that look to have a rubberized texture, which will differ from the bumpier texture used on other Series X controllers. Читать дальше...

Microsoft had a good showing at this year’s iteration of E3, and the company returned to show off its upcoming slate of games at Gamescom 2021. There were the usual suspects — like Forza and Flight Simulator — along with a few surprises like cloud streaming coming to Xbox consoles. (Curiously, Halo Infinite did not make an appearance.) And the company continues to put a big focus on its Game Pass subscription service.

Microsoft has revealed the next major additions coming to Microsoft Flight Simulator later this year, including the Volocopter VoloCity air taxi; updated maps for the Germany, Austria, and Switzerland regions; and a competitive online multiplayer racing mode.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft its bringing its Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) service to Xbox One and Xbox Series S / X consoles this holiday. The integration of xCloud will let Xbox owners simply click play on an Xbox Game Pass game and stream it immediately, allowing players to try games before they commit to the often hourslong process of downloading big titles.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

In August 2020, Google decided to add a tab for its Meet videoconferencing platform to Gmail. Not a big deal for the desktop version — although you can still choose to get rid of it if you don’t intend to use Meet at all — but it could be a real issue for the mobile app, because it expanded the bottom margin of the app and gave you approximately three fewer lines to work with. So we provided directions for how to get rid of the Meet tab on your phone. Читать дальше...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

TikTok announced it’s piloting a new in-app shopping experience on Tuesday as part of its ongoing partnership with Shopify (via The New York Times). TikTok Shopping allows select merchants from the US, Canada, and the UK to use a new shopping tab and product links to sell products from Shopify storefronts.

Apple Maps’ built-in ratings and photos system is rolling out to the US and Canada, letting users add their own information to points of interest on the map (via MacRumors). The system uses a thumbs up / thumbs down rating, and currently exists alongside Apple Maps’ existing integrations like Yelp, Tripadvisor, and Foursquare.

Military personnel on an inflatable boat ship past a destroyed house on the Ahr river in Rech, Rhineland-Palatinate, western Germany, on July 21, 2021, after devastating floods hit the region.  | Photo by CHRISTOF STACHE/AFP via Getty Images

Climate change raised the risk of deadly floods that swept through Western Europe in July, new research confirms. As people around the world continue burning fossil fuels and pumping out greenhouse gas emissions, the threat of similar disasters grows. Читать дальше...

The Frame camouflages itself as wall art when you’re not using it as a TV. | Samsung

The Frame, Samsung’s HDR-compatible QLED that pulls double duty as wall art, is one of the more unique TV designs that didn’t die in the concept phase or on the showroom floor of CES. Designed to look like a framed and matted photograph, the 120Hz screen hides in plain sight when switched to an Art Mode that displays still imagery instead of a black void when turned off. It’s a stunner of a TV in many ways and... Читать дальше...

Photo by David Lee/Riot Games/Riot Games Inc. via Getty Images

The 2021 League of Legends’ World Championship, the end-of-year tournament for arguably the biggest esport in the world, has been moved from China to a currently undisclosed location in Europe, Riot Games announced. The move happens just weeks before the competition is set to begin.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Some of the biggest Gamescom 2021 announcements are likely to happen during the Xbox stream. The stream will be a 90-minute blast that, according to Microsoft, will focus on “previously announced games” from its internal Xbox Studios and outside partners, as well as new titles coming to Xbox Game Pass. It’s possible that we’ll hear more about Halo Infinite, Forza Horizon 5, and more. I’m personally crossing my fingers for more Elden Ring news.

One of the first things you might notice when you get Android 12 on your phone is that a standout Android feature is no longer where you expect it.

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

Building a career on pushing buttons and seeing what happens

Movies Anywhere is best known as the service that syncs together purchased movies across different retailers (so that you can, say, watch movies you bought on iTunes through Google Play, or vice versa). But the service also has a fairly robust app of its own, which is getting a new machine learning-powered list feature to automatically generate lists that sort your library based on what movies you like.

Spotify

Spotify is broadening the number of people who can offer subscription podcasts and have their shows play on its service. Today, the company announced that all US-based podcasters can use Anchor, its podcast creation and distribution platform, to sell subscriptions for exclusive episodes that’ll be available both through a private RSS feed and within the Spotify app, which doesn’t otherwise support private shows over RSS.

Illustration by Claudia Chinyere Akole

TikTok tour guides will show you their city — and the places hooking them up

As good as foldables get, but is that good enough?

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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Once again, Google is headed back to the drawing board to rethink its healthcare strategy. As first reported by Business Insider, the tech giant is dissolving its single, unified Google Health division, founded in 2018, in favor of a distributed approach to building health products. The head of the division, David Feinberg, is leaving the company, while an unknown proportion of Google Health employees will be sent to other teams at Google (like Search and Fitbit) to work on specific services... Читать дальше...

Google Meet now warns you with a red dot and alert message if it thinks you have an echo. | Image: Google

Google Meet will soon tell you when it thinks you’re creating an echo in calls, Google announced in a blog posting Monday. Right now, it’s hard to know if you’re creating an irritating echo for meeting participants unless they interrupt the meeting to tell you. Google’s new proactive warnings should therefore help minimize everyone’s suffering.

A player uses the Ping System in Apex Legends to alert their team of the presence of a “Shield Battery”. | Image: Electronic Arts

Electronic Arts is pledging to open the patents for some of its accessibility-related tech, including the much-celebrated Apex Legends ping system, the company announced today. EA says it won’t file infringement lawsuits against people or companies for using tech that falls under patents listed in the pledge.

After it leaked over the weekend, Sony Pictures has released the first official teaser trailer for the upcoming Spider-Man: No Way Home, the third Spider-Man movie to be part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.