Новости за 26.08.2021

Data-mining firm Palantir invested $25 million in Faraday Future shortly before the electric vehicle startup became a publicly traded company in July, according to a previously unreported Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) document filed late last week.

Nintendo

The Switch still doesn’t have apps like Netflix or Twitch, but Nintendo decided to do us one better by announcing that Pokémon TV — the media app devoted to all things Pokémon — is now available on the console.

Image: Streamlabs

Streamlabs, the popular livestreaming software company owned by Logitech, is rolling out a “monthly tipping service” as an alternative way for streamers to earn money from their fans. Streamlabs Creator Subscriptions will offer streamers flexibility on what kinds of subscriptions they offer, and they will integrate directly into Streamlabs’ OBS software suite for streaming to Twitch, YouTube, or Facebook.

Disney

Disney Plus subscribers will finally be able to watch the Queen of Mean on the service at no additional cost beginning Friday.

Photo by Paul Hennessy / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images

United Launch Alliance won’t be selling any more of its workhorse Atlas V rockets, and it has stopped buying the launch vehicle’s Russian-made rocket engines for good, the company’s chief executive told The Verge. ULA’s decision sets up the retirement of one of the US government’s most trusted launch vehicles and is expected to mark the end for Russia’s iconic — but controversial — RD-180 engine, an engineering marvel... Читать дальше...

The gunslinger character in Overwatch. | Image: Activision Blizzard

Blizzard says it plans to change the name of Overwatch’s gunslinger character following the explosive sexual harassment lawsuit brought against Activision Blizzard by the state of California. The character was originally named “McCree” after Jesse McCree, a former longtime Blizzard staffer who appears to be pictured in the so-called “Cosby Suite” reported on by Kotaku.

Photo courtesy Stewart Volland for Blizzard Entertainment.

The 2021 Overwatch League playoffs have hit a slight snag. Yesterday, the League announced it will no longer host live playoff matches in Dallas and Los Angeles.

Location sign for the ‘CO2 to pipeline’ apparatus at the Hawiyah Natural Gas Liquids Recovery Plant, operated by Saudi Aramco, in Hawiyah, Saudi Arabia, on Monday, June 28, 2021. The Hawiyah Natural Gas Liquids Recovery Plant is designed to process 4.0 billion standard cubic feet per day of sweet gas as pilot project for Carbon Capture Technology (CCUS) to prove the possibility of capturing C02 and lowering emissions from such facilities. | Maya Siddiqui/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Last year... Читать дальше...

Image: Nuro

Nuro, the autonomous delivery startup founded by two ex-Google engineers, announced a dramatic expansion of its physical footprint. The company said it will spend $40 million on the construction of a manufacturing facility and test track for its fleet of self-driving robot vehicles. Both facilities will be located in Southern Nevada, which in recent years has become a hotbed for manufacturing and testing for the future of transportation.

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Google has announced that Google Sheets is getting the ability to intelligently suggest formulas and functions for your spreadsheet, based on the data you're trying to analyze. For example, typing “=” into a cell below a list of numbers will pop up a box that lets you automatically add the numbers together, find their average, and more.

We recently wrote how Panasonic maybe went a little overboard with wacky promotional images for its new SoundSlayer wearable gaming speaker. Fun, right? Here’s something less amusing: it appears that Panasonic couldn’t be bothered to take actual photos of its product on actual human beings, so it digitally inserted them into royalty-free pictures from Shutterstock and Getty Images. And then, it appears to have done something worse: stick a white man’s head on a Black man’s body, altering his skin tone to match. Читать дальше...

Image: Apple

Apple has a new offer for publishers: join Apple News, and it’ll only take 15 percent out of your in-app purchases and subscriptions instead of 30. Publishers can apply to Apple’s News Partner Program to take that bargain, but they have to agree to Apple’s requirements, which naturally benefit Apple and go beyond just maintaining a channel in Apple News.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Netflix is taking its next step into gaming by allowing subscribers in Poland on Android to play two Stranger Things games, the company announced Thursday.

Video still by Weston Reel for The Verge

The next generation of a feature called Scan can identify similar clothes, dog breeds, plants, cars, and more

Schell Games

You’re not really a secret agent until you put on a funny hat and fake mustache while you’re trying to stop an evil conglomerate from filling a theater with poison gas. At least, that’s what I Expect You To Die 2 posits, and I think it’s about right.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

TSMC is the biggest chipmaker in the world and the company responsible for the processors used by Apple, AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and even some Intel products. And its products are about to get a lot more expensive: the company plans to raise prices of its advanced chips by around 10 percent and less advanced products by about 20 percent, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal.

Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge

If you’re looking for a Chromebook that rises above many other models in terms of build quality, features, and performance, you should check out Best Buy’s deal on the Acer Chromebook Spin 713. It normally costs $629 to get the model that has a respectable Intel Core i5-10210U processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD, but it’s $200 off that price today. It’s yours for $429. At this price, the Spin 713 is kind of in a league of its own, with a convenient 2-in-1 design... Читать дальше...

Illustration by Claudia Chinyere Akole

It’s a lucrative opportunity many don’t want to take

It’s normal food, blitzed into a pulp, and compressed into 50 gram squares. | Image: SquarEat

Slap bang in the middle of a Venn diagram with two circles labelled “sincere tech startups” and “dystopian satires that are a little on the nose” you will find SquarEat: a company that you would swear is a joke if you weren’t already familiar with how the simulation we’re all living in likes to collide fact and fiction.

Illustration by Claudia Chinyere Akole

Generative profile picture NFTs are all the rage, but creators say it’s not just about the money

Capitalism is all about fairly distributing wealth based on hard work and personal merit, which is why Jeff Bezos earns in 20 seconds what the median US worker makes in a year. He’s just that much better than you!

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

It was just last February that Microsoft Surface chief Panos Panay was promoted to lead the company’s entire Windows software and device teams, and now he’s moving up in the world again — he’s becoming an Executive Vice President who’ll be part of the Senior Leadership Team that advises Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella himself, reports Bloomberg.

James Bareham / The Verge

Niantic announced Wednesday that it’s going back on at least one of its controversial gameplay changes to Pokémon Go. The company is permanently increasing the distance you can be from the real-world locations of Pokéstops and Gyms and still interact with them. The new base limit is 80 meters (262 feet), the distance Niantic introduced at the start of the pandemic.

Google’s Wear OS app for YouTube Music. | Image: Google

Google has finally released a Wear OS app for YouTube Music, which could seem like welcome news for people who have been waiting for a way to play their music off Google’s streaming service after the company shut down Google Play Music on Wear OS in August 2020. But the new app comes with a few caveats.

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft’s Halo-themed Xbox Series X — one of the many announcements to come out of Gamescom Opening Night Live — is set to arrive on November 15th, nearly a month before the confirmed launch of Halo Infinite on December 8th. Preorders for the $549.99, limited-edition bundle went live at the Microsoft Store and Target on Wednesday, with initial preorder stock selling out in a matter of minutes. Thankfully, if you weren’t able to snag the Infinite-ready console earlier... Читать дальше...