Новости за 05.05.2022

Amazon is throwing its hat into the ring of companies trying to solve one of streaming TV’s biggest issues: endless amounts of content can make it really difficult to pick something to watch. Its approach uses an IMDb-branded app that’s exclusively available to Fire TV owners, which will let you play a series of games designed to help you pick a movie.

‘Newcastle’ | Image: Respawn Entertainment

Over the last few seasons, the developers of Apex Legends have worked on opening up the game, both with a massive new map and adding a temporary game mode that swaps out battle royale action for a more traditional team deathmatch. On May 10th, they’re introducing another new legend to the arena with Newcastle and making changes that might help players focus on teamwork.

The number of annual reviews is being cut in half. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Google is hoping to make its performance reviews less of a burden to employees by making it so they only happen once a year instead of twice a year, requiring less paperwork, and changing the way employees are rated. According to a report from The Information, 47 percent of Google employees didn’t think that their time was well spent with the previous performance review system.

Apple introduced Cycle Tracking on the Series 5. | Photography by Victoria Song / The Verge

Although modern smartwatches and fitness trackers have been around for almost a decade, period tracking didn’t arrive until 2018. These integrations shared familiar features with your standard period-tracking app — but a big difference was that instead of having to pull out your phone, you could view or input data from your wrist. And, because these features were part of a wearable platform, users... Читать дальше...

Even before a leaked Supreme Court opinion threw the future of abortion in the United States into turmoil, major corporations were adding a new benefit for their employees: coverage for abortion and other medical travel.

Good news for smart homes divided: as of this week, the newest Google Nest cameras can now stream to your Amazon Alexa smart displays, including Echo Show devices, Fire TVs, and Fire tablets. Following Amazon’s announcement last week that third-party cameras can take advantage of its new person and package announcement features on Echo smart speakers, Google Nest has updated its languishing Alexa skill to include its latest cameras.

All recent iPhones — dating back to iPhone 8 — can take advantage of the Back Tap feature. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Back Tap is one of the easiest ways to put an iPhone function you use all the time literally at your fingertips. It is exactly what it sounds like: a way to access different phone features by tapping the back of your phone — kind of like an extra, user-customizable button. It was introduced with iOS 14, and the feature works on devices as old as the iPhone 8... Читать дальше...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter is working on a handful of new features, including the ability to attach photos and videos to the same tweet, according to a report from 9to5Google. The roundup of features in the works includes news things like mixed-media tweets and also updates on previously reported features like Statuses.

Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

The danger for many people isn’t medical — it’s legal

Image: Summer Game Fest

Summer Game Fest will kick off this year on June 9th at 2PM ET / 11AM PT, with a live show hosted by, as my college Ash Parrish described him, “consummate video game hype-man Geoff Keighley.” According to a press release, the show will be streamed on basically every platform, including YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, and Facebook.

Image: Xbox

Ever since Epic Games started its battle with Apple and Google over their app store fees, playing Fortnite on your mobile device has been more difficult, if not impossible. You could try it on iPhone via Nvidia’s GeForce Now but only if you got into a closed beta. But now, Epic Games has decided to partner with the company it spurned — Microsoft — and is putting Fortnite on pretty much anything with a screen for free via the Xbox Cloud Gaming service.

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

Elon Musk has secured $7.1 billion in new financing for his takeover of Twitter — which CNBC reports will include assuming the role of “temporary CEO” — with this round of funding coming from a group of sometimes high-profile outside investors. At the top of the list is Larry Ellison, with the co-founder and current CTO of Oracle committing $1 billion to the purchase.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Lyft Shared rides, the ride-hail company’s carpooling service, is returning to more US cities this month. The return of carpooling comes as the company struggles to rein in its spending in response to an ongoing driver shortage and high gas prices.

Matt Smith as Prince Daemon Targaryen. | HBO

Though House Targaryen will still hold much power in HBO’s upcoming House of the Dragon series, the Game of Thrones prequel will also dig into the story of how the family fell from grace after years of existing in a world separate from Westeros’ other classes. In the show’s latest trailer, King Viserys Targaryen, Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, and Prince Daemon Targaryen want nothing more than to further ensure that their family’s control over Wesreros’ other power players remains intact. Читать дальше...

Eero’s new mesh Wi-Fi router looks familiar but achieves higher speeds. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

It’s not every day that you get sizable discounts on products that just came out, but today is an exception. The new Eero Pro 6E mesh Wi-Fi router, which The Verge’s Jennifer Pattison Tuohy just reviewed, is already on sale at Amazon for 15 percent off. It’s the new, top-of-the-line model from Eero, sporting a 6GHz band that eclipses gigabit speeds via Wi-Fi — at least in devices that support it. Читать дальше...

The Eero Pro 6E is the company’s first 6GHz-capable router

Continue reading…

Josh Brolin in Outer Range. | Image: Richard Foreman/Amazon Prime Video

A show about cowboys, small town drama, and one big hole

HoloLens showing a driver an upcoming left turn. | Image: Microsoft

Microsoft has officially announced a new “moving platform” feature for the HoloLens 2, which is designed to let the augmented reality headset work in places like cars. It addresses a long-standing HoloLens issue of moving environments confusing the headset’s sensors. The enhancement was developed in collaboration with Volkswagen, which has been experimenting with using the headset as a heads-up display in its vehicles.

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

Elon Musk is expected to take on the CEO role at Twitter in a temporary capacity after his purchase of the company closes later this year, according to CNBC reporter David Faber. Faber says Musk detailed the plans in presentations to possible funders for the takeover.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

On May 5th — World Password Day — we might have come one step closer to passwords being a thing of the past.

Image: Nvidia

Nvidia kicked Google’s butt last October with a huge upgrade to its GeForce Now cloud gaming service — but only those with the company’s Shield TV streaming gadgets could experience it in glorious 4K. Today, Nvidia is fixing that by adding 4K to its native apps for Mac and Windows PC, including a newer version for Macs with Apple’s M1 chips.

The new Spin 514 features two upward-firing speakers. | Image: Acer

Acer is launching a new version of its Chromebook Spin 514 for 2022 with support for the latest AMD Ryzen 5000 C-series processors. The 14-inch 2-in-1 laptop will launch in Q3 2022 with a $579.99 starting price, which is significantly higher than the 2021 model. But the price hike might be justified if you want a faster Chromebook. Acer says that these Zen 3 processors are “performance-oriented” with AMD Radeon graphics. Читать дальше...

Believe it or not, there was no such thing as an AMD Chromebook until 2019. Also, the first ones were sluggish, and whi;e AMD’s second stab at Chromebooks was quite a bit better, they still contained rebranded CPUs whose Zen cores were years out of date. Today, AMD is putting a better foot forward — with the new Ryzen 5000 C-Series chips, including the “first 8-core high-performance x86 processor for Chromebooks.”

Gaze upon it. | Image: HP

HP’s Dragonfly Chromebook is the most exciting Chromebook I’ve seen in a while. The device, which mixes high-end specs with premium hardware design, was announced at CES back in January. And now, HP has finally revealed the price of this thing: the consumer version of the Dragonfly Chromebook is expected to ship this summer, and it will cost — brace yourselves — $1,149.

Apparent retail packaging for the Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones. | Image: u/Chez5160

Pictures of the apparent retail packaging for Sony’s upcoming flagship headphones, the WH-1000XM5, have leaked on Reddit, suggesting the successor to the excellent WH-1000XM4 could be just around the corner. The images appear to confirm the previously rumored design for the new headphones, which includes a thinner headband and redesigned connector with the left and right earcups.